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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1397 ***
+
+THE RUINS,
+
+OR, MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES:
+
+
+AND
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE,
+
+
+by C. F. VOLNEY,
+
+COMTE ET PAIR DE FRANCE. COMMANDEUR DE LA LEGION D'HONNEUR, MEMBRE DE
+L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE, ET DE PLUSIEURS AUTRES SOCIETES SAVANTES.
+
+DEPUTY TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF 1789, AND AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN EGYPT
+AND SYRIA," "NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY," ETC.
+
+
+TO WHICH IS ADDED
+
+VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE BY COUNT DARU,
+AND THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS BY THE EDITOR.
+
+
+I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will employ myself on
+the means of effecting good for him, and build my own happiness on the
+promotion of his.--Volney.
+
+
+NEW YORK, TWENTIETH CENTURY PUB. CO., 4 WARREN ST. 1890.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
+
+
+Having recently purchased a set of stereotyped plates of Volney's Ruins,
+with a view of reprinting the same, I found, on examination, that they
+were considerably worn by the many editions that had been printed
+from them and that they greatly needed both repairs and corrections. A
+careful estimate showed that the amount necessary for this purpose would
+go far towards reproducing this standard work in modern type and in an
+improved form. After due reflection this course was at length decided
+upon, and all the more readily, as by discarding the old plates and
+resetting the entire work, the publisher was enabled to greatly enhance
+its value, by inserting the translator's preface as it appeared in the
+original edition, and also to restore many notes and other valuable
+material which had been carelessly omitted in the American reprint.
+
+An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the
+fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may
+be appropriately referred to, in this connection. It is there stated, in
+describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes,
+her opulent metropolis, that "There a people, now forgotten, discovered,
+while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences.
+A race of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and
+frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil
+and religious systems which still govern the universe."
+
+A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to
+prove that this statement is substantially correct, and that we are in
+reality indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid imagination of
+the persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems
+now so highly revered by the different branches of both the Semitic
+and Aryan races. This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr.
+Volney's writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of
+all religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long
+concealed beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the
+Egyptian Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Dioderus, that
+"the Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship,
+of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other
+religious practice."
+
+That an imaginative and superstitious race of black men should have
+invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system
+of religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the
+intellects of the leading representatives of modern theology,--that
+still clings to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential influence
+the literature and faith of the civilized and cultured nations of Europe
+and America, is indeed a strange illustration of the mad caprice of
+destiny, of the insignificant and apparently trivial causes that oft
+produce the most grave and momentous results.
+
+
+The translation here given closely follows that published in Paris by
+Levrault, Quai Malaquais, in 1802, which was under the direction and
+careful supervision of the talented author; and whatever notes Count
+Volney then thought necessary to insert in his work, are here carefully
+reproduced without abridgment or modification.
+
+
+The portrait, maps and illustrations are from a French edition of
+Volney's complete works, published by Bossange Freres at No. 12 Rue de
+Seine, Paris, in 1821,--one year after the death of Mr. Volney. It is a
+presentation copy "on the part of Madame, the Countess de Volney, and
+of the nephew of the author," and it may therefore be taken for
+granted that Mr. Volney's portrait, as here given, is correct, and was
+satisfactory to his family.
+
+
+An explanation of the figures and diagrams shown on the map of the
+Astrological Heaven of the Ancients has been added in the appendix by
+the publisher.
+
+PETER ECKLER.
+
+New York, January 3, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
+
+OF THE ENGLISH EDITION PUBLISHED IN PARIS.
+
+
+To offer the public a new translation of Volney's Ruins may require some
+apology in the view of those who are acquainted with the work only in
+the English version which already exists, and which has had a general
+circulation. But those who are conversant with the book in the author's
+own language, and have taken pains to compare it with that version,
+must have been struck with the errors with which the English performance
+abounds. They must have regretted the loss of many original beauties,
+some of which go far in composing the essential merits of the work.
+
+The energy and dignity of the author's manner, the unaffected elevation
+of his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity of his
+diction, are everywhere suited to his subject, which is solemn, novel,
+luminous, affecting,--a subject perhaps the most universally interesting
+to the human race that has ever been presented to their contemplation.
+It takes the most liberal and comprehensive view of the social state
+of man, develops the sources of his errors in the most perspicuous and
+convincing manner, overturns his prejudices with the greatest delicacy
+and moderation, sets the wrongs he has suffered, and the rights he ought
+to cherish, in the clearest point of view, and lays before him the true
+foundation of morals--his only means of happiness.
+
+As the work has already become a classical one, even in English, and as
+it must become and continue to be so regarded in all languages in which
+it shall be faithfully rendered, we wish it to suffer as little as
+possible from a change of country;--that as much of the spirit of the
+original be transfused and preserved as is consistent with the nature of
+translation.
+
+How far we have succeeded in performing this service for the English
+reader we must not pretend to determine. We believe, however, that
+we have made an improved translation, and this without claiming any
+particular merit on our part, since we have had advantages which our
+predecessor had not. We have been aided by his labors; and, what is of
+still more importance, our work has been done under the inspection of
+the author, whose critical knowledge of both languages has given us
+a great facility in avoiding such errors as might arise from hurry or
+mistake.
+
+Paris, November 1, 1802.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE OF THE LONDON EDITION.*
+
+     * Published by T. Allman, 42 Holborn Hill, London, 1851.
+
+The plan of this publication was formed nearly ten years ago; and
+allusions to it may be seen in the preface to Travels in Syria and
+Egypt, as well as at the end of that work, (published in 1787). The
+performance was in some forwardness when the events of 1788 in France
+interrupted it. Persuaded that a development of the theory of political
+truth could not sufficiently acquit a citizen of his debt to society,
+the author wished to add practice; and that particularly at a time when
+a single arm was of consequence in the defence of the general cause.
+
+The same desire of public benefit which induced him to suspend his work,
+has since engaged him to resume it, and though it may not possess the
+same merit as if it had appeared under the circumstances that gave rise
+to it, yet he imagines that at a time when new passions are bursting
+forth,--passions that must communicate their activity to the religious
+opinions of men,--it is of importance to disseminate such moral truths
+as are calculated to operate as a curb and restraint. It is with this
+view he has endeavored to give to these truths, hitherto treated as
+abstract, a form likely to gain them a reception.
+
+It was found impossible not to shock the violent prejudices of some
+readers; but the work, so far from being the fruit of a disorderly
+and perturbed spirit, has been dictated by a sincere love of order and
+humanity.
+
+After reading this performance it will be asked, how it was possible in
+1784 to have had an idea of what did not take place till the year
+1790? The solution is simple. In the original plan the legislator was
+a fictitious and hypothetical being: in the present, the author has
+substituted an existing legislator; and the reality has only made the
+subject additionally interesting.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.*
+
+     * The copy from which this preface is reprinted was
+     published in Boston by Charles Gaylord, in 1833.  It was
+     given to the writer, when a mere lad, by a lady--almost a
+     stranger--who was traveling through the little hamlet on the
+     banks of the Hudson where he then resided.  This lady
+     assured me that the book was of great value, containing
+     noble and sublime truths; and the only condition she
+     attached to the gift was, that I should read it carefully
+     and endeavor to understand its meaning.  This I willingly
+     promised and faithfully performed; and all who have "climbed
+     the heights," and escaped from the thraldom of superstitious
+     faith, will concede the inestimable value of such a gift--
+     rich with the peace and consolation that the truth imparts.
+     --Pub.
+
+If books were to be judged of by their volume, the following would have
+but little value; if appraised by their contents, it will perhaps be
+reckoned among the most instructive.
+
+In general, nothing is more important than a good elementary book; but,
+also, nothing is more difficult to compose and even to read: and why?
+Because, as every thing in it should be analysis and definition, all
+should be expressed with truth and precision. If truth and precision are
+wanting, the object has not been attained; if they exist, its very force
+renders it abstract.
+
+The first of these defects has been hitherto evident in all books of
+morality. We find in them only a chaos of incoherent maxims, precepts
+without causes, and actions without a motive. The pedants of the human
+race have treated it like a little child: they have prescribed to it
+good behavior by frightening it with spirits and hobgoblins. Now that
+the growth of the human race is rapid, it is time to speak reason to it;
+it is time to prove to men that the springs of their improvement are to
+be found in their very organization, in the interest of their passions,
+and in all that composes their existence. It is time to demonstrate that
+morality is a physical and geometrical science, subject to the rules
+and calculations of the other mathematical sciences: and such is the
+advantage of the system expounded in this book, that the basis of
+morality being laid in it on the very nature of things, it is both
+constant and immutable; whereas, in all other theological systems,
+morality being built upon arbritary opinions, not demonstrable and often
+absurd, it changes, decays, expires with them, and leaves men in an
+absolute depravation. It is true that because our system is founded
+on facts and not on reveries, it will with much greater difficulty
+be extended and adopted: but it will derive strength from this very
+struggle, and sooner or later the eternal religion of Nature must
+overturn the transient religions of the human mind.
+
+
+This book was published for the first time in 1793, under the title of
+The French Citizen's Catechism. It was at first intended for a national
+work, but as it may be equally well entitled the Catechism of men of
+sense and honor, it is to be hoped that it will become a book common
+to all Europe. It is possible that its brevity may prevent it from
+attaining the object of a popular classical work, but the author will be
+satisfied if he has at least the merit of pointing out the way to make a
+better.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.
+
+VOLNEY'S RUINS;
+
+OR MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES.
+
+
+The superior merits of this work are too well known to require
+commendation; but as it is not generally known that there are in
+circulation three English translations of it, varying materially in
+regard to faithfulness and elegance of diction, the publisher of the
+present edition inserts the following extracts for the information of
+purchasers and readers:
+
+
+
+
+PARIS TRANSLATION,
+
+First published in this Country by Dixon and Sickels.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail, solitary ruins! holy sepulchres, and silent walls! you I invoke;
+to you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret
+terror, the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious
+sentiments--sublime contemplations. What useful lessons! what affecting
+and profound reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult
+you. When the whole earth, in chains and silence, bowed the neck before
+its tyrants, you had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor,
+and confounding the dust of the king with that of the meanest slave,
+had announced to man the sacred dogma of Equality! Within your pale, in
+solitary adoration of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions
+of the dead; not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude,
+armed with fire and sword, but under the august aspect of justice,
+poising in her hand the sacred balance, wherein are weighed the actions
+of men at the gates of eternity.
+
+O Tombs! what virtues are yours! you appal the tyrant's heart, and
+poison with secret alarm his impious joys; he flies, with coward step,
+your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON TRANSLATION.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Solitary ruins, sacred tombs, ye mouldering and silent walls, all hail!
+To you I address my invocation. While the vulgar shrink from your aspect
+with secret terror, my heart finds in the contemplation a thousand
+delicious sentiments, a thousand admirable recollections. Pregnant, I
+may truly call you, with useful lessons, with pathetic and irresistible
+advice to the man who knows how to consult you. A while ago the whole
+world bowed the neck in silence before the tyrants that oppressed it;
+and yet in that hopeless moment you already proclaimed the truths that
+tyrants hold in abhorrence: mixing the dust of the proudest kings with
+that of the meanest slaves, you called upon us to contemplate this
+example of Equality. From your caverns, whither the musing and anxious
+love of Liberty led me, I saw escape its venerable shade, and with
+unexpected felicity, direct its flight and marshal my steps the way to
+renovated France.
+
+Tombs! what virtues and potency do you exhibit! Tyrants tremble at your
+aspect--you poison with secret alarm their impious pleasures--they turn
+from you with impatience, and, coward like, endeavor to forget you amid
+the sumptuousness of their palaces.
+
+
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA TRANSLATION.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail, ye solitary ruins, ye sacred tombs, and silent walls! 'Tis your
+auspicious aid that I invoke; 'tis to you my soul, wrapt in meditation,
+pours forth its prayers! What though the profane and vulgar mind shrinks
+with dismay from your august and awe-inspiring aspect; to me you unfold
+the sublimest charms of contemplation and sentiment, and offer to my
+senses the luxury of a thousand delicious and enchanting thoughts!
+How sumptuous the feast to a being that has a taste to relish, and an
+understanding to consult you! What rich and noble admonitions;
+what exquisite and pathetic lessons do you read to a heart that is
+susceptible of exalted feelings! When oppressed humanity bent in timid
+silence throughout the globe beneath the galling yoke of slavery, it was
+you that proclaimed aloud the birthright of those truths which tyrants
+tremble at while they detect, and which, by sinking the loftiest head of
+the proudest potentate, with all his boasted pageantry, to the level
+of mortality with his meanest slave, confirmed and ratified by your
+unerring testimony the sacred and immortal doctrine of Equality.
+
+Musing within the precincts of your inviting scenes of philosophic
+solitude, whither the insatiate love of true-born Liberty had led me, I
+beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character and habit of
+a blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and instruments of murder, and
+followed by a frantic and intoxicated multitude, but under the placid
+and chaste aspect of Justice, holding with a pure and unsullied hand the
+sacred scales in which the actions of mortals are weighed on the brink
+of eternity.
+
+
+The first translation was made and published in London soon after the
+appearance of the work in French, and, by a late edition, is still
+adopted without alteration. Mr. Volney, when in this country in 1797,
+expressed his disapprobation of this translation, alleging that the
+translator must have been overawed by the government or clergy from
+rendering his ideas faithfully; and, accordingly, an English gentleman,
+then in Philadelphia, volunteered to correct this edition. But by his
+endeavors to give the true and full meaning of the author with great
+precision, he has so overloaded his composition with an exuberance
+of words, as in a great measure to dissipate the simple elegance and
+sublimity of the original. Mr. Volney, when he became better acquainted
+with the English language, perceived this defect; and with the aid of
+our countryman, Joel Barlow, made and published in Paris a new, correct,
+and elegant translation, of which the present edition is a faithful and
+correct copy.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     Publisher's Preface
+     Translator's Preface
+     Preface of London Edition
+     Preface of the American Edition
+     Advertisement of the American Edition
+     The Life of Volney
+     A List of Volney's Works
+     Invocation
+
+     Chap.
+     I.     The Journey
+     II.    The Reverie
+     III.   The Apparition
+     IV.    The Exposition
+     V.     Condition of Man in the Universe
+     VI.    The Primitive State of Man
+     VII.   Principles of Society
+     VIII.  Sources of the Evils of Societies
+     IX.    Origin of Governments and Laws
+     X.     General Causes of the Prosperity of Ancient States
+     XI.    General Causes of the Revolutions and Ruin of Ancient States
+     XII.   Lessons of Times Past repeated on the Present
+     XIII.  Will the Human Race Improve
+     XIV.   The Great Obstacle to Improvement
+     XV.    The New Age
+     XVI.   A Free and Legislative People
+     XVII.  Universal Basis of all Right and all Law
+     XVIII. Consternation and Conspiracy of Tyrants
+     XIX.   General Assembly of the Nations
+     XX.    The Search of Truth
+     XXI.   Problem of Religious Contradictions
+     XXII.  Origin and Filiation of Religious Ideas
+         I.     Origin of the Idea of God: Worship of the Elements
+                   and of the Physical Powers of Nature
+         II.    Second System.  Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism
+         III.   Third System.  Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry
+         IV.    Fourth System.  Worship of two Principles, or Dualism
+         V.     Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State
+         VI.    Sixth System.  The Animated World, or Worship of the
+                    Universe under diverse Emblems
+         VII.   Seventh System.  Worship of the Soul of the World, that
+                    is to say, the Element of Fire, Vital Principle
+                    of the Universe
+         VIII.  Eighth System.  The World Machine: Worship of the Demi-
+                   Ourgos, or Grand Artificer
+         IX.    Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World
+                  (You-piter)
+         X.     Religion of Zoroaster
+         XI.    Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans
+         XII.   Brahmism, or Indian System
+         XIII.  Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun
+                   under the cabalistic names of Chrish-en or Christ
+                   and Yesus or Jesus
+     XXIII. All Religions have the same Object
+     XXIV.  Solution of the Problem of Contradictions
+
+
+     THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+     Chap.
+     I.     Of the Law of Nature
+     II.    Characters of the Law of Nature
+     III.   Principles of the Law of Nature relating to Man
+     IV.    Basis of Morality: of Good, of Evil, of Sin, of Crime,
+               of Vice, and of Virtue
+     V.     Of Individual Virtues
+     VI.    On Temperance
+     VII.   On Continence
+     VIII.  On Courage and Activity
+     IX.    On Cleanliness
+     X.     On Domestic Virtues
+     XI.    The Social Virtues; Justice
+     XII.   Development of the Social Virtues
+
+     Volney's Answer to Dr. Priestly.
+
+     Appendix: The Zodiacal Signs and Constellations
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF VOLNEY.
+
+By Count Daru.
+
+
+Constantine Francis Chassebeuf De Volney was born in 1757 at Craon, in
+that intermediate condition of life, which is of all the happiest, since
+it is deprived only of fortune's too dangerous favors, and can aspire to
+the social and intellectual advantages reserved for a laudable ambition.
+
+From his earliest youth, he devoted himself to the search after truth,
+without being disheartened by the serious studies which alone can
+initiate us into her secrets. After having become acquainted with the
+ancient languages, the natural sciences and history, and being admitted
+into the society of the most eminent literary characters, he submitted,
+at the age of twenty, to an illustrious academy, the solution of one of
+the most difficult problems that the history of antiquity has left open
+for discussion. This attempt received no encouragement from the learned
+men who were appointed his judges; and the author's only appeal from
+their sentence was to his courage and his efforts.
+
+Soon after, a small inheritance having fallen to his lot, the difficulty
+was how to spend it (these are his own words.) He resolved to employ
+it in acquiring, by a long voyage, a new fund of information, and
+determined to visit Egypt and Syria. But these countries could not be
+explored to advantage without a knowledge of the language. Our young
+traveller was not to be discouraged by this difficulty. Instead of
+learning Arabic in Europe, he withdrew to a convent of Copts, until he
+had made himself master of an idiom that is spoken by so many nations
+of the East. This resolution showed one of those undaunted spirits that
+remain unshaken amid the trials of life.
+
+Although, like other travellers, he might have amused us with an account
+of his hardships and the perils surmounted by his courage, he overcame
+the temptation of interrupting his narrative by personal adventures. He
+disdained the beaten track. He does not tell us the road he took, the
+accidents he met with, or the impressions he received. He carefully
+avoids appearing upon the stage; he is an inhabitant of the country,
+who has long and well observed it, and who describes its physical,
+political, and moral state. The allusion would be entire if an old
+Arab could be supposed to possess all the erudition, all the European
+philosophy, which are found united and in their maturity in a traveller
+of twenty-five.
+
+But though a master in all those artifices by which a narration is
+rendered interesting, the young man is not to be discerned in the pomp
+of labored descriptions. Although possessed of a lively and brilliant
+imagination, he is never found unwarily explaining by conjectural
+systems the physical or moral phenomena he describes. In his
+observations he unites prudence with science. With these two guides he
+judges with circumspection, and sometimes confesses himself unable to
+account for the effects he has made known to us.
+
+Thus his account has all the qualities that persuade--accuracy
+and candor. And when, ten years later, a vast military enterprise
+transported forty thousand travellers to the classic ground, which he
+had trod unattended, unarmed and unprotected, they all recognized a sure
+guide and an enlightened observer in the writer who had, as it seemed,
+only preceded them to remove or point out a part of the difficulties of
+the way.
+
+The unanimous testimony of all parties proved the accuracy of his
+account and the justness of his observations; and his Travels in Egypt
+and Syria were, by universal suffrage, recommended to the gratitude and
+the confidence of the public.
+
+Before the work had undergone this trial it had obtained in the learned
+world such a rapid and general success, that it found its way into
+Russia. The empress, then (in 1787) upon the throne, sent the author
+a medal, which he received with respect, as a mark of esteem for his
+talents, and with gratitude, as a proof of the approbation given to his
+principles. But when the empress declared against France, Volney sent
+back the honorable present, saying: "If I obtained it from her esteem, I
+can only preserve her esteem by returning it."
+
+The revolution of 1789, which had drawn upon France the menaces of
+Catharine, had opened to Volney a political career. As deputy in the
+assembly of the states-general, the first words he uttered there were
+in favor of the publicity of their deliberations. He also supported
+the organization of the national guards, and that of the communes and
+departments.
+
+At the period when the question of the sale of the domain lands was
+agitated (in 1790), he published an essay in which he lays down the
+following principles: "The force of a State is in proportion to
+its population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in
+proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest,
+that is to the spirit of property. Whence it follows, that the nearer
+the cultivator approaches the passive condition of a mercenary, the less
+industry and activity are to be expected from him; and, on the other
+hand, the nearer he is to the condition of a free and entire proprietor,
+the more extension he gives to his own forces, to the produce of his
+lands, and the general prosperity of the State."
+
+The author draws this conclusion, that a State is so much the more
+powerful as it includes a greater number of proprietors,--that is, a
+greater division of property.
+
+Conducted into Corsica by that spirit of observation which belongs only
+to men whose information is varied and extensive, he perceived at the
+first glance all that could be done for the improvement of agriculture
+in that country: but he knew that, for a people firmly attached to
+ancient customs, there can exist no other demonstration or means of
+persuasion than example. He purchased a considerable estate, and made
+experiments on those kinds of tillage that he hoped to naturalize
+in that climate. The sugar-cane, cotton, indigo and coffee soon
+demonstrated the success of his efforts. This success drew upon him the
+notice of the government. He was appointed director of agriculture and
+commerce in that island, where, through ignorance, all new methods are
+introduced with such difficulty.
+
+It is impossible to calculate all the good that might have resulted from
+this peaceable magistracy; and we know that neither instruction, zeal,
+nor a persevering courage was wanting to him who had undertaken it.
+Of this he had given convincing proofs. It was in obedience to another
+sentiment, no less respectable, that he voluntarily interrupted the
+course of his labors. When his fellow citizens of Angers appointed him
+their deputy in the constituent assembly, he resigned the employment he
+held under government, upon the principle that no man can represent
+the nation and be dependent for a salary upon those by whom it is
+administered.
+
+Through respect for the independence of his legislative functions,
+he had ceased to occupy the place he possessed in Corsica before his
+election, but he had not ceased to be a benefactor of that country. He
+returned thither after the session of the constituent assembly. Invited
+into that island by the principal inhabitants, who were anxious to put
+into practice his lessons, he spent there a part of the years 1792 and
+1793.
+
+On his return he published a work entitled: An Account of the Present
+State of Corsica. This was an act of courage; for it was not a physical
+description, but a political review of the condition of a population
+divided into several factions and distracted by violent animosities.
+Volney unreservedly revealed the abuses, solicited the interest of
+France in favor of the Corsicans, without flattering them, and boldly
+denounced their defects and vices; so that the philosopher obtained the
+only recompense he could expect from his sincerity--he was accused by
+the Corsicans of heresy.
+
+To prove that he had not merited this reproach, he published soon after
+a short treatise entitled: The Law of Nature, or Physical Principles of
+Morality.
+
+He was soon exposed to a much more dangerous charge, and this, it must
+be confessed, he did merit. This philosopher, this worthy citizen, who
+in our first National assembly had seconded with his wishes and his
+talents the establishment of an order of things which he considered
+favorable to the happiness of his country, was accused of not being
+sincerely attached to that liberty for which he had contended; that is
+to say, of being averse to anarchy. An imprisonment of ten months, which
+only ended after the 9th of Thermidor, was a new trial reserved for his
+courage.
+
+The moment at which he recovered his liberty, was when the horror
+inspired by criminal excesses had recalled men to those noble sentiments
+which fortunately are one of the first necessaries of civilized life.
+They sought for consolations in study and literature after so many
+misfortunes, and organized a plan of public instruction.
+
+It was in the first place necessary to insure the aptitude of those to
+whom education should be confided; but as the systems were various, the
+best methods and a unity of doctrine were to be determined. It was not
+enough to interrogate the masters, they were to be formed, new ones were
+to be created, and for that purpose a school was opened in 1794, wherein
+the celebrity of the professors promised new instruction even to the
+best informed. This was not, as was objected, beginning the edifice at
+the roof, but creating architects, who were to superintend all the arts
+requisite for constructing the building.
+
+The more difficult their functions were, the greater care was to be
+taken in the choice of the professors; but France, though then accused
+of being plunged in barbarism, possessed men of transcendent talents,
+already enjoying the esteem of all Europe, and we may be bold to say,
+that by their labors, our literary glory had likewise extended its
+conquests. Their names were proclaimed by the public voice, and Volney's
+was associated with those of the men most illustrious in science and in
+literature.*
+
+     * Lagrange, Laplace, Berthollet, Garat, Bernardin de Saint-
+     Pierre, Daubenton, Hauy, Volney, Sicard, Monge, Thouin, La
+     Harpe, Buache Mentelle.
+
+This institution, however, did not answer the expectations that had been
+formed of it, because the two thousand students that assembled from all
+parts of France were not equally prepared to receive these transcendent
+lessons, and because it had not been sufficiently ascertained how far
+the theory of education should be kept distinct from education itself.
+
+Volney's Lectures on History, which were attended by an immense
+concourse of auditors, became one of his chief claims to literary glory.
+When forced to interrupt them, by the suppression of the Normal school,
+he might have reasonably expected to enjoy in his retirement that
+consideration which his recent functions had added to his name. But,
+disgusted with the scenes he had witnessed in his native land, he felt
+that passion revive within him which, in his youth, had led him to visit
+Africa and Asia. America, civilized within a century, and free only
+within a few years, fixed his attention. There every thing was new,--the
+inhabitants, the constitution, the earth itself. These were objects
+worthy of his observation. When embarking for this voyage, however, he
+felt emotions very different from those which formerly accompanied him
+into Turkey. Then in the prime of life, he joyfully bid adieu to a
+land where peace and plenty reigned, to travel amongst barbarians;
+now, mature in years, but dismayed at the spectacle and experience of
+injustice and persecution, it was with diffidence, as we learn from
+himself, that he went to implore from a free people an asylum for a
+sincere friend of that liberty that had been so profaned.
+
+Our traveller had gone to seek for repose beyond the seas. He there
+found himself exposed to aggression from a celebrated philosopher, Dr.
+Priestley. Although the subject of this discussion was confined to the
+investigation of some speculative opinions, published by the French
+writer in his work entitled The Ruins, the naturalist in this attack
+employed a degree of violence which added nothing to the force of his
+arguments, and an acrimony of expression not to be expected from a
+philosopher. M. Volney, though accused of Hottentotism and ignorance,
+preserved in his defence, all the advantages that the scurrility of
+his adversary gave over him. He replied in English, and Priestley's
+countrymen could only recognize the Frenchman in the refinement and
+politeness of his answer.
+
+Whilst M. Volney was travelling in America, there had been formed in
+France a literary body which, under the name of Institute, had attained
+in a very few years a distinguished rank amongst the learned societies
+of Europe. The name of the illustrious traveller was inscribed in it
+at its formation, and he acquired new rights to the academical
+honors conferred on him during his absence, by the publication of his
+observations On the Climate and Soil of the United States.
+
+These rights were further augmented by the historical and physiological
+labors of the Academician. An examination and justification of The
+Chronology of Herodotus, with numerous and profound researches on The
+History of the most Ancient Nations, occupied for a long time him who
+had observed their monuments and traces in the countries they inhabited.
+The trial he had made of the utility of the Oriental languages inspired
+him with an ardent desire to propagate the knowledge of them; and to be
+propagated, he felt how necessary it was to render it less difficult.
+In this view he conceived the project of applying to the study of the
+idioms of Asia, a part of the grammatical notions we possess concerning
+the languages of Europe. It only appertains to those conversant with
+their relations of dissimilitude or conformity to appreciate the
+possibility of realizing this system. The author has, however, already
+received the most flattering encouragement and the most unequivocal
+appreciation, by the inscription of his name amongst the members of
+the learned and illustrious society founded by English commerce in the
+Indian peninsula.
+
+M. Volney developed his system in three works,* which prove that this
+idea of uniting nations separated by immense distances and such various
+idioms, had never ceased to occupy him for twenty-five years. Lest those
+essays, of the utility of which he was persuaded, should be interrupted
+by his death, with the clay-cold hand that corrected his last work, he
+drew up a will which institutes a premium for the prosecution of his
+labors. Thus he prolonged, beyond the term of a life entirely devoted to
+letters, the glorious services he had rendered to them.
+
+     * On the Simplification of Oriental Languages, 1795. The
+     European Alphabet Applied to the Languages of Asia, 1819.
+     Hebrew Simplified, 1820.
+
+This is not the place, nor does it belong to me to appreciate the merit
+of the writings which render Volney's name illustrious. His name had
+been inscribed in the list of the Senate, and afterwards of the House
+of Peers. The philosopher who had travelled in the four quarters of
+the world, and observed their social state, had other titles to his
+admission into this body, than his literary glory. His public life, his
+conduct in the constituent assembly, his independent principles, the
+nobleness of his sentiments, the wisdom and fixity of his opinions, had
+gained him the esteem of those who can be depended upon, and with whom
+it is so agreeable to discuss political interests.
+
+Although no man had a better right to have an opinion, no one was more
+tolerant for the opinions of others. In State assemblies as well as
+in Academical meetings, the man whose counsels were so wise, voted
+according to his conscience, which nothing could bias; but the
+philosopher forgot his superiority to hear, to oppose with moderation,
+and sometimes to doubt. The extent and variety of his information,
+the force of his reason, the austerity of his manners, and the noble
+simplicity of his character, had procured him illustrious friends in
+both hemispheres; and now that this erudition is extinct in the tomb,*
+we may be allowed at least to predict that he was one of the very few
+whose memory shall never die.
+
+     * He died in Paris on the 20th of April, 1820.
+
+
+A list of the Works Published by Count Volney.
+
+
+TRAVELS IN EGYPT AND SYRIA during the years 1783, 1784, and 1785: 2
+vols. 8vo.--1787.
+
+CHRONOLOGY OF THE TWELVE CENTURIES that preceded the entrance of Xerxes
+into Greece.
+
+CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TURKISH WAR, in 1788.
+
+THE RUINS, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires--1791.
+
+ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT STATE OF CORSICA--1793.
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE, or Physical Principles of Morality--1793.
+
+ON THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES--1795.
+
+A LETTER TO DR. PRIESTLEY--1797.
+
+LECTURES ON HISTORY, delivered at the Normal School in the year 3--1800.
+
+ON THE CLIMATE AND SOIL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, to which is
+added an account of Florida, of the French colony of Scioto, of some
+Canadian Colonies, and of the Savages--1803.
+
+REPORT MADE TO THE CELTIC ACADEMY ON THE RUSSIAN WORK OF PROFESSOR
+PALLAS, entitled "A Comparative Vocabulary of all the Languages in the
+World."
+
+THE CHRONOLOGY OF HERODOTUS conformable with his Text--1808 and 1809.
+
+NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY, 3 vols. 8vo.--1814
+
+THE EUROPEAN ALPHABET Applied to the Languages of Asia--1819.
+
+A HISTORY OF SAMUEL--1819.
+
+HEBREW SIMPLIFIED--1820.
+
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail solitary ruins, holy sepulchres and silent walls! you I invoke; to
+you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret terror,
+the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious
+sentiments--sublime contemplations. What useful lessons, what affecting
+and profound reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult
+you! When the whole earth, in chains and silence bowed the neck before
+its tyrants, you had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor;
+and confounding the dust of the king with that of the meanest slave,
+had announced to man the sacred dogma of Equality. Within your pale, in
+solitary adoration of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions
+of the dead; not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude,
+armed with fire and sword, but under the august aspect of Justice,
+poising in her hand the sacred balance wherein are weighed the actions
+of men at the gates of eternity!
+
+O Tombs! what virtues are yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and
+poison with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward step,
+your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.*
+You punish the powerful oppressor; you wrest from avarice and extortion
+their ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the feeble whom they have
+despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of
+the rich; you console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from
+distress; and you give to the soul that just equipoise of strength and
+sensibility which constitutes wisdom--the true science of life. Aware
+that all must return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the
+burdens of grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires
+within the limits of justice; yet, knowing that he must run his destined
+course of life, he fills with employment all its hours, and enjoys the
+comforts that fortune has allotted him. You thus impose on the impetuous
+sallies of cupidity a salutary rein! you calm the feverish ardor
+of enjoyments which disturb the senses; you free the soul from the
+fatiguing conflict of the passions; elevate it above the paltry
+interests which torment the crowd; and surveying, from your commanding
+position, the expanse of ages and nations, the mind is only accessible
+to the great affections--to the solid ideas of virtue and of glory.
+
+     * The cathedral of St. Denis is the tomb of the kings of
+     France; and it was because the towers of that edifice are
+     seen from the Castle of St. Germain, that Louis XIV. quitted
+     that admirable residence, and established a new one in the
+     savage forests of Versailles.
+
+     (This note, like many others, has been omitted from the
+     American editions.  It seems pertinent to the subject, and
+     is explanatory of the text.--Pub.)
+
+Ah! when the dream of life is over, what will then avail all its
+agitations, if not one trace of utility remains behind?
+
+
+O Ruins! to your school I will return! I will seek again the calm of
+your solitudes; and there, far from the afflicting spectacle of the
+passions, I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will
+employ myself on the means of effecting good for him, and build my own
+happiness on the promotion of his.
+
+
+
+THE RUINS OF EMPIRES.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE JOURNEY.
+
+
+In the eleventh year of the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid, son of Ahmid, emperor
+of the Turks; when the Nogais-Tartars were driven from the Crimea, and a
+Mussulman prince of the blood of Gengis-Kahn became the vassal and
+guard of a Christian woman and queen,* I was travelling in the Ottoman
+dominions, and through those provinces which were anciently the kingdoms
+of Egypt and Syria.
+
+     * In the eleventh year of Abd-ul-Hamid, that is 1784 of the
+     Christian era, and 1198 of the Hegira.  The emigration of
+     the Tartars took place in March, immediately on the
+     manifesto of the empress, declaring the Crimea to be
+     incorporated with Russia.  The Mussulman prince of the blood
+     of Gengis-khan was Chahin-Guerai. Gengis-Khan was borne and
+     served by the kings whom he conquered: Chahin, on the
+     contrary, after selling his country for a pension of eighty
+     thousand roubles, accepted the commission of captain of
+     guards to Catherine II.  He afterwards returned home, and
+     according to custom was strangled by the Turks.
+
+My whole attention bent on whatever concerns the happiness of man in
+a social state, I visited cities, and studied the manners of their
+inhabitants; entered palaces, and observed the conduct of those who
+govern; wandered over fields, and examined the condition of those
+who cultivated them: and nowhere perceiving aught but robbery and
+devastation, tyranny and wretchedness, my heart was oppressed with
+sorrow and indignation.
+
+I saw daily on my road fields abandoned, villages deserted, and cities
+in ruin. Often I met with ancient monuments, wrecks of temples, palaces
+and fortresses, columns, aqueducts and tombs. This spectacle led me to
+meditate on times past, and filled my mind with contemplations the most
+serious and profound.
+
+Arrived at the city of Hems, on the border of the Orontes, and being
+in the neighborhood of Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to visit its
+celebrated ruins. After three days journeying through arid deserts,
+having traversed the Valley of Caves and Sepulchres, on issuing into
+the plain, I was suddenly struck with a scene of the most stupendous
+ruins--a countless multitude of superb columns, stretching in avenues
+beyond the reach of sight. Among them were magnificent edifices, some
+entire, others in ruins; the earth every where strewed with fragments
+of cornices, capitals, shafts, entablatures, pilasters, all of
+white marble, and of the most exquisite workmanship. After a walk of
+three-quarters of an hour along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of
+a vast edifice, formerly a temple dedicated to the Sun; and accepting
+the hospitality of some poor Arabian peasants, who had built their
+hovels on the area of the temple, I determined to devote some days to
+contemplate at leisure the beauty of these stupendous ruins.
+
+Daily I visited the monuments which covered the plain; and one evening,
+absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the Valley of Sepulchres. I
+ascended the heights which surround it from whence the eye commands the
+whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun had sunk
+below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind
+the distant mountains of Syria; the full-orbed moon was rising in the
+east, on a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was
+clear, the air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the
+horrors of approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered
+the sultry emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given
+their camels to repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and
+uniform plain; profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only
+of the jackal,* and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard
+at distant intervals. Darkness now increased, and through the dusk could
+only be discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls. The solitude
+of the place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene,
+impressed on my mind a religious pensiveness. The aspect of a great city
+deserted, the memory of times past, compared with its present state, all
+elevated my mind to high contemplations. I sat on the shaft of a column,
+my elbow reposing on my knee, and head reclining on my hand, my eyes
+fixed, sometimes on the desert, sometimes on the ruins, and fell into a
+profound reverie.
+
+     * An animal resembling a dog and a fox.  It preys on other
+     small animals, and upon the bodies of the dead on the field
+     of battle. It is the Canis aureus of Linnaeus.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE REVERIE.
+
+
+Here, said I, once flourished an opulent city; here was the seat of a
+powerful empire. Yes! these places now so wild and desolate, were once
+animated by a living multitude; a busy crowd thronged in these streets,
+now so solitary. Within these walls, where now reigns the silence
+of death, the noise of the arts, and the shouts of joy and festivity
+incessantly resounded; these piles of marble were regular palaces; these
+fallen columns adorned the majesty of temples; these ruined galleries
+surrounded public places. Here assembled a numerous people for the
+sacred duties of their religion, and the anxious cares of their
+subsistence; here industry, parent of enjoyments, collected the riches
+of all climes, and the purple of Tyre was exchanged for the precious
+thread of Serica;* the soft tissues of Cassimere for the sumptuous
+tapestry of Lydia; the amber of the Baltic for the pearls and perfumes
+of Arabia; the gold of Ophir for the tin of Thule.
+
+     * The precious thread of Serica.--That is, the silk
+     originally derived from the mountainous country where the
+     great wall terminates, and which appears to have been the
+     cradle of the Chinese empire.  The tissues of Cassimere.--
+     The shawls which Ezekiel seems to have described under the
+     appellation of Choud-choud.  The gold of Ophir.--This
+     country, which was one of the twelve Arab cantons, and which
+     has so much and so unsuccessfully been sought for by the
+     antiquarians, has left, however, some trace of itself in
+     Ofor, in the province of Oman, upon the Persian Gulf,
+     neighboring on one side to the Sabeans, who are celebrated
+     by Strabo for their abundance of gold, and on the other to
+     Aula or Hevila, where the pearl fishery was carried on.  See
+     the 27th chapter of Ezekiel, which gives a very curious and
+     extensive picture of the commerce of Asia at that period.
+
+And now behold what remains of this powerful city: a miserable skeleton!
+What of its vast domination: a doubtful and obscure remembrance! To
+the noisy concourse which thronged under these porticoes, succeeds the
+solitude of death. The silence of the grave is substituted for the busy
+hum of public places; the affluence of a commercial city is changed into
+wretched poverty; the palaces of kings have become a den of wild beasts;
+flocks repose in the area of temples, and savage reptiles inhabit the
+sanctuary of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed? how
+have so many labors been annihilated? Do thus perish then the works of
+men--thus vanish empires and nations?
+
+And the history of former times revived in my mind; I remembered those
+ancient ages when many illustrious nations inhabited these countries; I
+figured to myself the Assyrian on the banks of the Tygris, the Chaldean
+on the banks of the Euphrates, the Persian reigning from the Indus to
+the Mediterranean. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of
+Jerusalem and Samaria, the warlike states of the Philistines, and
+the commercial republics of Phoenicia. This Syria, said I, now so
+depopulated, then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded
+with towns, villages, and hamlets.* In all parts were seen cultivated
+fields, frequented roads, and crowded habitations. Ah! whither have
+flown those ages of life and abundance?--whither vanished those
+brilliant creations of human industry? Where are those ramparts of
+Nineveh, those walls of Babylon, those palaces of Persepolis, those
+temples of Balbec and of Jerusalem? Where are those fleets of Tyre,
+those dock-yards of Arad, those work-shops of Sidon, and that multitude
+of sailors, of pilots, of merchants, and of soldiers? Where those
+husbandmen, harvests, flocks, and all the creation of living beings
+in which the face of the earth rejoiced? Alas! I have passed over this
+desolate land! I have visited the palaces, once the scene of so much
+splendor, and I beheld nothing but solitude and desolation. I sought the
+ancient inhabitants and their works, and found nothing but a trace, like
+the foot-prints of a traveller over the sand. The temples are fallen,
+the palaces overthrown, the ports filled up, the cities destroyed; and
+the earth, stripped of inhabitants, has become a place of sepulchres.
+Great God! whence proceed such fatal revolutions? What causes have so
+changed the fortunes of these countries? Wherefore are so many cities
+destroyed? Why has not this ancient population been reproduced and
+perpetuated?
+
+     * According to Josephus and Strabo, there were in Syria
+     twelve millions of souls, and the traces that remain of
+     culture and habitation confirm the calculation.
+
+Thus absorbed in meditation, a crowd of new reflections continually
+poured in upon my mind. Every thing, continued I, bewilders my judgment,
+and fills my heart with trouble and uncertainty. When these countries
+enjoyed what constitutes the glory and happiness of man, they were
+inhabited by infidel nations: It was the Phoenician, offering human
+sacrifices to Moloch, who gathered into his stores the riches of all
+climates; it was the Chaldean, prostrate before his serpent-god,*
+who subjugated opulent cities, laid waste the palaces of kings, and
+despoiled the temples of the gods; it was the Persian, worshipper of
+fire, who received the tribute of a hundred nations; they were the
+inhabitants of this very city, adorers of the sun and stars, who erected
+so many monuments of prosperity and luxury. Numerous herds, fertile
+fields, abundant harvests--whatsoever should be the reward of piety--was
+in the hands of these idolaters. And now, when a people of saints and
+believers occupy these fields, all is become sterility and solitude.
+The earth, under these holy hands, produces only thorns and briers. Man
+soweth in anguish, and reapeth tears and cares. War, famine, pestilence,
+assail him by turns. And yet, are not these the children of the
+prophets? The Mussulman, Christian, Jew, are they not the elect children
+of God, loaded with favors and miracles? Why, then, do these privileged
+races no longer enjoy the same advantages? Why are these fields,
+sanctified by the blood of martyrs, deprived of their ancient fertility?
+Why have those blessings been banished hence, and transferred for so
+many ages to other nations and different climes?
+
+     * The dragon Bell.
+
+At these words, revolving in my mind the vicissitudes which have
+transmitted the sceptre of the world to people so different in religion
+and manners from those in ancient Asia to the most recent of Europe,
+this name of a natal land revived in me the sentiment of my country; and
+turning my eyes towards France, I began to reflect on the situation in
+which I had left her.*
+
+     * In the year 1782, at the close of the American war.
+
+I recalled her fields so richly cultivated, her roads so admirably
+constructed, her cities inhabited by a countless people, her fleets
+spread over every sea, her ports filled with the produce of both the
+Indies: and then comparing the activity of her commerce, the extent of
+her navigation, the magnificence of her buildings, the arts and industry
+of her inhabitants, with what Egypt and Syria had once possessed, I was
+gratified to find in modern Europe the departed splendor of Asia; but
+the charm of my reverie was soon dissolved by a last term of comparison.
+Reflecting that such had once been the activity of the places I was
+then contemplating, who knows, said I, but such may one day be the
+abandonment of our countries? Who knows if on the banks of the Seine,
+the Thames, the Zuyder-Zee, where now, in the tumult of so many
+enjoyments, the heart and the eye suffice not for the multitude of
+sensations,--who knows if some traveller, like myself, shall not one day
+sit on their silent ruins, and weep in solitude over the ashes of their
+inhabitants, and the memory of their former greatness.
+
+At these words, my eyes filled with tears: and covering my head with the
+fold of my mantle, I sank into gloomy meditations on all human affairs.
+Ah! hapless man, said I in my grief, a blind fatality sports with thy
+destiny!* A fatal necessity rules with the hand of chance the lot of
+mortals! But no: it is the justice of heaven fulfilling its decrees!--a
+God of mystery exercising his incomprehensible judgments! Doubtless
+he has pronounced a secret anathema against this land: blasting with
+maledictions the present, for the sins of past generations. Oh! who
+shall dare to fathom the depths of the Omnipotent?
+
+     * Fatality is the universal and rooted prejudice of the
+     East.  "It was written," is there the answer to every thing.
+     Hence result an unconcern and apathy, the most powerful
+     impediments to instruction and civilization.
+
+And sunk in profound melancholy, I remained motionless.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE APPARITION.
+
+
+While thus absorbed, a sound struck my ear, like the agitation of a
+flowing robe, or that of slow footsteps on dry and rustling grass.
+Startled, I opened my mantle, and looking about with fear and trembling,
+suddenly, on my left, by the glimmering light of the moon, through
+the columns and ruins of a neighboring temple, I thought I saw an
+apparition, pale, clothed in large and flowing robes, such as spectres
+are painted rising from their tombs. I shuddered: and while agitated and
+hesitating whether to fly or to advance toward the object, a distinct
+voice, in solemn tones, pronounced these words:
+
+How long will man importune heaven with unjust complaint? How long, with
+vain clamors, will he accuse Fate as the author of his calamities? Will
+he forever shut his eyes to the light, and his heart to the admonitions
+of truth and reason? The light of truth meets him everywhere; yet he
+sees it not! The voice of reason strikes his ear; and he hears it
+not! Unjust man! if for a moment thou canst suspend the delusion which
+fascinates thy senses, if thy heart can comprehend the language of
+reason, interrogate these ruins! Read the lessons which they present to
+thee! And you, evidences of twenty centuries, holy temples! venerable
+tombs! walls once so glorious, appear in the cause of nature herself!
+Approach the tribunal of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust
+accusations! Come and confound the declamations of a false wisdom or
+hypocritical piety, and avenge the heavens and the earth of man who
+calumniates them both!
+
+What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law,
+sports with the destiny of mortals? What is that unjust necessity, which
+confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of folly? In what
+consist the anathemas of heaven over this land? Where is that divine
+malediction which perpetuates the abandonment of these fields? Say,
+monuments of past ages! have the heavens changed their laws and the
+earth its motion? Are the fires of the sun extinct in the regions of
+space? Do the seas no longer emit their vapors? Are the rains and the
+dews suspended in the air? Do the mountains withhold their springs? Are
+the streams dried up? And do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed?
+Answer, generation of falsehood and iniquity, hath God deranged the
+primitive and settled order of things which he himself assigned to
+nature? Hath heaven denied to earth, and earth to its inhabitants,
+the blessings they formerly dispensed? If nothing hath changed in the
+creation, if the same means now exist which before existed, why then are
+not the present what former generations were? Ah! it is falsely that you
+accuse fate and heaven! it is unjustly that you accuse God as the cause
+of your evils! Say, perverse and hypocritical race! if these places are
+desolate, if these powerful cities are reduced to solitude, is it God
+who has caused their ruin? Is it his hand which has overthrown these
+walls, destroyed these temples, mutilated these columns, or is it the
+hand of man? Is it the arm of God which has carried the sword into your
+cities, and fire into your fields, which has slaughtered the people,
+burned the harvests, rooted up trees, and ravaged the pastures, or is
+it the hand of man? And when, after the destruction of crops, famine
+has ensued, is it the vengeance of God which has produced it, or the
+mad fury of mortals? When, sinking under famine, the people have fed
+on impure aliments, if pestilence ensues, is it the wrath of God which
+sends it, or the folly of man? When war, famine and pestilence, have
+swept away the inhabitants, if the earth remains a desert, is it God
+who has depopulated it? Is it his rapacity which robs the husbandman,
+ravages the fruitful fields, and wastes the earth, or is it the rapacity
+of those who govern? Is it his pride which excites murderous wars,
+or the pride of kings and their ministers? Is it the venality of his
+decisions which overthrows the fortunes of families, or the corruption
+of the organs of the law? Are they his passions which, under a thousand
+forms, torment individuals and nations, or are they the passions of man?
+And if, in the anguish of their miseries, they see not the remedies,
+is it the ignorance of God which is to blame, or their ignorance? Cease
+then, mortals, to accuse the decrees of Fate, or the judgments of the
+Divinity! If God is good, will he be the author of your misery? If he is
+just, will he be the accomplice of your crimes? No, the caprice of which
+man complains is not the caprice of fate; the darkness that misleads his
+reason is not the darkness of God; the source of his calamities is
+not in the distant heavens, it is beside him on the earth; it is not
+concealed in the bosom of the divinity; it dwells within himself, he
+bears it in his own heart.
+
+Thou murmurest and sayest: What! have an infidel people then enjoyed the
+blessings of heaven and earth? Are the holy people of God less fortunate
+than the races of impiety? Deluded man! where then is the contradiction
+which offends thee? Where is the inconsistency which thou imputest to
+the justice of heaven? Take into thine own hands the balance of rewards
+and punishments, of causes and effects. Say: when these infidels
+observed the laws of the heavens and the earth, when they regulated
+well-planned labors by the order of the seasons and the course of
+the stars, should the Almighty have disturbed the equilibrium of the
+universe to defeat their prudence? When their hands cultivated these
+fields with toil and care, should he have diverted the course of the
+rains, suspended the refreshing dews, and planted crops of thorns?
+When, to render these arid fields productive, their industry constructed
+aqueducts, dug canals, and led the distant waters across the desert,
+should he have dried up their sources in the mountains? Should he have
+blasted the harvests which art had nourished, wasted the plains which
+peace had peopled, overthrown cities which labor had created, or
+disturbed the order established by the wisdom of man? And what is that
+infidelity which founded empires by its prudence, defended them by
+its valor, and strengthened them by its justice--which built powerful
+cities, formed capacious ports, drained pestilential marshes, covered
+the ocean with ships, the earth with inhabitants; and, like the
+creative spirit, spread life and motion throughout the world? If such
+be infidelity, what then is the true faith? Doth sanctity consist in
+destruction? The God who peoples the air with birds, the earth with
+animals, the waters with fishes--the God who animates all nature--is he
+then a God of ruins and tombs? Demands he devastation for homage, and
+conflagration for sacrifice? Requires he groans for hymns, murderers for
+votaries, a ravaged and desolate earth for his temple? Behold then, holy
+and believing people, what are your works! behold the fruits of your
+piety! You have massacred the people, burned their cities, destroyed
+cultivation, reduced the earth to a solitude; and you ask the reward
+of your works! Miracles then must be performed! The people whom you
+extirpated must be recalled to life, the walls rebuilt which you have
+overthrown, the harvests reproduced which you have destroyed, the waters
+regathered which you have dispersed; the laws, in fine, of heaven and
+earth reversed; those laws, established by God himself, in demonstration
+of his magnificence and wisdom; those eternal laws, anterior to all
+codes, to all the prophets those immutable laws, which neither the
+passions nor the ignorance of man can pervert. But that passion which
+mistaketh, that ignorance which observeth neither causes nor effects,
+hath said in its folly: "All things flow from chance; a blind fatality
+poureth out good and evil upon the earth; success is not to the prudent,
+nor felicity to the wise;" or, assuming the language of hypocrisy, she
+hath said, "all things are from God; he taketh pleasure in deceiving
+wisdom and confounding reason." And Ignorance, applauding herself in her
+malice, hath said, "thus will I place myself on a par with that science
+which confounds me--thus will I excel that prudence which fatigues and
+torments me." And Avarice hath added: "I will oppress the weak, and
+devour the fruits of his labors; and I will say, it is fate which hath
+so ordained." But I! I swear by the laws of heaven and earth, and by the
+law which is written in the heart of man, that the hypocrite shall be
+deceived in his cunning--the oppressor in his rapacity! The sun shall
+change his course, before folly shall prevail over wisdom and knowledge,
+or ignorance surpass prudence, in the noble and sublime art of procuring
+to man his true enjoyments, and of building his happiness on an enduring
+foundation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EXPOSITION
+
+
+Thus spoke the Phantom. Confused with this discourse, and my heart
+agitated with different reflections, I remained long in silence. At
+length, taking courage, I thus addressed him: Oh, Genius of tombs and
+ruins! Thy presence, thy severity, hath disordered my senses; but the
+justice of thy discourse restoreth confidence to my soul. Pardon my
+ignorance. Alas, if man is blind, shall his misfortune be also his
+crime? I may have mistaken the voice of reason; but never, knowingly,
+have I rejected its authority. Ah! if thou readest my heart, thou
+knowest with what enthusiasm it seeketh truth. Is it not in its pursuit
+that thou seest me in this sequestered spot? Alas! I have wandered over
+the earth, I have visited cities and countries; and seeing everywhere
+misery and desolation, a sense of the evils which afflict my fellow men
+hath deeply oppressed my soul. I have said, with a sigh: is man then
+born but for sorrow and anguish? And I have meditated upon human misery
+that I might discover a remedy. I have said, I will separate myself from
+the corruption of society; I will retire far from palaces where the mind
+is depraved by satiety and from the hovel where it is debased by misery.
+I will go into the desert and dwell among ruins; I will interrogate
+ancient monuments on the wisdom of past ages; I will invoke from the
+bosom of the tombs the spirit which once in Asia gave splendor to
+states, and glory to nations; I will ask of the ashes of legislators,
+by what secret causes do empires rise and fall; from what sources spring
+the Prosperity and misfortunes of nations, on what principles can the
+Peace of Society, and the happiness of man be established?
+
+I ceased, and with submissive look awaited the answer of the Genius.
+
+Peace and happiness, said he, attend those who practice justice! Since
+thy heart, O mortal, with sincerity seeketh truth; since thine eyes can
+still recognize her through the mist of prejudice, thy prayer shall not
+be in vain. I will unfold to thy view that truth thou invokest; I will
+teach thy reason that knowledge thou seekest; I will reveal to thee the
+science of ages and the wisdom of the tombs.
+
+Then approaching and laying his hand on my head, he said:
+
+Rise, mortal, and extricate thy senses from the dust in which thou
+movest.
+
+Suddenly a celestial flame seemed to dissolve the bands which held us to
+the earth; and, like a light vapor, borne on the wings of the Genius,
+I felt myself wafted to the regions above. Thence, from the aerial
+heights, looking down upon the earth, I perceived a scene altogether
+new. Under my feet, floating in the void, a globe like that of the moon,
+but smaller and less luminous, presented to me one of its phases; and
+that phase* had the aspect of a disk varigated with large spots, some
+white and nebulous, others brown, green or gray, and while I strained my
+sight to distinguish what they were, the Genius exclaimed:
+
+     * See Plate representing half the terrestrial globe,
+     opposite page 10.
+
+Disciple of Truth, knowest thou that object?
+
+O Genius, answered I, if I did not see the moon in another quarter of
+the heavens, I should have supposed that to be her globe. It has
+the appearance of that planet seen through the telescope during the
+obscuration of an eclipse. These varigated spots might be mistaken for
+seas and continents.
+
+They are seas and continents, said he, and those of the very hemisphere
+which you inhabit.
+
+What! said I, is that the earth--the habitation of man?
+
+Yes, replied he, that brown space which occupies irregularly a great
+portion of the disk, and envelops it almost on every side, is what you
+call the great ocean, which advancing from the south pole towards the
+equator, forms first the great gulf of India and Africa, then extends
+eastward across the Malay islands to the confines of Tartary, while
+towards the west it encircles the continents of Africa and of Europe,
+even to the north of Asia.
+
+That square peninsula under our feet is the arid country of the Arabs;
+the great continent on its left, almost as naked in its interior, with
+a little verdure only towards its borders, is the parched soil inhabited
+by black-men.* To the north, beyond a long, narrow and irregular sea,**
+are the countries of Europe, rich in meadows and cultivated fields. On
+its right, from the Caspian Sea, extend the snowy and naked plains of
+Tartary. Returning in this direction that white space is the vast and
+barren desert of Cobi, which separates China from the rest of the world.
+You see that empire in the furrowed plain which obliquely rounds itself
+off from our sight. On yonder coasts, those ragged tongues of land
+and scattered points are the peninsulas and islands of the Malays, the
+wretched possessors of the spices and perfumes. That triangle which
+advances so far into the sea, is the too famous peninsula of India.***
+You see the winding course of the Ganges, the rough mountains of Thibet,
+the lovely valley of Cachemere, the briny deserts of Persia, the banks
+of the Euphrates and Tygris, the deep bed of the Jordan and the canals
+of the solitary Nile.
+
+     * Africa.
+
+     ** The Mediterranean.
+
+     *** Of what real good has been the commerce of India to the
+     mass of the people?  On the contrary, how great the evil
+     occasioned by the superstition of this country having been
+     added the general superstition!
+
+O Genius, said I, interrupting him, the sight of a mortal reaches not
+to objects at such a distance. He touched my eyes, and immediately they
+became piercing as those of an eagle; nevertheless the rivers still
+appeared like waving lines, the mountains winding furrows, and the
+cities little compartments like the squares of a chess-board.
+
+And the Genius proceeded to enumerate and point out the objects to
+me: Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow valley
+watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the
+ancient kingdom of Ethiopia.* Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of
+Thebes with her hundred palaces,** the parent of cities, and monument of
+the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while
+others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A
+race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled
+hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and
+religious systems which still govern the universe. Lower down, those
+dusky points are the pyramids whose masses have astonished you. Beyond
+that, the coast, hemmed in between the sea and a narrow ridge of
+mountains, was the habitation of the Phoenicians. These were the famous
+cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon, of Gaza, and of Berytus. That
+thread of water with no outlet, is the river Jordan; and those naked
+rocks were once the theatre of events that have resounded throughout
+the world. Behold that desert of Horeb, and that Mount Sinai; where,
+by means beyond vulgar reach, a genius, profound and bold, established
+institutions which have weighed on the whole human race. On that dry
+shore which borders it, you perceive no longer any trace of splendor;
+yet there was an emporium of riches. There were those famous Ports of
+Idumea, whence the fleets of Phoenicia and Judea, coasting the Arabian
+peninsula, went into the Persian gulf, to seek there the pearls of
+Hevila, the gold of Saba and of Ophir. Yes, there on that coast of Oman
+and of Barhain was the seat of that commerce of luxuries, which, by its
+movements and revolutions, fixed the destinies of ancient nations.***
+Thither came the spices and precious stones of Ceylon, the shawls of
+Cassimere, the diamonds of Golconda, the amber of Maldivia, the musk of
+Thibet, the aloes of Cochin, the apes and peacocks of the continent of
+India, the incense of Hadramaut, the myrrh, the silver, the gold dust
+and ivory of Africa; thence passing, sometimes by the Red Sea on the
+vessels of Egypt and Syria, these luxuries nourished successively the
+wealth of Thebes, of Sidon, of Memphis and of Jerusalem; sometimes,
+ascending the Tygris and Euphrates, they awakened the activity of the
+Assyrians, Medes, Chaldeans, and Persians; and that wealth, according
+to the use or abuse of it, raised or reversed by turns their domination.
+Hence sprung the magnificence of Persepolis, whose columns you
+still perceive; of Ecbatana, whose sevenfold wall is destroyed; of
+Babylon,**** now leveled with the earth; of Nineveh, of which scarce
+the name remains; of Thapsacus, of Anatho, of Gerra, and of desolated
+Palmyra. O names for ever glorious! fields of renown! countries of
+never-dying memory! what sublime lessons doth your aspect offer! what
+profound truths are written on the surface of your soil! remembrances of
+times past, return into my mind! places, witnesses of the life of man in
+so many different ages, retrace for me the revolutions of his fortune!
+say, what were their springs and secret causes! say, from what sources
+he derived success and disgrace! unveil to himself the causes of his
+evils! correct him by the spectacle of his errors! teach him the wisdom
+which belongeth to him, and let the experience of past ages become a
+means of instruction, and a germ of happiness to present and future
+generations.
+
+     * In the new Encyclopedia 3rd vol. Antiquities is published
+     a memoir, respecting the chronology of the twelve ages
+     anterior to the passing of Xerxes into Greece, in which I
+     conceive myself to have proved that upper Egypt formerly
+     composed a distinct kingdom known to the Hebrews by the name
+     of Kous and to which the appellation of Ethiopia was
+     specially given.  This kingdom preserved its independence to
+     the time of Psammeticus; at which period, being united to
+     the Lower Egypt, it lost its name of Ethiopia, which
+     thenceforth was bestowed upon the nations of Nubia and upon
+     the different tribes of blacks, including Thebes, their
+     metropolis.
+
+     ** The idea of a city with a hundred gates, in the common
+     acceptation of the word, is so absurd, that I am astonished
+     the equivoque has not before been felt.
+
+     It has ever been the custom of the East to call palaces and
+     houses of the great by the name of gates, because the
+     principal luxury of these buildings consists in the singular
+     gate leading from the street into the court, at the farthest
+     extremity of which the palace is situated.  It is under the
+     vestibule of this gate that conversation is held with
+     passengers, and a sort of audience and hospitality given.
+     All this was doubtless known to Homer; but poets make no
+     commentaries, and readers love the marvellous.
+
+     This city of Thebes, now Lougsor, reduced to the condition
+     of a miserable village, has left astonishing monuments of
+     its magnificence.  Particulars of this may be seen in the
+     plates of Norden, in Pocock, and in the recent travels of
+     Bruce.  These monuments give credibility to all that Homer
+     has related of its splendor, and lead us to infer its
+     political power and external commerce.
+
+     Its geographical position was favorable to this twofold
+     object. For, on one side, the valley of the Nile, singularly
+     fertile, must have early occasioned a numerous population;
+     and, on the other, the Red Sea, giving communication with
+     Arabia and India, and the Nile with Abyssinia and the
+     Mediterranean, Thebes was thus naturally allied to the
+     richest countries on the globe; an alliance that procured it
+     an activity so much the greater, as Lower Egypt, at first a
+     swamp, was nearly, if not totally, uninhabited.  But when at
+     length this country had been drained by the canals and dikes
+     which Sesostris constructed, population was introduced
+     there, and wars arose which proved fatal to the power of
+     Thebes.  Commerce then took another route, and descended to
+     the point of the Red Sea, to the canals of Sesostris (see
+     Strabo), and wealth and activity were transferred to
+     Memphis.  This is manifestly what Diodorus means when he
+     tells us (lib. i. sect. 2), that as soon as Memphis was
+     established and made a wholesome and delicious abode, kings
+     abandoned Thebes to fix themselves there.  Thus Thebes
+     continued to decline, and Memphis to flourish, till the time
+     of Alexander, who, building Alexandria on the border of the
+     sea, caused Memphis to fall in its turn; so that prosperity
+     and power seem to have descended historically step by step
+     along the Nile; whence it results, both physically and
+     historically, that the existence of Thebes was prior to that
+     of the other cities.  The testimony of writers is very
+     positive in this respect.  "The Thebans," says Diodorus,
+     "consider themselves as the most ancient people of the
+     earth, and assert, that with them originated philosophy and
+     the science of the stars.  Their situation, it is true, is
+     infinitely favorable to astronomical observation, and they
+     have a more accurate division of time into mouths and years
+     than other nations" etc.
+
+     What Diodorus says of the Thebans, every author, and himself
+     elsewhere, repeat of the Ethiopians, which tends more firmly
+     to establish the identity of this place of which I have
+     spoken.  "The Ethiopians conceive themselves," says he, lib.
+     iii., "to be of greater antiquity than any other nation: and
+     it is probable that, born under the sun's path, its warmth
+     may have ripened them earlier than other men.  They suppose
+     themselves also to be the inventors of divine worship, of
+     festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and every
+     other religious practice.  They affirm that the Egyptians
+     are one of their colonies, and that the Delta, which was
+     formerly sea, became land by the conglomeration of the earth
+     of the higher country which was washed down by the Nile.
+     They have, like the Egyptians, two species of letters,
+     hieroglyphics, and the alphabet; but among the Egyptians the
+     first was known only to the priests, and by them transmitted
+     from father to son, whereas both species were common among
+     the Ethiopians."
+
+     "The Ethiopians," says Lucian, page 985, "were the first who
+     invented the science of the stars, and gave names to the
+     planets, not at random and without meaning, but descriptive
+     of the qualities which they conceived them to possess; and
+     it was from them that this art passed, still in an imperfect
+     state, to the Egyptians."
+
+     It would be easy to multiply citations upon this subject;
+     from all which it follows, that we have the strongest
+     reasons to believe that the country neighboring to the
+     tropic was the cradle of the sciences, and of consequence
+     that the first learned nation was a nation of Blacks; for it
+     is incontrovertible, that, by the term Ethiopians, the
+     ancients meant to represent a people of black complexion,
+     thick lips, and woolly hair.  I am therefore inclined to
+     believe, that the inhabitants of Lower Egypt were originally
+     a foreign colony imported from Syria and Arabia, a medley of
+     different tribes of savages, originally shepherds and
+     fishermen, who, by degrees formed themselves into a nation,
+     and who, by nature and descent, were enemies of the Thebans,
+     by whom they were no doubt despised and treated as
+     barbarians.
+
+     I have suggested the same ideas in my Travels into Syria,
+     founded upon the black complexion of the Sphinx.  I have
+     since ascertained that the antique images of Thebias have
+     the same characteristic; and Mr. Bruce has offered a
+     multitude of analogous facts; but this traveller, of whom I
+     heard some mention at Cairo, has so interwoven these facts
+     with certain systematic opinions, that we should have
+     recourse to his narratives with caution.
+
+     It is singular that Africa, situated so near us, should be
+     the least known country on the earth.  The English are at
+     this moment making explorations, the success of which ought
+     to excite our emulation.
+
+     *** Ailah (Eloth), and Atsiom-Gaber (Hesien-Geber.)  The
+     name of the first of these towns still subsists in its
+     ruins, at the point of the gulf of the Red Sea, and in the
+     route which the pilgrims take to Mecca.  Hesion has at
+     present no trace, any more than Quolzoum and Faran: it was,
+     however, the harbor for the fleets of Solomon.  The vessels
+     of this prince conducted by the Tyrians, sailed along the
+     coast of Arabia to Ophir, in the Persian Gulf, thus opening
+     a communication with the merchants of India and Ceylon.
+     That this navigation was entirely of Tyrian invention,
+     appears both from the pilots and shipbuilders employed by
+     the Jews, and the names that were given to the trading
+     islands, viz. Tyrus and Aradus, now Barhain.  The voyage was
+     performed in two different modes, either in canoes of osier
+     and rushes, covered on the outside with skins done over with
+     pitch: (these vessels were unable to quit the Red Sea, or so
+     much as to leave the shore.)  The second mode of carrying on
+     the trade was by means of vessels with decks of the size of
+     our river boats, which were able to pass the strait and to
+     weather the dangers of time ocean; but for this purpose it
+     was necessary to bring the wood from Mount Libanus and
+     Cilicia, where it is very fine and in great abundance.  This
+     wood was first conveyed in floats from Tarsus to Phoenicia,
+     for which reason the vessels were called ships of Tarsus;
+     from whence it has been ridiculously inferred, that they
+     went round the promontory of Africa as far as Tortosa in
+     Spain.  From Phoenicia it was transported on the backs of
+     camels to the Red Sea, which practice still continues,
+     because the shores of this sea are absolutely unprovided
+     with wood even for fuel.  These vessels spent a complete
+     year in their voyage, that is, sailed one year, sojourned
+     another, and did not return till the third.  This
+     tediousness was owing first to their cruising from port to
+     port, as they do at present; secondly, to their being
+     detained by the Monsoon currents; and thirdly, because,
+     according to the calculations of Pliny and Strabo, it was
+     the ordinary practice among the ancients to spend three
+     years in a voyage of twelve hundred leagues.  Such a
+     commerce must have been very expensive, particularly as they
+     were obliged to carry with them their provisions, and even
+     fresh water.  For this reason Solomon made himself master of
+     Palmyra, which was at that time inhabited, and was already
+     the magazine and high road of merchants by the way of the
+     Euphrates.  This conquest brought Solomon much nearer to the
+     country of gold and pearls.  This alternative of a route
+     either by the Red Sea or by the river Euphrates was to the
+     ancients, what in later times has been the alternative in a
+     voyage to the Indies, either by crossing the isthmus of Suez
+     or doubling the cape of Good Hope.  It appears that till the
+     time of Moses, this trade was carried on across the desert
+     of Syria and Thebais; that afterwards it fell into the hands
+     of the Phoenicians, who fixed its site upon the Red Sea; and
+     that it was mutual jealousy that induced the kings of
+     Nineveh and Babylon to undertake the destruction of Tyre and
+     Jerusalem.  I insist the more upon these facts, because I
+     have never seen any thing reasonable upon the subject.
+
+     **** It appears that Babylon occupied on the eastern banks
+     of the Euphrates a space of ground six leagues in length.
+     Throughout this space bricks are found by means of which
+     daily additions are made to the town of Helle.  Upon many of
+     these are characters written with a nail similar to those of
+     Persepolis.  I am indebted for these facts to M. de
+     Beauchamp, grand vicar of Babylon, a traveller equally
+     distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and for his
+     veracity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CONDITION OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE.
+
+
+The Genius, after some moments of silence, resumed in these words:
+
+I have told thee already, O friend of truth! that man vainly ascribes
+his misfortunes to obscure and imaginary agents; in vain he seeks as the
+source of his evils mysterious and remote causes. In the general order
+of the universe his condition is, doubtless, subject to inconveniences,
+and his existence governed by superior powers; but those powers are
+neither the decrees of a blind fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical
+and fantastic beings. Like the world of which he forms a part, man is
+governed by natural laws, regular in their course, uniform in their
+effects, immutable in their essence; and those laws,--the common source
+of good and evil,--are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden
+in codes of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings,
+interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places,
+they are present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his
+understanding, and give to every action its reward or punishment. Let
+man then know these laws! let him comprehend the nature of the elements
+which surround him, and also his own nature, and he will know the
+regulators of his destiny; he will know the causes of his evils and the
+remedies he should apply.
+
+When the hidden power which animates the universe, formed the globe
+which man inhabits, he implanted in the beings composing it, essential
+properties which became the law of their individual motion, the bond of
+their reciprocal relations, the cause of the harmony of the whole; he
+thereby established a regular order of causes and effects, of principles
+and consequences, which, under an appearance of chance, governs the
+universe, and maintains the equilibrium of the world. Thus, he gave to
+fire, motion and activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to
+matter; he made air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood
+less cohesive than steel; he decreed flame to ascend, stones to fall,
+plants to vegetate; to man, who was to be exposed to the action of so
+many different beings, and still to preserve his frail life, he gave
+the faculty of sensation. By this faculty all action hurtful to his
+existence gives him a feeling of pain and evil, and all which is
+salutary, of pleasure and happiness. By these sensations, man, sometimes
+averted from that which wounds his senses, sometimes allured towards
+that which soothes them, has been obliged to cherish and preserve his
+own life; thus, self-love, the desire of happiness, aversion to
+pain, become the essential and primary laws imposed on man by nature
+herself--the laws which the directing power, whatever it be, has
+established for his government--and which laws, like those of motion in
+the physical world, are the simple and fruitful principle of whatever
+happens in the moral world.
+
+Such, then, is the condition of man: on one side, exposed to the action
+of the elements which surround him, he is subject to many inevitable
+evils; and if, in this decree, nature has been severe, on the other
+hand, just and even indulgent she has not only tempered the evils with
+equivalent good, she has also enabled him to increase the good and
+alleviate the evil. She seems to say:
+
+"Feeble work of my hands, I owe thee nothing, and I give thee life; the
+world wherein I placed thee was not made for thee, yet I give thee the
+use of it; thou wilt find in it a mixture of good and evil; it is for
+thee to distinguish them; for thee to guide thy footsteps in a path
+containing thorns as well as roses. Be the arbiter of thine own fate; I
+put thy destiny into thine own hands!"
+
+Yes, man is made the architect of his own destiny; he, himself, hath
+been the cause of the successes or reverses of his own fortune; and if,
+on a review of all the pains with which he has tormented his own
+life, he finds reason to weep over his own weakness or imprudence
+yet, considering the beginnings from which he sat out, and the height
+attained, he has, perhaps, still reason to presume on his strength, and
+to pride himself on his genius.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PRIMITIVE STATE OF MAN.
+
+
+Formed naked in body and in mind, man at first found himself thrown, as
+it were by chance, on a rough and savage land: an orphan, abandoned by
+the unknown power which had produced him, he saw not by his side beings
+descended from heaven to warn him of those wants which arise only from
+his senses, nor to instruct him in those duties which spring only
+from his wants. Like to other animals, without experience of the past,
+without foresight of the future, he wandered in the bosom of the forest,
+guided only and governed by the affections of his nature. By the pain of
+hunger, he was led to seek food and provide for his subsistence; by the
+inclemency of the air, he was urged to cover his body, and he made him
+clothes; by the attraction of a powerful pleasure, he approached a being
+like himself, and he perpetuated his kind.
+
+Thus the impressions which he received from every object, awakening his
+faculties, developed by degrees his understanding, and began to instruct
+his profound ignorance: his wants excited industry, dangers formed his
+courage; he learned to distinguish useful from noxious plants, to
+combat the elements, to seize his prey, to defend his life; and thus he
+alleviated its miseries.
+
+Thus self-love, aversion to pain, the desire of happiness, were the
+simple and powerful excitements which drew man from the savage and
+barbarous condition in which nature had placed him. And now, when his
+life is replete with enjoyments, when he may count each day by the
+comforts it brings, he may applaud himself and say:
+
+"It is I who have produced the comforts which surround me; it is I who
+am the author of my own happiness; a safe dwelling, convenient clothing,
+abundant and wholesome nourishment, smiling fields, fertile hills,
+populous empires, all is my work; without me this earth, given up
+to disorder, would have been but a filthy fen, a wild wood, a dreary
+desert."
+
+Yes, creative man, receive my homage! Thou hast measured the span of the
+heavens, calculated the volume of the stars, arrested the lightning in
+its clouds, subdued seas and storms, subjected all the elements. Ah! how
+are so many sublime energies allied to so many errors?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PRINCIPLES OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+Wandering in the woods and on the banks of rivers in pursuit of game and
+fish, the first men, beset with dangers, assailed by enemies, tormented
+by hunger, by reptiles, by ravenous beasts, felt their own individual
+weakness; and, urged by a common need of safety, and a reciprocal
+sentiment of like evils, they united their resources and their strength;
+and when one incurred a danger, many aided and succored him; when
+one wanted subsistence, another shared his food with him. Thus men
+associated to secure their existence, to augment their powers, to
+protect their enjoyments; and self-love thus became the principle of
+society.
+
+Instructed afterwards by the experience of various and repeated
+accidents, by the fatigues of a wandering life, by the distress of
+frequent scarcity, men reasoned with themselves and said:
+
+"Why consume our days in seeking scattered fruits from a parsimonious
+soil? why exhaust ourselves in pursuing prey which eludes us in the
+woods or waters? why not collect under our hands the animals that
+nourish us? why not apply our cares in multiplying and preserving them?
+We will feed on their increase, be clothed in their skins, and live
+exempt from the fatigues of the day and solicitude for the morrow."
+
+And men, aiding one another, seized the nimble goat, the timid sheep;
+they tamed the patient camel, the fierce bull, the impetuous horse; and,
+applauding their own industry, they sat down in the joy of their souls,
+and began to taste repose and comfort: and self-love, the principle of
+all reasoning, became the incitement to every art, and every enjoyment.
+
+When, therefore, men could pass long days in leisure, and in
+communication of their thoughts, they began to contemplate the earth,
+the heavens, and their own existence as objects of curiosity and
+reflection; they remarked the course of the seasons, the action of
+the elements, the properties of fruits and plants; and applied their
+thoughts to the multiplication of their enjoyments. And in some
+countries, having observed that certain seeds contained a wholesome
+nourishment in a small volume, convenient for transportation and
+preservation, they imitated the process of nature; they confided to the
+earth rice, barley, and corn, which multiplied to the full measure
+of their hope; and having found the means of obtaining within a small
+compass and without removal, plentiful subsistence and durable stores,
+they established themselves in fixed habitations; they built houses,
+villages, and towns; formed societies and nations; and self-love
+produced all the developments of genius and of power.
+
+Thus by the aid of his own faculties, man has raised himself to the
+astonishing height of his present fortune. Too happy if, observing
+scrupulously the law of his being, he had faithfully fulfilled its
+only and true object! But, by a fatal imprudence, sometimes mistaking,
+sometimes transgressing its limits, he has launched forth into a
+labyrinth of errors and misfortunes; and self-love, sometimes unruly,
+sometimes blind, became a principle fruitful in calamities.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SOURCES OF THE EVILS OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+In truth, scarcely were the faculties of men developed, when, inveigled
+by objects which gratify the senses, they gave themselves up to
+unbridled desires. The sweet sensations which nature had attached to
+their real wants, to endear to them their existence, no longer satisfied
+them. Not content with the abundance offered by the earth or produced
+by industry, they wished to accumulate enjoyments and coveted those
+possessed by their fellow men. The strong man rose up against the
+feeble, to take from him the fruit of his labor; the feeble invoked
+another feeble one to repel the violence. Two strong ones then said:
+
+"Why fatigue ourselves to produce enjoyments which we may find in the
+hands of the weak? Let us join and despoil them; they shall labor for
+us, and we will enjoy without labor."
+
+And the strong associating for oppression and the weak for resistance,
+men mutually afflicted each other; and a general and fatal discord
+spread over the earth, in which the passions, assuming a thousand new
+forms, have generated a continued chain of misfortunes.
+
+Thus the same self-love which, moderate and prudent, was a principle of
+happiness and perfection, becoming blind and disordered, was transformed
+into a corrupting poison; and cupidity, offspring and companion of
+ignorance, became the cause of all the evils that have desolated the
+earth.
+
+Yes, ignorance and cupidity! these are the twin sources of all the
+torments of man! Biased by these into false ideas of happiness, he has
+mistaken or broken the laws of nature in his own relation with external
+objects; and injuring his own existence, has violated individual
+morality; shutting through these his heart to compassion, and his mind
+to justice, he has injured and afflicted his equal, and violated social
+morality. From ignorance and cupidity, man has armed against man, family
+against family, tribe against tribe; and the earth is become a theatre
+of blood, of discord, and of rapine. By ignorance and cupidity, a secret
+war, fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from
+citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and
+oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation,
+sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its
+own bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism.
+Sometimes, hypocritical and cunning, they have called from heaven a
+lying power, and a sacrilegious yoke; and credulous cupidity has founded
+religious despotism. By these have been perverted the ideas of good and
+evil, just and unjust, vice and virtue; and nations have wandered in a
+labyrinth of errors and calamities.
+
+The cupidity of man and his ignorance,--these are the evil genii
+which have wasted the earth! These are the decrees of fate which have
+overthrown empires! These are the celestial anathemas which have smitten
+these walls once so glorious, and converted the splendor of a populous
+city into a solitude of mourning and of ruins! But as in the bosom of
+man have sprung all the evils which have afflicted his life, there he
+also is to seek and to find their remedies.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT AND LAWS.
+
+
+In fact, it soon happened that men, fatigued with the evils they
+reciprocally inflicted, began to sigh for peace; and reflecting on their
+misfortunes and the causes of them, they said:
+
+"We are mutually injuring each other by our passions; and, aiming to
+grasp every thing, we hold nothing. What one seizes to-day, another
+takes to-morrow, and our cupidity reacts upon ourselves. Let us
+establish judges, who shall arbitrate our rights, and settle our
+differences! When the strong shall rise against the weak, the judge
+shall restrain him, and dispose of our force to suppress violence;
+and the life and property of each shall be under the guarantee and
+protection of all; and all shall enjoy the good things of nature."
+
+Conventions were thus formed in society, sometimes express, sometimes
+tacit, which became the rule for the action of individuals, the measure
+of their rights, the law of their reciprocal relations; and persons were
+appointed to superintend their observance, to whom the people confided
+the balance to weigh rights, and the sword to punish transgressions.
+
+Thus was established among individuals a happy equilibrium of force and
+action, which constituted the common security. The name of equity and of
+justice was recognized and revered over the earth; every one, assured
+of enjoying in peace, the fruits of his toil, pursued with energy the
+objects of his attention; and industry, excited and maintained by the
+reality or the hope of enjoyment, developed, all the riches of art
+and of nature. The fields were covered with harvests, the valleys with
+flocks, the hills with fruits, the sea with vessels, and man became
+happy and powerful on the earth. Thus did his own wisdom repair the
+disorder which his imprudence had occasioned; and that wisdom was only
+the effect of his own organization. He respected the enjoyments of
+others in order to secure his own; and cupidity found its corrective in
+the enlightened love of self.
+
+Thus the love of self, the moving principle of every individual, becomes
+the necessary foundation of every association; and on the observance
+of that law of our nature has depended the fate of nations. Have the
+factitious and conventional laws tended to that object and accomplished
+that aim? Every one, urged by a powerful instinct, has displayed all
+the faculties of his being; and the sum of individual felicities has
+constituted the general felicity. Have these laws, on the contrary,
+restrained the effort of man toward his own happiness? His heart,
+deprived of its exciting principle, has languished in inactivity, and
+from the oppression of individuals has resulted the weakness of the
+state.
+
+As self-love, impetuous and improvident, is ever urging man against
+his equal, and consequently tends to dissolve society, the art of
+legislation and the merit of administrators consists in attempering
+the conflict of individual cupidities, in maintaining an equilibrium of
+powers, and securing to every one his happiness, in order that, in the
+shock of society against society, all the members may have a common
+interest in the preservation and defence of the public welfare.
+
+The internal splendor and prosperity of empires then, have had for
+their efficient cause the equity of their laws and government; and their
+respective external powers have been in proportion to the number of
+persons interested, and their degree of interest in the public welfare.
+
+On the other hand, the multiplication of men, by complicating their
+relations, having rendered the precise limitation of their rights
+difficult, the perpetual play of the passions having produced incidents
+not foreseen--their conventions having been vicious, inadequate, or
+nugatory--in fine, the authors of the laws having sometimes mistaken,
+sometimes disguised their objects; and their ministers, instead of
+restraining the cupidity of others, having given themselves up to
+their own; all these causes have introduced disorder and trouble into
+societies; and the viciousness of laws and the injustice of governments,
+flowing from cupidity and ignorance, have become the causes of the
+misfortunes of nations, and the subversion of states.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+GENERAL CAUSES OF THE PROSPERITY OF ANCIENT STATES.
+
+
+Such, O man who seekest wisdom, such have been the causes of revolution
+in the ancient states of which thou contemplatest the ruins! To whatever
+spot I direct my view, to whatever period my thoughts recur, the same
+principles of growth or destruction, of rise or fall, present themselves
+to my mind. Wherever a people is powerful, or an empire prosperous,
+there the conventional laws are conformable with the laws of nature--the
+government there procures for its citizens a free use of their
+faculties, equal security for their persons and property. If, on the
+contrary, an empire goes to ruin, or dissolves, it is because its laws
+have been vicious, or imperfect, or trodden under foot by a corrupt
+government. If the laws and government, at first wise and just, become
+afterwards depraved, it is because the alternation of good and evil is
+inherent to the heart of man, to a change in his propensities, to his
+progress in knowledge, to a combination of circumstances and events; as
+is proved by the history of the species.
+
+In the infancy of nations, when men yet lived in the forest, subject to
+the same wants, endowed with the same faculties, all were nearly equal
+in strength; and that equality was a circumstance highly advantageous
+in the composition of society: as every individual, thus feeling himself
+sufficiently independent of every other, no one was the slave, none
+thought of being the master of another. Man, then a novice, knew neither
+servitude nor tyranny; furnished with resources sufficient for his
+existence, he thought not of borrowing from others; owning nothing,
+requiring nothing, he judged the rights of others by his own, and formed
+ideas of justice sufficiently exact. Ignorant, moreover, in the art
+of enjoyments, unable to produce more than his necessaries, possessing
+nothing superfluous, cupidity remained dormant; or if excited, man,
+attacked in his real wants, resisted it with energy, and the foresight
+of such resistance ensured a happy balance.
+
+Thus original equality, in default of compact, maintained freedom of
+person, security of property, good manners, and order. Every one
+labored by himself and for himself; and the mind of man, being occupied,
+wandered not to culpable desires. He had few enjoyments, but his wants
+were satisfied; and as indulgent nature had made them less than his
+resources, the labor of his hands soon produced abundance--abundance,
+population; the arts unfolded, culture extended, and the earth, covered
+with numerous inhabitants, was divided into different dominions.
+
+The relations of man becoming complicated, the internal order of
+societies became more difficult to maintain. Time and industry having
+generated riches, cupidity became more active; and because equality,
+practicable among individuals, could not subsist among families, the
+natural equilibrium was broken; it became necessary to supply it by a
+factitious equilibrium; to set up chiefs, to establish laws; and in
+the primitive inexperience, it necessarily happened that these
+laws, occasioned by cupidity, assumed its character. But different
+circumstances concurred to correct the disorder, and oblige governments
+to be just.
+
+States, in fact, being weak at first, and having foreign enemies to
+fear, the chiefs found it their interest not to oppress their subjects;
+for, by lessening the confidence of the citizens in their government,
+they would diminish their means of resistance--they would facilitate
+foreign invasion, and by exercising arbitrary power, have endangered
+their very existence.
+
+In the interior, the firmness of the people repelled tyranny; men had
+contracted too long habits of independence; they had too few wants, and
+too much consciousness of their own strength.
+
+States being of a moderate size, it was difficult to divide their
+citizens so as to make use of some for the oppression of others. Their
+communications were too easy, their interest too clear and simple:
+besides, every one being a proprietor and cultivator, no one needed to
+sell himself, and the despot could find no mercenaries.
+
+If, then, dissensions arose, they were between family and family,
+faction and faction, and they interested a great number. The troubles,
+indeed, were warmer; but fears from abroad pacified discord at home. If
+the oppression of a party prevailed, the earth being still unoccupied,
+and man, still in a state of simplicity, finding every where the same
+advantages, the oppressed party emigrated, and carried elsewhere their
+independence.
+
+The ancient states then enjoyed within themselves numerous means of
+prosperity and power. Every one finding his own well-being in the
+constitution of his country, took a lively interest in its preservation.
+If a stranger attacked it, having to defend his own field, his own
+house, he carried into combat all the passions of a personal quarrel;
+and, devoted to his own interests, he was devoted to his country.
+
+As every action useful to the public attracted its esteem and gratitude,
+every one became eager to be useful; and self-love multiplied talents
+and civic virtues.
+
+Every citizen contributing equally by his talents and person, armies
+and funds were inexhaustible, and nations displayed formidable masses of
+power.
+
+The earth being free, and its possession secure and easy, every one
+was a proprietor; and the division of property preserved morals, and
+rendered luxury impossible.
+
+Every one cultivating for himself, culture was more active, produce more
+abundant; and individual riches became public wealth.
+
+The abundance of produce rendering subsistence easy, population was
+rapid and numerous, and states attained quickly the term of their
+plenitude.
+
+Productions increasing beyond consumption, the necessity of commerce
+arose; and exchanges took place between people and people; which
+augmented their activity and reciprocal advantages.
+
+In fine, certain countries, at certain times, uniting the advantages
+of good government with a position on the route of the most active
+circulation, they became emporiums of flourishing commerce and seats of
+powerful domination. And on the shores of the Nile and Mediterranean, of
+the Tygris and Euphrates, the accumulated riches of India and of Europe
+raised in successive splendor a hundred different cities.
+
+The people, growing rich, applied their superfluity to works of common
+and public use; and this was in every state, the epoch of those works
+whose grandeur astonishes the mind; of those wells of Tyre, of those
+dykes of the Euphrates, of those subterranean conduits of Media,* of
+those fortresses of the desert, of those aqueducts of Palmyra, of those
+temples, of those porticoes. And such labors might be immense, without
+oppressing the nations; because they were the effect of an equal and
+common contribution of the force of individuals animated and free.
+
+     * See respecting these monuments my Travels into Syria, vol.
+     ii. p. 214.
+
+From the town or village of Samouat the course of the Euphrates is
+accompanied with a double bank, which descends as far as its junction
+with the Tygris, and from thence to the sea, being a length of about a
+hundred leagues, French measure. The height of these artificial banks
+is not uniform, but increases as you advance from the sea; it may be
+estimated at from twelve to fifteen feet. But for them, the inundation
+of the river would bury the country around, which is flat, to an extent
+of twenty or twenty-five leagues and even notwithstanding these banks,
+there has been in modern times an overflow, which has covered the whole
+triangle formed by the junction of this river to the Tygris, being
+a space of country of one hundred and thirty square leagues. By the
+stagnation of these waters an epidemical disease of the most fatal
+nature was occasioned. It follows from hence, 1. That all the flat
+country bordering upon these rivers, was originally a marsh; 2. That
+this marsh could not have been inhabited previously to the construction
+of the banks in question; 3. That these banks could not have been the
+work but of a population prior as to date; and the elevation of Babylon,
+therefore, must have been posterior to that of Nineveh, as I think
+I have chronologically demonstrated in the memoir above cited. See
+Encyclopedia, vol. xiii, of Antiquities.
+
+The modern Aderbidjan, which was a part of Medea, the mountains of
+Koulderstan, and those of Diarbekr, abound with subterranean canals, by
+means of which the ancient inhabitants conveyed water to their parched
+soil in order to fertilize it. It was regarded as a meritorious act
+and a religious duty prescribed by Zoroaster, who, instead of preaching
+celibacy, mortifications, and other pretended virtues of the monkish
+sort, repeats continually in the passages that are preserved respecting
+him in the Sad-der and the Zend-avesta:
+
+"That the action most pleasing to God is to plough and cultivate the
+earth, to water it with running streams, to multiply vegetation and
+living beings, to have numerous flocks, young and fruitful virgins, a
+multitude of children," etc., etc.
+
+Among the aqueducts of Palmyra it appears certain, that, besides those
+which conducted water from the neighboring hills, there was one which
+brought it even from the mountains of Syria. It is to be traced a long
+way into the Desert where it escapes our search by going under ground.
+
+
+Thus ancient states prospered, because their social institutions
+conformed to the true laws of nature; and because men, enjoying liberty
+and security for their persons and their property, might display all the
+extent of their faculties,--all the energies of their self-love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+GENERAL CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONS AND RUIN OF ANCIENT STATES.
+
+
+Cupidity had nevertheless excited among men a constant and universal
+conflict, which incessantly prompting individuals and societies to
+reciprocal invasions, occasioned successive revolutions, and returning
+agitations.
+
+And first, in the savage and barbarous state of the first men, this
+audacious and fierce cupidity produced rapine, violence, and murder, and
+retarded for a long time the progress of civilization.
+
+When afterwards societies began to be formed, the effect of bad habits,
+communicated to laws and governments, corrupted their institutions and
+objects, and established arbitrary and factitious rights, which depraved
+the ideas of justice, and the morality of the people.
+
+Thus one man being stronger than another, their inequality--an accident
+of nature--was taken for her law;* and the strong being able to take
+the life of the weak, and yet sparing him, arrogated over his person an
+abusive right of property; and the slavery of individuals prepared the
+way for the slavery of nations.
+
+
+*Almost all the ancient philosophers and politicians have laid it down
+as a principle that men are born unequal, that nature his created some
+to be free, and others to be slaves. Expressions of this kind are to be
+found in Aristotle, and even in Plato, called the divine, doubtless in
+the same sense as the mythological reveries which he promulgated. With
+all the people of antiquity, the Gauls, the Romans, the Athenians,
+the right of the strongest was the right of nations; and from the same
+principle are derived all the political disorders and public national
+crimes that at present exist.
+
+
+Because the head of a family could be absolute in his house, he made his
+own affections and desires the rule of his conduct; he gave or resumed
+his goods without equality, without justice; and paternal despotism laid
+the foundation of despotism in government.*
+
+     * Upon this single expression it would be easy to write a
+     long and important chapter.  We might prove in it, beyond
+     contradiction, that all the abuses of national governments,
+     have sprung from those of domestic government, from that
+     government called patriarchal, which superficial minds have
+     extolled without having analyzed it. Numberless facts
+     demonstrate, that with every infant people, in every savage
+     and barbarous state, the father, the chief of the family, is
+     a despot, and a cruel and insolent despot.  The wife is his
+     slave, the children his servants.  This king sleeps or
+     smokes his pipe, while his wife and daughters perform all
+     the drudgery of the house, and even that of tillage and
+     cultivation, as far as occupations of this nature are
+     practised in such societies; and no sooner have the boys
+     acquired strength then they are allowed to beat the females
+     and make them serve and wait upon them as they do upon their
+     fathers.  Similar to this is the state of our own
+     uncivilized peasants.  In proportion as civilization
+     spreads, the manners become milder, and the condition of the
+     women improves, till, by a contrary excess, they arrive at
+     dominion, and then a nation becomes effeminate and corrupt.
+     It is remarkable that parental authority is great in
+     proportion as the government is despotic.  China, India, and
+     Turkey are striking examples of this. One would suppose that
+     tyrants gave themselves accomplices and interested subaltern
+     despots to maintain their authority.  In opposition to this
+     the Romans will be cited, but it remains to be proved that
+     the Romans were men truly free and their quick passage from
+     their republican despotism to their abject servility under
+     the emperors, gives room at least for considerable doubt as
+     to that freedom.
+
+In societies formed on such foundations, when time and labor had
+developed riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more artful,
+but not less active. Under the mask of union and civil peace, it
+fomented in the bosom of every state an intestine war, in which the
+citizens, divided into contending corps of orders, classes, families,
+unremittingly struggled to appropriate to themselves, under the name
+of supreme power, the ability to plunder every thing, and render every
+thing subservient to the dictates of their passions; and this spirit of
+encroachment, disguised under all possible forms, but always the same in
+its object and motives, has never ceased to torment the nations.
+
+Sometimes, opposing itself to all social compact, or breaking that
+which already existed, it committed the inhabitants of a country to the
+tumultuous shock of all their discords; and states thus dissolved, and
+reduced to the condition of anarchy, were tormented by the passions of
+all their members.
+
+Sometimes a nation, jealous of its liberty, having appointed agents to
+administer its government, these agents appropriated the powers of which
+they had only the guardianship: they employed the public treasures in
+corrupting elections, gaining partisans, in dividing the people among
+themselves. By these means, from being temporary they became perpetual;
+from elective, hereditary; and the state, agitated by the intrigues of
+the ambitious, by largesses from the rich and factious, by the venality
+of the poor and idle, by the influence of orators, by the boldness of
+the wicked, and the weakness of the virtuous, was convulsed with all the
+inconveniences of democracy.
+
+The chiefs of some countries, equal in strength and mutually fearing
+each other, formed impious pacts, nefarious associations; and,
+apportioning among themselves all power, rank, and honor, unjustly
+arrogated privileges and immunities; erected themselves into separate
+orders and distinct classes; reduced the people to their control; and,
+under the name of aristocracy, the state was tormented by the passions
+of the wealthy and the great.
+
+Sacred impostors, in other countries, tending by other means to the
+same object, abused the credulity of the ignorant. In the gloom of their
+temples, behind the curtain of the altar, they made their gods act and
+speak; gave forth oracles, worked miracles, ordered sacrifices, levied
+offerings, prescribed endowments; and, under the names of theocracy and
+of religion, the state became tormented by the passions of the priests.
+
+Sometimes a nation, weary of its dissensions or of its tyrants, to
+lessen the sources of evil, submitted to a single master; but if it
+limited his powers, his sole aim was to enlarge them; if it left them
+indefinite, he abused the trust confided to him; and, under the name of
+monarchy, the state was tormented by the passions of kings and princes.
+
+Then the factions, availing themselves of the general discontent,
+flattered the people with the hope of a better master; dealt out gifts
+and promises, deposed the despot to take his place; and their contests
+for the succession, or its partition, tormented the state with the
+disorders and devastations of civil war.
+
+In fine, among these rivals, one more adroit, or more fortunate, gained
+the ascendency, and concentrated all power within himself. By a strange
+phenomenon, a single individual mastered millions of his equals, against
+their will and without their consent; and the art of tyranny sprung also
+from cupidity.
+
+In fact, observing the spirit of egotism which incessantly divides
+mankind, the ambitious man fomented it with dexterity, flattered the
+vanity of one, excited the jealousy of another, favored the avarice of
+this, inflamed the resentment of that, and irritated the passions of
+all; then, placing in opposition their interests and prejudices, he
+sowed divisions and hatreds, promised to the poor the spoils of the
+rich, to the rich the subjection of the poor; threatened one man by
+another, this class by that; and insulating all by distrust, created his
+strength out of their weakness, and imposed the yoke of opinion,
+which they mutually riveted on each other. With the army he levied
+contributions, and with contributions he disposed of the army: dealing
+out wealth and office on these principles, he enchained a whole people
+in indissoluble bonds, and they languished under the slow consumption of
+despotism.
+
+Thus the same principle, varying its action under every possible form,
+was forever attenuating the consistence of states, and an eternal circle
+of vicissitudes flowed from an eternal circle of passions.
+
+And this spirit of egotism and usurpation produced two effects equally
+operative and fatal: the one a division and subdivision of societies
+into their smallest fractions, inducing a debility which facilitated
+their dissolution; the other, a preserving tendency to concentrate power
+in a single hand,* which, engulfing successively societies and states,
+was fatal to their peace and social existence.
+
+     * It is remarkable that this has in all instances been the
+     constant progress of societies; beginning with a state of
+     anarchy or democracy, that is, with a great division of
+     power they have passed to aristocracy, and from aristocracy
+     to monarchy.  Does it not hence follow that those who
+     constitute states under the democratic form, destine them to
+     undergo all the intervening troubles between that and
+     monarchy; but it should at the same time be proved that
+     social experience is already exhausted for the human race,
+     and that this spontaneous movement is not solely the effect
+     of ignorance.
+
+Thus, as in a state, a party absorbed the nation, a family the party,
+and an individual the family; so a movement of absorption took place
+between state and state, and exhibited on a larger scale in the
+political order, all the particular evils of the civil order. Thus a
+state having subdued a state, held it in subjection in the form of a
+province; and two provinces being joined together formed a kingdom; two
+kingdoms being united by conquest, gave birth to empires of gigantic
+size; and in this conglomeration, the internal strength of states,
+instead of increasing, diminished; and the condition of the people,
+instead of ameliorating, became daily more abject and wretched, for
+causes derived from the nature of things.
+
+Because, in proportion as states increased in extent, their
+administration becoming more difficult and complicated, greater energies
+of power were necessary to move such masses; and there was no longer any
+proportion between the duties of sovereigns and their ability to perform
+their duties:
+
+Because despots, feeling their weakness, feared whatever might develop
+the strength of nations, and studied only how to enfeeble them:
+
+Because nations, divided by the prejudices of ignorance and hatred,
+seconded the wickedness of their governments; and availing themselves
+reciprocally of subordinate agents, aggravated their mutual slavery:
+
+Because, the balance between states being destroyed, the strong more
+easily oppressed the weak.
+
+Finally, because in proportion as states were concentrated, the people,
+despoiled of their laws, of their usages, and of the government of
+their choice, lost that spirit of personal identification with their
+government, which had caused their energy.
+
+And despots, considering empires as their private domains and the people
+as their property, gave themselves up to depredations, and to all the
+licentiousness of the most arbitrary authority.
+
+And all the strength and wealth of nations were diverted to private
+expense and personal caprice; and kings, fatigued with gratification,
+abandoned themselves to all the extravagancies of factitious and
+depraved taste.* They must have gardens mounted on arcades, rivers
+raised over mountains, fertile fields converted into haunts for wild
+beasts; lakes scooped in dry lands, rocks erected in lakes, palaces
+built of marble and porphyry, furniture of gold and diamonds. Under
+the cloak of religion, their pride founded temples, endowed indolent
+priests, built, for vain skeletons, extravagant tombs, mausoleums and
+pyramids;** millions of hands were employed in sterile labors; and the
+luxury of princes, imitated by their parasites, and transmitted
+from grade to grade to the lowest ranks, became a general source of
+corruption and impoverishment.
+
+     * It is equally worthy of remark, that the conduct and
+     manners of princes and kings of every country and every age,
+     are found to be precisely the same at similar periods,
+     whether of the formation or dissolution of empires.  History
+     every where presents the same pictures of luxury and folly;
+     of parks, gardens, lakes, rocks, palaces, furniture, excess
+     of the table, wine, women, concluding with brutality.
+
+     The absurd rock in the garden of Versailles has alone cost
+     three millions.  I have sometimes calculated what might have
+     been done with the expense of the three pyramids of Gizah,
+     and I have found that it would easily have constructed from
+     the Red Sea to Alexandria, a canal one hundred and fifty
+     feet wide and thirty deep, completely covered in with cut
+     stones and a parapet, together with a fortified and
+     commercial town, consisting of four hundred houses,
+     furnished with cisterns.  What a difference in point of
+     utility between such a canal and these pyramids!
+
+     ** The learned Dupuis could not be persuaded that the
+     pyramids were tombs; but besides the positive testimony of
+     historians, read what Diodorus says of the religious and
+     superstitious importance every Egyptian attached to building
+     his dwelling eternal, b. 1.
+
+     During twenty years, says Herodotus, a hundred thousand men
+     labored every day to build the pyramid of the Egyptian
+     Cheops.  Supposing only three hundred days a year, on
+     account of the sabbath, there will be 30 millions of days'
+     work in a year, and 600 millions in twenty years; at 15 sous
+     a day, this makes 450 millions of francs lost, without any
+     further benefit.  With this sum, if the king had shut the
+     isthmus of Suez by a strong wall, like that of China, the
+     destinies of Egypt might have been entirely changed.
+     Foreign invasions would have been prevented, and the Arabs
+     of the desert would neither have conquered nor harassed that
+     country.  Sterile labors! how many millions lost in putting
+     one stone upon another, under the forms of temples and
+     churches!  Alchymists convert stones into gold; but
+     architects change gold into stone.  Woe to the kings (as
+     well as subjects) who trust their purse to these two classes
+     of empirics!
+
+And in the insatiable thirst of enjoyment, the ordinary revenues no
+longer sufficing, they were augmented; the cultivator, seeing his
+labors increase without compensation, lost all courage; the merchant,
+despoiled, was disgusted with industry; the multitude, condemned to
+perpetual poverty, restrained their labor to simple necessaries; and all
+productive industry vanished.
+
+The surcharge of taxes rendering lands a burdensome possession, the poor
+proprietor abandoned his field, or sold it to the powerful; and fortune
+became concentrated in a few hands. All the laws and institutions
+favoring this accumulation, the nation became divided into a group
+of wealthy drones, and a multitude of mercenary poor; the people were
+degraded with indigence, the great with satiety, and the number of those
+interested in the preservation of the state decreasing, its strength and
+existence became proportionally precarious.
+
+On the other hand, emulation finding no object, science no
+encouragement, the mind sunk into profound ignorance.
+
+The administration being secret and mysterious, there existed no means
+of reform or amelioration. The chiefs governing by force or fraud,
+the people viewed them as a faction of public enemies; and all harmony
+ceased between the governors and governed.
+
+And these vices having enervated the states of the wealthy part of Asia,
+the vagrant and indigent people of the adjacent deserts and mountains
+coveted the enjoyments of the fertile plains; and, urged by a cupidity
+common to all, attacked the polished empires, and overturned the thrones
+of their despots. These revolutions were rapid and easy; because the
+policy of tyrants had enfeebled the subjects, razed the fortresses,
+destroyed the warriors; and because the oppressed subjects remained
+without personal interest, and the mercenary soldiers without courage.
+
+And hordes of barbarians having reduced entire nations to slavery, the
+empires, formed of conquerors and conquered, united in their bosom two
+classes essentially opposite and hostile. All the principles of society
+were dissolved: there was no longer any common interest, no longer any
+public spirit; and there arose a distinction of casts and races, which
+reduced to a regular system the maintenance of disorder; and he who was
+born of this or that blood, was born a slave or a tyrant--property or
+proprietor.
+
+The oppressors being less numerous than the oppressed it was necessary
+to perfect the science of oppression, in order to support this false
+equilibrium. The art of governing became the art of subjecting the
+many to the few. To enforce an obedience so contrary to instinct, the
+severest punishments were established, and the cruelty of the laws
+rendered manners atrocious. The distinction of persons establishing in
+the state two codes, two orders of criminal justice, two sets of laws,
+the people, placed between the propensities of the heart and the oath
+uttered from the mouth, had two consciences in contradiction with
+each other; and the ideas of justice and injustice had no longer any
+foundation in the understanding.
+
+Under such a system, the people fell into dejection and despair; and the
+accidents of nature were added to the other evils which assailed them.
+Prostrated by so many calamities, they attributed their causes to
+superior and hidden powers; and, because they had tyrants on earth, they
+fancied others in heaven; and superstition aggravated the misfortunes of
+nations.
+
+Fatal doctrines and gloomy and misanthropic systems of religion arose,
+which painted their gods, like their despots, wicked and envious. To
+appease them, man offered up the sacrifice of all his enjoyments. He
+environed himself in privations, and reversed the order of nature.
+Conceiving his pleasures to be crimes, his sufferings expiations, he
+endeavored to love pain, and to abjure the love of self. He persecuted
+his senses, hated his life; and a self-denying and anti-social morality
+plunged nations into the apathy of death.
+
+But provident nature having endowed the heart of man with hope
+inexhaustible, when his desires of happiness were baffled on this earth,
+he pursued it into another world. By a sweet illusion he created for
+himself another country--an asylum where, far from tyrants, he should
+recover the rights of nature, and thence resulted new disorders. Smitten
+with an imaginary world, man despised that of nature. For chimerical
+hopes, he neglected realities. His life began to appear a troublesome
+journey--a painful dream; his body a prison, the obstacle to his
+felicity; and the earth, a place of exile and of pilgrimage, not worthy
+of culture. Then a holy indolence spread over the political world;
+the fields were deserted, empires depopulated, monuments neglected and
+deserts multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism, combining
+their operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation and ruin.
+
+Thus agitated by their own passions, men, whether collectively or
+individually taken, always greedy and improvident, passing from slavery
+to tyranny, from pride to baseness, from presumption to despondency,
+have made themselves the perpetual instruments of their own misfortunes.
+
+These, then, are the principles, simple and natural, which regulated
+the destiny of ancient states. By this regular and connected series of
+causes and effects, they rose or fell, in proportion as the physical
+laws of the human heart were respected or violated; and in the course
+of their successive changes, a hundred different nations, a hundred
+different empires, by turns humbled, elevated, conquered, overthrown,
+have repeated for the earth their instructive lessons. Yet these lessons
+were lost for the generations which have followed! The disorders in
+times past have reappeared in the present age! The chiefs of the nations
+have continued to walk in the paths of falsehood and tyranny!--the
+people to wander in the darkness of superstition and ignorance!
+
+Since then, continued the Genius, with renewed energy, since the
+experience of past ages is lost for the living--since the errors of
+progenitors have not instructed their descendants, the ancient examples
+are about to reappear; the earth will see renewed the tremendous scenes
+it has forgotten. New revolutions will agitate nations and empires;
+powerful thrones will again be overturned, and terrible catastrophes
+will again teach mankind that the laws of nature and the precepts of
+wisdom and truth cannot be infringed with impunity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+LESSONS OF TIMES PAST REPEATED ON THE PRESENT.
+
+
+Thus spoke the Genius. Struck with the justice and coherence of his
+discourse, assailed with a crowd of ideas, repugnant to my habits yet
+convincing to my reason, I remained absorbed in profound silence. At
+length, while with serious and pensive mien, I kept my eyes fixed on
+Asia, suddenly in the north, on the shores of the Black sea, and in the
+fields of the Crimea, clouds of smoke and flame attracted my attention.
+They appeared to rise at the same time from all parts of the peninsula;
+and passing by the isthmus into the continent, they ran, as if driven
+by a westerly wind, along the oozy lake of Azof, and disappeared in the
+grassy plains of Couban; and following more attentively the course of
+these clouds, I observed that they were preceded or followed by swarms
+of moving creatures, which, like ants or grasshoppers disturbed by the
+foot of a passenger, agitated themselves with vivacity. Sometimes these
+swarms appeared to advance and rush against each other; and numbers,
+after the concussion, remained motionless. While disquieted at this
+spectacle, I strained my sight to distinguish the objects.
+
+Do you see, said the Genius, those flames which spread over the earth,
+and do you comprehend their causes and effects?
+
+Oh! Genius, I answered, I see those columns of flame and smoke, and
+something like insects, accompanying them; but, when I can scarcely
+discern the great masses of cities and monuments, how should I discover,
+such little creatures? I can just perceive that these insects mimic
+battle, for they advance, retreat, attack and pursue.
+
+It is no mimicry, said the Genius, these are real battles.
+
+And what, said I, are those mad animalculae, which destroy each other?
+Beings of a day! will they not perish soon enough?
+
+Then the Genius, touching my sight and hearing, again directed my eyes
+towards the same object. Look, said he, and listen!
+
+Ah! wretches, cried I, oppressed with grief, these columns of flame!
+these insects! oh! Genius, they are men. These are the ravages of
+war! These torrents of flame rise from towns and villages! I see the
+squadrons who kindle them, and who, sword in hand overrun the country:
+they drive before them crowds of old men, women, and children, fugitive
+and desolate: I perceive other horsemen, who with shouldered lances,
+accompany and guide them. I even recognize them to be Tartars by their
+led horses,* their kalpacks, and tufts of hair: and, doubtless, they who
+pursue, in triangular hats and green uniforms, are Muscovites. Ah! I now
+comprehend, a war is kindled between the empire of the Czars and that of
+the Sultans.
+
+     * A Tartar horseman has always two horses, of which he leads
+     one in hand.  The Kalpeck is a bonnet made of the skin of a
+     sheep or other animal.  The part of the head covered by this
+     bonnet is shaved, with the exception of a tuft, about the
+     size of a crown piece, and which is suffered to grow to the
+     length of seven or eight inches, precisely where our priests
+     place their tonsure.  It is by this tuft of hair, worn by
+     the majority of Mussulmen, that the angel of the tomb is to
+     take the elect and carry them into paradise.
+
+Not yet, replied the Genius; this is only a preliminary. These Tartars
+have been, and might still he troublesome neighbors. The Muscovites are
+driving them off, finding their country would be a convenient extension
+of their own limits; and as a prelude to another revolution, the throne
+of the Guerais is destroyed.
+
+And in fact, I saw the Russian standards floating over the Crimea: and
+soon after their flag waving on the Euxine.
+
+Meanwhile, at the cry of the flying Tartars, the Mussulman empire was
+in commotion. They are driving off our brethren, cried the children
+of Mahomet: the people of the prophet are outraged! infidels occupy a
+consecrated land and profane the temples of Islamism.* Let us arm; let
+us rush to combat, to avenge the glory of God and our own cause.
+
+     * It is not in the power of the Sultan to cede to a foreign
+     power a province inhabited by true believers.  The people,
+     instigated by the lawyers, would not fail to revolt.  This
+     is one reason which has led those who know the Turks, to
+     regard as chimerical the ceding of Candia, Cyprus, and
+     Egypt, projected by certain European potentates.
+
+And a general movement of war took place in both empires. In every part
+armed men assembled. Provisions, stores, and all the murderous apparatus
+of battle were displayed. The temples of both nations, besieged by an
+immense multitude, presented a spectacle which fixed all my attention.
+
+On one side, the Mussulmen gathered before their mosques, washed
+their hands and feet, pared their nails, and combed their beards; then
+spreading carpets upon the ground, and turning towards the south,
+with their arms sometimes crossed and sometimes extended, they made
+genuflexions and prostrations, and recollecting the disasters of the
+late war, they exclaimed:
+
+God of mercy and clemency! hast thou then abandoned thy faithful people?
+Thou who hast promised to thy Prophet dominion over nations, and stamped
+his religion by so many triumphs, dost thou deliver thy true believers
+to the swords of infidels?
+
+And the Imans and the Santons said to the people:
+
+It is in chastisement of your sins. You eat pork; you drink wine; you
+touch unclean things. God hath punished you. Do penance therefore;
+purify; repeat the profession of faith;* fast from the rising to the
+setting sun; give the tenth of your goods to the mosques; go to Mecca;
+and God will render you victorious.
+
+     * There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet.
+
+And the people, recovering courage, uttered loud cries:
+
+There is but one God, said they transported with fury, and Mahomet is
+his prophet! Accursed be he who believeth not!
+
+God of goodness, grant us to exterminate these Christians; it is for
+thy glory we fight, and our death is a martyrdom for thy name. And then,
+offering victims, they prepared for battle.
+
+On the other side, the Russians, kneeling, said:
+
+We render thanks to God, and celebrate his power. He hath strengthened
+our arm to humble his enemies. Hear our prayers, thou God of mercy! To
+please thee, we will pass three days without eating either meat or eggs.
+Grant us to extirpate these impious Mahometans, and to overturn their
+empire. To thee we will consecrate the tenth of our spoil; to thee we
+will raise new temples.
+
+And the priests filled the churches with clouds of smoke, and said to
+the people:
+
+We pray for you, God accepteth our incense, and blesseth your arms.
+Continue to fast and to fight; confess to us your secret sins; give
+your wealth to the church; we will absolve you from your crimes, and you
+shall die in a state of grace.
+
+And they sprinkled water upon the people, dealt out to them, as amulets
+and charms, small relics of the dead, and the people breathed war and
+combat.
+
+Struck with this contrast of the same passions, and grieving for their
+fatal consequences, I was considering the difficulty with which the
+common judge could yield to prayers so contradictory; when the Genius,
+glowing with anger, spoke with vehemence:
+
+What accents of madness strike my ear? What blind and perverse delirium
+disorders the spirits of the nations? Sacrilegious prayers rise not from
+the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their homicidal vows and impious
+thanksgivings! Deluded mortals! is it thus you revere the Divinity?
+Say then; how should he, whom you style your common father, receive the
+homage of his children murdering one another? Ye victors! with what eye
+should he view your hands reeking in the blood he hath created? And,
+what do you expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans? Hath God
+the heart of a mortal, with passions ever changing? Is he, like you,
+agitated with vengeance or compassion, with wrath or repentance? What
+base conception of the most sublime of beings! According to them, it
+would seem, that God whimsical and capricious, is angered or appeased as
+a man: that he loves and hates alternately; that he punishes or favors;
+that, weak or wicked, he broods over his hatred; that, contradictory
+or perfidious, he lays snares to entrap; that he punishes the evils he
+permits; that he foresees but hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt
+judge, he is bribed by offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes
+laws and revokes them; that, like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes
+favors without reason, and can only be appeased by servility. Ah! now
+I know the lying spirit of man! Contemplating the picture which he hath
+drawn of the Divinity: No, said I, it is not God who hath made man after
+the image of God; but man hath made God after the image of man; he hath
+given him his own mind, clothed him with his own propensities;
+ascribed to him his own judgments. And when in this medley he finds
+the contradiction of his own principles, with hypocritical humility,
+he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the absurdities of his own
+mind the mysteries of God.
+
+He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change him;
+he hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him without
+ceasing.
+
+Imposters have arisen on the earth who have called themselves the
+confidants of God; and, erecting themselves into teachers of the people,
+have opened the ways of falsehood and iniquity; they have ascribed merit
+to practices indifferent or ridiculous; they have supposed a virtue,
+in certain postures, in pronouncing certain words, articulating certain
+names; they have transformed into a crime the eating of certain meats,
+the drinking of certain liquors, on one day rather than another. The
+Jew would rather die than labor on the sabbath; the Persian would endure
+suffocation, before he would blow the fire with his breath; the Indian
+places supreme perfection in besmearing himself with cow-dung, and
+pronouncing mysteriously the word Aum;* the Mussulman believes he has
+expiated everything in washing his head and arms; and disputes, sword
+in hand, whether the ablution should commence at the elbow, or finger
+ends;** the Christian would think himself damned, if he ate flesh
+instead of milk or butter. Oh sublime doctrines! Doctrines truly from
+heaven! Oh perfect morals, and worthy of martyrdom or the apostolate!
+I will cross the seas to teach these admirable laws to the savage
+people--to distant nations; I will say unto them:
+
+     * This word is, in the religion of the Hindoos, a sacred
+     emblem of the Divinity.  It is only to be pronounced in
+     secret, without being heard by any one.  It is formed of
+     three letters, of which the first, a, signifies the
+     principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the
+     conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who
+     puts an end to all, Chiven.  It is pronounced like the
+     monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three
+     Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega
+     mentioned in the New Testament.
+
+     ** This is one of the grand points of schism between the
+     partisans of Omar and those of Ali.  Suppose two Mahometans
+     to meet on a journey, and to accost each other with
+     brotherly affection: the hour of prayer arrives; one begins
+     his ablution at his fingers, the other at the elbow, and
+     instantly they are mortal enemies.  O sublime importance of
+     religious opinions!  O profound philosophy of the authors of
+     them!
+
+Children of nature, how long will you walk in the paths of ignorance?
+how long will you mistake the true principles of morality and religion?
+Come and learn its lessons from nations truly pious and learned, in
+civilized countries. They will inform you how, to gratify God, you must
+in certain months of the year, languish the whole day with hunger and
+thirst; how you may shed your neighbor's blood, and purify yourself from
+it by professions of faith and methodical ablutions; how you may steal
+his property and be absolved on sharing it with certain persons, who
+devote themselves to its consumption.
+
+Sovereign and invisible power of the universe! mysterious mover of
+nature! universal soul of beings! thou who art unknown, yet revered by
+mortals under so many names! being incomprehensible and infinite! God,
+who in the immensity of the heavens directest the movement of worlds,
+and peoplest the abyss of space with millions of suns! say what do these
+human insects, which my sight no longer discerns on the earth, appear in
+thy eyes? To thee, who art guiding stars in their orbits, what are
+those wormlings writhing themselves in the dust? Of what import to thy
+immensity, their distinctions of parties and sects? And of what concern
+the subtleties with which their folly torments itself?
+
+And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your practices! In so many
+centuries, during which you have been following or altering them, what
+changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of nature? Is the
+sun brighter? Is the course of the seasons varied? Is the earth more
+fruitful, or its inhabitants more happy? If God be good, can your
+penances please him? If infinite, can your homage add to his glory? If
+his decrees have been formed on foresight of every circumstance, can
+your prayers change them? Answer, O inconsistent mortals!
+
+Ye conquerors of the earth, who pretend you serve God! doth he need your
+aid? If he wishes to punish, hath he not earthquakes, volcanoes, and
+thunder? And cannot a merciful God correct without extermination?
+
+Ye Mussulmans, if God chastiseth you for violating the five precepts,
+how hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them? If he governeth
+the earth by the Koran, by what did he govern it before the days of the
+prophet, when it was covered with so many nations who drank wine, ate
+pork, and went not to Mecca, whom he nevertheless permitted to raise
+powerful empires? How did he judge the Sabeans of Nineveh and of
+Babylon; the Persian, worshipper of fire; the Greek and Roman idolators;
+the ancient kingdoms of the Nile; and your own ancestors, the Arabians
+and Tartars? How doth he yet judge so many nations who deny, or know
+not your worship--the numerous castes of Indians, the vast empire of
+the Chinese, the sable race of Africa, the islanders of the ocean, the
+tribes of America?
+
+Presumptuous and ignorant men, who arrogate the earth to yourselves! if
+God were to gather all the generations past and present, what would be,
+in their ocean, the sects calling themselves universal, of Christians
+and Mussulmans? What would be the judgments of his equal and common
+justice over the real universality of mankind? Therein it is that your
+knowledge loseth itself in incoherent systems; it is there that truth
+shines with evidence; and there are manifested the powerful and simple
+laws of nature and reason--laws of a common and general mover--of a God
+impartial and just, who sheds rain on a country without asking who is
+its prophet; who causeth his sun to shine alike on all the races of
+men, on the white as on the black, on the Jew, on the Mussulman, the
+Christian, and the Idolater; who reareth the harvest wherever cultivated
+with diligence; who multiplieth every nation where industry and order
+prevaileth; who prospereth every empire where justice is practised,
+where the powerful are restrained, and the poor protected by the laws;
+where the weak live in safety, and all enjoy the rights given by nature
+and a compact formed in justice.
+
+These are the principles by which people are judged! this the true
+religion which regulates the destiny of empires, and which, O Ottomans,
+hath governed yours! Interrogate your ancestors, ask of them by what
+means they rose to greatness; when few, poor and idolaters, they came
+from the deserts of Tartary and encamped in these fertile countries; ask
+if it was by Islamism, till then unknown to them, that they conquered
+the Greeks and the Arabs, or was it by their courage, their prudence,
+moderation, spirit of union--the true powers of the social state? Then
+the Sultan himself dispensed justice, and maintained discipline. The
+prevaricating judge, the extortionate governor, were punished, and the
+multitude lived at ease. The cultivator was protected from the rapine
+of the janissary, and the fields prospered; the highways were safe, and
+commerce caused abundance. You were a band of plunderers, but just among
+yourselves. You subdued nations, but did not oppress them. Harassed by
+their own princes, they preferred being your tributaries. What matters
+it, said the Christian, whether my ruler breaks or adores images, if
+he renders justice to me? God will judge his doctrines in the heavens
+above.
+
+You were sober and hardy; your enemies timid and enervated; you
+were expert in battle, your enemies unskillful; your leaders were
+experienced, your soldiers warlike and disciplined. Booty excited ardor,
+bravery was rewarded, cowardice and insubordination punished, and all
+the springs of the human heart were in action. Thus you vanquished
+a hundred nations, and of a mass of conquered kingdoms compounded an
+immense empire.
+
+But other customs have succeeded; and in the reverses attending them,
+the laws of nature have still exerted their force. After devouring your
+enemies, your cupidity, still insatiable, has reacted on itself, and,
+concentrated in your own bowels, has consumed you.
+
+Having become rich, you have quarrelled for partition and enjoyment, and
+disorder hath arisen in every class of society.
+
+The Sultan, intoxicated with grandeur, has mistaken the object of his
+functions; and all the vices of arbitrary power have been developed.
+Meeting no obstacle to his appetites, he has become a depraved being;
+weak and arrogant, he has kept the people at a distance; and their
+voice has no longer instructed and guided him. Ignorant, yet flattered,
+neglecting all instruction, all study, he has fallen into imbecility;
+unfit for business, he has thrown its burdens on hirelings, and they
+have deceived him. To satisfy their own passions, they have stimulated
+and nourished his; they have multiplied his wants, and his enormous
+luxury has consumed everything. The frugal table, plain clothing, simple
+dwelling of his ancestors no longer sufficed. To supply his pomp, earth
+and sea have been exhausted. The rarest furs have been brought from the
+poles; the most costly tissues from the equator. He has devoured at
+a meal the tribute of a city, and in a day that of a province. He has
+surrounded himself with an army of women, eunuchs, and satellites. They
+have instilled into him that the virtue of kings is to be liberal, and
+the munificence and treasures of the people have been delivered into
+the hands of flatterers. In imitation of their master, his servants
+must also have splendid houses, the most exquisite furniture; carpets
+embroidered at great cost, vases of gold and silver for the lowest uses,
+and all the riches of the empire have been swallowed up in the Serai.
+
+To supply this inordinate luxury, the slaves and women have sold their
+influence, and venality has introduced a general depravation. The favor
+of the sovereign has been sold to his vizier, and the vizier has sold
+the empire. The law has been sold to the cadi, and the cadi has made
+sale of justice. The altar has been sold to the priest, and the priest
+has sold the kingdom of heaven. And gold obtaining everything, they
+have sacrificed everything to obtain gold. For gold, friend has betrayed
+friend, the child his parent, the servant his master, the wife her
+honor, the merchant his conscience; and good faith, morals, concord, and
+strength were banished from the state.
+
+The pacha, who had purchased the government of his province, farmed
+it out to others, who exercised every extortion. He sold in turn the
+collection of the taxes, the command of the troops, the administration
+of the villages; and as every employ has been transient, rapine, spread
+from rank to rank, has been greedy and implacable. The revenue officer
+has fleeced the merchant, and commerce was annihilated; the aga has
+plundered the husbandman, and culture has degenerated. The laborer,
+deprived of his stock, has been unable to sow; the tax was augmented,
+and he could not pay it; the bastinado has been threatened, and he
+has borrowed. Money, from want of security, being locked up from
+circulation, interest was therefore enormous, and the usury of the rich
+has aggravated the misery of the laborer.
+
+When excessive droughts and accidents of seasons have blasted the
+harvest, the government has admitted no delay, no indulgence for the
+tax; and distress bearing hard on the village, a part of its inhabitants
+have taken refuge in the cities; and their burdens falling on those who
+remained, has completed their ruin, and depopulated the country.
+
+If driven to extremity by tyranny and outrage, the villages have
+revolted, the pacha rejoices. He wages war on them, assails their homes,
+pillages their property, carries off their stock; and when the fields
+have become a desert, he exclaims:
+
+"What care I? I leave these fields to-morrow."
+
+The earth wanting laborers, the rain of heaven and overflowing of
+torrents have stagnated in marshes; and their putrid exhalations in a
+warm climate, have caused epidemics, plagues, and maladies of all sorts,
+whence have flowed additional suffering, penury, and ruin.
+
+Oh! who can enumerate all the calamities of tyrannical government?
+
+Sometimes the pachas declare war against each other, and for their
+personal quarrels the provinces of the same state are laid waste.
+Sometimes, fearing their masters, they attempt independence, and draw
+on their subjects the chastisement of their revolt. Sometimes dreading
+their subjects, they invite and subsidize strangers, and to insure their
+fidelity set no bounds to their depredations. Here they persecute the
+rich and despoil them under false pretences; there they suborn false
+witnesses, and impose penalties for suppositious offences; everywhere
+they excite the hatred of parties, encourage informations to
+obtain amercements, extort property, seize persons; and when their
+short-sighted avarice has accumulated into one mass all the riches of
+a country, the government, by an execrable perfidy, under pretence of
+avenging its oppressed people, takes to itself all their spoils, as if
+they were the culprits, and uselessly sheds the blood of its agents for
+a crime of which it is the accomplice.
+
+Oh wretches, monarchs or ministers, who sport with the lives and
+fortunes of the people! Is it you who gave breath to man, that you dare
+take it from him? Do you give growth to the plants of the earth, that
+you may waste them? Do you toil to furrow the field? Do you endure the
+ardor of the sun, and the torment of thirst, to reap the harvest or
+thrash the grain? Do you, like the shepherd, watch through the dews of
+the night? Do you traverse deserts, like the merchant? Ah! on beholding
+the pride and cruelty of the powerful, I have been transported with
+indignation, and have said in my wrath, will there never then arise on
+the earth men who will avenge the people and punish tyrants? A handful
+of brigands devour the multitude, and the multitude submits to be
+devoured! Oh! degenerate people! Know you not your rights? All authority
+is from you, all power is yours. Unlawfully do kings command you on the
+authority of God and of their lance--Soldiers be still; if God supports
+the Sultan he needs not your aid; if his sword suffices, he needs not
+yours; let us see what he can do alone. The soldiers grounded their
+arms; and behold these masters of the world, feeble as the meanest of
+their subjects! People! know that those who govern are your chiefs, not
+your masters; your agents, not your owners; that they have no authority
+over you, but by you, and for you; that your wealth is yours and they
+accountable for it; that, kings or subjects, God has made all men equal,
+and no mortal has the right to oppress his fellow-creatures.
+
+But this nation and its chiefs have mistaken these holy truths. They
+must abide then the consequences of their blindness. The decree is past;
+the day approaches when this colossus of power shall be crushed and
+crumbled under its own mass. Yes, I swear it, by the ruins of so many
+empires destroyed. The empire of the Crescent shall follow the fate
+of the despotism it has copied. A nation of strangers shall drive the
+Sultan from his metropolis. The throne of Orkhan shall be overturned.
+The last shoot of his trunk shall be broken off; and the horde of
+Oguzians,* deprived of their chief, shall disperse like that of the
+Nagois. In this dissolution, the people of the empire, loosened from the
+yoke which united them, shall resume their ancient distinctions, and a
+general anarchy shall follow, as happened in the empire of the Sophis;**
+until there shall arise among the Arabians, Armenians, or Greeks,
+legislators who may compose new states.
+
+     * Before the Turks took the name of their chief, Othman I.,
+     they bore that of Oguzians; and it was under this
+     appellation that they were driven out of Tartary by Gengis,
+     and came from the borders of Giboun to settle themselves in
+     Anatolia.
+
+     ** In Persia, after the death of Thamas-Koulikan, each
+     province had its chief, and for forty years these chiefs
+     were in a constant state of war.  In this view the Turks do
+     not say without reason: "Ten years of a tyrant are less
+     destructive than a single night of anarchy."
+
+Oh! if there were on earth men profound and bold! what elements for
+grandeur and glory! But the hour of destiny has already come; the cry of
+war strikes my ear; and the catastrophe begins. In vain the Sultan leads
+forth his armies; his ignorant warriors are beaten and dispersed. In
+vain he calls his subjects; their hearts are ice. Is it not written? say
+they, what matters who is our master? We cannot lose by the change.
+
+In vain the true believers invoke heaven and the prophet. The prophet is
+dead; and heaven without pity answers:
+
+Cease to invoke me. You have caused your own misfortunes; cure them
+yourselves. Nature has established laws; your part is to obey them.
+Observe, reason, and profit by experience. It is the folly of man which
+ruins him; let his wisdom save him. The people are ignorant; let them
+gain instruction. Their chiefs are wicked; let them correct and amend;
+for such is Nature's decree. Since the evils of society spring from
+cupidity and ignorance, men will never cease to be persecuted, till they
+become enlightened and wise; till they practise justice, founded on a
+knowledge of their relations and of the laws of their organization.*
+
+     * A singular moral phenomenon made its appearance in Europe
+     in the year 1788.  A great nation, jealous of its liberty,
+     contracted a fondness for a nation the enemy of liberty; a
+     nation friendly to the arts, for a nation that detests them;
+     a mild and tolerant nation, for a persecuting and fanatic
+     one; a social and gay nation, for a nation whose
+     characteristics are gloom and misanthropy; in a word, the
+     French were smitten with a passion for the Turks: they were
+     desirous of engaging in a war for them, and that at a time
+     when revolution in their own country was just at its
+     commencement. A man, who perceived the true nature of the
+     situation, wrote a book to dissuade them from the war: it
+     was immediately pretended that he was paid by the
+     government, which in reality wished the war, and which was
+     upon the point of shutting him up in a state prison. Another
+     man wrote to recommend the war: he was applauded, and his
+     word taken for the science, the politeness, and importance
+     of the Turks.  It is true that he believed in his own
+     thesis, for he has found among them people who cast a
+     nativity, and alchymists who ruined his fortune; as he found
+     Martinists at Paris, who enabled him to sup with Sesostris,
+     and Magnetizers who concluded with destroying his existence.
+     Notwithstanding this, the Turks were beaten by the Russians,
+     and the man who then predicted the fall of their empire,
+     persists in the prediction.  The result of this fall will be
+     a complete change of the political system, as far as it
+     relates to the coast of the Mediterranean.  If, however, the
+     French become important in proportion as they become free,
+     and if they make use of the advantage they will obtain,
+     their progress may easily prove of the most honorable sort;
+     inasmuch as, by the wise decrees of fate, the true interest
+     of mankind evermore accords with their true morality.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+WILL THE HUMAN RACE IMPROVE?
+
+
+At these words, oppressed with the painful sentiment with which their
+severity overwhelmed me: Woe to the nations! cried I, melting in tears;
+woe to myself! Ah! now it is that I despair of the happiness of man!
+Since his miseries proceed from his heart; since the remedy is in his
+own power, woe for ever to his existence! Who, indeed will ever be
+able to restrain the lust of wealth in the strong and powerful? Who can
+enlighten the ignorance of the weak? Who can teach the multitude to know
+their rights, and force their chiefs to perform their duties? Thus the
+race of man is always doomed to suffer! Thus the individual will not
+cease to oppress the individual, a nation to attack a nation; and days
+of prosperity, of glory, for these regions, shall never return. Alas!
+conquerors will come; they will drive out the oppressors, and fix
+themselves in their place; but, inheriting their power, they will
+inherit their rapacity; and the earth will have changed tyrants, without
+changing the tyranny.
+
+Then, turning to the Genius, I exclaimed:
+
+O Genius, despair hath settled on my soul. Knowing the nature of
+man, the perversity of those who govern, and the debasement of the
+governed--this knowledge hath disgusted me with life; and since there
+is no choice but to be the accomplice or the victim of oppression, what
+remains to the man of virtue but to mingle his ashes with those of the
+tomb?
+
+The Genius then gave me a look of severity, mingled with compassion; and
+after a few moments of silence, he replied:
+
+Virtue, then, consists in dying! The wicked man is indefatigable in
+consummating his crime, and the just is discouraged from doing good at
+the first obstacle he encounters! But such is the human heart. A
+little success intoxicates man with confidence; a reverse overturns and
+confounds him. Always given up to the sensation of the moment, he seldom
+judges things from their nature, but from the impulse of his passion.
+
+Mortal, who despairest of the human race, on what profound combination
+of facts hast thou established thy conclusion? Hast thou scrutinized the
+organization of sentient beings, to determine with precision whether the
+instinctive force which moves them on to happiness is essentially weaker
+than that which repels them from it? or, embracing in one glance the
+history of the species, and judging the future by the past, hast thou
+shown that all improvement is impossible? Say! hath human society, since
+its origin, made no progress toward knowledge and a better state? Are
+men still in their forests, destitute of everything, ignorant, stupid
+and ferocious? Are all the nations still in that age when nothing was
+seen upon the globe but brutal robbers and brutal slaves? If at any
+time, in any place, individuals have ameliorated, why shall not the
+whole mass ameliorate? If partial societies have made improvements, what
+shall hinder the improvement of society in general? And if the first
+obstacles are overcome, why should the others be insurmountable?
+
+Art thou disposed to think that the human race degenerates? Guard
+against the illusion and paradoxes of the misanthrope. Man, discontented
+with the present, imagines for the past a perfection which never
+existed, and which only serves to cover his chagrin. He praises the dead
+out of hatred to the living, and beats the children with the bones of
+their ancestors.
+
+To prove this pretended retrograde progress from perfection we must
+contradict the testimony of reason and of fact; and if the facts of
+history are in any measure uncertain, we must contradict the living
+fact of the organization of man; we must prove that he is born with
+the enlightened use of his senses; that, without experience, he can
+distinguish aliment from poison; that the child is wiser than the old
+man; that the blind walks with more safety than the clear-sighted; that
+the civilized man is more miserable than the savage; and, indeed, that
+there is no ascending scale in experience and instruction.
+
+Believe, young man, the testimony of monuments, and the voice of the
+tombs. Some countries have doubtless fallen from what they were at
+certain epochs; but if we weigh the wisdom and happiness of their
+inhabitants, even in those times, we shall find more of splendor than of
+reality in their glory; we shall find, in the most celebrated of ancient
+states, enormous vices and cruel abuses, the true causes of their
+decay; we shall find in general that the principles of government
+were atrocious; that insolent robberies, barbarous wars and implacable
+hatreds were raging from nation to nation;* that natural right was
+unknown; that morality was perverted by senseless fanaticism and
+deplorable superstition; that a dream, a vision, an oracle, were
+constantly the causes of vast commotions. Perhaps the nations are not
+yet entirely cured of all these evils; but their intensity at least is
+diminished, and the experience of the past has not been wholly lost. For
+the last three centuries, especially, knowledge has increased and been
+extended; civilization, favored by happy circumstances, has made a
+sensible progress; inconveniences and abuses have even turned to its
+advantage; for if states have been too much extended by conquest,
+the people, by uniting under the same yoke, have lost the spirit of
+estrangement and division which made them all enemies one to the other.
+If the powers of government have been more concentrated, there has been
+more system and harmony in their exercise. If wars have become more
+extensive in the mass, they are less bloody in detail. If men have gone
+to battle with less personality, less energy, their struggles have been
+less sanguinary and less ferocious; they have been less free, but less
+turbulent; more effeminate, but more pacific. Despotism itself has
+rendered them some service; for if governments have been more absolute,
+they have been more quiet and less tempestuous. If thrones have become
+a property and hereditary, they have excited less dissensions, and the
+people have suffered fewer convulsions; finally, if the despots, jealous
+and mysterious, have interdicted all knowledge of their administration,
+all concurrence in the management of public affairs, the passions
+of men, drawn aside from politics, have fixed upon the arts, and the
+sciences of nature; and the sphere of ideas in every direction has been
+enlarged; man, devoted to abstract studies, has better understood his
+place in the system of nature, and his relations in society; principles
+have been better discussed, final causes better explained, knowledge
+more extended, individuals better instructed, manners more social, and
+life more happy. The species at large, especially in certain countries,
+has gained considerably; and this amelioration cannot but increase in
+future, because its two principal obstacles, those even which, till
+then, had rendered it slow and sometimes retrograde,--the difficulty of
+transmitting ideas and of communicating them rapidly,--have been at last
+removed.
+
+     * Read the history of the wars of Rome and Carthage, of
+     Sparta and Messina, of Athens and Syracuse, of the Hebrews
+     and the Phoenicians: yet these are the nations of which
+     antiquity boasts as being most polished!
+
+Indeed, among the ancients, each canton, each city, being isolated
+from all others by the difference of its language, the consequence was
+favorable to ignorance and anarchy. There was no communication of ideas,
+no participation of discoveries, no harmony of interests or of wills, no
+unity of action or design; besides, the only means of transmitting and
+of propagating ideas being that of speech, fugitive and limited,
+and that of writing, tedious of execution, expensive and scarce, the
+consequence was a hindrance of present instruction, loss of experience
+from one generation to another, instability, retrogression of knowledge,
+and a perpetuity of confusion and childhood.
+
+But in the modern world, especially in Europe, great nations having
+allied themselves in language, and established vast communities of
+opinions, the minds of men are assimilated, and their affections
+extended; there is a sympathy of opinion and a unity of action; then
+that gift of heavenly Genius, the holy art of printing, having furnished
+the means of communicating in an instant the same idea to millions of
+men, and of fixing it in a durable manner, beyond the power of tyrants
+to arrest or annihilate, there arose a mass of progressive instruction,
+an expanding atmosphere of science, which assures to future ages a solid
+amelioration. This amelioration is a necessary effect of the laws of
+nature; for, by the law of sensibility, man as invincibly tends to
+render himself happy as the flame to mount, the stone to descend, or the
+water to find its level. His obstacle is his ignorance, which misleads
+him in the means, and deceives him in causes and effects. He will
+enlighten himself by experience; he will become right by dint of errors;
+he will grow wise and good because it is his interest so to be.
+Ideas being communicated through the nation, whole classes will gain
+instruction; science will become a vulgar possession, and all men will
+know what are the principles of individual happiness and of public
+prosperity. They will know the relations they bear to society, their
+duties and their rights; they will learn to guard against the illusions
+of the lust of gain; they will perceive that the science of morals is
+a physical science, composed, indeed, of elements complicated in their
+operation, but simple and invariable in their nature, since they
+are only the elements of the organization of man. They will see the
+propriety of being moderate and just, because in that is found the
+advantage and security of each; they will perceive that the wish to
+enjoy at the expense of another is a false calculation of ignorance,
+because it gives rise to reprisal, hatred, and vengeance, and that
+dishonesty is the never-failing offspring of folly.
+
+Individuals will feel that private happiness is allied to public good:
+
+The weak, that instead of dividing their interests, they ought to unite
+them, because equality constitutes their force:
+
+The rich, that the measure of enjoyment is bounded by the constitution
+of the organs, and that lassitude follows satiety:
+
+The poor, that the employment of time, and the peace of the heart,
+compose the highest happiness of man. And public opinion, reaching kings
+on their thrones, will force them to confine themselves to the limits of
+regular authority.
+
+Even chance itself, serving the cause of nations, will sometimes give
+them feeble chiefs, who, through weakness, will suffer them to become
+free; and sometimes enlightened chiefs, who, from a principle of virtue,
+will free them.
+
+And when nations, free and enlightened, shall become like great
+individuals, the whole species will have the same facilities as
+particular portions now have; the communication of knowledge will extend
+from one to another, and thus reach the whole. By the law of imitation,
+the example of one people will be followed by others, who will adopt its
+spirit and its laws. Even despots, perceiving that they can no longer
+maintain their authority without justice and beneficence, will soften
+their sway from necessity, from rivalship; and civilization will become
+universal.
+
+There will be established among the several nations an equilibrium of
+force, which, restraining them all within the bounds of the respect due
+to their reciprocal rights, shall put an end to the barbarous practice
+of war, and submit their disputes to civil arbitration.* The human race
+will become one great society, one individual family, governed by the
+same spirit, by common laws, and enjoying all the happiness of which
+their nature is susceptible.
+
+     * What is a people?  An individual of the society at large.
+     What a war?  A duel between two individual people.  In what
+     manner ought a society to act when two of its members fight?
+     Interfere and reconcile, or repress them.  In the days of
+     the Abbe de Saint Pierre this was treated as a dream, but
+     happily for the human race it begins to be realized.
+
+Doubtless this great work will be long accomplishing; because the
+same movement must be given to an immense body; the same leaven must
+assimilate an enormous mass of heterogeneous parts. But this movement
+shall be effected; its presages are already to be seen. Already the
+great society, assuming in its course the same characters as partial
+societies have done, is evidently tending to a like result. At first
+disconnected in all its parts, it saw its members for a long time
+without cohesion; and this general solitude of nations formed its
+first age of anarchy and childhood; divided afterwards by chance into
+irregular sections, called states and kingdoms, it has experienced
+the fatal effects of an extreme inequality of wealth and rank; and the
+aristocracy of great empires has formed its second age; then, these
+lordly states disputing for preeminence, have exhibited the period of
+the shock of factions.
+
+At present the contending parties, wearied with discord, feel the want
+of laws, and sigh for the age of order and of peace. Let but a virtuous
+chief arise! a just, a powerful people appear! and the earth will raise
+them to supreme power. The world is waiting for a legislative people; it
+wishes and demands it; and my heart attends the cry.
+
+Then turning towards the west: Yes, continued he, a hollow sound already
+strikes my ear; a cry of liberty, proceeding from far distant shores,
+resounds on the ancient continent. At this cry, a secret murmur against
+oppression is raised in a powerful nation; a salutary inquietude alarms
+her respecting her situation; she enquires what she is, and what she
+ought to be; while, surprised at her own weakness, she interrogates her
+rights, her resources, and what has been the conduct of her chiefs.
+
+Yet another day--a little more reflection--and an immense agitation will
+begin; a new-born age will open! an age of astonishment to vulgar minds,
+of terror to tyrants, of freedom to a great nation, and of hope to the
+human race!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE GREAT OBSTACLE TO IMPROVEMENT.
+
+
+The Genius ceased. But preoccupied with melancholy thoughts, my mind
+resisted persuasion; fearing, however, to shock him by my resistance, I
+remained silent. After a while, turning to me with a look which pierced
+my soul, he said:
+
+Thou art silent, and thy heart is agitated with thoughts which it dares
+not utter.
+
+At last, troubled and terrified, I replied:
+
+O Genius, pardon my weakness. Doubtless thy mouth can utter nothing but
+truth; but thy celestial intelligence can seize its rays, where my gross
+faculties can discern nothing but clouds. I confess it; conviction has
+not penetrated my soul, and I feared that my doubts might offend thee.
+
+And what is doubt, replied he, that it should be a crime? Can man
+feel otherwise than as he is affected? If a truth be palpable, and
+of importance in practice, let us pity him that misconceives it.
+His punishment will arise from his blindness. If it be uncertain or
+equivocal, how is he to find in it what it has not? To believe without
+evidence or proof, is an act of ignorance and folly. The credulous
+man loses himself in a labyrinth of contradictions; the man of sense
+examines and discusses, that he may be consistent in his opinions. The
+honest man will bear contradiction; because it gives rise to evidence.
+Violence is the argument of falsehood; and to impose a creed by
+authority is the act and indication of a tyrant.
+
+O Genius, said I, encouraged by these words, since my reason is free, I
+strive in vain to entertain the flattering hope with which you endeavor
+to console me. The sensible and virtuous soul is easily caught with
+dreams of happiness; but a cruel reality constantly awakens it to
+suffering and wretchedness. The more I meditate on the nature of man,
+the more I examine the present state of societies, the less possible it
+appears to realize a world of wisdom and felicity. I cast my eye over
+the whole of our hemisphere; I perceive in no place the germ, nor do
+I foresee the instinctive energy of a happy revolution. All Asia lies
+buried in profound darkness. The Chinese, governed by an insolent
+despotism,* by strokes of the bamboo and the cast of lots, restrained
+by an immutable code of gestures, and by the radical vices of an
+ill-constructed language,** appear to be in their abortive civilization
+nothing but a race of automatons. The Indian, borne down by prejudices,
+and enchained in the sacred fetters of his castes, vegetates in an
+incurable apathy. The Tartar, wandering or fixed, always ignorant and
+ferocious, lives in the savageness of his ancestors. The Arab, endowed
+with a happy genius, loses its force and the fruits of his virtue in
+the anarchy of his tribes and the jealousy of his families. The African,
+degraded from the rank of man, seems irrevocably doomed to servitude.
+In the North I see nothing but vilified serfs, herds of men with which
+landlords stock their estates. Ignorance, tyranny, and wretchedness
+have everywhere stupified the nations; and vicious habits, depraving
+the natural senses, have destroyed the very instinct of happiness and of
+truth.
+
+     * The emperor of China calls himself the son of heaven; that
+     is, of God: for in the opinion of the Chinese, the material
+     of heaven, the arbiter of fatality, is the Deity himself.
+     "The emperor only shows himself once in ten months, lest the
+     people, accustomed to see him, might lose their respect; for
+     he holds it as a maxim that power can only be supported by
+     force, that the people have no idea of justice, and are not
+     to be governed but by coercion."  Narrative of two Mahometan
+     travellers in 851 and 877, translated by the Abbe Renaudot
+     in 1718.
+
+     Notwithstanding what is asserted by the missionaries, this
+     situation has undergone no change.  The bamboo still reigns
+     in China, and the son of heaven bastinades, for the most
+     trivial fault, the Mandarin, who in his turn bastinades the
+     people.  The Jesuits may tell us that this is the best
+     governed country in the world, and its inhabitants the
+     happiest of men: but a single letter from Amyot has
+     convinced me that China is a truly Turkish government, and
+     the account of Sonnerat confirms it.  See Vol. II. of Voyage
+     aux Indes, in 4to.
+
+     ** As long as the Chinese shall in writing make use of their
+     present characters, they can be expected to make no progress
+     in civilization.  The necessary introductory step must be
+     the giving them an alphabet like our own, or of substituting
+     in the room of their language that of the Tartars.  The
+     improvement made in the latter by M. de Lengles, is
+     calculated to introduce this change. See the Mantchou
+     alphabet, the production of a mind truly learned in the
+     formation of language.
+
+In some parts of Europe, indeed, reason has begun to dawn, but even
+there, do nations partake of the knowledge of individuals? Are the
+talents and genius of governors turned to the benefit of the people? And
+those nations which call themselves polished, are they not the same that
+for the last three centuries have filled the earth with their injustice?
+Are they not those who, under the pretext of commerce, have desolated
+India, depopulated a new continent, and, at present, subject Africa
+to the most barbarous slavery? Can liberty be born from the bosom
+of despots? and shall justice be rendered by the hands of piracy and
+avarice? O Genius, I have seen the civilized countries; and the mockery
+of their wisdom has vanished before my sight. I saw wealth accumulated
+in the hands of a few, and the multitude poor and destitute. I have seen
+all rights, all powers concentered in certain classes, and the mass of
+the people passive and dependent. I have seen families of princes, but
+no families of the nation. I have seen government interests, but
+no public interests or spirit. I have seen that all the science of
+government was to oppress prudently; and the refined servitude of
+polished nations appeared to me only the more irremediable.
+
+One obstacle above all has profoundly struck my mind. On looking over
+the world, I have seen it divided into twenty different systems of
+religion. Every nation has received, or formed, opposite opinions; and
+every one ascribing to itself the exclusive possession of the truth,
+must believe the other to be wrong. Now if, as must be the fact in this
+discordance of opinion, the greater part are in error, and are honest in
+it, then it follows that our mind embraces falsehood as it does truth;
+and if so, how is it to be enlightened? When prejudice has once seized
+the mind, how is it to be dissipated? How shall we remove the bandage
+from our eyes, when the first article in every creed, the first dogma in
+all religion, is the absolute proscription of doubt, the interdiction of
+examination, and the rejection of our own judgment? How is truth to make
+herself known?--If she resorts to arguments and proofs, the timid man
+stifles the voice of his own conscience; if she invokes the authority
+of celestial powers, he opposes it with another authority of the same
+origin, with which he is preoccupied; and he treats all innovation as
+blasphemy. Thus man in his blindness, has riveted his own chains,
+and surrendered himself forever, without defence, to the sport of his
+ignorance and his passions.
+
+To dissolve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy
+events would be necessary. A whole nation, cured of the delirium of
+superstition, must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism. Freed
+from the yoke of false doctrine, a whole people must impose upon itself
+that of true morality and reason. This people should be courageous and
+prudent, wise and docile. Each individual, knowing his rights, should
+not transgress them. The poor should know how to resist seduction,
+and the rich the allurements of avarice. There should be found leaders
+disinterested and just, and their tyrants should be seized with a spirit
+of madness and folly. This people, recovering its rights, should
+feel its inability to exercise them in person, and should name its
+representatives. Creator of its magistrates, it should know at once to
+respect them and to judge them. In the sudden reform of a whole nation,
+accustomed to live by abuses, each individual displaced should bear with
+patience his privations, and submit to a change of habits. This nation
+should have the courage to conquer its liberty; the power to defend it,
+the wisdom to establish it, and the generosity to extend it to others.
+And can we ever expect the union of so many circumstances? But suppose
+that chance in its infinite combinations should produce them, shall I
+see those fortunate days. Will not my ashes long ere then be mouldering
+in the tomb?
+
+Here, sunk in sorrow, my oppressed heart no longer found utterance. The
+Genius answered not, but I heard him whisper to himself:
+
+Let us revive the hope of this man; for if he who loves his fellow
+creatures be suffered to despair, what will become of nations? The past
+is perhaps too discouraging; I must anticipate futurity, and disclose to
+the eye of virtue the astonishing age that is ready to begin; that, on
+viewing the object she desires, she may be animated with new ardor, and
+redouble her efforts to attain it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE NEW AGE.
+
+
+Scarcely had he finished these words, when a great tumult arose in the
+west; and turning to that quarter, I perceived, at the extremity of
+the Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a prodigious
+movement--such as when a violent sedition arises in a vast city--a
+numberless people, rushing in all directions, pour through the streets
+and fluctuate like waves in the public places. My ear, struck with the
+cries which resounded to the heavens, distinguished these words:
+
+What is this new prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We
+are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and
+we are in want of subsistence? We are active and laborious, and we live
+in indigence! We pay enormous tributes, and we are told they are not
+sufficient! We are at peace without, and our persons and property are
+not safe within. Who, then, is the secret enemy that devours us?
+
+Some voices from the midst of the multitude replied:
+
+Raise a discriminating standard; and let all those who maintain and
+nourish mankind by useful labors gather round it; and you will discover
+the enemy that preys upon you.
+
+The standard being raised, this nation divided itself at once into
+two bodies of unequal magnitude and contrasted appearance. The one,
+innumerable, and almost total, exhibited in the poverty of its clothing,
+in its emaciated appearance and sun-burnt faces, the marks of misery and
+labor; the other, a little group, an insignificant faction, presented in
+its rich attire embroidered with gold and silver, and in its sleek and
+ruddy faces, the signs of leisure and abundance.
+
+Considering these men more attentively, I found that the great body was
+composed of farmers, artificers, merchants, all professions useful
+to society; and that the little group was made up of priests of every
+order, of financiers, of nobles, of men in livery, of commanders of
+armies; in a word, of the civil, military, and religious agents of
+government.
+
+These two bodies being assembled face to face, and regarding each other
+with astonishment, I saw indignation and rage arising in one side, and
+a sort of panic in the other. And the large body said to the little one:
+Why are you separated from us? Are you not of our number?
+
+No, replied the group; you are the people; we are a privileged class,
+who have our laws, customs, and rights, peculiar to ourselves.
+
+PEOPLE.--And what labor do you perform in our society?
+
+PRIVILEGED CLASS.--None; we are not made to work.
+
+PEOPLE.--How, then, have you acquired these riches?
+
+PRIVILEGED CLASS.--By taking the pains to govern you.
+
+PEOPLE.--What! is this what you call governing? We toil and you enjoy!
+we produce and you dissipate! Wealth proceeds from us, and you absorb
+it. Privileged men! class who are not the people; form a nation apart,
+and govern yourselves.*
+
+     * This dialogue between the people and the indolent classes,
+     is applicable to every society; it contains the seeds of all
+     the political vices and disorders that prevail, and which
+     may thus be defined: Men who do nothing, and who devour the
+     substance of others; and men who arrogate to themselves
+     particular rights and exclusive privileges of wealth and
+     indolence.  Compare the Mamlouks of Egypt, the nobility of
+     Europe, the Nairs of India, the Emirs of Arabia, the
+     patricians of Rome, the Christian clergy, the Imans, the
+     Bramins, the Bonzes, the Lamas, etc., etc., and you will
+     find in all the same characteristic feature:--Men living in
+     idleness at the expense of those who labor.
+
+Then the little group, deliberating on this new state of things, some of
+the most honorable among them said: We must join the people and partake
+of their labors and burdens, for they are men like us, and our riches
+come from them; but others arrogantly exclaimed: It would be a shame, an
+infamy, for us to mingle with the crowd; they are born to serve us.
+Are we not men of another race--the noble and pure descendants of the
+conquerors of this empire? This multitude must be reminded of our rights
+and its own origin.
+
+THE NOBLES.--People! know you not that our ancestors conquered this
+land, and that your race was spared only on condition of serving us?
+This is our social compact! this the government constituted by custom
+and prescribed by time.
+
+PEOPLE.--O conquerors, pure of blood! show us your genealogies! we
+shall then see if what in an individual is robbery and plunder, can be
+virtuous in a nation.
+
+And forthwith, voices were heard in every quarter calling out the nobles
+by their names; and relating their origin and parentage, they told how
+the grandfather, great-grandfather, or even father, born traders and
+mechanics, after acquiring wealth in every way, had purchased their
+nobility for money: so that but very few families were really of the
+original stock. See, said these voices, see these purse-proud commoners
+who deny their parents! see these plebian recruits who look upon
+themselves as illustrious veterans! and peals of laughter were heard.
+
+And the civil governors said: these people are mild, and naturally
+servile; speak to them of the king and of the law, and they will return
+to their duty. People! the king wills, the sovereign ordains!
+
+PEOPLE.--The king can will nothing but the good of the people; the
+sovereign can only ordain according to law.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--The law commands you to be submissive.
+
+PEOPLE.--The law is the general will; and we will a new order of things.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--You are then a rebel people.
+
+PEOPLE.--A nation cannot revolt; tyrants only are rebels.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--The king is on our side; he commands you to submit.
+
+PEOPLE.--Kings are inseparable from their nations. Our king cannot be
+with you; you possess only his phantom.
+
+And the military governors came forward. The people are timorous, said
+they; we must threaten them; they will submit only to force. Soldiers,
+chastise this insolent multitude.
+
+PEOPLE.--Soldiers, you are of our blood! Will you strike your brothers,
+your relatives? If the people perish who will nourish the army?
+
+And the soldiers, grounding their arms, said to the chiefs:
+
+We are likewise the people; show us the enemy!
+
+Then the ecclesiastical governors said: There is but one resource left.
+The people are superstitious; we must frighten them with the names of
+God and religion.
+
+Our dear brethren! our children! God has ordained us to govern you.
+
+PEOPLE.--Show us your credentials from God!
+
+PRIESTS.--You must have faith; reason leads astray.
+
+PEOPLE.--Do you govern without reason?
+
+PRIESTS.--God commands peace! Religion prescribes obedience.
+
+PEOPLE.--Peace supposes justice. Obedience implies conviction of a duty.
+
+PRIESTS.--Suffering is the business of this world.
+
+PEOPLE.--Show us the example.
+
+PRIESTS.--Would you live without gods or kings?
+
+PEOPLE.--We would live without oppressors.
+
+PRIESTS.--You must have mediators, intercessors.
+
+PEOPLE.--Mediators with God and with the king! courtiers and priests,
+your services are too expensive: we will henceforth manage our own
+affairs.
+
+And the little group said: We are lost! the multitude are enlightened.
+
+And the people answered: You are safe; since we are enlightened we will
+commit no violence; we only claim our rights. We feel resentments, but
+we will forget them. We were slaves, we might command; but we only wish
+to be free, and liberty is but justice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A FREE AND LEGISLATIVE PEOPLE.
+
+
+Considering that all public power was now suspended, and that the
+habitual restraint of the people had suddenly ceased, I shuddered with
+the apprehension that they would fall into the dissolution of anarchy.
+But, taking their affairs into immediate deliberation, they said:
+
+It is not enough that we have freed ourselves from tyrants and
+parasites; we must prevent their return. We are men, and experience
+has abundantly taught us that every man is fond of power, and wishes
+to enjoy it at the expense of others. It is necessary, then, to guard
+against a propensity which is the source of discord; we must establish
+certain rules of duty and of right. But the knowledge of our rights,
+and the estimation of our duties, are so abstract and difficult as to
+require all the time and all the faculties of a man. Occupied in our
+own affairs, we have not leisure for these studies; nor can we
+exercise these functions in our own persons. Let us choose, then, among
+ourselves, such persons as are capable of this employment. To them we
+will delegate our powers to institute our government and laws. They
+shall be the representatives of our wills and of our interests. And in
+order to attain the fairest representation possible of our wills and our
+interests, let it be numerous, and composed of men resembling ourselves.
+
+Having made the election of a numerous body of delegates, the people
+thus addressed them:
+
+We have hitherto lived in a society formed by chance, without fixed
+agreements, without free conventions, without a stipulation of rights,
+without reciprocal engagements,--and a multitude of disorders and evils
+have arisen from this precarious state. We are now determined on forming
+a regular compact; and we have chosen you to adjust the articles.
+Examine, then, with care what ought to be its basis and its conditions;
+consider what is the end and the principles of every association;
+recognize the rights which every member brings, the powers which he
+delegates, and those which he reserves to himself. Point out to us the
+rules of conduct--the basis of just and equitable laws. Prepare for us a
+new system of government; for we realize that the one which has
+hitherto guided us is corrupt. Our fathers have wandered in the paths
+of ignorance, and habit has taught us to follow in their footsteps.
+Everything has been done by fraud, violence, and delusion; and the true
+laws of morality and reason are still obscure. Clear up, then, their
+chaos; trace out their connection; publish their code, and we will adopt
+it.
+
+And the people raised a large throne, in the form of a pyramid, and
+seating on it the men they had chosen, said to them:
+
+We raise you to-day above us, that you may better discover the whole of
+our relations, and be above the reach of our passions. But remember that
+you are our fellow-citizens; that the power we confer on you is our own;
+that we deposit it with you, but not as a property or a heritage; that
+you must be the first to obey the laws you make; that to-morrow you
+redescend among us, and that you will have acquired no other right but
+that of our esteem and gratitude. And consider what a tribute of glory
+the world, which reveres so many apostles of error, will bestow on the
+first assembly of rational men, who shall have declared the unchangeable
+principles of justice, and consecrated, in the face of tyrants, the
+rights of nations.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+UNIVERSAL BASIS OF ALL RIGHT AND ALL LAW.
+
+
+The men chosen by the people to investigate the true principles of
+morals and of reason then proceeded in the sacred object of their
+mission; and, after a long examination, having discovered a fundamental
+and universal principle, a legislator arose and said to the people:
+
+Here is the primordial basis, the physical origin of all justice and of
+all right.
+
+Whatever be the active power, the moving cause, that governs the
+universe, since it has given to all men the same organs, the same
+sensations, and the same wants, it has thereby declared that it has
+given to all the same right to the use of its treasures, and that all
+men are equal in the order of nature.
+
+And, since this power has given to each man the necessary means of
+preserving his own existence, it is evident that it has constituted them
+all independent one of another; that it has created them free; that no
+one is subject to another; that each one is absolute proprietor of his
+own person.
+
+Equality and liberty are, therefore, two essential attributes of man,
+two laws of the Divinity, constitutional and unchangeable, like the
+physical properties of matter.
+
+Now, every individual being absolute master of his own person, it
+follows that a full and free consent is a condition indispensable to all
+contracts and all engagements.
+
+Again, since each individual is equal to another, it follows that the
+balance of what is received and of what is given, should be strictly in
+equilibrium; so that the idea of justice, of equity, necessarily imports
+that of equality.*
+
+     * The etymology of the words themselves trace out to us this
+     connection: equilibrium, equalitas, equitas, are all of one
+     family, and the physical idea of equality, in the scales of
+     a balance, is the source and type of all the rest.
+
+Equality and liberty are therefore the physical and unalterable basis
+of every union of men in society, and of course the necessary and
+generating principle of every law and of every system of regular
+government.*
+
+     * In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of
+     ideas in the first article, liberty being placed before
+     equality, from which it in reality springs.  This defect is
+     not to be wondered at; the science of the rights of man is a
+     new science: it was invented yesterday by the Americans,
+     to-day the French are perfecting it, but there yet remains a
+     great deal to be done.  In the ideas that constitute it
+     there is a genealogical order which, from us basis, physical
+     equality, to the minutest and most remote branches of
+     government, ought to proceed in an uninterrupted series of
+     inferences.
+
+A disregard of this basis has introduced in your nation, and in every
+other, those disorders which have finally roused you. It is by returning
+to this rule that you may reform them, and reorganize a happy order of
+society.
+
+But observe, this reorganization will occasion a violent shock in
+your habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices. Vicious contracts and
+abusive claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill founded
+property renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a state of
+nature. Consider whether you can consent to so many sacrifices.
+
+Then, reflecting on the cupidity inherent in the heart of man, I thought
+that this people would renounce all ideas of amelioration.
+
+But, in a moment, a great number of men, advancing toward the pyramid,
+made a solemn abjuration of all their distinctions and all their riches.
+
+Establish for us, said they, the laws of equality and liberty; we will
+possess nothing in future but on the title of justice.
+
+Equality, liberty, justice,--these shall be our code, and shall be
+written on our standards.
+
+And the people immediately raised a great standard, inscribed with
+these three words, in three different colors. They displayed it over the
+pyramid of the legislators, and for the first time the flag of universal
+justice floated on the face of the earth.
+
+And the people raised before the pyramid a new altar, on which they
+placed a golden balance, a sword, and a book with this inscription:
+
+
+TO EQUAL LAW, WHICH JUDGES AND PROTECTS.
+
+
+And having surrounded the pyramid and the altar with a vast
+amphitheatre, all the people took their seats to hear the publication
+of the law. And millions of men, raising at once their hands to heaven,
+took the solemn oath to live equal, free, and just; to respect their
+reciprocal properties and rights; to obey the law and its regularly
+chosen representatives.
+
+
+A spectacle so impressive and sublime, so replete with generous
+emotions, moved me to tears; and addressing myself to the Genius, I
+exclaimed: Let me now live, for in future I have everything to hope.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+CONSTERNATION AND CONSPIRACY OF TYRANTS.
+
+
+But scarcely had the solemn voice of liberty and equality resounded
+through the earth, when a movement of confusion, of astonishment, arose
+in different nations. On the one hand, the people, warmed with desire,
+but wavering between hope and fear, between the sentiment of right and
+the habit of obedience, began to be in motion. The kings, on the other
+hand, suddenly awakened from the sleep of indolence and despotism, were
+alarmed for the safety of their thrones; while, on all sides, those
+clans of civil and religious tyrants, who deceive kings and oppress the
+people, were seized with rage and consternation; and, concerting their
+perfidious plans, they said: Woe to us, if this fatal cry of liberty
+comes to the ears of the multitude! Woe to us, if this pernicious spirit
+of justice be propagated!
+
+And, pointing to the floating banner, they continued:
+
+Consider what a swarm of evils are included in these three words! If all
+men are equal, where is our exclusive right to honors and to power? If
+all men are to be free, what becomes of our slaves, our vassals, our
+property? If all are equal in the civil state, where is our prerogative
+of birth, of inheritance? and what becomes of nobility? If they are
+all equal in the sight of God, what need of mediators?--where is the
+priesthood? Let us hasten, then, to destroy a germ so prolific, and so
+contagious. We must employ all our cunning against this innovation. We
+must frighten the kings, that they may join us in the cause. We
+must divide the people by national jealousies, and occupy them with
+commotions, wars, and conquests. They must be alarmed at the power
+of this free nation. Let us form a league against the common enemy,
+demolish that sacrilegious standard, overturn that throne of rebellion,
+and stifle in its birth the flame of revolution.
+
+And, indeed, the civil and religious tyrants of nations formed a general
+combination; and, multiplying their followers by force and seduction,
+they marched in hostile array against the free nation; and, surrounding
+the altar and the pyramid of natural law, they demanded with loud cries:
+
+What is this new and heretical doctrine? what this impious altar, this
+sacrilegious worship? True believers and loyal subjects! can you suppose
+that truth has been first discovered to-day, and that hitherto you have
+been walking in error? that those men, more fortunate than you, have the
+sole privilege of wisdom? And you, rebel and misguided nation, perceive
+you not that your new leaders are misleading you? that they destroy the
+principles of your faith, and overturn the religion of your ancestors?
+Ah, tremble! lest the wrath of heaven should kindle against you; and
+hasten by speedy repentance to retrieve your error.
+
+But, inaccessible to seduction as well as to fear, the free nation kept
+silence, and rising universally in arms, assumed an imposing attitude.
+
+And the legislator said to the chiefs of nations:
+
+If while we walked with a bandage on our eyes the light guided our
+steps, why, since we are no longer blindfold, should it fly from our
+search? If guides, who teach mankind to see for themselves, mislead and
+deceive them, what can be expected from those who profess to keep them
+in darkness?
+
+But hark, ye leaders of nations! If you possess the truth, show it to
+us, and we will receive it with gratitude, for we seek it with ardor,
+and have a great interest in finding it. We are men, and liable to be
+deceived; but you are also men, and equally fallible. Aid us then in
+this labyrinth, where the human race has wandered for so many ages; help
+us to dissipate the illusion of so many prejudices and vicious habits.
+Amid the shock of so many opinions which dispute for our acceptance,
+assist us in discovering the proper and distinctive character of truth.
+Let us this day terminate the long combat with error. Let us establish
+between it and truth a solemn contest, to which we will invite the
+opinions of men of all nations. Let us convoke a general assembly of the
+nations. Let them be judges in their own cause; and in the debate of all
+systems, let no champion, no argument, be wanting, either on the side
+of prejudice or of reason; and let the sentiment of a general and common
+mass of evidence give birth to a universal concord of opinions and of
+hearts.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE NATIONS.
+
+
+Thus spoke the legislator; and the multitude, seized with those emotions
+which a reasonable proposition always inspires, expressed its applause;
+while the tyrants, left without support, were overwhelmed with
+confusion.
+
+A scene of a new and astonishing nature then opened to my view. All that
+the earth contains of people and of nations; men of every race and of
+every region, converging from their various climates, seemed to assemble
+in one allotted place; where, forming an immense congress, distinguished
+in groups by the vast variety of their dresses, features, and
+complexion, the numberless multitude presented a most unusual and
+affecting sight.
+
+On one side I saw the European, with his short close coat, pointed
+triangular hat, smooth chin, and powdered hair; on the other side the
+Asiatic, with a flowing robe, long beard, shaved head, and round turban.
+Here stood the nations of Africa, with their ebony skins, their woolly
+hair, their body girt with white and blue tissues of bark, adorned with
+bracelets and necklaces of coral, shells, and glass; there the tribes
+of the north, enveloped in their leathern bags; the Laplander, with his
+pointed bonnet and his snow-shoes; the Samoyede, with his feverish body
+and strong odor; the Tongouse, with his horned cap, and carrying his
+idols pendant from his neck; the Yakoute, with his freckled face; the
+Kalmuc, with his flat nose and little retorted eyes. Farther distant
+were the Chinese, attired in silk, with their hair hanging in tresses;
+the Japanese, of mingled race; the Malays, with wide-spreading ears,
+rings in their noses, and palm-leaf hats of vast circumference;* and the
+tattooed races of the isles of the southern ocean and of the continent
+of the antipodes.** The view of so many varieties of the same species,
+of so many extravagant inventions of the same understanding, and of so
+many modifications of the same organization, affected me with a thousand
+feelings and a thousand thoughts.*** I contemplated with astonishment
+this gradation of color, which, passing from a bright carnation to a
+light brown, a deeper brown, dusky, bronze, olive, leaden, copper, ends
+in the black of ebony and of jet. And finding the Cassimerian, with his
+rosy cheek, next to the sun-burnt Hindoo, and the Georgian by the side
+of the Tartar, I reflected on the effects of climate hot or cold, of
+soil high or low, marshy or dry, open or shaded. I compared the dwarf of
+the pole with the giant of the temperate zones, the slender body of
+the Arab with the ample chest of the Hollander; the squat figure of
+the Samoyede with the elegant form of the Greek and the Sclavonian; the
+greasy black wool of the Negro with the bright silken locks of the Dane;
+the broad face of the Kalmuc, his little angular eyes and flattened
+nose, with the oval prominent visage, large blue eyes, and aquiline nose
+of the Circassian and Abazan. I contrasted the brilliant calicoes of the
+Indian, the well-wrought stuffs of the European, the rich furs of the
+Siberian, with the tissues of bark, of osiers, leaves and feathers of
+savage nations; and the blue figures of serpents, flowers, and
+stars, with which they painted their bodies. Sometimes the variegated
+appearance of this multitude reminded me of the enamelled meadows of the
+Nile and the Euphrates, when, after rains or inundations, millions of
+flowers are rising on every side. Sometimes their murmurs and their
+motions called to mind the numberless swarms of locusts which, issuing
+from the desert, cover in the spring the plains of Hauran.
+
+     * This species of the palm-tree is called Latanier.  Its
+     leaf, similar to a fan-mount, grows upon a stalk issuing
+     directly from the earth.  A specimen may be seen in the
+     botanic garden.
+
+     ** The country of the Papons of New Guinea.
+
+     *** A hall of costumes in one of the galleries of the Louvre
+     would, in every point of view, be an interesting
+     establishment.  It would furnish an admirable treat to the
+     curiosity of a great number of persons, excellent models to
+     the artist, and useful subjects of meditation to the
+     physician, the philosopher and the legislator.
+
+     Picture to yourself a collection of the various faces and
+     figures of every country and nation, exhibiting accurately,
+     color, features and form; what a field for investigation and
+     enquiry as to the influence of climate, customs, food, etc.
+     It might truly be called the science of man!  Buffon has
+     attempted a chapter of this nature, but it only serves to
+     exhibit more strikingly our actual ignorance. Such a
+     collection is said to have been begun at St. Petersburg, but
+     it is also said at the same time to be as imperfect as the
+     vocabulary of the three hundred languages.  The enterprise
+     would be worthy of the French nation.
+
+At the sight of so many rational beings, considering on the one hand the
+immensity of thoughts and sensations assembled in this place, and on the
+other hand, reflecting on the opposition of so many opinions, and the
+shock of so many passions of men so capricious, I struggled between
+astonishment, admiration, and secret dread--when the legislator
+commanded silence, and attracted all my attention.
+
+Inhabitants of earth! a free and powerful nation addresses you with
+words of justice and peace, and she offers you the sure pledges of her
+intentions in her own conviction and experience. Long afflicted with the
+same evils as yourselves, we sought for their source, and found them
+all derived from violence and injustice, erected into law by the
+inexperience of past ages, and maintained by the prejudices of the
+present. Then abolishing our artificial and arbitrary institutions,
+and recurring to the origin of all right and reason, we have found
+that there existed in the very order of nature and in the physical
+constitution of man, eternal and immutable laws, which only waited his
+observance to render him happy.
+
+O men! cast your eyes on the heavens that give you light, and on the
+earth that gives you bread! Since they offer the same bounties to you
+all--since from the power that gives them motion you have all received
+the same life, the same organs, have you not likewise all received the
+same right to enjoy its benefits? Has it not hereby declared you all
+equal and free? What mortal shall dare refuse to his fellow that which
+nature gives him?
+
+O nations! let us banish all tyranny and all discord; let us form but
+one society, one great family; and, since human nature has but one
+constitution, let there exist in future but one law, that of nature--but
+one code, that of reason--but one throne, that of justice--but one
+altar, that of union.
+
+He ceased; and an immense acclamation resounded to the skies. Ten
+thousand benedictions announced the transports of the multitude; and
+they made the earth re-echo JUSTICE, EQUALITY and UNION.
+
+But different emotions soon succeeded; soon the doctors and the chiefs
+of nations exciting a spirit of dispute, there was heard a sullen
+murmur, which growing louder, and spreading from group to group, became
+a vast disorder; and each nation setting up exclusive pretensions,
+claimed a preference for its own code and opinion.
+
+You are in error, said the parties, pointing one to the other. We alone
+are in possession of reason and truth. We alone have the true law,
+the real rule of right and justice, the only means of happiness and
+perfection. All other men are either blind or rebellious.
+
+And great agitation prevailed.
+
+Then the legislator, after enforcing silence, loudly exclaimed:
+
+What, O people! is this passionate emotion? Whither will this quarrel
+conduct you? What can you expect from this dissension? The earth has
+been for ages a field of disputation, and you have shed torrents of
+blood in your controversies. What have you gained by so many battles
+and tears? When the strong has subjected the weak to his opinion, has he
+thereby aided the cause of truth?
+
+O nations! take counsel of your own wisdom. When among yourselves
+disputes arise between families and individuals, how do you reconcile
+them? Do you not give them arbitrators?
+
+Yes, cried the whole multitude.
+
+Do so then to the authors of your present dissensions. Order those who
+call themselves your instructors, and who force their creeds upon
+you, to discuss before you their reasons. Since they appeal to your
+interests, inform yourselves how they support them.
+
+And you, chiefs and governors of the people! before dragging the masses
+into the quarrels resulting from your diverse opinions, let the reasons
+for and against your views be given. Let us establish one solemn
+controversy, one public scrutiny of truth--not before the tribunal of a
+corruptible individual, or of a prejudiced party, but in the grand forum
+of mankind--guarded by all their information and all their interests.
+Let the natural sense of the whole human race be our arbiter and judge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE SEARCH OF TRUTH.
+
+
+The people expressed their applause, and the legislator continued: To
+proceed with order, and avoid all confusion, let a spacious semicircle
+be left vacant in front of the altar of peace and union; let each system
+of religion, and each particular sect, erect its proper distinctive
+standard on the line of this semicircle; let its chiefs and doctors
+place themselves around the standard, and their followers form a column
+behind them.
+
+The semicircle being traced, and the order published, there instantly
+rose an innumerable multitude of standards, of all colors and of every
+form, like what we see in a great commercial port, when, on a day of
+rejoicing, a thousand different flags and streamers are floating from a
+forest of masts.
+
+At the sight of this prodigious diversity, I turned towards the Genius
+and said:
+
+I thought that the earth was divided only into eight or ten systems of
+faith, and I then despaired of a reconciliation; I now behold thousands
+of different sects, and how can I hope for concord?
+
+But these, replied the Genius, are not all; and yet they will be
+intolerant!
+
+Then, as the groups advanced to take their stations, he pointed out to
+me their distinctive marks, and thus began to explain their characters:
+
+That first group, said he, with a green banner bearing a crescent, a
+bandage, and a sabre, are the followers of the Arabian prophet. To say
+there is a God, without knowing what he is; to believe the words of a
+man, without understanding his language; to go into the desert to pray
+to God, who is everywhere; to wash the hands with water, and not abstain
+from blood; to fast all day, and eat all night; to give alms of their
+own goods, and to plunder those of others; such are the means of
+perfection instituted by Mahomet--such are the symbols of his followers;
+and whoever does not bear them is a reprobate, stricken with anathema,
+and devoted to the sword.
+
+A God of clemency, the author of life, has instituted these laws of
+oppression and murder: he made them for all the world, but has revealed
+them only to one man; he established them from all eternity, though he
+made them known but yesterday. These laws are abundantly sufficient
+for all purposes, and yet a volume is added to them. This volume was
+to diffuse light, to exhibit evidence, to lead men to perfection and
+happiness; and yet every page was so full of obscurities, ambiguities,
+and contradictions, that commentaries and explanations became necessary,
+even in the life-time of its apostle. Its interpreters, differing in
+opinion, divided into opposite and hostile sects. One maintains that Ali
+is the true successor; the other contends for Omar and Aboubekre. This
+denies the eternity of the Koran; that the necessity of ablutions and
+prayers. The Carmite forbids pilgrimages, and allows the use of wine;
+the Hakemite preaches the transmigration of souls. Thus they make up
+the number of seventy-two sects, whose banners are before you.* In this
+contestation, every one attributing the evidence of truth exclusively to
+himself, and taxing all others with heresy and rebellion, turns against
+them its sanguinary zeal. And their religion, which celebrates a mild
+and merciful God, the common father of all men,--changed to a torch of
+discord, a signal for war and murder, has not ceased for twelve hundred
+years to deluge the earth in blood, and to ravage and desolate the
+ancient hemisphere from centre to circumference.**
+
+     * The Mussulmen enumerate in common seventy-two sects, but I
+     read, while I resided among them, a work which gave an
+     account of more than eighty,--all equally wise and
+     important.
+
+     ** Read the history of Islamism by its own writers, and you
+     will be convinced that one of the principal causes of the
+     wars which have desolated Asia and Africa, since the days of
+     Mahomet, has been the apostolical fanaticism of its
+     doctrine.  Caesar has been supposed to have destroyed three
+     millions of men: it would be interesting to make a similar
+     calculation respecting every founder of a religious system.
+
+Those men, distinguished by their enormous white turbans, their broad
+sleeves, and their long rosaries, are the Imans, the Mollas, and the
+Muftis; and near them are the Dervishes with pointed bonnets, and the
+Santons with dishevelled hair. Behold with what vehemence they recite
+their professions of faith! They are now beginning a dispute about
+the greater and lesser impurities--about the matter and the manner of
+ablutions,--about the attributes of God and his perfections--about the
+Chaitan, and the good and wicked angels,--about death, the resurrection,
+the interrogatory in the tomb, the judgment, the passage of the narrow
+bridge not broader than a hair, the balance of works, the pains of hell,
+and the joys of paradise.
+
+
+Next to these, that second more numerous group, with white banners
+intersected with crosses, are the followers of Jesus. Acknowledging the
+same God with the Mussulmans, founding their belief on the same books,
+admitting, like them, a first man who lost the human race by eating an
+apple, they hold them, however, in a holy abhorrence; and, out of pure
+piety, they call each other impious blasphemers.
+
+The great point of their dissension consists in this, that after
+admitting a God one and indivisible the Christian divides him into three
+persons, each of which he believes to be a complete and entire God,
+without ceasing to constitute an identical whole, by the indivisibility
+of the three. And he adds, that this being, who fills the universe,
+has reduced himself to the body of a man; and has assumed material,
+perishable, and limited organs, without ceasing to be immaterial,
+infinite, and eternal. The Mussulman who does not comprehend these
+mysteries, rejects them as follies, and the visions of a distempered
+brain; though he conceives perfectly well the eternity of the Koran, and
+the mission of the prophet: hence their implacable hatreds.
+
+Again, the Christians, divided among themselves on many points, have
+formed parties not less violent than the Mussulmans; and their quarrels
+are so much the more obstinate, as the objects of them are inaccessible
+to the senses and incapable of demonstration: their opinions, therefore,
+have no other basis but the will and caprice of the parties. Thus,
+while they agree that God is a being incomprehensible and unknown, they
+dispute, nevertheless, about his essence, his mode of acting, and his
+attributes. While they agree that his pretended transformation into man
+is an enigma above the human understanding, they dispute on the junction
+or distinction of his two wills and his two natures, on his change
+of substance, on the real or fictitious presence, on the mode of
+incarnation, etc.
+
+Hence those innumerable sects, of which two or three hundred have
+already perished, and three or four hundred others, which still subsist,
+display those numberless banners which here distract your sight.
+
+The first in order, surrounded by a group in varied and fantastic
+dress, that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black and speckled
+garments--with heads shaved, or with tonsures, or with short hair--with
+red hats, square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long beards, is the
+standard of the Roman pontiff, who, uniting the civil government to
+the priesthood, has erected the supremacy of his city into a point of
+religion, and made of his pride an article of faith.
+
+On his right you see the Greek pontiff, who, proud of the rivalship of
+his metropolis, sets up equal pretensions, and supports them against the
+Western church by the priority of that of the East. On the left are the
+standards of two recent chiefs,* who, shaking off a yoke that had become
+tyrannical, have raised altar against altar in their reform, and wrested
+half of Europe from the pope. Behind these are the subaltern sects,
+subdivided from the principal divisions, the Nestorians, the Eutycheans,
+the Jacobites, the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Presbyterians,
+the Wicliffites, the Osiandrians, the Manicheans, the Pietists, the
+Adamites, the Contemplatives, the Quakers, the Weepers, and a hundred
+others,** all of distinct parties, persecuting when strong, tolerant
+when weak, hating each other in the name of a God of peace, forming each
+an exclusive heaven in a religion of universal charity, dooming each
+other to pains without end in a future state, and realizing in this
+world the imaginary hell of the other.
+
+     * Luther and Calvin.
+
+     ** Consult upon this subject Dictionnaire des Herseies par
+     l'Abbe Pluquet, in two volumes 8vo.: a work admirably
+     calculated to inspire the mind with philosophy, in the sense
+     that the Lacedemonians taught the children temperance by
+     showing to them the drunken Helots.
+
+After this group, observing a lonely standard of the color of hyacinth,
+round which were assembled men clad in all the different dresses of
+Europe and Asia:
+
+At least, said I, to the Genius, we shall find unanimity here.
+
+Yes, said he, at first sight and by a momentary accident. Dost thou not
+know that system of worship?
+
+Then, perceiving in Hebrew letters the monogram of the name of God, and
+the palms which the Rabbins held in their hands:
+
+True, said I, these are the children of Moses, dispersed even to this
+day, abhorring every nation, and abhorred and persecuted by all.
+
+Yes, he replied, and for this reason, that, having neither the time nor
+liberty to dispute, they have the appearance of unanimity. But no sooner
+will they come together, compare their principles, and reason on
+their opinions, than they will separate as formerly, at least into two
+principal sects;* one of which, taking advantage of the silence of their
+legislator, and adhering to the literal sense of his books, will deny
+everything that is not clearly expressed therein; and on this principle
+will reject as profane inventions, the immortality of the soul, its
+transmigration to places of pain or pleasure, its resurrection, the
+final judgment, the good and bad angels, the revolt of the evil Genius,
+and all the poetical belief of a world to come. And this highly-favored
+people, whose perfection consists in a slight mutilation of their
+persons,--this atom of a people, which forms but a small wave in the
+ocean of mankind, and which insists that God has made nothing but for
+them, will by its schism reduce to one-half, its present trifling weight
+in the scale of the universe.
+
+     * The Sadducees and Pharisees.
+
+He then showed me a neighboring group, composed of men dressed in white
+robes, wearing a veil over their mouths, and ranged around a banner of
+the color of the morning sky, on which was painted a globe cleft in two
+hemispheres, black and white: The same thing will happen, said he, to
+these children of Zoroaster,* the obscure remnant of a people once so
+powerful. At present, persecuted like the Jews, and dispersed among
+all nations, they receive without discussion the precepts of the
+representative of their prophet. But as soon as the Mobed and the
+Destours** shall assemble, they will renew the controversy about the
+good and the bad principle; on the combats of Ormuzd, God of light, and
+Ahrimanes, God of darkness; on the direct and allegorical sense; on
+the good and evil Genii; on the worship of fire and the elements; on
+impurities and ablutions; on the resurrection of the soul and body, or
+only of the soul;*** on the renovation of the present world, and on that
+which is to take its place. And the Parses will divide into sects, so
+much the more numerous, as their families will have contracted, during
+their dispersion, the manners and opinions of different nations.
+
+     * They are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name
+     of Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels.  They are
+     in Asia what the Jews are in Europe.  The name of their pope
+     or high priest is Mobed.
+
+     ** That is to say, their priests.  See, respecting the rites
+     of this religion, Henry Lord Hyde, and the Zendavesta.
+     Their costume is a robe with a belt of four knots, and a
+     veil over their mouth for fear of polluting the fire with
+     their breath.
+
+     *** The Zoroastrians are divided between two opinions; one
+     party believing that both soul and body will rise, the other
+     that it will be the soul only.  The Christians and
+     Mahometans have embraced the most solid of the two.
+
+Next to these, remark those banners of an azure ground, painted with
+monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and quadruple, with
+heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of fishes and tortoises;
+these are the ensigns of the sects of India, who find their gods in
+various animals, and the souls of their fathers in reptiles and insects.
+These men support hospitals for hawks, serpents, and rats, and they
+abhor their fellow creatures! They purify themselves with the dung and
+urine of cows, and think themselves defiled by the touch of a man! They
+wear a net over the mouth, lest, in a fly, they should swallow a soul
+in a state of penance,* and they can see a Pariah** perish with hunger!
+They acknowledge the same gods, but they separate into hostile bands.
+
+     * According to the system of the Metempsychosis, a soul, to
+     undergo purification, passes into the body of some insect or
+     animal.  It is of importance not to disturb this penance, as
+     the work must in that case begin afresh.
+
+     ** This is the name of a cast or tribe reputed unclean,
+     because they eat of what has enjoyed life.
+
+The first standard, retired from the rest, bearing a figure with four
+heads, is that of Brama, who, though the creator of the universe, is
+without temples or followers; but, reduced to serve as a pedestal to the
+Lingam,* he contents himself with a little water which the Bramin throws
+every morning on his shoulder, reciting meanwhile an idle canticle in
+his praise.
+
+     * See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, vol. 1.
+
+The second, bearing a kite with a scarlet body and a white head, is that
+of Vichenou, who, though preserver of the world, has passed part of his
+life in wicked actions. You sometimes see him under the hideous form
+of a boar or a lion, tearing human entrails, or under that of a horse,*
+shortly to come armed with a sword to destroy the human race, blot out
+the stars, annihilate the planets, shake the earth, and force the great
+serpent to vomit a fire which shall consume the spheres.
+
+     * These are the incarnations of Vichenou, or metamorphoses
+     of the sun.  He is to come at the end of the world, that is,
+     at the expiration of the great period, in the form of a
+     horse, like the four horses of the Apocalypse.
+
+The third is that of Chiven, God of destruction and desolation, who has,
+however, for his emblem the symbol of generation. He is the most wicked
+of the three, and he has the most followers. These men, proud of his
+character, express in their devotions to him their contempt for
+the other gods,* his equals and brothers; and, in imitation of his
+inconsistencies, while they profess great modesty and chastity, they
+publicly crown with flowers, and sprinkle with milk and honey, the
+obscene image of the Lingam.
+
+     * When a sectary of Chiven hears the name of Vichenou
+     pronounced, he stops his ears, runs, and purifies himself.
+
+In the rear of these, approach the smaller standards of a multitude of
+gods--male, female, and hermaphrodite. These are friends and relations
+of the principal gods, who have passed their lives in wars among
+themselves, and their followers imitate them. These gods have need of
+nothing, and they are constantly receiving presents; they are omnipotent
+and omnipresent, and a priest, by muttering a few words, shuts them up
+in an idol or a pitcher, to sell their favors for his own benefit.
+
+
+Beyond these, that cloud of standards, which, on a yellow ground, common
+to them all, bear various emblems, are those of the same god, who reins
+under different names in the nations of the East. The Chinese adores him
+in Fot,* the Japanese in Budso, the Ceylonese in Bedhou, the people of
+Laos in Chekia, of Pegu in Phta, of Siam in Sommona-Kodom, of Thibet
+in Budd and in La. Agreeing in some points of his history, they all
+celebrate his life of penitence, his mortifications, his fastings, his
+functions of mediator and expiator, the enmity between him and another
+god, his adversary, their battles, and his ascendency. But as they
+disagree on the means of pleasing him, they dispute about rites and
+ceremonies, and about the dogmas of interior doctrine and of public
+doctrine. That Japanese Bonze, with a yellow robe and naked head,
+preaches the eternity of souls, and their successive transmigrations
+into various bodies; near him, the Sintoist denies that souls can exist
+separate from the senses,** and maintains that they are only the effect
+of the organs to which they belong, and with which they must perish, as
+the sound of the flute perishes with the flute. Near him, the Siamese,
+with his eyebrows shaved, and a talipat screen*** in his hand,
+recommends alms, offerings, and expiations, at the same time that he
+preaches blind necessity and inexorable fate. The Chinese vo-chung
+sacrifices to the souls of his ancestors; and next him, the follower of
+Confucius interrogates his destiny in the cast of dice and the movement
+of the stars.**** That child, surrounded by a swarm of priests in yellow
+robes and hats, is the Grand Lama, in whom the god of Thibet has just
+become incarnate.*5 But a rival has arisen who partakes this benefit
+with him; and the Kalmouc on the banks of the Baikal, has a God similar
+to the inhabitant of Lasa. And they agree, also, in one important
+point--that god can inhabit only a human body. They both laugh at
+the stupidity of the Indian who pays homage to cow-dung, though they
+themselves consecrate the excrements of their high-priest.*6
+
+     * The original name of this god is Baits, which in Hebrew
+     signifies an egg.  The Arabs pronounce it Baidh, giving to
+     the dh an emphatic sound which makes it approach to dz.
+     Kempfer, an acurate traveler, writes it Budso, which must be
+     pronounced Boudso, whence is derived the name of Budsoist
+     and of Bonze, applied to the priests.  Clement of
+     Alexandria, in his Stromata, writes it Bedou, as it is
+     pronounced also by the Chingulais; and Saint Jerome, Boudda
+     and Boutta.  At Thibet they call it Budd; and hence the name
+     of the country called Boud-tan and Ti-budd: it was in this
+     province that this system of religion was first inculcated
+     in Upper Asia; La is a corruption of Allah, the name of God
+     in the Syriac language, from which many of the eastern
+     dialects appear to be derived.  The Chinese having neither b
+     nor d, have supplied their place by f and t, and have
+     therefore said Fout.
+
+     ** See in Kempfer the doctrine of the Sintoists, which is a
+     mixture of that of Epicurus and of the Stoics.
+
+     *** It is a leaf of the Latanier species of the palm-tree.
+     Hence the bonzes of Siam take the appellation of Talapoin.
+     The use of this screen is an exclusive privilege.
+
+     **** The sectaries of Confucius are no less addicted to
+     astrology than the bonzes.  It is indeed the malady of every
+     eastern nation.
+
+     *5 The Delai-La-Ma, or immense high priest of La, is the
+     same person whom we find mentioned in our old books of
+     travels, by the name of Prester John, from a corruption of
+     the Persian word Djehan, which signifies the world, to which
+     has been prefixed the French word prestre or pretre, priest.
+     Thus the priest world, and the god world are in the Persian
+     idiom the same.
+
+     *6 In a recent expedition the English have found certain
+     idols of the Lamas filled in the inside with sacred pastils
+     from the close stool of the high priest.  Mr. Hastings, and
+     Colonel Pollier, who is now at Lausanne, are living
+     witnesses of this fact, and undoubtedly worthy of credit.
+     It will be very extraordinary to observe, that this
+     disgusting ceremony is connected with a profound
+     philosophical system, to wit, that of the metempsychosis,
+     admitted by the Lamas.  When the Tartars swallow, the sacred
+     relics, which they are accustomed to do, they imitate the
+     laws of the universe, the parts of which are incessantly
+     absorbed and pass into the substance of each other.  It is
+     upon the model of the serpent who devours his tail, and this
+     serpent is Budd and the world.
+
+After these, a crowd of other banners, which no man could number, came
+forward into sight; and the genius exclaimed:
+
+I should never finish the detail of all the systems of faith which
+divide these nations. Here the hordes of Tartars adore, in the forms
+of beasts, birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who, under a
+principal, but indolent god, govern the universe. In their idolatry
+they call to mind the ancient paganism of the West. You observe the
+fantastical dress of the Chamans; who, under a robe of leather, hung
+round with bells and rattles, idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of
+snakes and heads of owls, invoke, with frantic cries and factitious
+convulsions, the dead to deceive the living. There, the black tribes of
+Africa exhibit the same opinions in the worship of their fetiches. See
+the inhabitant of Juida worship god in a great snake, which, unluckily,
+the swine delight to eat.* The Teleutean attires his god in a coat of
+several colors, like a Russian soldier.** The Kamchadale, observing that
+everything goes wrong in his frozen country, considers god as an old
+ill-natured man, smoking his pipe and hunting foxes and martins in his
+sledge.***
+
+     * It frequently happens that the swine devour the very
+     species of serpents the negroes adore, which is a source of
+     great desolation in the country.  President de Brosses has
+     given us, in his History of the Fetiche, a curious
+     collection of absurdities of this nature.
+
+     ** The Teleuteans, a Tartar nation, paint God as wearing a
+     vesture of all colors, particularly red and green; and as
+     these constitute the uniform of the Russian dragoons, they
+     compare him to this description of soldiers.  The Egyptians
+     also dress the God World in a garment of every color.
+     Eusebius Proep. Evang. p 115.  The Teleuteans call God Bou,
+     which is only an alteration of Boudd, the God Egg and World.
+
+     *** Consult upon this subject a work entitled, Description
+     des Peuples, soumis a la Russie, and it will be found that
+     the picture is not overcharged.
+
+But you may still behold a hundred savage nations who have none of the
+ideas of civilized people respecting God, the soul, another world, and a
+future life; who have formed no system of worship; and who nevertheless
+enjoy the rich gifts of nature in the irreligion in which she has
+created them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS CONTRADICTIONS.
+
+
+The various groups having taken their places, an unbounded silence
+succeeded to the murmurs of the multitude; and the legislator said:
+
+Chiefs and doctors of mankind! You remark how the nations, living apart,
+have hitherto followed different paths, each believing its own to be
+that of truth. If, however, truth is one, and opinions are various, it
+is evident that some are in error. If, then, such vast numbers of us
+are in the wrong, who shall dare to say, "I am in the right?" Begin,
+therefore, by being indulgent in your dissensions. Let us all seek truth
+as if no one possessed it. The opinions which to this day have governed
+the world, originating from chance, propagated in obscurity, admitted
+without discussion, accredited by a love of novelty and imitation, have
+usurped their empire in a clandestine manner. It is time, if they are
+well founded, to give a solemn stamp to their certainty, and legitimize
+their existence. Let us summon them this day to a general scrutiny, let
+each propound his creed, let the whole assembly be the judge, and let
+that alone be acknowledged as true which is so for the whole human race.
+
+Then, by order of position, the representative of the first standard on
+the left was allowed to speak:
+
+"You are not permitted to doubt," said their chief, "that our doctrine
+is the only true and infallible one. FIRST, it is revealed by God
+himself--"
+
+"So is ours," cried all the other standards, "and you are not permitted
+to doubt it."
+
+"But at least," said the legislator, "you must prove it, for we cannot
+believe what we do not know."
+
+"Our doctrine is proved," replied the first standard, "by numerous
+facts, by a multitude of miracles, by resurrections of the dead, by
+rivers dried up, by mountains removed--"
+
+"And we also have numberless miracles," cried all the others, and each
+began to recount the most incredible things.
+
+"THEIR miracles," said the first standard, "are imaginary, or the
+fictions of the evil spirit, who has deluded them."
+
+"They are yours," said the others, "that are imaginary;" and each group,
+speaking of itself, cried out:
+
+"None but ours are true, all the others are false."
+
+The legislator then asked: "Have you living witnesses of the facts?"
+
+"No," replied they all; "the facts are ancient, the witnesses are dead,
+but their writings remain."
+
+"Be it so," replied the legislator; "but if they contradict each other,
+who shall reconcile them?"
+
+"Just judge!" cried one of the standards, "the proof that our witnesses
+have seen the truth is, that they died to confirm it; and our faith is
+sealed by the blood of martyrs."
+
+"And ours too," said the other standards; "we have thousands of martyrs
+who have died in the most excruciating torments, without ever denying
+the truth."
+
+Then the Christians of every sect, the Mussulmans, the Indians, the
+Japanese, recited endless legends of confessors, martyrs, penitents,
+etc.
+
+And one of these parties, having denied the martyrology of the others:
+"Well," said they, "we will then die ourselves to prove the truth of our
+belief."
+
+And instantly a crowd of men, of every religion and of every sect,
+presented themselves to suffer the torments of death. Many even began
+to tear their arms, and to beat their heads and breasts, without
+discovering any symptom of pain.
+
+But the legislator, preventing them--"O men!" said he, "hear my words
+with patience. If you die to prove that two and two make four, will your
+death add any thing to this truth?"
+
+"No!" answered all.
+
+"And if you die to prove that they make five, will that make them five?"
+
+Again they all answered, "No."
+
+"What, then, is your persuasion to prove, if it changes not the
+existence of things? Truth is one--your persuasions are various; many of
+you, therefore, are in error. Now, if man, as is evident, can persuade
+himself of error, what is the persuasion of man to prove?
+
+"If error has its martyrs, what is the sure criterion of truth?
+
+"If the evil spirit works miracles, what is the distinctive character of
+God?
+
+"Besides, why resort forever to incomplete and insufficient miracles?
+Instead of changing the course of nature, why not rather change
+opinions? Why murder and terrify men, instead of instructing and
+correcting them?
+
+"O credulous, but opinionated mortals! none of us know what was done
+yesterday, what is doing to-day even under our eyes; and we swear to
+what was done two thousand years ago!
+
+"Oh, the weakness and yet the pride of men! The laws of nature
+are unchangeable and profound--our minds are full of illusion and
+frivolity--and yet we would comprehend every thing--determine every
+thing! Forgetting that it is easier for the whole human race to be in
+error, than to change the nature of the smallest atom."
+
+"Well, then," said one of the doctors, "let us lay aside the evidence
+of fact, since it is uncertain; let us come to argument--to the proofs
+inherent in the doctrine."
+
+Then came forward, with a look of confidence, an Iman of the law of
+Mahomet; and, having advanced into the circle, turned towards Mecca, and
+recited with great fervor his confession of faith. "Praise be to God,"
+said he, with a solemn and imposing voice, "the light shines with full
+evidence, and the truth has no need of examination." Then, showing the
+Koran, he exclaimed: "Here is the light of truth in its proper essence.
+There is no doubt in this book. It conducts with safety him who walks
+in darkness, and who receives without discussion the divine word which
+descended on the prophet, to save the simple and confound the wise.
+God has established Mahomet his minister on earth; he has given him the
+world, that he may subdue with the sword whoever shall refuse to receive
+his law. Infidels dispute, and will not believe; their obduracy comes
+from God, who has hardened their hearts to deliver them to dreadful
+punishments."*
+
+     * This passage contains the sense and nearly the very words
+     of the first chapter of the Koran; and the reader will
+     observe in general, that, in the pictures that follow, the
+     writer has endeavored to give as accurately as possible the
+     letter and spirit of the opinions of each party.
+
+At these words a violent murmur arose on all sides, and silenced the
+speaker. "Who is this man," cried all the groups, "who thus insults
+us without a cause? What right has he to impose his creed on us as
+conqueror and tyrant? Has not God endowed us, as well as him, with eyes,
+understanding, and reason? And have we not an equal right to use them,
+in choosing what to believe and what to reject? If he attacks us, shall
+we not defend ourselves? If he likes to believe without examination,
+must we therefore not examine before we believe?
+
+"And what is this luminous doctrine that fears the light? What is
+this apostle of a God of clemency, who preaches nothing but murder and
+carnage? What is this God of justice, who punishes blindness which
+he himself has made? If violence and persecution are the arguments of
+truth, are gentleness and charity the signs of falsehood?"
+
+A man then advancing from a neighboring group, said to the Iman:
+
+"Admitting that Mahomet is the apostle of the best doctrine,--the
+prophet of the true religion,--have the goodness at least to tell
+us whether, in the practice of his doctrine, we are to follow his
+son-in-law Ali, or his vicars Omar and Aboubekre?"*
+
+     * These are the two grand parties into which the Mussulmans
+     are divided.  The Turks have embraced the second, the
+     Persians the first.
+
+At the sound of these names a terrible schism arose among the Mussulmans
+themselves. The partisans of Ali and those of Omar, calling out heretics
+and blasphemers, loaded each other with execrations. The quarrel became
+so violent that neighboring groups were obliged to interfere, to prevent
+their coming to blows. At length, tranquillity being somewhat restored,
+the legislator said to the Imans:
+
+"See the consequences of your principles! If you yourselves were to
+carry them into practice, you would destroy each other to the last man.
+Is it not the first law of God that man should live?"
+
+Then, addressing himself to the other groups, he continued:
+
+"Doubtless this intolerant and exclusive spirit shocks every idea of
+justice, and overturns the whole foundation of morals and society; but
+before we totally reject this code of doctrine, is it not proper to hear
+some of its dogmas? Let us not pronounce on the forms, without having
+some knowledge of the substance."
+
+The groups having consented, the Iman began to expound how God, having
+sent to the nations lost in idolatry twenty-four thousand prophets, had
+finally sent the last, the seal and perfection of all, Mahomet; on whom
+be the salvation of peace: how, to prevent the divine word from being
+any longer perverted by infidels, the supreme goodness had itself
+written the pages of the Koran. Then, explaining the particular dogmas
+of Islamism, the Iman unfolded how the Koran, partaking of the divine
+nature, was uncreated and eternal, like its author: how it had been sent
+leaf by leaf, in twenty-four thousand nocturnal apparitions of the angel
+Gabriel: how the angel announced himself by a gentle knocking, which
+threw the prophet into a cold sweat: how in the vision of one night
+he had travelled over ninety heavens, riding on the beast Borack, half
+horse and half woman: how, endowed with the gift of miracles, he walked
+in the sunshine without a shadow, turned dry trees to green, filled
+wells and cisterns with water, and split in two the body of the moon:
+how, by divine command, Mahomet had propagated, sword in hand, the
+religion the most worthy of God by its sublimity, and the most proper
+for men by the simplicity of its practice; since it consisted in only
+eight or ten points:--To profess the unity of God; to acknowledge
+Mahomet as his only prophet; to pray five times a day; to fast one month
+in the year; to go to Mecca once in our life; to pay the tenth of all
+we possess; to drink no wine; to eat no pork; and to make war upon
+the infidels.* He taught that by these means every Mussulman becoming
+himself an apostle and martyr, should enjoy in this world many
+blessings; and at his death, his soul, weighed in the balance of works,
+and absolved by the two black angels, should pass the infernal pit on
+the bridge as narrow as a hair and as sharp as the edge of a sword, and
+should finally be received to a region of delight, which is watered with
+rivers of milk and honey, and embalmed in all the perfumes of India
+and Arabia; and where the celestial Houris--virgins always chaste--are
+eternally crowning with repeated favors the elect of God, who preserve
+an eternal youth.
+
+     * Whatever the advocates for the philosophy and civilization
+     of the Turks may assert, to make war upon infidels is
+     considered by them as an obligatory precept and an act of
+     religion.  See Reland de Relig. Mahom.
+
+At these words an involuntary smile was seen on all their lips; and the
+various groups, reasoning on these articles of faith, exclaimed with one
+voice:
+
+"Is it possible that reasonable beings can admit such reveries? Would
+you not think it a chapter from The Thousand and One Nights?"
+
+A Samoyede advanced into the circle: "The paradise of Mahomet," said
+he, "appears to me very good; but one of the means of gaining it is
+embarrassing: for if we must neither eat nor drink between the rising
+and setting sun, as he has ordered, how are we to practise that fast in
+my country, where the sun continues above the horizon six months without
+setting?"
+
+"That is impossible," cried all the Mussulman doctors, to support the
+teaching of the prophet; but a hundred nations having attested the fact,
+the infallibility of Mahomet could not but receive a severe shock.
+
+"It is singular," said an European, "that God should be constantly
+revealing what takes place in heaven, without ever instructing us what
+is doing on the earth."
+
+"For my part," said an American, "I find a great difficulty in the
+pilgrimage. For suppose twenty-five years to a generation, and only a
+hundred millions of males on the globe,--each being obliged to go to
+Mecca once in his life,--there must be four millions a year on the
+journey; and as it would be impracticable for them to return the same
+year, the numbers would be doubled--that is, eight millions: where
+would you find provisions, lodgings, water, vessels, for this universal
+procession? Here must be miracles indeed!"
+
+"The proof," said a catholic doctor, "that the religion of Mahomet is
+not revealed, is that the greater part of the ideas which serve for its
+basis existed a long time before, and that it is only a confused mixture
+of truths disfigured and taken from our holy religion and from that
+of the Jews; which an ambitious man has made to serve his projects of
+domination, and his worldly views. Look through his book; you will see
+nothing there but the histories of the Bible and the Gospel travestied
+into absurd fables--into a tissue of vague and contradictory
+declamations, and ridiculous or dangerous precepts.
+
+"Analyze the spirit of these precepts, and the conduct of their apostle;
+you will find there an artful and audacious character, which, to obtain
+its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of the people it had
+to govern. It is speaking to simple men, and it entertains them with
+miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and it flatters their vanity
+by despising science; they are poor and rapacious, and it excites their
+cupidity by the hope of pillage; having nothing at first to give them on
+earth, it tells them of treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire
+death as a supreme good; it threatens cowards with hell; it rewards the
+brave with paradise; it sustains the weak with the opinion of fatality;
+in short, it produces the attachment it wants by all the allurements of
+sense, and all the power of the passions.
+
+"How different is the character of our religion! and how completely does
+its empire, founded on the counteraction of the natural temper, and the
+mortification of all our passions, prove its divine origin! How forcibly
+does its mild and compassionate morality, its affections altogether
+spiritual, attest its emanation from God! Many of its doctrines, it is
+true, soar above the reach of the understanding, and impose on reason
+a respectful silence; but this more fully demonstrates its revelation,
+since the human mind could never have imagined such mysteries."
+
+Then, holding the Bible in one hand and the four Gospels in the other,
+the doctor began to relate that, in the beginning, God, after passing an
+eternity in idleness, took the resolution, without any known cause, of
+making the world out of nothing; that having created the whole universe
+in six days, he found himself fatigued on the seventh; that having
+placed the first human pair in a garden of delights, to make them
+completely happy, he forbade their tasting a particular fruit which he
+placed within their reach; that these first parents, having yielded
+to the temptation, all their race (which were not yet born) had been
+condemned to bear the penalty of a fault which they had not committed;
+that, after having left the human race to damn themselves for four or
+five thousand years, this God of mercy ordered a well beloved son, whom
+he had engendered without a mother, and who was as old as himself, to go
+and be put to death on the earth; and this for the salvation of
+mankind; of whom much the greater portion, nevertheless, have ever since
+continued in the way of perdition; that to remedy this new difficulty,
+this same God, born of a virgin, having died and risen from the dead,
+assumes a new existence every day, and in the form of a piece of bread,
+multiplies himself by millions at the voice of one of the basest of
+men. Then, passing on to the doctrine of the sacraments, he was going to
+treat at large on the power of absolution and reprobation, of the means
+of purging all sins by a little water and a few words, when, uttering
+the words indulgence, power of the pope, sufficient grace, and
+efficacious grace, he was interrupted by a thousand cries.
+
+"It is a horrible abuse," cried the Lutherans, "to pretend to remit sins
+for money."
+
+"The notion of the real presence," cried the Calvinists, "is contrary to
+the text of the Gospel."
+
+"The pope has no right to decide anything of himself," cried the
+Jansenists; and thirty other sects rising up, and accusing each other
+of heresies and errors, it was no longer possible to hear anything
+distinctly.
+
+Silence being at last restored, the Mussulmans observed to the
+legislator:
+
+"Since you have rejected our doctrine as containing things incredible,
+can you admit that of the Christians? Is not theirs still more contrary
+to common sense and justice? A God, immaterial and infinite, to become
+a man! to have a son as old as himself! This god-man to become bread,
+to be eaten and digested! Have we any thing equal to that? Have the
+Christians an exclusive right of setting up a blind faith? And will you
+grant them privileges of belief to our detriment?"
+
+Some savage tribes then advanced: "What!" said they, "because a man
+and woman ate an apple six thousand years ago, all the human race
+are damned? And you call God just? What tyrant ever rendered children
+responsible for the faults of their fathers? What man can answer for the
+actions of another? Does not this overturn every idea of justice and of
+reason?"
+
+Others exclaimed: "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these
+pretended facts? Can we receive them without examining the evidence? The
+least action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are
+ordered to believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!"
+
+A Jewish Rabbin then addressing the assembly, said: "As to the
+fundamental facts, we are sureties; but with regard to their form and
+their application, the case is different, and the Christians are here
+condemned by their own arguments. For they cannot deny that we are the
+original source from which they are derived--the primitive stock on
+which they are grafted; and hence the reasoning is very short: Either
+our law is from God, and then theirs is a heresy, since it differs from
+ours, or our law is not from God, and then theirs falls at the same
+time."
+
+"But you must make this distinction," replied the Christian: "Your law
+is from God as typical and preparative, but not as final and absolute:
+you are the image of which we are the substance."
+
+"We know," replied the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but they
+are absolutely gratuitous and false. Your system turns altogether on
+mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical interpretations.* With
+violent distortions on the letter of our books, you substitute the most
+chimerical ideas for the true ones, and find in them whatever pleases
+you; as a roving imagination will find figures in the clouds. Thus
+you have made a spiritual Messiah of that which, in the spirit of our
+prophets, is only a temporal king. You have made a redemption of the
+human race out of the simple re-establishment of our nation. Your
+conception of the Virgin is founded on a single phrase, of which you
+have changed the meaning. Thus you make from our Scriptures whatever
+your fancy dictates; you even find there your trinity; though there is
+not a word that has the most distant allusion to such a thing; and it is
+an invention of profane writers, admitted into your system with a host
+of other opinions, of every religion and of every sect, during the
+anarchy of the first three centuries of your era."
+
+     * When we read the Fathers of the church, and see upon what
+     arguments they have built the edifice of religion, we are
+     inexpressibly astonished with their credulity or their
+     knavery: but allegory was the rage of that period; the
+     Pagans employed it to explain the actions of their gods, and
+     the Christians acted in the same spirit when they employed
+     it after their fashion.
+
+At these words, the Christian doctors, crying sacrilege and blasphemy,
+sprang forward in a transport of fury to fall upon the Jew; and a troop
+of monks, in motley dresses of black and white, advanced with a standard
+on which were painted pincers, gridirons, lighted fagots, and the words
+Justice, Charity, Mercy.* "It is necessary," said they, "to make an
+example of these impious wretches, and burn them for the glory of God."
+They began even to prepare the pile, when a Mussulman answered in a
+strain of irony:
+
+"This, then, is that religion of peace, that meek and beneficent system
+which you so much extol! This is that evangelical charity which combats
+infidelity with persuasive mildness, and repays injuries with patience!
+Ye hypocrites! It is thus that you deceive mankind--thus that you
+propagate your accursed errors! When you were weak, you preached
+liberty, toleration, peace; when you are strong, you practise
+persecution and violence--"
+
+     * This description answers exactly to the banner of the
+     Inquisition of Spanish Jacobins.
+
+And he was going to begin the history of the wars and slaughters of
+Christianity, when the legislator, demanding silence, suspended this
+scene of discord.
+
+The monks, affecting a tone of meekness and humility, exclaimed: "It is
+not ourselves that we would avenge; it is the cause of God; it is the
+glory of God that we defend."
+
+"And what right have you, more than we," said the Imans, "to constitute
+yourselves the representatives of God? Have you privileges that we have
+not? Are you not men like us?"
+
+"To defend God," said another group, "to pretend to avenge him, is to
+insult his wisdom and his power. Does he not know, better than men, what
+befits his dignity?"
+
+"Yes," replied the monks, "but his ways are secret."
+
+"And it remains for you to prove," said the Rabbins, "that you have the
+exclusive privilege of understanding them."
+
+Then, proud of finding supporters to their cause, the Jews thought that
+the books of Moses were going to be triumphant, when the Mobed (high
+priest) of the Parses obtained leave to speak.
+
+"We have heard," said he, "the account of the Jews and Christians of the
+origin of the world; and, though greatly mutilated, we find in it some
+facts which we admit. But we deny that they are to be attributed to the
+legislator of the Hebrews. It was not he who made known to men these
+sublime truths, these celestial events. It was not to him that God
+revealed them, but to our holy prophet Zoroaster: and the proof of this
+is in the very books that they refer to. Examine with attention the
+laws, the ceremonies, the precepts established by Moses in those
+books; you will not find the slightest indication, either expressed or
+understood, of what constitutes the basis of the Jewish and Christian
+theology. You nowhere find the least trace of the immortality of the
+soul, or of a future life, or of heaven, or of hell, or of the revolt of
+the principal angel, author of the evils of the human race. These ideas
+were not known to Moses, and the reason is very obvious: it was not
+till four centuries afterwards that Zoroaster first evangelized them in
+Asia.*
+
+     * See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceive
+     myself to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400
+     years before Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.
+
+"Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not till
+after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first kings, that
+these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then their appearance
+was obscure and gradual, according to the progress of the political
+relations between your ancestors and ours. It was especially when,
+having been conquered by the kings of Nineveh and Babylon and
+transported to the banks of the Tygris and the Euphrates, where they
+resided for three successive generations, that they imbibed manners and
+opinions which had been rejected as contrary to their law. When our
+king Cyrus had delivered them from slavery, their heart was won to us
+by gratitude; they became our disciples and imitators; and they admitted
+our dogmas in the revision of their books;* for your Genesis, in
+particular, was never the work of Moses, but a compilation drawn up
+after the return from the Babylonian captivity, in which are inserted
+the Chaldean opinions of the origin of the world.
+
+     * In the first periods of the Christian church, not only the
+     most learned of those who have since been denominated
+     heretics, but many of the orthodox conceived Moses to have
+     written neither the law nor the Pentateuch, but that the
+     work was a compilation made by the elders of the people and
+     the Seventy, who, after the death of Moses, collected his
+     scattered ordinances, and mixed with them things that were
+     extraneous; similar to what happened as to the Koran of
+     Mahomet.  See Les Clementines, Homel. 2. sect. 51. and
+     Homel. 3. sect. 42.
+
+     Modern critics, more enlightened or more attentive than the
+     ancients, have found in Genesis in particular, marks of its
+     having been composed on the return from the captivity; but
+     the principal proofs have escaped them.  These I mean to
+     exhibit in an analysis of the book of Genesis, in which I
+     shall demonstrate that the tenth chapter, among others,
+     which treats of the pretended generations of the man called
+     Noah, is a real geographical picture of the world, as it was
+     known to the Hebrews at the epoch of the captivity, which
+     was bounded by Greece or Hellas at the West, mount Caucasus
+     at the North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egypt
+     at the South. All the pretended personages from Adam to
+     Abraham, or his father Terah, are mythological beings,
+     stars, constellations, countries. Adam is Bootes: Noah is
+     Osiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to say Capricorn,
+     or the celestial Genius that opened the year.  The
+     Alexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrod
+     was supposed by the Persians to be their first king, as
+     having invented the art of hunting, and that he was
+     translated into heaven, where he appears under the name of
+     Orion.
+
+"At first the pure followers of the law, opposing to the emigrants the
+letter of the text and the absolute silence of the prophet, endeavored
+to repel these innovations; but they ultimately prevailed, and our
+doctrine, modified by your ideas, gave rise to a new sect.
+
+"You expected a king to restore your political independence; we
+announced a God to regenerate and save mankind. From this combination of
+ideas, your Essenians laid the foundation of Christianity: and whatever
+your pretensions may be, Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your
+system of spiritual beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster."
+
+The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting from
+the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as they are
+found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in six gahans,*
+the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a divine place, under
+the reign of perfect good; the introduction of evil into the world by
+the great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the revolt and battles of the
+Genius of evil and darkness against Ormuzd, God of good and of light;
+the division of the angels into white and black, or good and bad; their
+hierarchal orders, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end
+of the world at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the
+lamb, the regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the
+regions of happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the bridge
+of the bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of Mithras;
+the unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism of new-born
+children; the unction of the dead; the confession of sins; and, in
+a word, he recited so many things analagous to those of the three
+preceding religions, that his discourse seemed like a commentary or a
+continuation of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**
+
+     * Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods of
+     time. These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousands
+     of God or of light, meaning the six summer months.  In the
+     first, say the Persians, God created (arranged in order) the
+     heavens; in the second the waters; in the third the earth;
+     in the fourth trees; in the fifth animals; and in the sixth
+     man; corresponding with the account in Genesis.  For
+     particulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry Lord, ch. 2, on the
+     religion of the ancient Persians.  It is remarkable that the
+     same tradition is found in the sacred books of the
+     Etrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all things
+     had comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelve
+     thousand years, which period was distributed to the twelve
+     houses of the sun.  In the first thousand, God made heaven
+     and earth; in the second the firmament; in the third the sea
+     and the waters; in the fourth the sun, moon and stars; in
+     the fifth the souls of animals, birds, and reptiles; in the
+     sixth man.  See Suidas, at the word Tyrrhena; which shows
+     first the identity of their theological and astrological
+     opinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather confusion
+     of ideas, between absolute and systematical creation; that
+     is, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature,
+     which were at first the period of the year, and afterwards
+     periods of 60, of 600, of 25,000, of 36,000 and of 432,000
+     years.
+
+     ** The modern Parses and the ancient Mithriacs, who are the
+     same sect, observe all the Christian sacraments, even the
+     laying on of hands in confirmation.  The priest of Mithra,
+     says Tertullian, (de Proescriptione, ch. 40) promises
+     absolution from sin on confession and baptism; and, if I
+     rightly remember, Mithra marks his soldiers in the forehead,
+     with the chrism called in the Egyptian Kouphi; he celebrates
+     the sacrifice of bread, which is the resurrection, and
+     presents the crown to his followers, menacing them at the
+     same time with the sword, etc.
+
+     In these mysteries they tried the courage of the initiated
+     with a thousand terrors, presenting fire to his face, a
+     sword to his breast, etc.; they also offered him a crown,
+     which he refused, saying, God is my crown: and this crown is
+     to be seen in the celestial sphere by the side of Bootes.
+     The personages in these mysteries were distinguished by the
+     names of the animal constellations.  The ceremony of mass is
+     nothing more than an imitation of these mysteries and those
+     of Eleusis.  The benediction, the Lord be with you, is a
+     literal translation of the formula of admission chou-k, am,
+     p-ka.  See Beausob. Hist. Du Manicheisme, vol. ii.
+
+But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out against
+this recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and worshippers of
+fire, charged them with falsehood, interpolations, falsification of
+facts; and there arose a violent dispute as to the dates of the
+events, their order and succession, the origin of the doctrines, their
+transmission from nation to nation, the authenticity of the books on
+which they are founded, the epoch of their composition, the character
+of their compilers, and the validity of their testimony. And the various
+parties, pointing out reciprocally to each other, the contradictions,
+improbabilities, and forgeries, accused one another of having
+established their belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd
+fables, invented without discernment, and admitted without examination
+by unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown
+epochs.
+
+A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various Indian
+sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions of the Jews
+and the Parses, said:
+
+"What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly set
+themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the depositaries of
+its archives? To hear their calculations of five or six thousand years,
+it would seem that the world was of yesterday; whereas our monuments
+prove a duration of many thousands of centuries. And for what reason are
+their books to be preferred to ours? Are then the Vedes, the Chastres,
+and the Pourans inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the
+Zadders?* And is not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as
+valid as that of the fathers and the gods of the West? Ah! if it were
+permitted to reveal our mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did
+not justly conceal them from every eye!"
+
+
+These are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos; they are sometimes written
+Vedams, Pouranams, Chastrans, because the Hindoos, like the Persians,
+are accustomed to give a nasal sound to the terminations of their words,
+which we represent by the affixes on and an, and the Portuguese by the
+affixes om and am. Many of these books have been translated, thanks
+to the liberal spirit of Mr. Hastings, who has founded at Calcutta a
+literary society, and a printing press. At the same time, however,
+that we express our gratitude to this society, we must be permitted to
+complain of its exclusive spirit; the number of copies printed of each
+book being such as it is impossible to purchase them even in England;
+they are wholly in the hands of the East India proprietors. Scarcely
+even is the Asiatic Miscellany known in Europe; and a man must be very
+learned in oriental antiquity before he so much as hears of the Jones's,
+the Wilkins's, and the Halhed's, etc. As to the sacred books of the
+Hindoos, all that are yet in our hands are the Bhagvat Geeta, the
+Ezour-Vedam, the Bagavadam, and certain fragments of the Chastres
+printed at the end of the Bhagvat Geeta. These books are in Indostan
+what the Old and New Testament are in Christendom, the Koran in Turkey,
+the Zadder and the Zendavesta among the Parses, etc. When I have taken
+an extensive survey of their contents, I have sometimes asked myself,
+what would be the loss to the human race if a new Omar condemned them
+to the flames; and, unable to discover any mischief that would ensue, I
+call the imaginary chest that contains them, the box of Pandora.
+
+
+The Bramins stopping short at these words: "How can we admit your
+doctrine," said the legislator, "if you will not make it known? And how
+did its first authors propagate it, when, being alone possessed of it,
+their own people were to them profane? Did heaven reveal it to be kept a
+secret?"*
+
+     * The Vedas or Vedams are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos,
+     as the Bibles with us.  They are three in number; the Rick
+     Veda, the Yadjour Veda, and the Sama Veda; they are so
+     scarce in India, that the English could with great
+     difficulty find an original one, of which a copy is
+     deposited in the British Museum; they who reckon four Vedas,
+     include among them the Attar Veda, concerning ceremonies,
+     but which is lost.  There are besides commentaries named
+     Upanishada, one of which was published by Anquetil du Peron,
+     and entitled Oupnekhat, a curious work.  The date of these
+     books is more than twenty-five centuries prior to our era;
+     their contents prove that all the reveries of the Greek
+     metaphysicians come from India and Egypt.  Since the year
+     1788, the learned men of England are working in India a mine
+     of literature totally unknown in Europe, and which proves
+     that the civilization of India ascends to a very remote
+     antiquity.  After the Vedas come the Chastras amounting to
+     six.  They treat of theology and the Sciences. Afterwards
+     eighteen Pouranas, treating of Mythology and History. See
+     the Bahgouet-guita, the Baga Vadam, and the Ezour-Vedam,
+     etc.
+
+But the Bramins persisting in their silence: "Let them have the honor of
+the secret," said a European: "Their doctrine is now divulged; we have
+their books, and I can give you the substance of them."
+
+Then beginning with an abstract of the four Vedes, the eighteen Pourans,
+and the five or six Chastres, he recounted how a being, infinite,
+eternal, immaterial and round, after having passed an eternity in
+self-contemplation, and determining at last to manifest himself,
+separated the male and female faculties which were in him, and performed
+an act of generation, of which the Lingam remains an emblem; how that
+first act gave birth to three divine powers, Brama, Bichen or Vichenou,
+and Chib or Chiven;* whose functions were--the first to create, the
+second to preserve, and the third to destroy, or change the form of
+the universe. Then, detailing the history of their operations and
+adventures, he explained how Brama, proud of having created the world
+and the eight bobouns, or spheres of probation, thought himself superior
+to Chib, his equal; how his pride brought on a battle between them, in
+which these celestial globes were crushed like a basket of eggs; how
+Brama, vanquished in this conflict, was reduced to serve as a pedestal
+to Chib, metamorphosed into a Lingam; how Vichenou, the god mediator,
+has taken at different times to preserve the world, nine mortal forms
+of animals; how first, in shape of a fish, he saved from the universal
+deluge a family who repeopled the earth; how afterwards, in the form of
+a tortoise,** he drew from the sea of milk the mountain Mandreguiri
+(the pole); then, becoming a boar, he tore the belly of the giant
+Ereuniachessen, who was drowning the earth in the abyss of Djole, from
+whence he drew it out with his tusks; how, becoming incarnate in a black
+shepherd, and under the name of Christ-en, he delivered the world of the
+enormous serpent Calengem, and then crushed his head, after having been
+wounded by him in the heel.
+
+     * These names are differently pronounced according to the
+     different dialects; thus they say Birmah, Bremma, Brouma.
+     Bichen has been turned into Vichen by the easy exchange of a
+     B for a V, and into Vichenou by means of a grammatical
+     affix.  In the same manner Chib, which is synonymous with
+     Satan, and signifies adversary, is frequently written Chiba
+     and Chiv-en; he is called also Rouder and Routr-en, that is,
+     the destroyer.
+
+     ** This is the constellation testudo, or the lyre, which was
+     at first a tortoise, on account of its slow motion round the
+     Pole; then a lyre, because it is the shell of this reptile
+     on which the strings of the lyre are mounted.  See an
+     excellent memoir of M. Dupuis sur l'Origine des
+     Constellations.
+
+Then, passing on to the history of the secondary Genii, he related how
+the Eternal, to display his own glory, created various orders of angels,
+whose business it was to sing his praises and to direct the universe;
+how a part of these angels revolted under the guidance of an ambitious
+chief, who strove to usurp the power of God, and to govern all; how God
+plunged them into a world of darkness, there to undergo the punishment
+for their crimes; how at last, touched with compassion, he consented to
+release them, to receive them into favor, after they should undergo a
+long series of probations; how, after creating for this purpose fifteen
+orbits or regions of planets, and peopling them with bodies, he ordered
+these rebel angels to undergo in them eighty-seven transmigrations; he
+then explained how souls, thus purified, returned to the first source,
+to the ocean of life and animation from which they had proceeded; and
+since all living creatures contain portions of this universal soul,
+he taught how criminal it was to deprive them of it. He was finally
+proceeding to explain the rites and ceremonies, when, speaking of
+offerings and libations of milk and butter made to gods of copper and
+wood, and then of purifications by the dung and urine of cows,
+there arose a universal murmur, mixed with peals of laughter, which
+interrupted the orator.
+
+Each of the different groups began to reason on that religion: "They are
+idolators," said the Mussulmans; "and should be exterminated." "They are
+deranged in their intellect," said the followers of Confucius; "we
+must try to cure them." "What ridiculous gods," said others, "are these
+puppets, besmeared with grease and smoke! Are gods to be washed
+like dirty children, from whom you must brush away the flies, which,
+attracted by honey, are fouling them with their excrements!"
+
+But a Bramin exclaimed with indignation: "These are profound
+mysteries,--emblems of truth, which you are not worthy to hear."
+
+"And in what respect are you more worthy than we?" exclaimed a Lama of
+Tibet. "Is it because you pretend to have issued from the head of Brama,
+and the rest of the human race from the less noble parts of his body?
+But to support the pride of your distinctions of origin and castes,
+prove to us in the first place that you are different from other men;
+establish, in the next place, as historical facts, the allegories
+which you relate; show us, indeed, that you are the authors of all this
+doctrine; for we will demonstrate, if necessary, that you have only
+stolen and disfigured it; that you are only the imitators of the ancient
+paganism of the West; to which, by an ill assorted mixture, you have
+allied the pure and spiritual doctrine of our gods--a doctrine totally
+detached from the senses, and entirely unknown on earth till Beddou
+taught it to the nations."*
+
+     * All the ancient opinions of the Egyptian and Grecian
+     theologians are to be found in India, and they appear to
+     have been introduced, by means of the commerce of Arabia and
+     the vicinity of Persia, time immemorial.
+
+A number of groups having asked what was this doctrine, and who was this
+god, of whom the greater part had never heard the name, the Lama resumed
+and said:
+
+"In the beginning, a sole-existent and self-existent God, having passed
+an eternity in the contemplation of his own being, resolved to manifest
+his perfections out of himself, and created the matter of the world.
+The four elements being produced, but still in a state of confusion, he
+breathed on the face of the waters, which swelled like an immense bubble
+in form of an egg, which unfolding, became the vault or orb of heaven,
+enclosing the world.* Having made the earth, and the bodies of animals,
+this God, essence of motion, imparted to them a part of his own being
+to animate them; for this reason, the soul of everything that breathes
+being a portion of the universal soul, no one of them can perish; they
+only change their form and mould in passing successively into different
+bodies. Of all these forms, the one most pleasing to God is that of
+man, as most resembling his own perfections. When a man, by an absolute
+disengagement from his senses, is wholly absorbed in self-contemplation,
+he then discovers the divinity, and becomes himself God. Of all the
+incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest
+and most solemn was that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in
+Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of
+self-denial and self-annihilation."
+
+     * This cosmogony of the Lamas, the Bonzes, and even the
+     Bramins, as Henry Lord asserts, is literally that of the
+     ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians, says Porphyry, call Kneph,
+     intelligence, or efficient cause of the universe.  They
+     relate that this God vomited an egg, from which was produced
+     another God named Phtha or Vulcan, (igneous principle or the
+     sun) and they add, that this egg is the world.  Euseb.
+     Proep. Evang. p. 115.
+
+     They represent, says the same author in another place, the
+     God Kneph, or efficient cause, under the form of a man in
+     deep blue (the color of the sky) having in his hand a
+     sceptre, a belt round his body, and a small bonnet royal of
+     light feathers on his head, to denote how very subtile and
+     fugacious the idea of that being is. Upon which I shall
+     observe that Kneph in Hebrew signifies a wing, a feather,
+     and that this color of sky-blue is to be found in the
+     majority of the Indian Gods, and is, under the name of
+     Narayan, one of their most distinguishing epithets.
+
+Then, pursuing the history of Fot, the Lama continued:
+
+"He was born from the right flank of a virgin of royal blood, who did
+not cease to be a virgin for having become a mother; that the king of
+the country, uneasy at his birth, wished to destroy him, and for this
+purpose ordered a massacre of all the males born at that period, that
+being saved by shepherds, Beddou lived in the desert till the age of
+thirty years, at which time he began his mission to enlighten men and
+cast out devils; that he performed a multitude of the most astonishing
+miracles; that he spent his life in fasting and severe penitence, and at
+his death, bequeathed to his disciples a book containing his doctrines."
+
+And the Lama began to read:
+
+"He that leaveth his father and mother to follow me," says Fot, "becomes
+a perfect Samanean (a heavenly man).
+
+"He that practices my precepts to the fourth degree of perfection,
+acquires the faculty of flying in the air, of moving heaven and earth,
+of prolonging or shortening his life (rising from the dead).
+
+"The Samanean despises riches, and uses only what is strictly necessary;
+he mortifies his body, silences his passions, desires nothing, forms no
+attachments, meditates my doctrines without ceasing, endures injuries
+with patience, and bears no malice to his neighbor.
+
+"Heaven and earth shall perish," says Fot: "despise therefore your
+bodies, which are composed of the four perishable elements, and think
+only of your immortal soul.
+
+"Listen not to the flesh: fear and sorrow spring from the passions:
+stifle the passions and you destroy fear and sorrow.
+
+"Whoever dies without having embraced my religion," says Fot, "returns
+among men, until he embraces it."
+
+The Lama was going on with his reading, when the Christians interrupted
+him, crying out that this was their own religion adulterated--that Fot
+was no other than Jesus himself disfigured, and that the Lamas were the
+Nestorians and the Manicheans disguised and bastardized.*
+
+     * This is asserted by our missionaries, and among others by
+     Georgi in his unfinished work of the Thibetan alphabet: but
+     if it can be proved that the Manicheans were but
+     plagiarists, and the ignorant echo of a doctrine that
+     existed fifteen hundred years before them, what becomes of
+     the declarations of Georgi?  See upon this subject, Beausob.
+     Hist. du Manicheisme.
+
+But the Lama, supported by the Chamans, Bonzes, Gonnis, Talapoins of
+Siam, of Ceylon, of Japan, and of China, proved to the Christians, even
+from their own authors, that the doctrine of the Samaneans was known
+through the East more than a thousand years before the Christian era;
+that their name was cited before the time of Alexander, and that Boutta,
+or Beddou, was known before Jesus.*
+
+     * The eastern writers in general agree in placing the birth
+     of Beddou 1027 years before Jesus Christ, which makes him
+     the contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion,
+     they confound him.  It is certain that his doctrine
+     notoriously existed at that epoch; it is found entire in
+     that of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the Indian gymnosophists.
+     But the gymnosophists are cited at the time of Alexander as
+     an ancient sect already divided into Brachmans and
+     Samaneans.  See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien.
+     Pythagoras lived in the ninth century before Jesus Christ;
+     See chronology of the twelve ages; and Orpheus is of still
+     greater antiquity.  If, as is the case, the doctrine of
+     Pythagoras and that of Orpheus are of Egyptian origin, that
+     of Beddou goes back to the common source; and in reality the
+     Egyptian priests recite, that Hermes as he was dying said:
+     "I have hitherto lived an exile from my country, to which I
+     now return.  Weep not for me, I ascend to the celestial
+     abode where each of you will follow in his turn: there God
+     is: this life is only death."--Chalcidius in Thinaeum.
+
+     Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, the
+     sectaries of Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans.  Farther, Hermes
+     is no other than Beddou himself; for among the Indians,
+     Chinese, Lamas, etc., the planet Mercury and the
+     corresponding day of the week (Wednesday) bear the name of
+     Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rank
+     of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his
+     pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that
+     Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who,
+     placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year;
+     hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius,
+     and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius,
+     having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence his
+     serpent, which is the Hydra, emblem of the Nile (Hydor,
+     humidity); and from this serpent he seems to have derived
+     his name of Hermes, as Remes (with a schin) in the oriental
+     languages, signifies serpent.  Now Beddou and Hermes being
+     the same names, it is manifest of what antiquity is the
+     system ascribed to the former.  As to the name of Samanean,
+     it is precisely that of Chaman, still preserved in Tartary,
+     China, and India.  The interpretation given to it is, man of
+     the woods, a hermit mortifying the flesh, such being the
+     characteristic of this sect; but its literal meaning is,
+     celestial (Samaoui) and explains the system of those who are
+     called by it.--The system is the same as that of the
+     sectaries of Orpheus, of the Essenians, of the ancient
+     Anchorets of Persia, and the whole eastern country.  See
+     Porphyry, de Abstin. Animal.
+
+     These celestial and penitent men carried in India their
+     insanity to such an extreme as to wish not to touch the
+     earth, and they accordingly lived in cages suspended from
+     the trees, where the people, whose admiration was not less
+     absurd, brought them provisions.  During the night there
+     were frequent robberies, rapes and murders, and it was at
+     length discovered that they were committed by those men,
+     who, descending from their cages, thus indemnified
+     themselves for their restraint during the day.  The Bramins,
+     their rivals, embraced the opportunity of exterminating
+     them; and from that time their name in India has been
+     synonymous with hypocrite.  See Hist. de la Chine, in 5
+     vols. quarto, at the note page 30; Hist. de Huns, 2 vols.
+     and preface to the Ezour-Vedam.
+
+Then, retorting the pretensions of the Christians against themselves:
+"Prove to us," said the Lama, "that you are not Samaneans degenerated,
+and that the man you make the author of your sect is not Fot himself
+disguised. Prove to us by historical facts that he even existed at the
+epoch you pretend; for, it being destitute of authentic testimony,* we
+absolutely deny it; and we maintain that your very gospels are only the
+books of some Mithriacs of Persia, and the Essenians of Syria, who were
+a branch of reformed Samaneans."**
+
+     * There are absolutely no other monuments of the existence
+     of Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus
+     (Antiq. Jud. lib. 18, c.3,) a single phrase in Tacitus
+     (Annal. lib. 15, c. 44), and the Gospels.  But the passage
+     in Josephus is unanimously acknowledged to be apocryphal,
+     and to have been interpolated towards the close of the third
+     century, (See Trad. de joseph, par M. Gillet); and that of
+     Tacitus in so vague and so evidently taken from the
+     deposition of the Christians before the tribunals, that it
+     may be ranked in the class of evangelical records.  It
+     remains to enquire of what authority are these records.
+     "All the world knows," says Faustus, who, though a
+     Manichean, was one of the most learned men of the third
+     century, "All the world knows that the gospels were neither
+     written by Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, but by certain
+     unknown persons, who rightly judging that they should not
+     obtain belief respecting things which they had not seen,
+     placed at the head of their recitals the names of
+     contemporary apostles." See Beausob. vol. i. and Hist. des
+     Apologistes de la Relig. Chret. par Burigni, a sagacious
+     writer, who has demonstrated the absolute uncertainty of
+     those foundations of the Christian religion; so that the
+     existence of Jesus is no better proved than that of Osiris
+     and Hercules, or that of Fot or Beddou, with whom, says M.
+     de Guignes, the Chinese continually confound him, for they
+     never call Jesus by any other name than Fot.  Hist. de Huns.
+
+     ** That is to say, from the pious romances formed out of the
+     sacred legends of the mysteries of Mithra, Ceres, Isis,
+     etc., from whence are equally derived the books of the
+     Hindoos and the Bonzes.  Our missionaries have long remarked
+     a striking resemblance between those books and the gospels.
+     M. Wilkins expressly mentions it in a note in the Bhagvat
+     Geeta.  All agree that Krisna, Fot, and Jesus have the same
+     characteristic features: but religious prejudice has stood
+     in the way of drawing from this circumstance the proper and
+     natural inference.  To time and reason must it be left to
+     display the truth.
+
+
+At these words, the Christians set up a general cry, and a new dispute
+was about to begin; when a number of Chinese Chamans, and Talapoins of
+Siam, came forward and said that they would settle the whole
+controversy.  And one of them speaking for the whole exclaimed: "It is
+time to put an end to these frivolous contests by drawing aside the veil
+from the interior doctrine that Fot himself revealed to his disciples on
+his death bed.*
+
+     * The Budsoists have two doctrines, the one public and
+     ostensible, the other interior and secret, precisely like
+     the Egyptian priests. It may be asked, why this distinction?
+     It is, that as the public doctrine recommends offerings,
+     expiations, endowments, etc., the priests find their profit
+     in preaching it to the people; whereas the other, teaching
+     the vanity of worldly things, and attended with no lucre, it
+     is thought proper to make it known only to adepts. Can the
+     teachers and followers of this religion be better classed
+     than under the heads of knavery and credulity?
+
+"All these theological opinions," continued he, "are but chimeras. All
+the stories of the nature of the gods, of their actions and their lives,
+are but allegories and mythological emblems, under which are enveloped
+ingenious ideas of morals, and the knowledge of the operations of nature
+in the action of the elements and the movement of the planets.
+
+"The truth is, that all is reduced to nothing--that all is illusion,
+appearance, dream; that the moral metempsychosis is only the figurative
+sense of the physical metempsychosis, or the successive movement of
+the elements of bodies which perish not, but which, having composed one
+body, pass when that is dissolved, into other mediums and form other
+combinations. The soul is but the vital principle which results from
+the properties of matter, and from the action of the elements in those
+bodies where they create a spontaneous movement. To suppose that this
+product of the play of the organs, born with them, matured with them,
+and which sleeps with them, can subsist when they cease, is the romance
+of a wandering imagination, perhaps agreeable enough, but really
+chimerical.
+
+"God itself is nothing more than the moving principle, the occult force
+inherent in all beings--the sum of their laws and properties--the
+animating principle; in a word, the soul of the universe; which on
+account of the infinite variety of its connections and its operations,
+sometimes simple, sometimes multiple, sometimes active, sometimes
+passive, has always presented to the human mind an unsolvable enigma.
+All that man can comprehend with certainty is, that matter does not
+perish; that it possesses essentially those properties by which the
+world is held together like a living and organized being; that the
+knowledge of these laws with respect to man is what constitutes wisdom;
+that virtue and merit consist in their observance; and evil, sin, and
+vice, in the ignorance and violation of them; that happiness and misery
+result from these by the same necessity which makes heavy bodies descend
+and light ones rise, and by a fatality of causes and effects, whose
+chain extends from the smallest atom to the greatest of the heavenly
+bodies."*
+
+     * These are the very expressions of La Loubre, in his
+     description of the kingdom of Siam and the theology of the
+     Bronzes.  Their dogmas, compared with those of the ancient
+     philosophers of Greece and Italy, give a complete
+     representation of the whole system of the Stoics and
+     Epicureans, mixed with astrological superstitious, and some
+     traits of Pythagorism.
+
+At these words, a crowd of theologians of every sect cried out that this
+doctrine was materialism, and that those who profess it were impious
+atheists, enemies to God and man, who must be exterminated. "Very well,"
+replied the Chamans, "suppose we are in error, which is not impossible,
+since the first attribute of the human mind is to be subject to
+illusion; but what right have you to take away from men like yourselves,
+the life which Heaven has given them? If Heaven holds us guilty and in
+abhorrence, why does it impart to us the same blessings as to you? And
+if it treats us with forbearance, what authority have you to be less
+indulgent? Pious men! who speak of God with so much certainty and
+confidence, be so good as to tell us what it is; give us to comprehend
+what those abstract and metaphysical beings are, which you call God and
+soul, substance without matter, existence without body, life without
+organs or sensation. If you know those beings by your senses or their
+reflections, render them in like manner perceptible to us; or if you
+speak of them on testimony and tradition, show us a uniform account, and
+give a determinate basis to our creed."
+
+There now arose among the theologians a great controversy respecting God
+and his nature, his manner of acting, and of manifesting himself; on the
+nature of the soul and its union with the body; whether it exists before
+the organs, or only after they are formed; on the future life, and the
+other world. And every sect, every school, every individual, differing
+on all these points, and each assigning plausible reasons, and
+respectable though opposite authorities for his opinion, they fell into
+an inextricable labyrinth of contradictions.
+
+Then the legislator, having commanded silence and recalled the dispute
+to its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of nations; you came
+together in search of truth. At first, every one of you, thinking he
+possessed it, demanded of the others an implicit faith; but perceiving
+the contrariety of your opinions, you found it necessary to submit them
+to a common rule of evidence, and to bring them to one general term of
+comparison; and you agreed that each should exhibit the proofs of his
+doctrine. You began by alleging facts; but each religion and every sect,
+being equally furnished with miracles and martyrs, each producing an
+equal number of witnesses, and offering to support them by a voluntary
+death, the balance on this first point, by right of parity, remained
+equal.
+
+"You then passed to the trial of reasoning; but the same arguments
+applying equally to contrary positions--the same assertions, equally
+gratuitous, being advanced and repelled with equal force, and all having
+an equal right to refuse his assent, nothing was demonstrated. What
+is more, the confrontation of your systems has brought up more and
+extraordinary difficulties; for amid the apparent or adventitious
+diversities, you have discovered a fundamental resemblance, a common
+groundwork; and each of you pretending to be the inventor, and first
+depositary, have taxed each other with adulterations and plagiarisms;
+and thence arises a difficult question concerning the transmission of
+religious ideas from people to people.
+
+"Finally, to complete your embarrassment: when you endeavored to explain
+your doctrines to each other, they appeared confused and foreign, even
+to their adherents; they were founded on ideas inaccessible to your
+senses; you consequently had no means of judging of them, and you
+confessed yourselves in this respect to be only the echoes of your
+fathers. Hence follows this other question: how came they to the
+knowledge of your fathers, who themselves had no other means than you to
+conceive them? So that, on the one hand, the succession of these ideas
+being unknown, and on the other, their origin and existence being
+a mystery, all the edifice of your religious opinions becomes a
+complicated problem of metaphysics and history.
+
+"Since, however, these opinions, extraordinary as they may be, must have
+had some origin; since even the most abstract and fantastical ideas
+have some physical model, it may be useful to recur to this origin, and
+discover this model--in a word, to find out from what source the human
+understanding has drawn these ideas, at present so obscure, of God,
+of the soul, of all immaterial beings, which make the basis of so many
+systems; to unfold the filiation which they have followed, and the
+alterations which they have undergone in their transmissions and
+ramifications. If, then, there are any persons present who have made a
+study of these objects, let them come forward, and endeavor, in the face
+of nations, to dissipate the obscurity in which their opinions have so
+long remained."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ORIGIN AND FILIATION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.
+
+
+At these words, a new group, formed in an instant by men from various
+standards, but not distinguished by any, came forward into the circle;
+and one of them spoke in the name of the whole:
+
+"Delegates, friends of evidence and virtue! It is not surprising that
+the subject in question should be enveloped in so many clouds, since,
+besides its inherent difficulties, thought itself has always been
+encumbered with superadded obstacles peculiar to this study, where all
+free enquiry and discussion have been interdicted by the intolerance of
+every system. But now that our views are permitted to expand, we will
+expose to open day, and submit to the judgment of nations, that which
+unprejudiced minds, after long researches, have found to be the most
+reasonable; and we do this, not with the pretension of imposing a new
+creed, but with the hope of provoking new lights, and obtaining better
+information.
+
+"Doctors and instructors of nations! You know what thick darkness covers
+the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach.
+Imposed by authority, inculcated by education, and maintained by
+example, they pass from age to age, and strengthen their empire from
+habit and inattention. But if man, enlightened by reflection and
+experience, brings to mature examination the prejudices of his
+childhood, he soon discovers a multitude of incongruities and
+contradictions which awaken his sagacity and excite his reasoning
+powers.
+
+"At first, remarking the diversity and opposition of the creeds which
+divide the nations, he takes courage to question the infallibility
+which each of them claims, and arming himself with their reciprocal
+pretensions, he conceives that his senses and his reason, derived
+immediately from God, are a law not less holy, a guide not less sure,
+than the mediate and contradictory codes of the prophets.
+
+"If he then examines the texture of these codes themselves, he observes
+that their laws, pretended to be divine, that is, immutable and eternal,
+have arisen from circumstances of times, places, and persons; that
+they have issued one from the other, in a kind of genealogical order,
+borrowing from each other reciprocally a common and similar fund of
+ideas, which every lawgiver modifies according to his fancy.
+
+"If he ascends to the source of these ideas, he finds it involved in
+the night of time, in the infancy of nations, even to the origin of the
+world, to which they claim alliance; and there, placed in the darkness
+of chaos, in the empire of fables and traditions, they present
+themselves, accompanied with a state of things so full of prodigies,
+that it seems to forbid all access to the judgment: but this state
+itself excites a first effort of reason, which resolves the difficulty;
+for if the prodigies, found in the theological systems, have really
+existed--if, for instance, the metamorphoses, the apparitions, the
+conversations with one or many gods, recorded in the books of the
+Indians, the Hebrews, the Parses, are historical events, he must agree
+that nature in those times was totally different from what it is at
+present; that the present race of men are quite another species from
+those who then existed; and, therefore, he ought not to trouble his head
+about them.
+
+"If, on the contrary, these miraculous events have really not existed
+in the physical order of things, then he readily conceives that they are
+creatures of the human intellect; and this faculty being still capable
+of the most fantastical combinations, explains at once the phenomenon
+of these monsters in history. It only remains, then, to find how and
+wherefore they have been formed in the imagination. Now, if we examine
+with care the subjects of these intellectual creations, analyze the
+ideas which they combine and associate, and carefully weigh all the
+circumstances which they allege, we shall find that this first obscure
+and incredible state of things is explained by the laws of nature.
+We find that these stories of a fabulous kind have a figurative sense
+different from the apparent one; that these events, pretended to be
+marvellous, are simple and physical facts, which, being misconceived or
+misrepresented, have been disfigured by accidental causes dependent
+on the human mind, by the confusion of signs employed to represent
+the ideas, the want of precision in words, permanence in language,
+and perfection in writing; we find that these gods, for instance, who
+display such singular characters in every system, are only the physical
+agents of nature, the elements, the winds, the stars, and the meteors,
+which have been personified by the necessary mechanism of language
+and of the human understanding; that their lives, their manners, their
+actions, are only their mechanical operations and connections; and that
+all their pretended history is only the description of these phenomena,
+formed by the first naturalists who observed them, and misconceived by
+the vulgar who did not understand them, or by succeeding generations who
+forgot them. In a word, all the theological dogmas on the origin of the
+world, the nature of God, the revelation of his laws, the manifestation
+of his person, are known to be only the recital of astronomical facts,
+only figurative and emblematical accounts of the motion of the heavenly
+bodies. We are convinced that the very idea of a God, that idea at
+present so obscure, is, in its first origin, nothing but that of the
+physical powers of the universe, considered sometimes as a plurality by
+reason of their agencies and phenomena, sometimes as one simple and only
+being by reason of the universality of the machine and the connection of
+its parts; so that the being called God has been sometimes the wind,
+the fire, the water, all the elements; sometimes the sun, the stars, the
+planets, and their influence; sometimes the matter of the visible
+world, the totality of the universe; sometimes abstract and metaphysical
+qualities, such as space, duration, motion, intelligence; and we
+everywhere see this conclusion, that the idea of God has not been a
+miraculous revelation of invisible beings, but a natural offspring of
+the human intellect--an operation of the mind, whose progress it has
+followed and whose revolutions it has undergone, in all the progress
+that has been made in the knowledge of the physical world and its
+agents.
+
+"It is then in vain that nations attribute their religion to heavenly
+inspirations; it is in vain that their dogmas pretend to a primeval
+state of supernatural events: the original barbarity of the human race,
+attested by their own monuments,* belies these assertions at once.
+But there is one constant and indubitable fact which refutes beyond
+contradiction all these doubtful accounts of past ages. From this
+position, that man acquires and receives no ideas but through the medium
+of his senses,** it follows with certainty that every notion which
+claims to itself any other origin than that of sensation and experience,
+is the erroneous supposition of a posterior reasoning: now, it is
+sufficient to cast an eye upon the sacred systems of the origin of the
+world, and of the actions of the gods, to discover in every idea, in
+every word, the anticipation of an order of things which could not exist
+till a long time after. Reason, strengthened by these contradictions,
+rejecting everything that is not in the order of nature, and admitting
+no historical facts but those founded on probabilities, lays open its
+own system, and pronounces itself with assurance.
+
+     * It is the unanimous testimony of history, and even of
+     legends, that the first human beings were every where
+     savages, and that it was to civilize them, and teach them to
+     make bread, that the Gods manifested themselves.
+
+     ** The rock on which all the ancients have split, and which
+     has occasioned all their errors, has been their supposing
+     the idea of God to be innate and co-eternal with the soul;
+     and hence all the reveries developed in Plato and Jamblicus.
+     See the Timoeus, the Phedon, and De Mysteriis Egyptiorum,
+     sect. I, c. 3.
+
+"Before one nation had received from another nation dogmas already
+invented; before one generation had inherited ideas acquired by a
+preceding generation, none of these complicated systems could have
+existed in the world. The first men, being children of nature, anterior
+to all events, ignorant of all science, were born without any idea of
+the dogmas arising from scholastic disputes; of rites founded on
+the practice of arts not then known; of precepts framed after the
+development of passions; or of laws which suppose a language, a state
+of society not then in being; or of God, whose attributes all refer to
+physical objects, and his actions to a despotic state of government; or
+of the soul, or of any of those metaphysical beings, which we are told
+are not the objects of sense, and for which, however, there can be
+no other means of access to the understanding. To arrive at so many
+results, the necessary circle of preceding facts must have been
+observed; slow experience and repeated trials must have taught the
+rude man the use of his organs; the accumulated knowledge of successive
+generations must have invented and improved the means of living; and
+the mind, freed from the cares of the first wants of nature, must have
+raised itself to the complicated art of comparing ideas, of digesting
+arguments, and seizing abstract similitudes."
+
+
+I. Origin of the idea of God: Worship of the elements and of the
+physical powers of nature.
+
+
+"It was not till after having overcome these obstacles, and gone through
+a long career in the night of history, that man, reflecting on his
+condition, began to perceive that he was subjected to forces superior
+to his own, and independent of his will. The sun enlightened and warmed
+him, the fire burned him, the thunder terrified him, the wind beat upon
+him, the water overwhelmed him. All beings acted upon him powerfully and
+irresistibly. He sustained this action for a long time, like a machine,
+without enquiring the cause; but the moment he began his enquiries,
+he fell into astonishment; and, passing from the surprise of his first
+reflections to the reverie of curiosity, he began a chain of reasoning.
+
+"First, considering the action of the elements on him, he conceived an
+idea of weakness and subjection on his part, and of power and domination
+on theirs; and this idea of power was the primitive and fundamental type
+of every idea of God.
+
+"Secondly, the action of these natural existences excited in him
+sensations of pleasure or pain, of good or evil; and by a natural effect
+of his organization, he conceived for them love or aversion; he desired
+or dreaded their presence; and fear or hope gave rise to the first idea
+of religion.
+
+"Then, judging everything by comparison, and remarking in these beings a
+spontaneous movement like his own, he supposed this movement directed
+by a will,--an intelligence of the nature of his own; and hence, by
+induction, he formed a new reasoning. Having experienced that certain
+practices towards his fellow creatures had the effect to modify their
+affections and direct their conduct to his advantage, he resorted to
+the same practices towards these powerful beings of the universe. He
+reasoned thus with himself: When my fellow creature, stronger than I, is
+disposed to do me injury, I abase myself before him, and my prayer has
+the art to calm him. I will pray to these powerful beings who strike me.
+I will supplicate the intelligences of the winds, of the stars, of the
+waters, and they will hear me. I will conjure them to avert the evil
+and give me the good that is at their disposal; I will move them by my
+tears, I will soften them by offerings, and I shall be happy.
+
+"Thus simple man, in the infancy of his reason, spoke to the sun and to
+the moon; he animated with his own understanding and passions the great
+agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds, and vain actions, to change
+their inflexible laws. Fatal error! He prayed the stone to ascend,
+the water to mount above its level, the mountains to remove, and
+substituting a fantastical world for the real one, he peopled it with
+imaginary beings, to the terror of his mind and the torment of his race.
+
+"In this manner the ideas of God and religion have sprung, like all
+others, from physical objects; they were produced in the mind of man
+from his sensations, from his wants, from the circumstances of his life,
+and the progressive state of his knowledge.
+
+"Now, as the ideas of God had their first models in physical agents, it
+followed that God was at first varied and manifold, like the form under
+which he appeared to act. Every being was a Power, a Genius; and the
+first men conceived the universe filled with innumerable gods.
+
+"Again the ideas of God have been created by the affections of the human
+heart; they became necessarily divided into two classes, according to
+the sensations of pleasure or pain, love or hatred, which they inspired.
+
+"The forces of nature, the gods and genii, were divided into beneficent
+and malignant, good and evil powers; and hence the universality of these
+two characters in all the systems of religion.
+
+"These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were for a
+long time confused and ill-digested. Savage men, wandering in the woods,
+beset with wants and destitute of resources, had not the leisure to
+combine principles and draw conclusions; affected with more evils than
+they found pleasures, their most habitual sentiment was that of fear,
+their theology terror; their worship was confined to a few salutations
+and offerings to beings whom they conceived as greedy and ferocious as
+themselves. In their state of equality and independence, no man offered
+himself as mediator between men and gods as insubordinate and poor as
+himself. No one having superfluities to give, there existed no parasite
+by the name of priest, no tribute by the name of victim, no empire by
+the name of altar. Their dogmas and their morals were the same thing, it
+was only self-preservation; and religion, that arbitrary idea, without
+influence on the mutual relations of men, was a vain homage rendered to
+the visible powers of nature.
+
+"Such was the necessary and original idea of God."
+
+And the orator, addressing himself to the savage nations, continued:
+
+"We appeal to you, men who have received no foreign and factitious
+ideas; tell us, have you ever gone beyond what I have described? And
+you, learned doctors, we call you to witness; is not this the unanimous
+testimony of all ancient monuments?*
+
+     * It clearly results, says Plutarch, from the verses of
+     Orpheus and the sacred books of the Egyptians and Phrygians,
+     that the ancient theology, not only of the Greeks, but of
+     all nations, was nothing more than a system of physics, a
+     picture of the operations of nature, wrapped up in
+     mysterious allegories and enigmatical symbols, in a manner
+     that the ignorant multitude attended rather to their
+     apparent than to their hidden meaning, and even in what they
+     understood of the latter, supposed there to be something
+     more deep than what they perceived.  Fragment of a work of
+     Plutarch now lost, quoted by Eusebius, Proepar. Evang. lib.
+     3, ch. 1, p. 83.
+
+     The majority of philosophers, says Porphyry, and among
+     others Haeremon (who lived in Egypt in the first age of
+     Christianity), imagine there never to have been any other
+     world than the one we see, and acknowledged no other Gods of
+     all those recognized by the Egyptians, than such as are
+     commonly called planets, signs of the Zodiac, and
+     constellations; whose aspects, that is, rising and setting,
+     are supposed to influence the fortunes of men; to which they
+     add their divisions of the signs into decans and dispensers
+     of time, whom they style lords of the ascendant, whose
+     names, virtues in relieving distempers, rising, setting, and
+     presages of future events, are the subjects of almanacs (for
+     be it observed, that the Egyptian priests had almanacs the
+     exact counterpart of Matthew Lansberg's); for when the
+     priests affirmed that the sun was the architect of the
+     universe, Chaeremon presently concludes that all their
+     narratives respecting Isis and Osiris, together with their
+     other sacred fables, referred in part to the planets, the
+     phases of the moon, and the revolution of the sun, and in
+     part to the stars of the daily and nightly hemispheres and
+     the river Nile; in a word, in all cases to physical and
+     natural existences and never to such as might be immaterial
+     and incorporeal. . . .
+
+     All these philosophers believe that the acts of our will and
+     the motion of our bodies depend on those of the stars to
+     which they are subjected, and they refer every thing to the
+     laws of physical necessity, which they call destiny or
+     Fatum, supposing a chain of causes and effects which binds,
+     by I know not what connection, all beings together, from the
+     meanest atom to the supremest power and primary influence of
+     the Gods; so that, whether in their temples or in their
+     idols, the only subject of worship is the power of destiny.
+     Porphyr. Epist. ad Janebonem.
+
+II. Second system: Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism.
+
+
+"But those same monuments present us likewise a system more methodical
+and more complicated--that of the worship of all the stars; adored
+sometimes in their proper forms, sometimes under figurative emblems
+and symbols; and this worship was the effect of the knowledge men had
+acquired in physics, and was derived immediately from the first causes
+of the social state; that is, from the necessities and arts of the first
+degree, which are among the elements of society.
+
+"Indeed, as soon as men began to unite in society, it became necessary
+for them to multiply the means of subsistence, and consequently to
+attend to agriculture: agriculture, to be carried on with success,
+requires the observation and knowledge of the heavens. It was necessary
+to know the periodical return of the same operations of nature, and the
+same phenomena in the skies; indeed to go so far as to ascertain the
+duration and succession of the seasons and the months of the year. It
+was indispensable to know, in the first place, the course of the sun,
+who, in his zodiacal revolution, shows himself the supreme agent of
+the whole creation; then, of the moon, who, by her phases and periods,
+regulates and distributes time; then, of the stars, and even of the
+planets, which by their appearance and disappearance on the horizon and
+nocturnal hemisphere, marked the minutest divisions. Finally, it was
+necessary to form a whole system of astronomy,* or a calendar; and from
+these works there naturally followed a new manner of considering these
+predominant and governing powers. Having observed that the productions
+of the earth had a regular and constant relation with the heavenly
+bodies; that the rise, growth, and decline of each plant kept pace with
+the appearance, elevation, and declination of the same star or the same
+group of stars; in short, that the languor or activity of vegetation
+seemed to depend on celestial influences, men drew from thence an idea
+of action, of power, in those beings, superior to earthly bodies; and
+the stars, dispensing plenty or scarcity, became powers, genii,** gods,
+authors of good and evil.
+
+     * It continues to be repeated every day, on the indirect
+     authority of the book of Genesis, that astronomy was the
+     invention of the children of Noah.  It has been gravely
+     said, that while wandering shepherds in the plains of
+     Shinar, they employed their leisure in composing a planetary
+     system: as if shepherds had occasion to know more than the
+     polar star; and if necessity was not the sole motive of
+     every invention!  If the ancient shepherds were so studious
+     and sagacious, how does it happen that the modern ones are
+     so stupid, ignorant, and inattentive?  And it is a fact that
+     the Arabs of the desert know not so many as six
+     constellations, and understand not a word of astronomy.
+
+     ** It appears that by the word genius, the ancients denoted
+     a quality, a generative power; for the following words,
+     which are all of one family, convey this meaning: generare,
+     genos, genesis, genus, gens.
+
+"As the state of society had already introduced a regular hierarchy
+of ranks, employments and conditions, men, continuing to reason by
+comparison, carried their new notions into their theology, and formed a
+complicated system of divinities by gradation of rank, in which the sun,
+as first god,* was a military chief or a political king: the moon was
+his wife and queen; the planets were servants, bearers of commands,
+messengers; and the multitude of stars were a nation, an army of heroes,
+genii, whose office was to govern the world under the orders of their
+chiefs. All the individuals had names, functions, attributes, drawn from
+their relations and influences; and even sexes, from the gender of their
+appellations.**
+
+     * The Sabeans, ancient and modern, says Maimonides,
+     acknowledge a principal God, the maker and inhabitant of
+     heaven; but on account of his great distance they conceive
+     him to be inaccessible; and in imitation of the conduct of
+     people towards their kings, they employ as mediators with
+     him, the planets and their angels, whom they call princes
+     and potentates, and whom they suppose to reside in those
+     luminous bodies as in palaces or tabernacles, etc.  More-
+     Nebuchim.
+
+     ** According as the gender of the object was in the language
+     of the nation masculine or feminine, the Divinity who bore
+     its name was male or female.  Thus the Cappadocians called
+     the moon God, and the sun Goddess: a circumstance which
+     gives to the same beings a perpetual variety in ancient
+     mythology.
+
+"And as the social state had introduced certain usages and ceremonies,
+religion, keeping pace with the social state, adopted similar ones;
+these ceremonies, at first simple and private, became public and
+solemn; the offerings became rich and more numerous, and the rites more
+methodical; they assigned certain places for the assemblies, and began
+to have chapels and temples; they instituted officers to administer
+them, and these became priests and pontiffs: they established liturgies,
+and sanctified certain days, and religion became a civil act, a
+political tie.
+
+"But in this arrangement, religion did not change its first principles;
+the idea of God was always that of physical beings, operating good or
+evil, that is, impressing sensations of pleasure or pain: the dogma was
+the knowledge of their laws, or their manner of acting; virtue and sin,
+the observance or infraction of these laws; and morality, in its native
+simplicity, was the judicious practice of whatever contributes to the
+preservation of existence, the well-being of one's self and his fellow
+creatures.*
+
+     * We may add, says Plutarch, that these Egyptian priests
+     always regarded the preservation of health as a point of the
+     first importance, and as indispensably necessary to the
+     practice of piety and the service of the gods.  See his
+     account of Isis and Osiris, towards the end.
+
+"Should it be asked at what epoch this system took its birth, we shall
+answer on the testimony of the monuments of astronomy itself; that
+its principles appear with certainty to have been established about
+seventeen thousand years ago,* and if it be asked to what people it is
+to be attributed, we shall answer that the same monuments, supported
+by unanimous traditions, attribute it to the first tribes of Egypt; and
+when reason finds in that country all the circumstances which could lead
+to such a system; when it finds there a zone of sky, bordering on the
+tropic, equally free from the rains of the equator and the fogs of
+the North;** when it finds there a central point of the sphere of the
+ancients, a salubrious climate, a great, but manageable river, a soil
+fertile without art or labor, inundated without morbid exhalations, and
+placed between two seas which communicate with the richest countries, it
+conceives that the inhabitant of the Nile, addicted to agriculture
+from the nature of his soil, to geometry from the annual necessity of
+measuring his lands, to commerce from the facility of communications,
+to astronomy from the state of his sky, always open to observation, must
+have been the first to pass from the savage to the social state; and
+consequently to attain the physical and moral sciences necessary to
+civilized life.
+
+     * The historical orator follows here the opinion of M.
+     Dupuis, who, in his learned memoirs concerning the Origin of
+     the Constellations and Origin of all Worship, has assigned
+     many plausible reasons to prove that Libra was formerly the
+     sign of the vernal, and Aries of the autumnal equinox; that
+     is, that since the origin of the actual astronomical system,
+     the precession of the equinoxes has carried forward by seven
+     signs the primitive order of the zodiac.  Now estimating the
+     precession at about seventy years and a half to a degree,
+     that is, 2,115 years to each sign; and observing that Aries
+     was in its fifteenth degree, 1,447 years before Christ, it
+     follows that the first degree of Libra could not have
+     coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194
+     years before Christ; now, if you add 1790 years since
+     Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the
+     origin of the Zodiac.  The vernal equinox coincided with the
+     first degree of Aries, 2,504 years before Christ, and with
+     the first degree of Taurus 4,619 years before Christ.  Now
+     it is to be observed, that the worship of the Bull is the
+     principal article in the theological creed of the Egyptians,
+     Persians, Japanese, etc.; from whence it clearly follows,
+     that some general revolution took place among these nations
+     at that time. The chronology of five or six thousand years
+     in Genesis is little agreeable to this hypothesis; but as
+     the book of Genesis cannot claim to be considered as a
+     history farther back than Abraham, we are at liberty to make
+     what arrangements we please in the eternity that preceded.
+     See on this subject the analysis of Genesis, in the first
+     volume of New Researches on Ancient History; see also Origin
+     of Constellatians, by Dupuis, 1781; the Origin of Worship,
+     in 3 vols. 1794, and the Chronological Zodiac, 1806.
+
+     ** M. Balli, in placing the first astronomers at
+     Selingenakoy, near the Bailkal paid no attention to this
+     twofold circumstance: it equally argues against their being
+     placed at Axoum on account of the rains, and the Zimb fly of
+     which Mr. Bruce speaks.
+
+"It was, then, on the borders of the upper Nile, among a black race of
+men, that was organized the complicated system of the worship of the
+stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth and the
+labors of agriculture; and this first worship, characterized by their
+adoration under their own forms and natural attributes, was a simple
+proceeding of the human mind. But in a short time, the multiplicity of
+the objects of their relations, and their reciprocal influence, having
+complicated the ideas, and the signs that represented them, there
+followed a confusion as singular in its cause as pernicious in its
+effects."
+
+
+III. Third system. Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry.
+
+
+"As soon as this agricultural people began to observe the stars with
+attention, they found it necessary to individualize or group them; and
+to assign to each a proper name, in order to understand each other in
+their designation. A great difficulty must have presented itself in
+this business: First, the heavenly bodies, similar in form, offered
+no distinguishing characteristics by which to denominate them; and,
+secondly, the language in its infancy and poverty, had no expressions
+for so many new and metaphysical ideas. Necessity, the usual stimulus
+of genius, surmounted everything. Having remarked that in the annual
+revolution, the renewal and periodical appearance of terrestrial
+productions were constantly associated with the rising and setting
+of certain stars, and to their position as relative to the sun, the
+fundamental term of all comparison, the mind by a natural operation
+connected in thought these terrestrial and celestial objects, which were
+connected in fact; and applying to them a common sign, it gave to the
+stars, and their groups, the names of the terrestrial objects to which
+they answered.*
+
+     * "The ancients," says Maimonides, "directing all their
+     attention to agriculture, gave names to the stars derived
+     from their occupation during the year."  More Neb. pars 3.
+
+"Thus the Ethopian of Thebes named stars of inundation, or Aquarius,
+those stars under which the Nile began to overflow;* stars of the ox or
+the bull, those under which they began to plow; stars of the lion, those
+under which that animal, driven from the desert by thirst, appeared on
+the banks of the Nile; stars of the sheaf, or of the harvest virgin,
+those of the reaping season; stars of the lamb, stars of the two kids,
+those under which these precious animals were brought forth: and thus
+was resolved the first part of the difficulty.
+
+     * This must have been June.
+
+"Moreover, man having remarked in the beings which surrounded him
+certain qualities distinctive and proper to each species, and having
+thence derived a name by which to designate them, he found in the same
+source an ingenious mode of generalizing his ideas; and transferring
+the name already invented to every thing which bore any resemblance or
+analogy, he enriched his language with a perpetual round of metaphors.
+
+"Thus the same Ethiopian having observed that the return of the
+inundation always corresponded with the rising of a beautiful star
+which appeared towards the source of the Nile, and seemed to warn the
+husbandman against the coming waters, he compared this action to that
+of the animal who, by his barking, gives notice of danger, and he called
+this star the dog, the barker (Sirius). In the same manner he named the
+stars of the crab, those where the sun, having arrived at the tropic,
+retreated by a slow retrograde motion like the crab or cancer. He
+named stars of the wild goat, or Capricorn, those where the sun, having
+reached the highest point in his annuary tract, rests at the summit
+of the horary gnomon, and imitates the goat, who delights to climb the
+summit of the rocks. He named stars of the balance, or libra, those
+where the days and nights, being equal, seemed in equilibrium, like that
+instrument; and stars of the scorpion, those where certain periodical
+winds bring vapors, burning like the venom of the scorpion. In the same
+manner he called by the name of rings and serpents the figured traces of
+the orbits of the stars and the planets, and such was the general mode
+of naming all the stars and even the planets, taken by groups or as
+individuals, according to their relations with husbandry and terrestrial
+objects, and according to the analogies which each nation found between
+them and the objects of its particular soil and climate.*
+
+     * The ancients had verbs from the substantives crab, goat,
+     tortoise, as the French have at present the verbs serpenter,
+     coquetter.  The history of all languages is nearly the same.
+
+"From this it appeared that abject and terrestrial beings became
+associated with the superior and powerful inhabitants of heaven; and
+this association became stronger every day by the mechanism of language
+and the constitution of the human mind. Men would say by a natural
+metaphor: The bull spreads over the earth the germs of fecundity (in
+spring) he restores vegetation and plenty: the lamb (or ram) delivers
+the skies from the maleficent powers of winter; he saves the world from
+the serpent (emblem of the humid season) and restores the empire of
+goodness (summer, joyful season): the scorpion pours out his poison
+on the earth, and scatters diseases and death. The same of all similar
+effects.
+
+"This language, understood by every one, was attended at first with no
+inconvenience; but in the course of time, when the calendar had been
+regulated, the people, who had no longer any need of observing the
+heavens, lost sight of the original meaning of these expressions; and
+the allegories remaining in common use became a fatal stumbling block to
+the understanding and to reason. Habituated to associate to the symbols
+the ideas of their archetypes, the mind at last confounded them: then
+the same animals, whom fancy had transported to the skies, returned
+again to the earth; but being thus returned, clothed in the livery of
+the stars, they claimed the stellary attributes, and imposed on their
+own authors. Then it was that the people, believing that they saw their
+gods among them, could pray to them with more convenience: they demanded
+from the ram of their flock the influences which might be expected from
+the heavenly ram; they prayed the scorpion not to pour out his venom
+upon nature; they revered the crab of the sea, the scarabeus of the
+mud, the fish of the river; and by a series of corrupt but inseparable
+analogies, they lost themselves in a labyrinth of well connected
+absurdities.
+
+"Such was the origin of that ancient whimsical worship of the animals;
+such is the train of ideas by which the character of the divinity became
+common to the vilest of brutes, and by which was formed that theological
+system, extremely comprehensive, complicated, and learned, which,
+rising on the borders of the Nile, propagated from country to country by
+commerce, war, and conquest, overspread the whole of the ancient world;
+and which, modified by time, circumstances and prejudices, is still seen
+entire among a hundred nations, and remains as the essential and secret
+basis of the theology of those even who despise and reject it."
+
+Some murmurs at these words being heard from various groups: "Yes!"
+continued the orator, "hence arose, for instance, among you, nations of
+Africa, the adoration of your fetiches, plants, animals, pebbles, pieces
+of wood, before which your ancestors would not have had the folly to
+bow, if they had not seen in them talismans endowed with the virtue of
+the stars.*
+
+     * The ancient astrologers, says the most learned of the Jews
+     (Maimonides), having sacredly assigned to each planet a
+     color, an animal, a tree, a metal, a fruit, a plant, formed
+     from them all a figure or representation of the star, taking
+     care to select for the purpose a proper moment, a fortunate
+     day, such as the conjunction of the star, or some other
+     favorable aspect.  They conceived that by their magic
+     ceremonies they could introduce into those figures or idols
+     the influences of the superior beings after which they were
+     modeled.  These were the idols that the Chaldean-Sabeans
+     adored; and in the performance of their worship they were
+     obliged to be dressed in the proper color.  The astrologers,
+     by their practices, thus introduced idolatry, desirous of
+     being regarded as the dispensers of the favors of heaven;
+     and as agriculture was the sole employment of the ancients,
+     they succeeded in persuading them that the rain and other
+     blessings of the seasons were at their disposal.  Thus the
+     whole art of agriculture was exercised by rules of
+     astrology, and the priests made talismans or charms which
+     were to drive away locusts, flies, etc.  See Maimonides,
+     More Nebuchim, pars 3, c. 29.
+
+     The priests of Egypt, Persia, India, etc., pretended to bind
+     the Gods to their idols, and to make them come from heaven
+     at their pleasure.  They threatened the sun and moon, if
+     they were disobedient, to reveal the secret mysteries, to
+     shake the skies, etc., etc.  Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 198,
+     and Jamblicus de Mysteriis Aegypt.
+
+"Here, ye nations of Tartary, is the origin of your marmosets, and of
+all that train of animals with which your chamans ornament their magical
+robes. This is the origin of those figures of birds and of snakes which
+savage nations imprint upon their skins with sacred and mysterious
+ceremonies.
+
+"Ye inhabitants of India! in vain you cover yourselves with the veil
+of mystery: the hawk of your god Vichenou is but one of the thousand
+emblems of the sun in Egypt; and your incarnations of a god in the fish,
+the boar, the lion, the tortoise, and all his monstrous adventures, are
+only the metamorphoses of the sun, who, passing through the signs of the
+twelve animals (or the zodiac), was supposed to assume their figures,
+and perform their astronomical functions.*
+
+     * These are the very words of Jamblicus de Symbolis
+     Aegyptiorum, c. 2, sect. 7.  The sun was the grand Proteus,
+     the universal metamorphist.
+
+"People of Japan, your bull, which breaks the mundane egg, is only the
+bull of the zodiac, which in former times opened the seasons, the age
+of creation, the vernal equinox. It is the same bull Apis which Egypt
+adored, and which your ancestors, Jewish Rabbins, worshipped in the
+golden calf. This is still your bull, followers of Zoroaster, which,
+sacrificed in the symbolic mysteries of Mithra, poured out his blood
+which fertilized the earth. And ye Christians, your bull of the
+Apocalypse, with his wings, symbol of the air, has no other origin; and
+your lamb of God, sacrificed, like the bull of Mithra, for the salvation
+of the world, is only the same sun, in the sign of the celestial ram,
+which, in a later age, opening the equinox in his turn, was supposed to
+deliver the world from evil, that is to say, from the constellation of
+the serpent, from that great snake, the parent of winter, the emblem of
+the Ahrimanes, or Satan of the Persians, your school masters. Yes, in
+vain does your imprudent zeal consign idolaters to the torments of the
+Tartarus which they invented; the whole basis of your system is only
+the worship of the sun, with whose attributes you have decorated your
+principal personage. It is the sun which, under the name of Horus,
+was born, like your God, at the winter solstice, in the arms of the
+celestial virgin, and who passed a childhood of obscurity, indigence,
+and want, answering to the season of cold and frost. It is he that,
+under the name of Osiris, persecuted by Typhon and by the tyrants of the
+air, was put to death, shut up in a dark tomb, emblem of the hemisphere
+of winter, and afterwards, ascending from the inferior zone towards the
+zenith of heaven, arose again from the dead triumphant over the giants
+and the angels of destruction.
+
+"Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all over
+your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole is his
+zodiac;* your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets. Ye pontiffs
+and prelates! your mitre, your crozier, your mantle are those of Osiris;
+and that cross whose mystery you extol without comprehending it, is the
+cross of Serapis, traced by the hands of Egyptian priests on the plan
+of the figurative world; which, passing through the equinoxes and the
+tropics, became the emblem of the future life and of the resurrection,
+because it touched the gates of ivory and of horn, through which the
+soul passed to heaven."
+
+     * "The Arabs," says Herodotus, "shave their heads in a
+     circle and about the temples, in imitation of Bacchus (that
+     is the sun), who shaves himself is this manner."  Jeremiah
+     speaks also of this custom.  The tuft of hair which the
+     Mahometans preserve, is taken also from the sun, who was
+     painted by the Egyptians at the winter solstice, as having
+     but a single hair upon his head. . . .
+
+     The robes of the goddess of Syria and of Diana of Ephesus,
+     from whence are borrowed the dress of the priests; have the
+     twelve animals of the zodiac painted on them. . . .
+
+     Rosaries are found upon all the Indian idols, constructed
+     more than four thousand years ago, and their use in the East
+     has been universal from time immemorial. . . .
+
+     The crozier is precisely the staff of Bootes or Osiris.
+     (See plate.)
+
+     All the Lamas wear the mitre or cap in the shape of a cone,
+     which was an emblem of the sun.
+
+At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each
+other with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator
+proceeded:
+
+"Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas:
+First, the figurative expressions under which an infant language was
+obliged to describe the relations of objects; expressions which, passing
+afterwards from a limited to a general sense, and from a physical to a
+moral one, caused, by their ambiguities and synonymes, a great number of
+mistakes.
+
+"Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or finished,
+twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had killed them,
+fought them, conquered them; and of this was composed the historical
+life of Hercules.*
+
+     * See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the
+     Constellations, before cited.
+
+"It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the seed
+time and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and occupations,
+ran through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he was taken for a
+legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they framed from this the
+history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of that description.
+
+"Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this
+conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.* Having said that the
+planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and ascended to
+its exaltation, they said that it had died, risen again, was carried
+into heaven, etc.
+
+     * These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of
+     Isis and Osiris.  The Hebrews say, in speaking of the
+     generations of the Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam.
+     From this continual equivoke of ancient language, proceeds
+     every mistake.
+
+"A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves,
+by which men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of
+hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were the first invention of the
+mind. Thus, to give warning of the inundation, and of the necessity of
+guarding against it, they painted a boat, the ship Argo; to express the
+wind, they painted the wing of a bird; to designate the season, or the
+month, they painted the bird of passage, the insect, or the animal which
+made its appearance at that period; to describe the winter, they painted
+a hog or a serpent, which delight in humid places, and the combination
+of these figures carried the known sense of words and phrases.* But as
+this sense could not be fixed with precision, as the number of these
+figures and their combinations became excessive, and overburdened
+the memory, the immediate consequence was confusion and false
+interpretations. Genius afterwards having invented the more simple
+art of applying signs to sounds, of which the number is limited, and
+painting words, instead of thoughts, alphabetical writing thus threw
+into disuetude hieroglyphical painting; and its signification, falling
+daily into oblivion, gave rise to a multitude of illusions, ambiguities,
+and errors.
+
+     * The reader will doubtless see with pleasure some examples
+     of ancient hieroglyphics.
+
+     "The Egyptians (says Hor-appolo) represent eternity by the
+     figures of the sun and moon.  They designate the world by
+     the blue serpent with yellow scales (stars, it is the
+     Chinese Dragon).  If they were desirous of expressing the
+     year, they drew a picture of Isis, who is also in their
+     language called Sothis, or dog-star, one of the first
+     constellations, by the rising of which the year commences;
+     its inscription at Sais was, It is I that rise in the
+     constellation of the Dog.
+
+     "They also represent the year by a palm tree, and the month
+     by one of its branches, because it is the nature of this
+     tree to produce a branch every month.  They farther
+     represent it by the fourth part of an acre of land."  The
+     whole acre divided into four denotes the bissextile period
+     of four years.  The abbreviation of this figure of a field
+     in four divisions, is manifestly the letter ha or het, the
+     seventh in the Samaritan alphabet; and in general all the
+     letters of the alphabet are merely astronomical
+     hieroglyphics; and it is for this reason that the mode of
+     writing is from right to left, like the march of the stars.
+     --"They denote a prophet by the image of a dog, because the
+     dog star (Anoubis) by its rising gives notice of the
+     inundation.  Noubi, in Hebrew signifies prophet--They
+     represent inundation by a lion, because it takes place under
+     that sign: and hence, says Plutarch, the custom of placing
+     at the gates of temples figures of lions with water issuing
+     from their mouths.--They express the idea of God and destiny
+     by a star.  They also represent God, says Porphyry, by a
+     black stone, because his nature is dark and obscure.  All
+     white things express the celestial and luminous Gods: all
+     circular ones the world, the moon, the sun, the orbits; all
+     semicircular ones, as bows and crescents are descriptive of
+     the moon.  Fire and the Gods of Olympus they represent by
+     pyramids and obelisks (the name of the sun, Baal, is found
+     in this latter word): the sun by a cone (the mitre of
+     Osiris): the earth, by a cylinder (which revolves): the
+     generative power of the air by the phalus, and that of the
+     earth by a triangle, emblem of the female organ.  Euseb.
+     Proecep.  Evang. p. 98.
+
+     "Clay, says Jamblicus de Symbolis, sect. 7, c. 2. denotes
+     matter, the generative and nutrimental power, every thing
+     which receives the warmth and fermentation of life."
+
+     "A man sitting upon the Lotos or Nenuphar, represents the
+     moving spirit (the sun) which, in like manner as that plant
+     lives in the water without any communication with clay,
+     exists equally distinct from matter, swimming in empty
+     space, resting on itself: it is round also in all its parts,
+     like the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit of the Lotos.
+     (Brama has the eyes of the Lotos, says Chasler Nesdirsen, to
+     denote his intelligence: his eye swims over every thing,
+     like the flower of the Lotos on the waters.)  A man at the
+     helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun
+     which governs all.  And Porphyry tells us that the sun is
+     also represented by a man in a ship resting upon an
+     amphibious crocodile (emblem of air and water).
+
+     "At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a
+     sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and
+     the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which
+     represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of
+     the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at
+     the period of junction, to raise water into the clouds.
+     Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
+
+     "The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account
+     of his rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions
+     of the air where light abounds.
+
+     A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of
+     violence, because it is said to kill its father and to
+     ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical
+     inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on
+     the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A
+     fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1. Entrance, into
+     life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5.  Injustice. See
+     Isis and Osiris.
+
+     "The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus,
+     because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that
+     in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as
+     the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the
+     sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an opposite direction to its
+     own.
+
+     "They represent the world also by the number five, being
+     that of the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth,
+     water, air, fire, and ether, or spiritus.  The Indians have
+     the same number of elements, and according to Macrobius's
+     mystics, they are the supreme God, or primum mobile, the
+     intelligence, or mens, born of him, the soul of the world
+     which proceeds from him, the celestial spheres, and all
+     things terrestrial.  Hence, adds Plutarch, the analogy
+     between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
+
+     "The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because
+     like that animal he is of a reddish color.  Now Typhon
+     signifies whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in
+     Hebrew I find the three words clay, red, and ass to be
+     formed from the same root hamr).  Jamblicus has farther told
+     us that clay was the emblem of matter and he elsewhere adds,
+     that all evil and corruption proceeded from matter; which
+     compared with the phrase of Macrobius, all is perishable,
+     liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives us the
+     theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good
+     and evil of the ancients."
+
+"Finally, a third cause of confusion was the civil organization
+of ancient states. When the people began to apply themselves to
+agriculture, the formation of a rural calendar, requiring a continued
+series of astronomical observations, it became necessary to appoint
+certain individuals charged with the functions of watching the
+appearance and disappearance of certain stars, to foretell the return of
+the inundation, of certain winds, of the rainy season, the proper time
+to sow every kind of grain. These men, on account of their service,
+were exempt from common labor, and the society provided for their
+maintenance. With this provision, and wholly employed in their
+observations, they soon became acquainted with the great phenomena
+of nature, and even learned to penetrate the secret of many of her
+operations. They discovered the movement of the stars and planets, the
+coincidence of their phases and returns with the productions of
+the earth and the action of vegetation; the medicinal and nutritive
+properties of plants and fruits; the action of the elements, and
+their reciprocal affinities. Now, as there was no other method of
+communicating the knowledge of these discoveries but the laborious one
+of oral instruction, they transmitted it only to their relations and
+friends, it followed therefore that all science and instruction were
+confined to a few families, who, arrogating it to themselves as an
+exclusive privilege, assumed a professional distinction, a corporation
+spirit, fatal to the public welfare. This continued succession of the
+same researches and the same labors, hastened, it is true, the progress
+of knowledge; but by the mystery which accompanied it, the people were
+daily plunged in deeper shades, and became more superstitious and
+more enslaved. Seeing their fellow mortals produce certain phenomena,
+announce, as at pleasure, eclipses and comets, heal diseases, and handle
+venomous serpents, they thought them in alliance with celestial powers;
+and, to obtain the blessings and avert the evils which they expected
+from above, they took them for mediators and interpreters; and thus
+became established in the bosom of every state sacrilegious corporations
+of hypocritical and deceitful men, who centered all powers in
+themselves; and the priests, being at once astronomers, theologians,
+naturalists, physicians, magicians, interpreters of the gods, oracles of
+men, and rivals of kings, or their accomplices, established, under the
+name of religion, an empire of mystery and a monopoly of instruction,
+which to this day have ruined every nation. . . ."
+
+Here the priests of all the groups interrupted the orator, and with loud
+cries accused him of impiety, irreligion, blasphemy; and endeavored to
+cut short his discourse; but the legislator observing that this was only
+an exposition of historical facts, which, if false or forged, would be
+easily refuted; that hitherto the declaration of every opinion had been
+free, and without this it would be impossible to discover the truth, the
+orator proceeded:
+
+"Now, from all these causes, and from the continual associations of
+ill-assorted ideas, arose a mass of disorders in theology, in morals,
+and in traditions; first, because the animals represented the stars,
+the characters of the animals, their appetites, their sympathies,
+their aversions, passed over to the gods, and were supposed to be their
+actions; thus, the god Ichneumon made war against the god Crocodile;
+the god Wolf liked to eat the god Sheep; the god Ibis devoured the
+god Serpent; and the deity became a strange, capricious, and ferocious
+being, whose idea deranged the judgment of man, and corrupted his morals
+and his reason.
+
+"Again, because in the spirit of their worship every family, every
+nation, took for its special patron a star or a constellation, the
+affections or antipathies of the symbolic animal were transferred to its
+sectaries; and the partisans of the god Dog were enemies to those of the
+god Wolf;* those who adored the god Ox had an abhorrence to those who
+ate him; and religion became the source of hatred and hostility,--the
+senseless cause of frenzy and superstition.
+
+     * These are properly the words of Plutarch, who relates that
+     those various worships were given by a king of Egypt to the
+     different towns to disunite and enslave them, and these
+     kings had been taken from the cast of priests.  See Isis and
+     Osiris.
+
+"Besides, the names of those animal-stars having, for this same reason
+of patronage, been conferred on countries, nations, mountains, and
+rivers, these objects were taken for gods, and hence followed a mixture
+of geographical, historical, and mythological beings, which confounded
+all traditions.
+
+"Finally, by the analogy of actions which were ascribed to them, the
+god-stars, having been taken for men, for heroes, for kings, kings
+and heroes took in their turn the actions of gods for models, and by
+imitation became warriors, conquerors, proud, lascivious, indolent,
+sanguinary; and religion consecrated the crimes of despots, and
+perverted the principles of government."
+
+
+IV. Fourth system. Worship of two Principles, or Dualism.
+
+
+"In the mean time, the astronomical priests, enjoying peace and
+abundance in their temples, made every day new progress in the sciences,
+and the system of the world unfolding gradually to their view, they
+raised successively various hypotheses as to its agents and effects,
+which became so many theological systems.
+
+"The voyages of the maritime nations and the caravans of the nomads of
+Asia and Africa, having given them a knowledge of the earth from the
+Fortunate Islands to Serica, and from the Baltic to the sources of the
+Nile, the comparison of the phenomena of the various zones taught them
+the rotundity of the earth, and gave birth to a new theory. Having
+remarked that all the operations of nature during the annual period
+were reducible to two principal ones, that of producing and that of
+destroying; that on the greater part of the globe these two operations
+were performed in the intervals of the two equinoxes; that is to
+say, during the six months of summer every thing was procreating and
+multiplying, and that during winter everything languished and almost
+died; they supposed in Nature two contrary powers, which were in
+a continual state of contention and exertion; and considering the
+celestial sphere in this view, they divided the images which
+they figured upon it into two halves or hemispheres; so that the
+constellations which were on the summer heaven formed a direct and
+superior empire; and those which were on the winter heaven composed an
+antipode and inferior empire. Therefore, as the constellations of summer
+accompanied the season of long, warm, and unclouded days, and that
+of fruits and harvests, they were considered as the powers of light,
+fecundity, and creation; and, by a transition from a physical to a moral
+sense, they became genii, angels of science, of beneficence, of purity
+and virtue. And as the constellations of winter were connected with long
+nights and polar fogs, they were the genii of darkness, of destruction,
+of death; and by transition, angels of ignorance, of wickedness, of sin
+and vice. By this arrangement the heaven was divided into two domains,
+two factions; and the analogy of human ideas already opened a vast field
+to the errors of imagination; but the mistake and the illusion were
+determined, if not occasioned by a particular circumstance. (Observe
+plate Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
+
+"In the projection of the celestial sphere, as traced by the
+astronomical priests,* the zodiac and the constellations, disposed in
+circular order, presented their halves in diametrical opposition; the
+hemisphere of winter, antipode of that of summer, was adverse, contrary,
+opposed to it. By a continual metaphor, these words acquired a moral
+sense; and the adverse genii, or angels, became revolted enemies.**
+From that moment all the astronomical history of the constellations was
+changed into a political history; the heavens became a human state,
+where things happened as on the earth. Now, as the earthly states, the
+greater part despotic, had already their monarchs, and as the sun was
+apparently the monarch of the skies, the summer hemisphere (empire of
+light) and its constellations (a nation of white angels) had for king
+an enlightened God, a creator intelligent and good. And as every rebel
+faction must have its chief, the heaven of winter, the subterranean
+empire of darkness and woe, and its stars, a nation of black angels,
+giants and demons, had for their chief a malignant genius, whose
+character was applied by different people to the constellation which
+to them was the most remarkable. In Egypt it was at first the Scorpion,
+first zodiacal sign after Libra, and for a long time chief of the winter
+signs ; then it was the Bear, or the polar Ass, called Typhon, that is
+to say, deluge,** on account of the rains which deluge the earth during
+the dominion of that star. At a later period,*** in Persia,**** it was
+the Serpent, who, under the name of Abrimanes, formed the basis of the
+system of Zoroaster; and it is the same, O Christians and Jews! that
+has become your serpent of Eve (the celestial virgin,) and that of the
+cross; in both cases it is the emblem of Satan, the enemy and great
+adversary of the Ancient of Days, sung by Daniel.
+
+     * The ancient priests had three kinds of spheres, which it
+     may be useful to make known to the reader.
+
+     "We read in Eusebius," says Porphyry, "that Zoroaster was
+     the first who, having fixed upon a cavern pleasantly
+     situated in the mountains adjacent to Persia, formed the
+     idea of consecrating it to Mithra (the sun) creator and
+     father of all things: that is to say, having made in this
+     cavern several geometrical divisions, representing the
+     seasons and the elements, he imitated on a small scale the
+     order and disposition of the universe by Mithra.  After
+     Zoroaster, it became a custom to consecrate caverns for the
+     celebration of mysteries: so that in like manner as temples
+     were dedicated to the Gods, rural altars to heroes and
+     terrestrial deities, etc., subterranean abodes to infernal
+     deities, so caverns and grottoes were consecrated to the
+     world, to the universe, and to the nymphs: and from hence
+     Pythagoras and Plato borrowed the idea of calling the earth
+     a cavern, a cave, de Antro Nympharum.
+
+     Such was the first projection of the sphere in relief;
+     though the Persians give the honor of the invention to
+     Zoroaster, it is doubtless due to the Egyptians; for we may
+     suppose from this projection being the most simple that it
+     was the most ancient; the caverns of Thebes, full of similar
+     pictures, tend to strengthen this opinion.
+
+     The following was the second projection: "The prophets or
+     hierophants," says Bishop Synnesius, "who had been initiated
+     in the mysteries, do not permit the common workmen to form
+     idols or images of the Gods; but they descend themselves
+     into the sacred caves, where they have concealed coffers
+     containing certain spheres upon which they construct those
+     images secretly and without the knowledge of the people, who
+     despise simple and natural things and wish for prodigies and
+     fables."  (Syn. in Calvit.)  That is, the ancient priests
+     had armillary spheres like ours; and this passage, which so
+     well agrees with that of Chaeremon, gives us the key to all
+     their theological astrology.
+
+     Lastly, they had flat models of the nature of Plate V. with
+     the difference that they were of a very complicated nature,
+     having every fictitious division of decan and subdecan, with
+     the hieroglyphic signs of their influence.  Kircher has
+     given us a copy of one of them in his Egyptian Oedipus, and
+     Gybelin a figured fragment in his book of the calendar
+     (under the name of the Egyptian Zodiac).  The ancient
+     Egyptians, says the astrologer Julius Firmicus, (Astron.
+     lib. ii. and lib. iv., c. 16), divide each sign of the
+     Zodiac into three sections; and each section was under the
+     direction of an imaginary being whom they called decan or
+     chief of ten; so that there were three decans a month, and
+     thirty-six a year.  Now these decans, who were also called
+     Gods (Theoi), regulated the destinies of mankind--and they
+     were placed particularly in certain stars.  They afterwards
+     imagined in every ten three other Gods, whom they called
+     arbiters; so that there were nine for every month, and these
+     were farther divided into an infinite number of powers.  The
+     Persians and Indians made their spheres on similar plans;
+     and if a picture thereof were to be drawn from the
+     description given by Scaliger at the end of Manilius, we
+     should find in it a complete explanation of their
+     hieroglyphics, for every article forms one.
+
+     ** If it was for this reason the Persians always wrote the
+     name of Ahrimanes inverted thus: ['Ahrimanes' upside down
+     and backwards].
+
+     *** Typhon, pronounced Touphon by the Greeks, is precisely
+     the touphan of the Arabs, which signifies deluge; and these
+     deluges in mythology are nothing more than winter and the
+     rains, or the overflowing of the Nile: as their pretended
+     fires which are to destroy the world, are simply the summer
+     season.  And it is for this reason that Aristotle (De
+     Meteor, lib. I. c. xiv), says, that the winter of the great
+     cyclic year is a deluge; and its summer a conflagration.
+     "The Egyptians," says Porphyry, "employ every year a
+     talisman in remembrance of the world: at the summer solstice
+     they mark their houses, flocks and trees with red, supposing
+     that on that day the whole world had been set on fire.  It
+     was also at the same period that they celebrated the pyrric
+     or fire dance."  And this illustrates the origin of
+     purification by fire and by water; for having denominated
+     the tropic of Cancer the gate of heaven, and the genial heat
+     of celestial fire, and that of Capricorn the gate of deluge
+     or of water, it was imagined that the spirit or souls who
+     passed through these gates in their way to and from heaven,
+     were roasted or bathed: hence the baptism of Mithra; and the
+     passage through flames, observed throughout the East long
+     before Moses.
+
+     **** That is when the ram became the equinoctial sign, or
+     rather when the alteration of the skies showed that it was
+     no longer the bull.
+
+"In Syria, it was the hog or wild boar, enemy of Adonis; because in that
+country the functions of the Northern Bear were performed by the animal
+whose inclination for mire and dirt was emblematic of winter. And this
+is the reason, followers of Moses and Mahomet! that you hold him in
+horror, in imitation of the priests of Memphis and Balbec, who detested
+him as the murderer of their God, the sun. This likewise, O Indians!
+is the type of your Chib-en; and it has been likewise the Pluto of your
+brethren, the Romans and Greeks; in like manner, your Brama, God the
+creator, is only the Persian Ormuzd, and the Egyptian Osiris, whose
+very name expresses creative power, producer of forms. And these gods
+received a worship analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary;
+which worship was divided into two branches, according to their
+characters. The good god receives a worship of love and joy, from which
+are derived all religious acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances,
+banquets, offerings of flowers, milk, honey, perfumes; in a word,
+everything grateful to the senses and to the soul.* The evil god, on
+the contrary, received a worship of fear and pain; whence originated
+all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears, desolations, mournings,
+self-denials, bloody offerings, and cruel sacrifices.
+
+     * All the ancient festivals respecting the return and
+     exaltation of the sun were of this description: hence the
+     hilaria of the Roman calendar at the period of the passage,
+     Pascha, of the vernal equinox.  The dances were imitations
+     of the march of the planets. Those of the Dervises still
+     represent it to this day.
+
+     ** "Sacrifices of blood," says Porphyry, "were only offered
+     to Demons and evil Genii to avert their wrath.  Demons are
+     fond of blood, humidity, stench."  Apud. Euseb. Proep. Ev.,
+     p. 173.
+
+     "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "only offer bloody victims
+     to Typhon.  They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animal
+     immolated is held in execration and loaded with all the sins
+     of the people." The goat of Moses.  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+     Strabo says, speaking of Moses, and the Jews, "Circumcision
+     and the prohibition of certain kinds of meat sprung from
+     superstition." And I observe, respecting the ceremony of
+     circumcision, that its object was to take from the symbol of
+     Osiris, (Phallus) the pretended obstacle to fecundity: an
+     obstacle which bore the seal of Typhon, "whose nature," says
+     Plutarch, "is made up of all that hinders, opposes, causes
+     obstruction."
+
+"Hence arose that distinction of terrestrial beings into pure and
+impure, sacred and abominable, according as their species were of the
+number of the constellations of one of these two gods, and made part
+of his domain; and this produced, on the one hand, the superstitions
+concerning pollutions and purifications; and, on the other, the
+pretended efficacious virtues of amulets and talismans.
+
+"You conceive now," continued the orator, addressing himself to the
+Persians, the Indians, the Jews, the Christians, the Mussulmans, "you
+conceive the origin of those ideas of battles and rebellions, which
+equally abound in all your mythologies. You see what is meant by white
+and black angels, your cherubim and seraphim, with heads of eagles, of
+lions, or of bulls; your deus, devils, demons, with horns of goats and
+tails of serpents; your thrones and dominions, ranged in seven orders or
+gradations, like the seven spheres of the planets; all beings acting the
+same parts, and endowed with the same attributes in your Vedas, Bibles,
+and Zend-avestas, whether they have for chiefs Ormuzd or Brama, Typhon
+or Chiven, Michael or Satan;--whether they appear under the form
+of giants with a hundred arms and feet of serpents, or that of gods
+metamorphosed into lions, storks, bulls or cats, as they are in the
+sacred fables of the Greeks and Egyptians. You perceive the successive
+filiation of these ideas, and how, in proportion to their remoteness
+from their source, and as the minds of men became refined, their gross
+forms have been polished, and rendered less disgusting.
+
+"But in the same manner as you have seen the system of two opposite
+principles or gods arise from that of symbols, interwoven into its
+texture, your attention shall now be called to a new system which has
+grown out of this, and to which this has served in its turn as the basis
+and support.
+
+
+V. Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State.
+
+
+"Indeed, when the vulgar heard speak of a new heaven and another world,
+they soon gave a body to these fictions; they erected therein a real
+theatre of action, and their notions of astronomy and geography served
+to strengthen, if not to originate, this illusion.
+
+"On the one hand, the Phoenician navigators who passed the pillars of
+Hercules, to fetch the tin of Thule and the amber of the Baltic,
+related that at the extremity of the world, the end of the ocean (the
+Mediterranean), where the sun sets for the countries of Asia, were the
+Fortunate Islands, the abode of eternal spring; and beyond were the
+hyperborean regions, placed under the earth (relatively to the tropics)
+where reigned an eternal night.* From these stories, misunderstood, and
+no doubt confusedly related, the imagination of the people composed the
+Elysian fields,** regions of delight, placed in a world below, having
+their heaven, their sun, and their stars; and Tartarus, a place of
+darkness, humidity, mire, and frost. Now, as man, inquisitive of that
+which he knows not, and desirous of protracting his existence, had
+already interrogated himself concerning what was to become of him after
+his death, as he had early reasoned on the principle of life which
+animates his body, and which leaves it without deforming it, and as he
+had imagined airy substances, phantoms, and shades, he fondly believed
+that he should continue, in the subterranean world, that life which
+it was too painful for him to lose; and these lower regions seemed
+commodious for the reception of the beloved objects which he could not
+willingly resign.
+
+     * Nights of six months duration.
+
+     ** Aliz, in the Phoenician or Hebrew language signifies
+     dancing and joyous.
+
+"On the other hand, the astrological and geological priests told
+such stories and made such descriptions of their heavens, as accorded
+perfectly well with these fictions. Having, in their metaphorical
+language, called the equinoxes and solstices the gates of heaven, the
+entrance of the seasons, they explained these terrestrial phenomena by
+saying, that through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the
+ram) and through the gate of Cancer, descended the vivifying fires which
+give life to vegetation in the spring, and the aqueous spirits which
+bring, at the solstice, the inundation of the Nile; that through the
+gate of ivory (Libra, formerly Sagittarius, or the bowman) and that
+of Capricorn, or the urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens
+returned to their source, and reascended to their origin; and the Milky
+Way, which passed through the gates of the solstices, seemed to be
+placed there to serve them as a road or vehicle.* Besides, in their
+atlas, the celestial scene presented a river (the Nile, designated by
+the windings of the hydra), a boat, (the ship Argo) and the dog Sirius,
+both relative to this river, whose inundation they foretold. These
+circumstances, added to the preceding, and still further explaining
+them, increased their probability, and to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium,
+souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of
+the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates of horn or ivory,
+guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions were applied to a
+civil use, and thence received a further consistency.
+
+     *See Macrob. Som. Scrip. c. 12.
+
+"Having remarked that in their burning climate the putrefaction of dead
+bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in many of
+their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead beyond the
+limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the West. To go there,
+it was necessary to pass the channels of the river, and consequently
+to be received into a boat, and pay something to the ferryman, without
+which the body, deprived of sepulture, must have been the prey of wild
+beasts. This custom suggested to the civil and religious legislators the
+means of a powerful influence on manners; and, addressing uncultivated
+and ferocious men with the motives of filial piety and a reverence for
+the dead, they established, as a necessary condition, their undergoing
+a previous trial, which should decide whether the deceased merited to
+be admitted to the rank of the family in the black city. Such an idea
+accorded too well with all the others, not to be incorporated with them:
+the people soon adopted it; and hell had its Minos and its Rhadamanthus,
+with the wand, the bench, the ushers, and the urn, as in the earthly and
+civil state. It was then that God became a moral and political being,
+a lawgiver to men, and so much the more to be dreaded, as this supreme
+legislator, this final judge, was inaccessible and invisible. Then it
+was that this fabulous and mythological world, composed of such odd
+materials and disjointed parts, became a place of punishments and of
+rewards, where divine justice was supposed to correct what was vicious
+and erroneous in the judgment of men. This spiritual and mystical
+system acquired the more credit, as it took possession of man by all his
+natural inclinations. The oppressed found in it the hope of indemnity,
+and the consolation of future vengeance; the oppressor, expecting by
+rich offerings to purchase his impunity, formed out of the errors of the
+vulgar an additional weapon of oppression; the chiefs of nations, the
+kings and priests, found in this a new instrument of domination by the
+privilege which they reserved to themselves of distributing the favors
+and punishments of the great judge, according to the merit or demerit
+of actions, which they took care to characterize as best suited their
+system.
+
+"This, then, is the manner in which an invisible and imaginary world
+has been introduced into the real and visible one; this is the origin of
+those regions of pleasure and pain, of which you Persians have made your
+regenerated earth, your city of resurrection, placed under the equator,
+with this singular attribute, that in it the blessed cast no shade.* Of
+these materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have
+you formed your New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, your paradise, your
+heaven, copied in all its parts from the astrological heaven of Hermes:
+and your hell, ye Mussulmans, your bottomless pit, surmounted by a
+bridge, your balance for weighing souls and good works, your last
+judgment by the angels Monkir and Nekir, are likewise modeled from the
+mysterious ceremonies of the cave of Mithras** and your heaven differs
+not in the least from that of Osiris, of Ormuzd, and of Brama.
+
+     * There is on this subject a passage in Plutarch, so
+     interesting and explanatory of the whole of this system,
+     that we shall cite it entire.  Having observed that the
+     theory of good and evil had at all times occupied the
+     attention of philosophers and theologians, he adds: "Many
+     suppose there to be two gods of opposite inclinations, one
+     delighting in good, the other in evil; the first of these is
+     called particularly by the name of God, the second by that
+     of Genius or Demon.  Zoroaster has denominated them Oromaze
+     and Ahrimanes, and has said that of whatever falls under the
+     cognizance of our senses, light is the best representation
+     of the one, and darkness and ignorance of the other.  He
+     adds, that Mithra is an intermediate being, and it is for
+     this reason the Persians call Mithra the mediator or
+     intermediator.  Each of these Gods has distinct plants and
+     animals consecrated to him: for example, dogs, birds and
+     hedge-hogs belong to the good Genius, and all aquatic
+     animals to the evil one.
+
+     "The Persians also say, that Oromaze was born or formed out
+     of the purest light; Ahrimanes, on the contrary, out of the
+     thickest darkness: that Oromaze made six gods as good as
+     himself, and Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones: that
+     Oromaze afterwards multiplied himself threefold (Hermes
+     trismegistus) and removed to a distance as remote from the
+     sun as the sun is remote from the earth that he there formed
+     stars, and, among others, Sirius, which he placed in the
+     heavens as a guard and sentinel.  He made also twenty-four
+     other Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanes
+     created an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, and
+     from that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).
+     But Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth to
+     be made equal and smooth, that all men may live happy.
+
+     "Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one of
+     these Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years during
+     which the other is kept in subjection; that they afterwards
+     contend with equal weapons during a similar portion of time,
+     but that in the end the evil Genius will fall (never to rise
+     again).  Then men will become happy, and their bodies cast
+     no shade.  The God who mediates all these things reclines at
+     present in repose, waiting till he shall be pleased to
+     execute them."  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+     There is an apparent allegory through the whole of this
+     passage. The egg is the fixed sphere, the world: the six
+     Gods of Oromaze are the six signs of summer, those of
+     Ahrimanes the six signs of winter.  The forty-eight other
+     Gods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient
+     sphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze.  The
+     office of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that the
+     origin of these ideas was Egyptian: finally, the expression
+     that the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that the
+     bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that the
+     equator was considered as their true paradise.
+
+     ** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they
+     celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against
+     Celsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets
+     and the heavens. The initiated took the name of
+     constellations, and assumed the figures of animals.  One was
+     a lion, another a raven, and a third a ram.  Hence the use
+     of masks in the first representation of the drama.  See Ant.
+     Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244.  "In the mysteries of Ceres the
+     chief in the procession called himself the creator; the
+     bearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the person
+     nearest to the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon,
+     Mercury.  In Egypt there was a festival in which the men and
+     women represented the year, the age, the seasons, the
+     different parts of the day, and they walked in precession
+     after Bacchus.  Athen. lib. v., ch. 7.  In the cave of
+     Mithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the seven
+     spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and
+     descended.  This is precisely the ladder in Jacob's vision,
+     which shows that at that epoch a the whole system was
+     formed.  There is in the French king's library a superb
+     volume of pictures of the Indian Gods, in which the ladder
+     is represented with the souls of men mounting it."
+
+VI. Sixth System. The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe under
+diverse Emblems.
+
+
+"While the nations were wandering in the dark labyrinth of mythology and
+fables, the physical priests, pursuing their studies and enquiries into
+the order and disposition of the universe, came to new conclusions, and
+formed new systems concerning powers and first causes.
+
+"Long confined to simple appearances, they saw nothing in the movement
+of the stars but an unknown play of luminous bodies rolling round the
+earth, which they believed the central point of all the spheres; but as
+soon as they discovered the rotundity of our planet, the consequences
+of this first fact led them to new considerations; and from induction to
+induction they rose to the highest conceptions in astronomy and physics.
+
+"Indeed, after having conceived this luminous idea, that the terrestrial
+globe is a little circle inscribed in the greater circle of the heavens,
+the theory of concentric circles came naturally into their hypothesis,
+to determine the unknown circle of the terrestrial globe by certain
+known portions of the celestial circle; and the measurement of one
+or more degrees of the meridian gave with precision the whole
+circumference. Then, taking for a compass the known diameter of
+the earth, some fortunate genius applied it with a bold hand to the
+boundless orbits of the heavens; and man, the inhabitant of a grain of
+sand, embracing the infinite distances of the stars, launches into the
+immensity of space and the eternity of time: there he is presented with
+a new order of the universe of which the atom-globe which he inhabited
+appeared no longer to be the centre; this important post was reserved to
+the enormous mass of the sun; and that body became the flaming pivot of
+eight surrounding spheres, whose movements were henceforth subjected to
+precise calculations.
+
+"It was indeed a great effort for the human mind to have undertaken to
+determine the disposition and order of the great engines of nature; but
+not content with this first effort, it still endeavored to develop the
+mechanism, and discover the origin and the instinctive principle. Hence,
+engaged in the abstract and metaphysical nature of motion and its
+first cause, of the inherent or incidental properties of matter, its
+successive forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space
+unbounded, the physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of
+subtile reasoning and scholastic controversy.*
+
+     * Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you will
+     find our assertions respecting the knowledge of the priests
+     amply proved.
+
+"In the first place, the action of the sun on terrestrial bodies,
+teaching them to regard his substance as a pure and elementary fire,
+they made it the focus and reservoir of an ocean of igneous and luminous
+fluid, which, under the name of ether, filled the universe and nourished
+all beings. Afterwards, having discovered, by a physical and attentive
+analysis, this same fire, or another perfectly resembling it, in the
+composition of all bodies, and having perceived it to be the essential
+agent of that spontaneous movement which is called life in animals and
+vegetation in plants, they conceived the mechanism and harmony of the
+universe, as of a homogeneous whole, of one identical body, whose parts,
+though distant, had nevertheless an intimate relation;* and the world
+was a living being, animated by the organic circulation of an igneous
+and even electrical fluid,** which, by a term of comparison borrowed
+first from men and animals, had the sun for a heart and a focus.***
+
+     * These are the very words of Jamblicus.  De Myst. Egypt.
+
+     ** The more I consider what the ancients understood by ether
+     and spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the stronger
+     do I find the analogy between it and the electrial fluid.  A
+     luminous fluid, principle of warmth and motion, pervading
+     the universe, forming the matter of the stars, having small
+     round particles, which insinuate themselves into bodies, and
+     fill them by dilating itself, be their extent what it will.
+     What can more strongly resemble electricity?
+
+     *** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun the
+     heart of the world.  Som. Scrip. c. 20.  The Egyptians, says
+     Plutarch, call the East the face, the North the right side,
+     and the South the left side of the world, because there the
+     heart is placed.  They continually compare the universe to a
+     man; and hence the celebrated microcosm of the Alchymists.
+     We observe, by the bye, that the Alchymists, Cabalists,
+     Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and every other such
+     sort of visionaries, are but the mistaken disciples of this
+     ancient school: we say mistaken, because, in spite of their
+     pretensions, the thread of the occult science is broken.
+
+"From this time the physical theologians seem to have divided into
+several classes; one class, grounding itself on these principles
+resulting from observation; that nothing can be annihilated in the
+world; that the elements are indestructible; that they change their
+combinations but not their nature; that the life and death of beings are
+but the different modifications of the same atoms; that matter itself
+possesses properties which give rise to all its modes of existence; that
+the world is eternal,* or unlimited in space and duration; said that the
+whole universe was God; and, according to them, God was a being, effect
+and cause, agent and patient, moving principle and thing moved, having
+for laws the invariable properties that constitute fatality; and this
+class conveyed their idea by the emblem of Pan (the great whole); or of
+Jupiter, with a forehead of stars, body of planets, and feet of animals;
+or of the Orphic Egg,** whose yolk, suspended in the center of a liquid,
+surrounded by a vault, represented the globe of the sun, swimming in
+ether in the midst of the vault of heaven;*** sometimes by a great
+round serpent, representing the heavens where they placed the moving
+principle, and for that reason of an azure color, studded with spots
+of gold, (the stars) devouring his tail--that is, folding and unfolding
+himself eternally, like the revolutions of the spheres; sometimes by
+that of a man, having his feet joined together and tied, to signify
+immutable existence, wrapped in a cloak of all colors, like the face
+of nature, and bearing on his head a sphere of gold,**** emblem of the
+sphere of the stars; or by that of another man, sometimes seated on the
+flower of the lotos borne on the abyss of waters, sometimes lying on a
+pile of twelve cushions, denoting the twelve celestial signs. And here,
+Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Tibetans, and Chinese, is the theology,
+which, founded by the Egyptians and transmitted to you, is preserved in
+the pictures which you compose of Brama, of Beddou, of Somona-Kodom of
+Omito. This, ye Jews and Christians, is likewise the opinion of which
+you have preserved a part in your God moving on the face of the waters,
+by an allusion to the wind*5 which, at the beginning of the world, that
+is, the departure of the sun from the sign of Cancer, announced the
+inundation of the Nile, and seemed to prepare the creation."
+
+     * See the Pythagorean, Ocellus Lacunus.
+
+     ** Vide Oedip. Aegypt. Tome II., page 205.
+
+     *** This comparison of the sun with the yolk of an egg
+     refers: 1. To its round and yellow figure; 2. To its central
+     situation; 3. To the germ or principle of life contained in
+     the yolk.  May not the oval form of the egg allude to the
+     elipsis of the orbs?  I am inclined to this opinion.  The
+     word Orphic offers a farther observation.  Macrobius says
+     (Som. Scrip. c. 14. and c. 20), that the sun is the brain of
+     the universe, and that it is from analogy that the skull of
+     a human being is round, like the planet, the seat of
+     intelligence.  Now the word Oerph signifies in Hebrew the
+     brain and its seat (cervix): Orpheus, then, is the same as
+     Bedou or Baits; and the Bonzes are those very Orphics which
+     Plutarch represents as quacks, who ate no meat, vended
+     talismans and little stones, and deceived individuals, and
+     even governments themselves. See a learned memoir of Freret
+     sur les Orphiques, Acad. des Inscrp. vol. 25, in quarto.
+
+     **** See Porphyry in Eusebus. Proep. Evang., lib. 3, p. 115.
+
+     *5 The Northern or Etesian wind, which commences regularly
+     at the solstice, with the inundation.
+
+
+VII. Seventh System. Worship of the SOUL of the WORLD, that is to say,
+the Element of Fire, vital Principle of the Universe.
+
+
+"But others, disgusted at the idea of a being at once effect and cause,
+agent and patient, and uniting contrary natures in the same nature,
+distinguished the moving principle from the thing moved; and premising
+that matter in itself was inert they pretended that its properties were
+communicated to it by a distinct agent, of which itself was only the
+cover or the case. This agent was called by some the igneous principle,
+known to be the author of all motion; by others it was supposed to be
+the fluid called ether, which was thought more active and subtile;
+and, as in animals the vital and moving principle was called a soul, a
+spirit, and as they reasoned constantly by comparisons, especially
+those drawn from human beings, they gave to the moving principle of the
+universe the name of soul, intelligence, spirit; and God was the vital
+spirit, which extended through all beings and animated the vast body of
+the world. And this class conveyed their idea sometimes by Youpiter,*
+essence of motion and animation, principle of existence, or rather
+existence itself; sometimes by Vulcan or Phtha, elementary principle of
+fire; or by the altar of Vesta, placed in the center of her temple like
+the sun in the heavens; sometimes by Kneph, a human figure, dressed in
+dark blue, having in one hand a sceptre and a girdle (the zodiac), with
+a cap of feathers to express the fugacity of thought, and producing from
+his mouth the great egg.
+
+     * This is the true pronunciation of the Jupiter of the
+     Latins. . . . Existence itself.  This is the signification
+     of the word You.
+
+"Now, as a consequence of this system, every being containing in itself
+a portion of the igneous and etherial fluid, common and universal mover,
+and this fluid soul of the world being God, it followed that the
+souls of all beings were portions of God himself partaking of all
+his attributes, that is, being a substance indivisible, simple, and
+immortal; and hence the whole system of the immortality of the soul,
+which at first was eternity.*
+
+     * In the system of the first spiritualists, the soul was not
+     created with, or at the same time as the body, in order to
+     be inserted in it: its existence was supposed to be anterior
+     and from all eternity.  Such, in a few words, is the
+     doctrine of Macrobius on this head.  Som. Seip. passim.
+
+     "There exists a luminous, igneous, subtile fluid, which
+     under the name of ether and spiritus, fills the universe.
+     It is the essential principle and agent of motion and life,
+     it is the Deity. When an earthly body is to be animated, a
+     small round particle of this fluid gravitates through the
+     milky way towards the lunar sphere; where, when it arrives,
+     it unites with a grosser air, and becomes fit to associate
+     with matter: it then enters and entirely fills the body,
+     animates it, suffers, grows, increases, and diminishes with
+     it; lastly, when the body dies, and its gross elements
+     dissolve, this incorruptible particle takes its leave of it,
+     and returns to the grand ocean of ether, if not retained by
+     its union with the lunar air: it is this air or gas, which,
+     retaining the shape of the body, becomes a phantom or ghost,
+     the perfect representation of the deceased.  The Greeks
+     called this phantom the image or idol of the soul; the
+     Pythagoreans, its chariot, its frame; and the Rabbinical
+     school, its vessel, or boat.  When a man had conducted
+     himself well in this world, his whole soul, that is its
+     chariot and ether, ascended to the moon, where a separation
+     took place: the chariot lived in the lunar Elysium, and the
+     ether returned to the fixed sphere, that is, to God: for the
+     fixed heaven, says Macrobius, was by many called by the name
+     of God (c. 14).  If a man had not lived virtuously, the soul
+     remained on earth to undergo purification, and was to wander
+     to and fro, like the ghosts of Homer, to whom this doctrine
+     must have been known, since he wrote after the time of
+     Pherecydes and Pythagoras, who were its promulgators in
+     Greece.  Herodotus upon this occasion says, that the whole
+     romance of the soul and its transmigrations was invented by
+     the Egyptians, and propagated in Greece by men, who
+     pretended to be its authors.  I know their names, adds he,
+     but shall not mention them (lib. 2).  Cicero, however, has
+     positively informed us, that it was Pherecydes, master of
+     Pythagoras.  Tuscul. lib. 1, sect. 16. Now admitting that
+     this system was at that period a novelty, it accounts for
+     Solomon's treating it as a fable, who lived 130 years before
+     Pherecydes.  'Who knoweth,' said he, 'the spirit of a man
+     that it goeth upwards?  I said in my heart concerning the
+     estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them and
+     that they might see that they themselves are beasts.  For
+     that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even
+     one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the
+     other; yea they have all one breath, so that a man hath no
+     pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'" Eccles. c.
+     iii: v. 18.
+
+     And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator of
+     Herodotus (M. Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justly
+     observes in note 389 of the second book; where he says also
+     that the immortality of the soul was not introduced among
+     the Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians.  In
+     other respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properly
+     analysed, appears to be merely a system of physics badly
+     understood.
+
+"Hence, also its transmigrations, known by the name of metempsychosis,
+that is, the passage of the vital principle from one body to another; an
+idea which arose from the real transmigration of the material elements.
+And behold, ye Indians, ye Boudhists, ye Christians, ye Mussulmans!
+whence are derived all your opinions on the spirituality of the soul;
+behold what was the source of the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato, your
+masters, who were themselves but the echoes of another, the last sect of
+visionary philosophers, which we will proceed to examine.
+
+
+VIII. Eighth system. The WORLD-MACHINE: Worship of the Demi-Ourgos, or
+Grand Artificer.
+
+
+"Hitherto the theologians, employing themselves in examining the
+fine and subtile substances of ether or the generating fire, had not,
+however, ceased to treat of beings palpable and perceptible to the
+senses; and theology continued to be the theory of physical powers,
+placed sometimes exclusively in the stars, and sometimes disseminated
+through the universe; but at this period, certain superficial minds,
+losing the chain of ideas which had directed them in their profound
+studies, or ignorant of the facts on which they were founded, distorted
+all the conclusions that flowed from them by the introduction of a
+strange and novel chimera. They pretended that this universe, these
+heavens, these stars, this sun, differed in no respect from an ordinary
+machine; and applying to this first hypothesis a comparison drawn from
+the works of art, they raised an edifice of the most whimsical sophisms.
+A machine, said they, does not make itself; it has had an anterior
+workman; its very existence proves it. The world is a machine; therefore
+it had an artificer.*
+
+     * All the arguments of the spiritualists are founded on
+     this.  See Macrobius, at the end of the second book, and
+     Plato, with the comments of Marcilius Ficinus.
+
+"Here, then, is the Demi-Ourgos or grand artificer, constituted God
+autocratical and supreme. In vain the ancient philosophy objected to
+this by saying that the artificer himself must have had parents and
+progenitors; and that they only added another step to the ladder by
+taking eternity from the world, and giving it to its supposed author.
+The innovators, not content with this first paradox, passed on to
+a second; and, applying to their artificer the theory of the human
+understanding, they pretended that the Demi-Ourgos had framed his
+machine on a plan already existing in his understanding. Now, as their
+masters, the naturalists, had placed in the regions of the fixed stars
+the great primum mobile, under the name of intelligence and reason, so
+their mimics, the spiritualists, seizing this idea, applied it to their
+Demi-Ourgos, and making it a substance distinct and self-existent, they
+called it mens or logos (reason or word). And, as they likewise admitted
+the existence of the soul of the world, or solar principle, they found
+themselves obliged to compose three grades of divine beings, which were:
+first, the Demi-Ourgos, or working god; secondly, the logos, word
+or reason; thirdly, the spirit or soul (of the world).* And here,
+Christians! is the romance on which you have founded your trinity; here
+is the system which, born a heretic in the temples of Egypt, transported
+a pagan into the schools of Greece and Italy, is now found to be
+good, catholic, and orthodox, by the conversion of its partisans, the
+disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, to Christianity.
+
+     * These are the real types of the Christian Trinity.
+
+"It is thus that God, after having been, First, The visible and various
+action of the meteors and the elements;
+
+"Secondly, The combined powers of the stars, considered in their
+relations to terrestrial beings;
+
+Thirdly, These terrestrial beings themselves, by confounding the symbols
+with their archetypes;
+
+Fourthly, The double power of nature in its two principal operations of
+producing and destroying;
+
+"Fifthly, The animated world, with distinction of agent and patient, of
+effect and cause;
+
+"Sixthly, The solar principle, or the element of fire considered as the
+only mover;
+
+"Has thus become, finally, in the last resort, a chimerical and abstract
+being, a scholastic subtilty, of substance without form, a body without
+a figure, a very delirium of the mind, beyond the power of reason to
+comprehend. But vainly does it seek in this last transformation to elude
+the senses; the seal of its origin is imprinted upon it too deep to be
+effaced; and its attributes, all borrowed from the physical attributes
+of the universe, such as immensity, eternity, indivisibility,
+incomprehensibility; or on the moral affections of man, such as
+goodness, justice, majesty; its names* even, all derived from the
+physical beings which were its types, and especially from the sun, from
+the planets, and from the world, constantly bring to mind, in spite of
+its corrupters, indelible marks of its real nature.
+
+     * In our last analysis we found all the names of the Deity
+     to be derived from some material object in which it was
+     supposed to reside.  We have given a considerable number of
+     instances; let us add one more relative to our word God.
+     This is known to be the Deus of the Latins, and the Theos of
+     the Greeks.  Now by the confession of Plato (in Cratylo), of
+     Macrobius (Saturn, lib. 1, c. 24,) and of Plutarch (Isis and
+     Osiris) its root is thein, which signifies to wander, like
+     planein, that is to say, it is synonymous with planets;
+     because, add our authors, both the ancient Greeks and
+     Barbarians particularly worshipped the planets.  I know that
+     such enquiries into etymologies have been much decried: but
+     if, as is the case, words are the representative signs of
+     ideas, the genealogy of the one becomes that of the other,
+     and a good etymological dictionary would be the most perfect
+     history of the human understanding.  It would only be
+     necessary in this enquiry to observe certain precautions,
+     which have hitherto been neglected, and particularly to make
+     an exact comparison of the value of the letters of the
+     different alphabets.  But, to continue our subject, we shall
+     add, that in the Phoenician language, the word thah (with
+     ain) signifies also to wander, and appears to be the
+     derivation of thein.  If we suppose Deus to be derived from
+     the Greek Zeus, a proper name of You-piter, having zaw, I
+     live, for its root, its sense will be precisely that of you,
+     and will mean soul of the world, igneous principle.  (See
+     note p. 143).  Div-us, which only signifies Genius, God of
+     the second order, appears to me to come from the oriental
+     word div substituted for dib, wolf and chacal, one of the
+     emblems of the sun.  At Thebes, says Macrobius, the sun was
+     painted under the form of a wolf or chacal, for there are no
+     wolves in Egypt.  The reason of this emblem, doubtless, is
+     that the chacal, like the cock announces by its cries the
+     sun's rising; and this reason is confirmed by the analogy of
+     the words lykos, wolf, and lyke, light of the morning,
+     whence comes lux.
+
+     Dius, which is to be understood also of the sun, must be
+     derived from dih, a hawk.  "The Egyptians," says Porphyry
+     (Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 92,) "represent the sun under the
+     emblem of a hawk, because this bird soars to the highest
+     regions of air where light abounds."  And in reality we
+     continually see at Cairo large flights of these birds,
+     hovering in the air, from whence they descend not but to
+     stun us with their shrieks, which are like the monosyllable
+     dih: and here, as in the preceding example, we find an
+     analogy between the word dies, day, light, and dius, god,
+     sun.
+
+"Such is the chain of ideas which the human mind had already run
+through at an epoch previous to the records of history; and since their
+continuity proves that they were the produce of the same series of
+studies and labors, we have every reason to place their origin in Egypt,
+the cradle of their first elements. This progress there may have been
+rapid; because the physical priests had no other food, in the retirement
+of the temples, but the enigma of the universe, always present to their
+minds; and because in the political districts into which that country
+was for a long time divided, every state had its college of priests,
+who, being by turns auxiliaries or rivals, hastened by their disputes
+the progress of science and discovery.*
+
+     * One of the proofs that all these systems were invented in
+     Egypt, is that this is the only country where we see a
+     complete body of doctrine formed from the remotest
+     antiquity.
+
+     Clemens Alexandrinus has transmitted to us (Stromat. lib.
+     6,) a curious detail of the forty-two volumes which were
+     borne in the procession of Isis.  "The priest," says he, "or
+     chanter, carries one of the symbolic instruments of music,
+     and two of the books of Mercury; one containing hymns of the
+     gods, the other the list of kings.  Next to him the
+     horoscope (the regulator of time,) carries a palm and a
+     dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the four
+     books of Mercury which treat of astrology: the first on the
+     order of the planets, the second on the risings of the sun
+     and moon, and the two last on the rising and aspect of the
+     stars.  Then comes the sacred author, with feathers on his
+     head (like Kneph) and a book in his hand, together with ink,
+     and a reed to write with, (as is still the practice among
+     the Arabs).  He must be versed in hieroglyphics, must
+     understand the description of the universe, the course of
+     the sun, moon, stars, and planets, be acquainted with the
+     division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes, with the course of
+     the Nile, with instruments, measures, sacred ornaments, and
+     sacred places.  Next comes the stole bearer, who carries the
+     cubit of justice, or measure of the Nile, and a cup for the
+     libations; he bears also in the procession ten volumes on
+     the subject of sacrifices, hymns, prayers, offerings,
+     ceremonies, festivals. Lastly arrives the prophet, bearing
+     in his bosom a pitcher, so as to be exposed to view; he is
+     followed by persons carrying bread (as at the marriage of
+     Cana.) This prophet, as president of the mysteries, learns
+     ten other sacred volumes, which treat of the laws, the gods,
+     and the discipline of the priests.  Now there are in all
+     forty-two volumes, thirty-six of which are studied and got
+     by heart by these personages, and the remaining six are set
+     apart to be consulted by the pastophores; they treat of
+     medicine, the construction of the human body (anatomy),
+     diseases, remedies, instruments, etc., etc."
+
+     We leave the reader to deduce all the consequences of an
+     Encyclopedia.  It is ascribed to Mercury; but Jamblicus
+     tells us that each book, composed by priests, was dedicated
+     to that god, who, on account of his title of genius or decan
+     opening the zodiac, presided over every enterprise.  He is
+     the Janus of the Romans, and the Guianesa of the Indians,
+     and it is remarkable that Yanus and Guianes are homonymous.
+     In short it appears that these books are the source of all
+     that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and Latins in
+     every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc.  What is
+     most to be regretted in their loss is that part which
+     related to the principles of medicine and diet, in which the
+     Egyptians appear to have made a considerable progress, and
+     to have delivered many useful observations.
+
+"There happened early on the borders of the Nile, what has since been
+repeated in every country; as soon as a new system was formed
+its novelty excited quarrels and schisms; then, gaining credit by
+persecution itself, sometimes it effaced antecedent ideas, sometimes it
+modified and incorporated them; then, by the intervention of political
+revolutions, the aggregation of states and the mixture of nations
+confused all opinions; and the filiation of ideas being lost, theology
+fell into a chaos, and became a mere logogriph of old traditions no
+longer understood. Religion, having strayed from its object was now
+nothing more than a political engine to conduct the credulous vulgar;
+and it was used for this purpose, sometimes by men credulous themselves
+and dupes of their own visions, and sometimes by bold and energetic
+spirits in pursuit of great objects of ambition.
+
+
+IX. Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World (You-piter).
+
+
+"Such was the legislator of the Hebrews; who, wishing to separate his
+nation from all others, and to form a distinct and solitary empire,
+conceived the design of establishing its basis on religious prejudices,
+and of raising around it a sacred rampart of opinions and of rites. But
+in vain did he prescribe the worship of the symbols which prevailed in
+lower Egypt and in Phoenicia;* for his god was nevertheless an Egyptian
+god, invented by those priests of whom Moses had been the disciple; and
+Yahouh,** betrayed by its very name, essence (of beings), and by its
+symbol, the burning bush, is only the soul of the world, the
+moving principle which the Greeks soon after adopted under the same
+denomination in their you-piter, regenerating being, and under that of
+Ei, existence,*** which the Thebans consecrated by the name of Kneph,
+which Sais worshipped under the emblem of Isis veiled, with this
+inscription: I am al that has been, all that is, and all that is to
+come, and no mortal has raised my veil; which Pythagoras honored under
+the name of Vesta, and which the stoic philosophy defined precisely by
+calling it the principle of fire. In vain did Moses wish to blot from
+his religion every thing which had relation to the stars; many traits
+call them to mind in spite of all he has done. The seven planetary
+luminaries of the great candlestick; the twelve stones, or signs in the
+Urim of the high priests; the feast of the two equinoxes, (entrances and
+gates of the two hemispheres); the ceremony of the lamb, (the celestial
+ram then in his fifteenth degree); lastly, the name even of Osiris
+preserved in his song,**** and the ark, or coffer, an imitation of the
+tomb in which that God was laid, all remain as so many witnesses of the
+filiation of his ideas, and of their extraction from the common source.
+
+     * "At a certain period," says Plutarch (de Iside) "all the
+     Egyptians have their animal gods painted.  The Thebans are
+     the only people who do not employ painters, because they
+     worship a god whose form comes not under the senses, and
+     cannot be represented."  And this is the god whom Moses,
+     educated at Heliopolis, adopted; but the idea was not of his
+     invention.
+
+     ** Such is the true pronunciation of the Jehovah of the
+     moderns, who violate, in this respect, every rule of
+     criticism; since it is evident that the ancients,
+     particularly the eastern Syrians and Phoenicians, were
+     acquainted neither with the J nor the P which are of Tartar
+     origin.  The subsisting usage of the Arabs, which we have
+     re-established here, is confirmed by Diodorus, who calls the
+     god of Moses Iaw, (lib. 1), and Iaw and Yahouh are
+     manifestly the same word: the identity continues in that of
+     You-piter; but in order to render it more complete, we shall
+     demonstrate the signification to be the same.
+
+     In Hebrew, that is to say, in one of the dialects of the
+     common language of lower Asia, Yahouh is the participle of
+     the verb hih, to exist, to be, and signifies existing: in
+     other words, the principle of life, the mover or even motion
+     (the universal soul of beings).  Now what is Jupiter?  Let
+     us hear the Greeks and Latins explain their theology.  "The
+     Egyptians," says Diodorus, after Manatho, priest of Memphis,
+     "in giving names to the five elements, called spirit, or
+     ether, You-piter, on account of the true meaning of that
+     word: for spirit is the source of life, author of the vital
+     principle in animals; and for this reason they considered
+     him as the father, the generator of beings."  For the same
+     reason Homer says, father, and king of men and gods.  (Diod.
+     lib. 1, sect 1).
+
+     "Theologians," says Macrobius, "consider You-piter as the
+     soul of the world."  Hence the words of Virgil: " Muses let
+     us begin with You-piter; the world is full of You-piter."
+     (Somn. Scrip., ch. 17).  And in the Saturnalia, he says,
+     "Jupiter is the sun himself." It was this also which made
+     Virgil say, "The spirit nourishes the life (of beings), and
+     the soul diffused through the vast members (of the
+     universe), agitates the whole mass, and forms but one
+     immense body."
+
+     "Ioupiter," says the ancient verses of the Orphic sect,
+     which originated in Egypt; verses collected by Onomacritus
+     in the days of Pisistratus, "Ioupiter, represented with the
+     thunder in his hand, is the beginning, origin, end, and
+     middle of all things: a single and universal power, he
+     governs every thing; heaven, earth, fire, water, the
+     elements, day, and night.  These are what constitute his
+     immense body: his eyes are the sun and moon: he is space and
+     eternity: in fine," adds Porphyry.  "Jupiter is the world,
+     the universe, that which constitutes the essence and life of
+     all beings.  Now," continues the same author, "as
+     philosophers differed in opinion respecting the nature and
+     constituent parts of this god, and as they could invent no
+     figure that should represent all his attributes, they
+     painted him in the form of a man.  He is in a sitting
+     posture, in allusion to his immutable essence; the upper
+     part of his body is uncovered, because it is in the upper
+     regions of the universe (the stars) that he most
+     conspicuously displays himself.  He is covered from the
+     waist downwards, because respecting terrestrial things he is
+     more secret and concealed.  He holds a scepter in his left
+     hand, because on the left side is the heart, and the heart
+     is the seat of the understanding, which, (in human beings)
+     regulates every action."  Euseb. Proeper. Evang., p 100.
+
+     The following passage of the geographer and philosopher,
+     Strabo, removes every doubt as to the identity of the ideas
+     of Moses and those of the heathen theologians.
+
+     "Moses, who was one of the Egyptian priests, taught his
+     followers that it was an egregious error to represent the
+     Deity under the form of animals, as the Egyptians did, or in
+     the shape of man, as was the practice of the Greeks and
+     Africans.  That alone is the Deity, said he, which
+     constitutes heaven, earth, and every living thing; that
+     which we call the world, the sum of all things, nature; and
+     no reasonable person will think of representing such a being
+     by the image of any one of the objects around us.  It is for
+     this reason, that, rejecting every species of images or
+     idols, Moses wished the Deity to be worshipped without
+     emblems, and according to his proper nature; and he
+     accordingly ordered a temple worthy of him to be erected,
+     etc.  Geograph. lib. 16, p. 1104, edition of 1707.
+
+     The theology of Moses has, then, differed in no respect from
+     that of his followers, that is to say, from that of the
+     Stoics and Epicureans, who consider the Deity as the soul of
+     the world.  This philosophy appears to have taken birth, or
+     to have been disseminated when Abraham came into Egypt (200
+     years before Moses), since he quitted his system of idols
+     for that of the god Yahouh; so that we may place its
+     promulgation about the seventeenth or eighteenth century
+     before Christ; which corresponds with what we have said
+     before.
+
+     As to the history of Moses, Diodorus properly represents it
+     when he says, lib. 34 and 40, "That the Jews were driven out
+     of Egypt at a time of dearth, when the country was full of
+     foreigners, and that Moses, a man of extraordinary prudence
+     seized this opportunity of establishing his religion in the
+     mountains of Judea."  It will seem paradoxical to assert,
+     that the 600,000 armed men whom he conducted thither ought
+     to be reduced to 6,000; but I can confirm the assertion by
+     so many proofs drawn from the books themselves, that it will
+     be necessary to correct an error which appears to have
+     arisen from the mistake of the transcribers.
+
+     *** This was the monosyllable written on the gates of the
+     temple of Delphos.  Plutarch has made it the subject of a
+     dissertation.
+
+     **** These are the literal expressions of the book of
+     Deuteronomy, chap. XXXII.  "The works of Tsour are perfect."
+     Now Tsour has been translated by the word creator; its
+     proper signification is to give forms, and this is one of
+     the definitions of Osiris in Plutarch.
+
+
+X. Religion of Zoroaster.
+
+
+"Such also was Zoroaster; who, five centuries after Moses, and in the
+time of David, revived and moralized among the Medes and Bactrians, the
+whole Egyptian system of Osiris and Typhon, under the names Ormuzd and
+Ahrimanes; who called the reign of summer, virtue and good; the reign of
+winter, sin and evil; the renewal of nature in spring, creation of the
+world; the conjunction of the spheres at secular periods, resurrection;
+and the Tartarus and Elysium of the astrologers and geographers were
+named future life, hell and paradise. In a word, he did nothing but
+consecrate the existing dreams of the mystical system.
+
+
+XI. Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans.
+
+
+"Such again are the propagators of the dismal doctrine of the Samaneans;
+who, on the basis of the Metempsychosis, have erected the misanthropic
+system of self-denial, and of privations; who, laying it down as a
+principle that the body is only a prison where the soul lives in an
+impure confinement, that life is only a dream, an illusion, and the
+world only a passage to another country, to a life without end, placed
+virtue and perfection in absolute immobility, in the destruction of all
+sentiment, in the abnegation of physical organs, in the annihilation of
+all our being; whence resulted fasts, penances, macerations, solitude,
+contemplations, and all the practices of the deplorable delirium of the
+Anchorites.
+
+
+XII. Brahmism, or Indian System.
+
+
+"And such, too, were the founders of the Indian System; who, refining
+after Zoroaster on the two principles of creation and destruction,
+introduced an intermediary principle, that of preservation, and on
+their trinity in unity, of Brama, Chiven, and Vichenou, accumulated the
+allegories of their ancient traditions, and the alembicated subtilities
+of their metaphysics.
+
+"These are the materials which existed in a scattered state for
+many centuries in Asia; when a fortuitous concourse of events and
+circumstances, on the borders of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean,
+served to form them into new combinations.
+
+
+XIII. Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun, under the
+cabalistical names of Chrish-en, or Christ, and Ye-sus or Jesus.
+
+
+"In constituting a separate nation, Moses strove in vain to defend it
+against the invasion of foreign ideas. An invisible inclination, founded
+on the affinity of their origin, had constantly brought back the Hebrews
+towards the worship of the neighboring nations; and the commercial and
+political relations which necessarily existed between them, strengthened
+this propensity from day to day. As long as the constitution of the
+state remained entire, the coercive force of the government and the laws
+opposed these innovations, and retarded their progress; nevertheless
+the high places were full of idols; and the god Sun had his chariot and
+horses painted in the palaces of the kings, and even in the temples of
+Yahouh; but when the conquests of the sultans of Nineveh and Babylon had
+dissolved the bands of civil power, the people, left to themselves and
+solicited by their conquerors, restrained no longer their inclination
+for profane opinions, and they were publicly established in Judea.
+First, the Assyrian colonies, which came and occupied the lands of the
+tribes, filled the kingdom of Samaria with dogmas of the Magi, which
+very soon penetrated into the kingdom of Judea. Afterwards, Jerusalem
+being subjugated, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Arabs, entering this
+defenceless country, introduced their opinions; and the religion of
+Moses was doubly mutilated. Besides the priests and great men, being
+transported to Babylon and educated in the sciences of the Chaldeans,
+imbibed, during a residence of seventy years, the whole of their
+theology; and from that moment the dogmas of the hostile Genius (Satan),
+the archangel Michael,* the ancient of days (Ormuzd), the rebel
+angels, the battles in heaven, the immortality of the soul, and the
+resurrection, all unknown to Moses, or rejected by his total silence
+respecting them, were introduced and naturalized among the Jews.
+
+     * "The names of the angels and of the months, such as
+     Gabriel, Michael, Yar, Nisan, etc., came from Babylon with
+     the Jews:" says expressly the Talmud of Jerusalem.  See
+     Beousob. Hist. du Manich. Vol. II, p. 624, where he proves
+     that the saints of the Almanac are an imitation of the 365
+     angels of the Persians; and Jamblicus in his Egyptian
+     Mysteries, sect. 2, c. 3, speaks of angels, archangels,
+     seraphims, etc., like a true Christian.
+
+"The emigrants returned to their country with these ideas; and their
+innovation at first excited disputes between their partisans the
+Pharisees, and their opponents the Saducees, who maintained the ancient
+national worship; but the former, aided by the propensities of the
+people and their habits already contracted, and supported by the
+Persians, their deliverers and masters, gained the ascendant over the
+latter; and the Sons of Moses consecrated the theology of Zoroaster.*
+
+     * "The whole philosophy of the gymnosophists," says Diogenes
+     Laertius on the authority of an ancient writer, "is derived
+     from that of the Magi, and many assert that of the Jews to
+     have the same origin."  Lib. 1. c. 9.  Megasthenes, an
+     historian of repute in the days of Seleucus Nicanor, and who
+     wrote particularly upon India, speaking of the philosophy of
+     the ancients respecting natural things, puts the Brachmans
+     and the Jews precisely on the same footing.
+
+"A fortuitous analogy between two leading ideas was highly favorable
+to this coalition, and became the basis of a last system, not less
+surprising in the fortune it has had in the world, than in the causes of
+its formation.
+
+"After the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Samaria, some
+judicious men foresaw the same destiny for Jerusalem, which they did not
+fail to predict and publish; and their predictions had the particular
+turn of being terminated by prayers for a re-establishment and
+regeneration, uttered in the form of prophecies. The Hierophants,
+in their enthusiasm, had painted a king as a deliverer, who was to
+re-establish the nation in its ancient glory; the Hebrews were to become
+once more a powerful, a conquering nation, and Jerusalem the capital of
+an empire extended over the whole earth.
+
+"Events having realized the first part of these predictions, the ruin of
+Jerusalem, the people adhered to the second with a firmness of belief in
+proportion to their misfortunes; and the afflicted Jews expected, with
+the impatience of want and desire, this victorious king and deliverer,
+who was to come and save the nation of Moses, and restore the empire of
+David.
+
+"On the other hand, the sacred and mythological traditions of preceding
+times had spread through all Asia a dogma perfectly analogous. The cry
+there was a great mediator, a final judge, a future saviour, a king,
+god, conqueror and legislator, who was to restore the golden age upon
+earth,* to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the
+empire of good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished
+these ideas with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a
+consolation under that deplorable state of suffering into which they
+had been plunged by the devastations of successive conquests, and the
+barbarous despotism of their governments. This conformity between the
+oracles of different nations, and those of the prophets, excited the
+attention of the Jews; and doubtless the prophets had the art to compose
+their descriptions after the style and genius of the sacred books
+employed in the Pagan mysteries. There was therefore a general
+expectation in Judea of a great ambassador, a final Saviour; when a
+singular circumstance determined the epoch of his coming.
+
+     * This is the reason of the application of the many Pagan
+     oracles to Jesus, and particularly the fourth eclogue of
+     Virgil, and the Sybilline verses so celebrated among the
+     ancients.
+
+"It is found in the sacred books of the Persians and Chaldeans, that the
+world, composed of a total revolution of twelve thousand, was divided
+into two partial revolutions; one of which, the age and reign of good,
+terminated in six thousand; the other, the age and reign of evil, was to
+terminate in six thousand more.
+
+"By these records, the first authors had understood the annual
+revolution of the great celestial orb called the world, (a revolution
+composed of twelve months or signs, divided each into a thousand parts),
+and the two systematic periods, of winter and summer, composed each of
+six thousand. These expressions, wholly equivocal and badly explained,
+having received an absolute and moral, instead of a physical and
+astrological sense, it happened that the annual world was taken for the
+secular world, the thousand of the zodiacal divisions, for a thousand of
+years; and supposing, from the state of things, that they lived in
+the age of evil, they inferred that it would end with the six thousand
+pretended years.*
+
+     * We have already seen this tradition current among the
+     Tuscans; it was disseminated through most nations, and shows
+     us what we ought to think of all the pretended creations and
+     terminations of the world, which are merely the beginnings
+     and endings of astronomical periods invented by astrologers.
+     That of the year or solar revolution, being the most simple
+     and perceptible, served as a model to the rest, and its
+     comparison gave rise to the most whimsical ideas.  Of this
+     description is the idea of the four ages of the world among
+     the Indians.  Originally these four ages were merely the
+     four seasons; and as each season was under the supposed
+     influence of a planet, it bore the name of the metal
+     appropriated to that planet; thus spring was the age of the
+     sun, or of gold; summer the age of the moon, or of silver;
+     autumn the age of Venus, or of brass; and winter the age of
+     Mars, or of iron.  Afterwards when astronomers invented the
+     great year of 25 and 36 thousand common years, which had for
+     its object the bringing back all the stars to one point of
+     departure and a general conjunction, the ambiguity of the
+     terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and the
+     myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which
+     were thus measured were easily converted into so many
+     revolutions of the sun.  Thus the different periods of
+     creation which have been so great a source of difficulty and
+     misapprehension to curious enquirers, were in reality
+     nothing more than hypothetical calculations of astronomical
+     periods.  In the same manner the creation of the world has
+     been attributed to different seasons of the year, just as
+     these different seasons have served for the fictitious
+     period of these conjunctions; and of consequence has been
+     adopted by different nations for the commencement of an
+     ordinary year.  Among the Egyptians this period fell upon
+     the summer solstice, which was the commencement of their
+     year; and the departure of the spheres, according to their
+     conjectures, fell in like manner upon the period when the
+     sun enters cancer.  Among the Persians the year commenced at
+     first in the spring, or when the sun enters Aries; and from
+     thence the first Christians were led to suppose that God
+     created the world in the spring: this opinion is also
+     favored by the book of Genesis; and it is farther
+     remarkable, that the world is not there said to be created
+     by the God of Moses (Yahouh), but by the Elohim or gods in
+     the plural, that is by the angels or genii, for so the word
+     constantly means in the Hebrew books.  If we farther observe
+     that the root of the word Elohim signifies strong or
+     powerful, and that the Egyptians called their decans strong
+     and powerful leaders, attributing to them the creation of
+     the world, we shall presently perceive that the book of
+     Genesis affirms neither more nor less than that the world
+     was created by the decans, by those very genii whom,
+     according to Sanchoniathon, Mercury excited against Saturn,
+     and who were called Elohim.  It may be farther asked why the
+     plural substantive Elohim is made to agree with the singular
+     verb bara (the Elohim creates). The reason is that after the
+     Babylonish captivity the unity of the Supreme Being was the
+     prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was therefore thought
+     proper to introduce a pious solecism in language, which it
+     is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the names
+     of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a
+     plural verb, to which Elohim is the nominative case
+     understood, as Raouben (Reuben), they have looked upon me,
+     and Samaonni (Simeon), they have granted me my prayer; to
+     wit, the Elohim.  The reason of this etymology is to be
+     found in the religious creeds of the wives of Jacob, whose
+     gods were the taraphim of Laban, that is, the angels of the
+     Persians, and Egyptian decans.
+
+"Now, according to calculations admitted by the Jews, they began to
+reckon near six thousand years since the supposed creation of the
+world.* This coincidence caused a fermentation in the public mind.
+Nothing was thought of but the approaching end. They consulted the
+hierophants and the mystical books, which differed as to the term; the
+great mediator, the final judge, was expected and desired, to put an
+end to so many calamities. This being was so much spoken of, that some
+person finally was said to have seen him; and a first rumor of this sort
+was sufficient to establish a general certainty. Popular report became
+an established fact: the imaginary being was realized; and all the
+circumstances of mythological tradition, being assembled around this
+phantom, produced a regular history, of which it was no longer permitted
+to doubt.
+
+     * According to the computation of the Seventy, the period
+     elapsed consisted of about 5,600 years, and this computation
+     was principally followed.  It is well known how much, in the
+     first ages of the church, this opinion of the end of the
+     world agitated the minds of men.  In the sequel, the general
+     councils encouraged by finding that the general
+     conflagration did not come, pronounced the expectation that
+     prevailed heretical, and its believers were called
+     Millenarians; a circumstance curious enough, since it is
+     evident from the history of the gospels that Jesus Christ
+     was a Millenarian, and of consequence a heretic.
+
+"These mythological traditions recounted that, in the beginning, a woman
+and a man had by their fall introduced sin and misery into the world.
+(Consult plate of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
+
+"By this was denoted the astronomical fact, that the celestial virgin
+and the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal
+equinox, delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed,
+on falling below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of
+evil, Ahrimanes, represented by the constellation of the Serpent.*
+
+     * "The Persians," says Chardin, "call the constellation of
+     the serpent Ophiucus, serpent of Eve: and this serpent
+     Ophiucas or Ophioneus plays a similar part in the theology
+     of the Phoenicians," for Pherecydes, their disciple and the
+     master of Pythagoras, said "that Ophioneus Serpentinus had
+     been chief of the rebels against Jupiter."  See Mars. Ficin.
+     Apol. Socrat. p. m. 797, col. 2.  I shall add that ephah
+     (with ain) signifies in Hebrew, serpent.
+
+These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the
+man.*
+
+     * In a physical sense to seduce, seducere, means only to
+     attract, to draw after us.
+
+"And in fact, the virgin, setting first, seems to draw the herdsman
+after her.
+
+"That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight and
+good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil.
+
+"And in fact, the Virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit, which she
+seems to offer to the Herdsman; and the branch, emblem of autumn, placed
+in the picture of Mithra* between winter and summer, seems to open the
+door and give knowledge, the key of good and evil.
+
+     * See this picture in Hyde, page 111, edition of 1760.
+
+That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and that a
+cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to guard it.
+
+"And in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the horizon,
+Perseus rises on the other side;* and this Genius, with a sword in
+his hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the garden and
+dominion of fruits and flowers.
+
+     * Rather the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so
+     beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his
+     hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the
+     horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the
+     serpents which surround it are Orphiucus and the Polar
+     Dragon, who then occupy the zenith. This shows us in what
+     manner the ancients composed all their figures and fables.
+     They took such constellations as they found at the same time
+     on the circle of the horizon, and collecting the different
+     parts, they formed groups which served them as an almanac in
+     hieroglyphic characters.  Such is the secret of all their
+     pictures, and the solution of all their mythological
+     monsters.  The virgin is also Andromeda, delivered by
+     Perseus from the whale that pursues her (pro-sequitor).
+
+That of this virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a child,
+who should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the world from
+sin.
+
+"This denotes the son, which, at the moment of the winter solstice,
+precisely when the Persian Magi drew the horoscope of the new year,
+was placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern
+horizon; on this account he was figured in their astrological pictures
+under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin,* and became
+afterwards, at the vernal equinox, the ram, or the lamb, triumphant over
+the constellation of the Serpent, which disappeared from the skies.
+
+     * Such was the picture of the Persian sphere, cited by Aben
+     Ezra in the Coelam Poeticum of Blaeu, p. 71.  "The picture
+     of the first decan of the Virgin," says that writer.
+     "represents a beautiful virgin with flowing hair; sitting in
+     a chair, with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an
+     infant, called Jesus by some nations, and Christ in Greek."
+
+     In the library of the king of France is a manuscript in
+     Arabic, marked 1165, in which is a picture of the twelve
+     signs; and that of the Virgin represents a young woman with
+     an infant by her side: the whole scene indeed of the birth
+     of Jesus is to be found in the adjacent part of the heavens.
+     The stable is the constellation of the charioteer and the
+     goat, formerly Capricorn: a constellation called proesepe
+     Jovis Heniochi, stable of Iou; and the word Iou is found in
+     the name Iou-seph (Joseph).  At no great distance is the ass
+     of Typhon (the great she-bear), and the ox or bull, the
+     ancient attendants of the manger.  Peter the porter, is
+     Janus with his keys and bald forehead: the twelve apostles
+     are the genii of the twelve months, etc.  This Virgin has
+     acted very different parts in the various systems of
+     mythology: she has been the Isis of the Egyptians, who said
+     of her in one of their inscriptions cited by Julian, the
+     fruit I have brought forth is the sun.  The majority of
+     traits drawn by Plutarch apply to her, in the same manner as
+     those of Osiris apply to Bootes: also the seven principal
+     stars of the she-bear, called David's chariot, were called
+     the chariot of Osiris (See Kirker); and the crown that is
+     situated behind, formed of ivy, was called Chen-Osiris, the
+     tree of Osiris.  The Virgin has likewise been Ceres, whose
+     mysteries were the same with those of Isis and Mithra; she
+     has been the Diana of the Ephesians; the great goddess of
+     Syria, Cybele, drawn by lions; Minerva, the mother of
+     Bacchus; Astraea, a chaste virgin taken up into heaven at
+     the end of a golden age; Themis at whose feet is the balance
+     that was put in her hands; the Sybil of Virgil, who descends
+     into hell, or sinks below the hemisphere with a branch in
+     her hand, etc.
+
+That, in his infancy, this restorer of divine and celestial nature would
+live abased, humble, obscure and indigent.
+
+"And this, because the winter sun is abased below the horizon; and that
+this first period of his four ages or seasons, is a time of obscurity,
+scarcity, fasting, and want.
+
+"That, being put to death by the wicked, he had risen gloriously; that
+he had reascended from hell to heaven, where he would reign forever
+
+"This is a sketch of the life of the sun; who, finishing his career at
+the winter solstice, when Typhon and the rebel angels gain the dominion,
+seems to be put to death by them; but who soon after is born again, and
+rises* into the vault of heaven, where he reigns.
+
+     * Resurgere, to rise a second time, cannot signify to return
+     to life, but in a metaphorical sense; but we see continually
+     mistakes of this kind result from the ambiguous meaning of
+     the words made use of in ancient tradition.
+
+"Finally, these traditions went so far as to mention even his
+astrological and mythological names, and inform us that he was called
+sometimes Chris, that is to say, preserver,* and from that, ye Indians,
+you have made your god Chrish-en or Chrish-na; and, ye Greek and Western
+Christians, your Chris-tos, son of Mary, is the same; sometimes he is
+called Yes, by the union of three letters, which by their numerical
+value form the number 608, one of the solar periods.** And this,
+Europeans, is the name which, with the Latin termination, is become your
+Yes-us or Jesus, the ancient and cabalistic name attributed to young
+Bacchus, the clandestine son (nocturnal) of the Virgin Minerva, who, in
+the history of his whole life, and even of his death, brings to mind the
+history of the god of the Christians, that is, of the star of day, of
+which they are each of them the emblems."
+
+     * The Greeks used to express by X, or Spanish iota, the
+     aspirated ha of the Orientals, who said haris.  In Hebrew
+     heres signifies the sun, but in Arabic the meaning of the
+     radical word is, to guard, to preserve, and of haris,
+     guardian, preserver.  It is the proper epithet of Vichenou,
+     which demonstrates at once the identity of the Indian and
+     Christian Trinities, and their common origin.  It is
+     manifestly but one system, which divided into two branches,
+     one extending to the east, and the other to the west,
+     assumed two different forms: Its principal trunk is the
+     Pythagorean system of the soul of the world, or Iou-piter.
+     The epithet piter, or father, having been applied to the
+     demi-ourgos of Plato, gave rise to an ambiguity which caused
+     an enquiry to be made respecting the son of this father.  In
+     the opinion of the philosophers the son was understanding,
+     Nous and Logos, from which the Latins made their Verbum.
+     And thus we clearly perceive the origin of the eternal
+     father and of the Verbum his son, proceeding from him (Mens
+     Ex Deo nata, says Macrobius): the oenima or spiritus mundi,
+     was the Holy Ghost; and it is for this reason that Manes,
+     Pasilides, Valentinius, and other pretended heretics of the
+     first ages, who traced things to their source, said, that
+     God the Father was the supreme inaccessible light (that of
+     the heaven, the primum mobile, or the aplanes); the Son the
+     secondary light resident in the sun, and the Holy Ghost the
+     atmosphere of the earth (See Beausob. vol. II, p. 586):
+     hence, among the Syrians, the representation of the Holy
+     Ghost by a dove, the bird of Venus Urania, that is of the
+     air. The Syrians (says Nigidius de Germaico) assert that a
+     dove sat for a certain number of days on the egg of a fish,
+     and that from this incubation Venus was born: Sextus
+     Empiricus also observes (Inst. Pyrrh. lib. 3, c. 23) that
+     the Syrians abstain from eating doves; which intimates to us
+     a period commencing in the sign Pisces, in the winter
+     solstice.  We may farther observe, that if Chris comes from
+     Harisch by a chin, it will signify artificer, an epithet
+     belonging to the sun.  These variations, which must have
+     embarrassed the ancients, prove it to be the real type of
+     Jesus, as had been already remarked in the time of
+     Tertullian.  "Many, says this writer, suppose with greater
+     probability that the sun is our God, and they refer us to
+     the religion of the Persians."  Apologet. c. 16.
+
+     ** See a curious ode to the sun, by Martianus Capella,
+     translated by Gebelin.
+
+Here a great murmur having arisen among all the Christian groups, the
+Lamas, the Mussulmans and the Indians called them to order, and the
+orator went on to finish his discourse:
+
+"You know at present," said he, "how the rest of this system was
+composed in the chaos and anarchy of the three first centuries; what a
+multitude of singular opinions divided the minds of men, and armed them
+with an enthusiasm and a reciprocal obstinacy; because, being equally
+founded on ancient tradition, they were equally sacred. You know how the
+government, after three centuries, having embraced one of these sects,
+made it the orthodox, that is to say, the pre-dominant religion, to the
+exclusion of the rest; which, being less in number, became heretics; you
+know how and by what means of violence and seduction this religion was
+propagated, extended, divided, and enfeebled; how, six hundred years
+after the Christian innovation, another system was formed from it and
+from that of the Jews; and how Mahomet found the means of composing a
+political and theological empire at the expense of those of Moses and
+the vicars of Jesus.
+
+"Now, if you take a review of the whole history of the spirit of all
+religion, you will see that in its origin it has had no other author
+than the sensations and wants of man; that the idea of God has had no
+other type and model than those of physical powers, material beings,
+producing either good or evil, by impressions of pleasure or pain on
+sensitive beings; that in the formation of all these systems the spirit
+of religion has always followed the same course, and been uniform in
+its proceedings; that in all of them the dogma has never failed to
+represent, under the name of gods, the operations of nature, and
+passions and prejudices of men; that the moral of them all has had for
+its object the desire of happiness and the aversion to pain; but that
+the people, and the greater part of legislators, not knowing the route
+to be pursued, have formed false, and therefore discordant, ideas of
+virtue and vice of good and evil, that is to say, of what renders man
+happy or miserable; that in every instance, the means and the causes of
+propagating and establishing systems have exhibited the same scenes of
+passion and the same events; everywhere disputes about words, pretexts
+for zeal, revolutions and wars excited by the ambition of princes, the
+knavery of apostles, the credulity of proselytes, the ignorance of the
+vulgar, the exclusive cupidity and intolerant arrogance of all. Indeed,
+you will see that the whole history of the spirit of religion is only
+the history of the errors of the human mind, which, placed in a world
+that it does not comprehend, endeavors nevertheless to solve the enigma;
+and which, beholding with astonishment this mysterious and visible
+prodigy, imagines causes, supposes reasons, builds systems; then,
+finding one defective, destroys it for another not less so; hates the
+error that it abandons, misconceives the one that it embraces, rejects
+the truth that it is seeking, composes chimeras of discordant beings;
+and thus, while always dreaming of wisdom and happiness, wanders blindly
+in a labyrinth of illusion and doubt."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ALL RELIGIONS HAVE THE SAME OBJECT.
+
+
+Thus spoke the orator in the name of those men who had studied the
+origin and succession of religious ideas.
+
+The theologians of various systems, reasoning on this discourse: "It is
+an impious representation," said some, "whose tendency is nothing less
+than to overturn all belief, to destroy subordination in the minds of
+men, and annihilate our ministry and power." "It is a romance," said
+others, "a tissue of conjectures, composed with art, but without
+foundation." The moderate and prudent men added: "Supposing all this to
+be true, why reveal these mysteries? Doubtless our opinions are full of
+errors; but these errors are a necessary restraint on the multitude. The
+world has gone thus for two thousand years; why change it now?"
+
+A murmur of disapprobation, which never fails to rise at every
+innovation, now began to increase; when a numerous group of the common
+classes of people, and of untaught men of all countries and of every
+nation, without prophets, without doctors, and without doctrine,
+advancing in the circle, drew the attention of the whole assembly; and
+one of them, in the name of all, thus addressed the multitude:
+
+"Mediators and arbiters of nations! the strange relations which have
+occupied the present debate were unknown to us until this day. Our
+understanding, confounded and amazed at so many statements, some of them
+learned, others absurd and all incomprehensible, remains in uncertainty
+and doubt. One only reflection has struck us: on reviewing so many
+prodigious facts, so many contradictory assertions, we ask ourselves:
+What are all these discussions to us? What need have we of knowing what
+passed five or six thousand years ago, in countries we never heard
+of, and among men who will ever be unknown to us? True or false, what
+interest have we in knowing whether the world has existed six thousand,
+or twenty-five thousand years? Whether it was made of nothing, or of
+something; by itself, or by a maker, who in his turn would require
+another maker? What! we are not sure of what happens near us, and shall
+we answer for what happens in the sun, in the moon, or in imaginary
+regions of space? We have forgotten our own infancy, and shall we know
+the infancy of the world? And who will attest what no one has seen? who
+will certify what no man comprehends?
+
+"Besides, what addition or diminution will it make to our existence, to
+answer yes or no to all these chimeras? Hitherto neither our fathers nor
+ourselves have had the least knowledge or notion of them, and we do not
+perceive that we have had on this account either more or less of the
+sun, more or less of subsistence, more or less of good or of evil.
+
+"If the knowledge of these things is so necessary, why have we lived as
+well without it as those who have taken so much trouble concerning it?
+If this knowledge is superfluous, why should we burden ourselves with it
+to-day?"
+
+Then addressing himself to the doctors and theologians:
+
+"What!" said he, "is it necessary that we, poor and ignorant men, whose
+every moment is scarcely sufficient for the cares of life, and the
+labors of which you take the profit,--is it necessary for us to learn
+the numberless histories that you have recounted, to read the quantity
+of books that you have cited, and to study the various languages in
+which they are composed! A thousand years of life would not suffice--"
+
+"It is not necessary," replied the doctors, "that you should acquire all
+this science; we have it for you--"
+
+"But even you," replied the simple men, "with all your science, you are
+not agreed; of what advantage, then, is your science? Besides, how can
+you answer for us? If the faith of one man is applicable to many, what
+need have even you to believe? your fathers may have believed for you;
+and this would be reasonable, since they have seen for you.
+
+"Farther, what is believing, if believing influences no action? And what
+action is influenced by believing, for instance, that the world is or is
+not eternal?"
+
+"The latter would be offensive to God," said the doctors.
+
+"How prove you that?" replied the simple men.
+
+"In our books," answered the doctors.
+
+"We do not understand them," returned the simple men.
+
+"We understand them for you," said the doctors.
+
+"That is the difficulty," replied the simple men. "By what right do you
+constitute yourselves mediators between God and us?"
+
+"By his orders," said the doctors.
+
+"Where is the proof of these orders?" said the simple men.
+
+"In our books," said the doctors.
+
+"We understand them not," said the simple men; "and how came this just
+God to give you this privilege over us? Why did this common father
+oblige us to believe on a less degree of evidence than you? He has
+spoken to you; be it so; he is infallible, and deceives you not. But
+it is you who speak to us! And who shall assure us that you are not in
+error yourselves, or that you will not lead us into error? And if we
+should be deceived, how will that just God save us contrary to law, or
+condemn us on a law which we have not known?"
+
+"He has given you the natural law," said the doctors.
+
+"And what is the natural law?" replied the simple men. "If that law is
+sufficient, why has he given any other? If it is not sufficient, why did
+he make it imperfect?"
+
+"His judgments are mysteries," said the doctors, "and his justice is not
+like that of men."
+
+"If his justice," replied the simple men, "is not like ours, by what
+rule are we to judge of it? And, moreover, why all these laws, and what
+is the object proposed by them?"
+
+"To render you more happy," replied a doctor, "by rendering you better
+and more virtuous. It is to teach man to enjoy his benefits, and not
+injure his fellows, that God has manifested himself by so many oracles
+and prodigies."
+
+"In that case," said the simple men, "there is no necessity for so many
+studies, nor of such a variety of arguments; only tell us which is the
+religion that best answers the end which they all propose."
+
+Immediately, on this, every group, extolling its own morality above
+that of all others, there arose among the different sects a new and most
+violent dispute.
+
+"It is we," said the Mussulmans, "who possess the most excellent morals,
+who teach all the virtues useful to men and agreeable to God. We profess
+justice, disinterestedness, resignation to providence, charity to
+our brethren, alms-giving, and devotion; we torment not the soul with
+superstitious fears; we live without alarm, and die without remorse."
+
+"How dare you speak of morals," answered the Christian priests, "you,
+whose chief lived in licentiousness and preached impurity? You, whose
+first precept is homicide and war? For this we appeal to experience: for
+these twelve hundred years your fanatical zeal has not ceased to spread
+commotion and carnage among the nations. If Asia, so flourishing in
+former times, is now languishing in barbarity and depopulation, it is in
+your doctrine that we find the cause; in that doctrine, the enemy of
+all instruction, which sanctifies ignorance, which consecrates the most
+absolute despotism in the governors, imposes the most blind and passive
+obedience in the people, that has stupefied the faculties of man, and
+brutalized the nations.
+
+"It is not so with our sublime and celestial morals; it was they which
+raised the world from its primitive barbarity, from the senseless
+and cruel superstitions of idolatry, from human sacrifices,* from the
+shameful orgies of pagan mysteries; they it was that purified manners,
+proscribed incest and adultery, polished savage nations, banished
+slavery, and introduced new and unknown virtues, charity for men, their
+equality in the sight of God, forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries,
+the restraint of all the passions, the contempt of worldly greatness, a
+life completely spiritual and completely holy!"
+
+     * Read the cold declaration of Eusebius (Proep. Evang. lib.
+     I, p. 11,), who pretends that, since the coming of Christ,
+     there have been neither wars, nor tyrants, nor cannibals,
+     nor sodomites, nor persons committing incest, nor savages
+     destroying their parents, etc.  When we read these fathers
+     of the church we are astonished at their insincerity or
+     infatuation.
+
+"We admire," said the Mussulmans, "the ease with which you reconcile
+that evangelical meekness, of which you are so ostentatious, with
+the injuries and outrages with which you are constantly galling your
+neighbors. When you criminate so severely the great man whom we revere,
+we might fairly retort on the conduct of him whom you adore; but we
+scorn such advantages, and confining ourselves to the real object in
+question, we maintain that the morals of your gospel have by no means
+that perfection which you ascribe to them; it is not true that they
+have introduced into the world new and unknown virtues: for example,
+the equality of men in the sight of God,--that fraternity and that
+benevolence which follow from it, were formal doctrines of the sect
+of the Hermatics or Samaneans,* from whom you descend. As to the
+forgiveness of injuries, the Pagans themselves had taught it; but in
+the extent that you give it, far from being a virtue, it becomes an
+immorality, a vice. Your so much boasted precept of turning one cheek
+after the other, is not only contrary to every sentiment of man, but is
+opposed to all ideas of justice. It emboldens the wicked by impunity,
+debases the virtuous by servility, delivers up the world to despotism
+and tyranny, and dissolves all society. Such is the true spirit of your
+doctrines. Your gospels in their precepts and their parables, never
+represent God but as a despot without any rules of equity; a partial
+father treating a debauched and prodigal son with more favor than his
+respectful and virtuous children; a capricious master, who gives the
+same wages to workmen who had wrought but one hour, as to those who had
+labored through the whole day; one who prefers the last comers to the
+first. The moral is everywhere misanthropic and antisocial; it disgusts
+men with life and with society; and tends only to encourage hermitism
+and celibacy.
+
+     * The equality of mankind in a state of nature and in the
+     eyes of God was one of the principal tenets of the
+     Samaneans, and they appear to be the only ancients that
+     entertained this opinion.
+
+"As to the manner in which you have practised these morals, we appeal
+in our turn to the testimony of facts. We ask whether it is this
+evangelical meekness which has excited your interminable wars between
+your sects, your atrocious persecutions of pretended heretics, your
+crusades against Arianism, Manicheism, Protestantism, without speaking
+of your crusades against us, and of those sacrilegious associations,
+still subsisting, of men who take an oath to continue them?* We ask
+you whether it be gospel charity which has made you exterminate whole
+nations in America, to annihilate the empires of Mexico and Peru; which
+makes you continue to dispeople Africa and sell its inhabitants like
+cattle, notwithstanding your abolition of slavery; which makes you
+ravage India and usurp its dominions; and whether it be the same charity
+which, for three centuries past, has led you to harrass the habitations
+of the people of three continents, of whom the most prudent, the Chinese
+and Japanese, were constrained to drive you off, that they might escape
+your chains and recover their internal peace?"
+
+     * The oath taken by the knights of the Order of Malta, is to
+     kill, or make the Mahometans prisoners, for the glory of
+     God.
+
+Here the Bramins, the Rabbins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, the Priests of
+the Molucca islands, and the coasts of Guinea, loading the Christian
+doctors with reproaches: "Yes!" cried they, "these men are robbers and
+hypocrites, who preach simplicity, to surprise confidence; humility,
+to enslave with more ease; poverty, to appropriate all riches to
+themselves. They promise another world, the better to usurp the present;
+and while they speak to you of tolerance and charity, they burn, in the
+name of God, the men who do not worship him in their manner."
+
+"Lying priests," retorted the missionaries, "it is you who abuse the
+credulity of ignorant nations to subjugate them. It is you who have made
+of your ministry an art of cheating and imposture; you have converted
+religion into a traffic of cupidity and avarice. You pretend to hold
+communications with spirits, and they give for oracles nothing but
+your wills. You feign to read the stars, and destiny decrees only your
+desires. You cause idols to speak, and the gods are but the instruments
+of your passions. You have invented sacrifices and libations, to
+collect for your own profit the milk of flocks, and the flesh and fat
+of victims; and under the cloak of piety you devour the offerings of the
+gods, who cannot eat, and the substance of the people who are forced to
+labor."
+
+"And you," replied the Bramins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, "you sell to
+the credulous living, your vain prayers for the souls of the dead. With
+your indulgences and your absolutions you have usurped the power of God
+himself; and making a traffic of his favors and pardons, you have put
+heaven at auction; and by your system of expiations you have formed a
+tariff of crimes, which has perverted all consciences."*
+
+     * As long as it shall be possible to obtain purification
+     from crimes and exemption from punishment by means of money
+     or other frivolous practices; as long as kings and great men
+     shall suppose that building temples or instituting
+     foundations, will absolve them from the guilt of oppression
+     and homicide; as long as individuals shall imagine that they
+     may rob and cheat, provided they observe fast during Lent,
+     go to confession, and receive extreme unction, it is
+     impossible there should exist in society any morality or
+     virtue; and it is from a deep conviction of truth, that a
+     modern philosopher has called the doctrine of expiations la
+     verola des societes.
+
+"Add to this," said the Imans, "that these men have invented the
+most insidious of all systems of wickedness,--the absurd and impious
+obligation of recounting to them the most intimate secrets of actions
+and of thoughts (confessions); so their insolent curiosity has carried
+their inquisition even into the sanctuary of the marriage bed,* and the
+inviolable recesses of the heart."
+
+     * Confession is a very ancient invention of the priests, who
+     did not fail to avail themselves of that means of governing.
+     It was practised in the Egyptian, Greek, Phrygian, Persian
+     mysteries, etc. Plutarch has transmitted us the remarkable
+     answer of a Spartan whom a priest wanted to confess.  "Is it
+     to you or to God I am to confess?"  "To God," answered the
+     priest: "In that case," replied the Spartan, "man, begone!"
+     (Remarkable Savings of the Lacedemonians.)  The first
+     Christians confessed their faults publicly, like the
+     Essenians.  Afterwards, priests began to be established,
+     with power of absolution from the sin of idolatry.  In the
+     time of Theodosius, a woman having publicly confessed an
+     intrigue with a deacon, bishop Necterius, and his successor
+     Chrysostom, granted communion without confession.  It was
+     not until the seventh century that the abbots of convents
+     exacted from monks and nuns confession twice a year; and it
+     was at a still later period that bishops of Rome generalized
+     it.
+
+     The Mussulmen, who suppose women to have no souls, are
+     shocked at the idea of confession; and say; How can an
+     honest man think of listening to the recital of the actions
+     or the secret thoughts of a woman?  May we not also ask, on
+     the other hand, how can an honest woman consent to reveal
+     them?
+
+Thus by mutual reproaches the doctors of the different sects began to
+reveal all the crimes of their ministry--all the vices of their craft;
+and it was found that among all nations the spirit of the priesthood,
+their system of conduct, their actions their morals, were absolutely the
+same:
+
+That they had everywhere formed secret associations and corporations at
+enmity with the rest of society:*
+
+     * That we may understand the general feelings of priests
+     respecting the rest of mankind, whom they always call by the
+     name of the people, let us hear one of the doctors of the
+     church.  "The people," says Bishop Synnesius, in Calvit.
+     page 315, "are desirous of being deceived, we cannot act
+     otherwise respecting them.  The case was similar with the
+     ancient priests of Egypt, and for this reason they shut
+     themselves up in their temples, and there composed their
+     mysteries, out of the reach of the eye of the people."  And
+     forgetting what he has before just said, he adds: "for had
+     the people been in the secret they might have been offended
+     at the deception played upon them.  In the mean time how is
+     it possible to conduct one's self otherwise with the people
+     so long as they are people?  For my own part, to myself I
+     shall always be a philosopher, but in dealing with the mass
+     of mankind, I shall be a priest."
+
+     "A little jargon," says Geogory Nazianzen to St. Jerome
+     (Hieron. ad. Nep.) "is all that is necessary to impose on
+     the people.  The less they comprehend, the more they admire.
+     Our forefathers and doctors of the church have often said,
+     not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity
+     dictated to them."
+
+     "We endeavor," says Sanchoniaton, "to excite admiration by
+     means of the marvellous." (Proep. Evang. lib. 3.)
+
+     Such was the conduct of all the priests of antiquity, and is
+     still that of the Bramins and Lamas who are the exact
+     counterpart of the Egyptian priests.  Such was the practice
+     of the Jesuits, who marched with hasty strides in the same
+     career.  It is useless to point out the whole depravity of
+     such a doctrine.  In general every association which has
+     mystery for its basis, or an oath of secrecy, is a league of
+     robbers against society, a league divided in its very bosom
+     into knaves and dupes, or in other words agents and
+     instruments.  It is thus we ought to judge of those modern
+     clubs, which, under the name of Illuminatists, Martinists,
+     Cagliostronists, and Mesmerites, infest Europe.  These
+     societies are the follies and deceptions of the ancient
+     Cabalists, Magicians, Orphies, etc., "who," says Plutarch,
+     "led into errors of considerable magnitude, not only
+     individuals, but kings and nations."
+
+That they had everywhere attributed to themselves prerogatives and
+immunities, by means of which they lived exempt from the burdens of
+other classes:
+
+That they everywhere avoided the toils of the laborer, the dangers of
+the soldier, and the disappointments of the merchant:
+
+That they lived everywhere in celibacy, to shun even the cares of a
+family:
+
+That, under the cloak of poverty, they found everywhere the secret of
+procuring wealth and all sorts of enjoyments:
+
+That under the name of mendicity they raised taxes to a greater amount
+than princes:
+
+That in the form of gifts and offerings they had established fixed and
+certain revenues exempt from charges:
+
+That under pretence of retirement and devotion they lived in idleness
+and licentiousness:
+
+That they had made a virtue of alms-giving, to live quietly on the
+labors of others:
+
+That they had invented the ceremonies of worship, as a means of
+attracting the reverence of the people, while they were playing the
+parts of gods, of whom they styled themselves the interpreters and
+mediators, to assume all their powers; that, with this design, they had
+(according to the degree of ignorance or information of their people)
+assumed by turns the character of astrologers, drawers of horoscopes,
+fortune-tellers, magicians,* necromancers, quacks, physicians,
+courtiers, confessors of princes, always aiming at the great object to
+govern for their own advantage:
+
+     * What is a magician, in the sense in which people
+     understand the word?  A man who by words and gestures
+     pretends to act on supernatural beings, and compel them to
+     descend at his call and obey his orders.  Such was the
+     conduct of the ancient priests, and such is still that of
+     all priests in idolatrous nations; for which reason we have
+     given them the denomination of Magicians.
+
+     And when a Christian priest pretends to make God descend
+     from heaven, to fix him to a morsel of leaven, and render,
+     by means of this talisman, souls pure and in a state of
+     grace, what is this but a trick of magic?  And where is the
+     difference between a Chaman of Tartary who invokes the
+     Genii, or an Indian Bramin, who makes Vichenou descend in a
+     vessel of water to drive away evil spirits? Yes, the
+     identity of the spirit of priests in every age and country
+     is fully established!  Every where it is the assumption of
+     an exclusive privilege, the pretended faculty of moving at
+     will the powers of nature; and this assumption is so direct
+     a violation of the right of equality, that whenever the
+     people shall regain their importance, they will forever
+     abolish this sacrilegious kind of nobility, which has been
+     the type and parent stock of the other species of nobility.
+
+That sometimes they had exalted the power of kings and consecrated their
+persons, to monopolize their favors, or participate their sway:
+
+That sometimes they had preached up the murder of tyrants (reserving it
+to themselves to define tyranny), to avenge themselves of their contempt
+or their disobedience:
+
+And that they always stigmatised with impiety whatever crossed their
+interests; that they hindered all public instruction, to exercise the
+monopoly of science; that finally, at all times and in all places, they
+had found the secret of living in peace in the midst of the anarchy they
+created, in safety under the despotism that they favored, in idleness
+amidst the industry they preached, and in abundance while surrounded
+with scarcity; and all this by carrying on the singular trade of selling
+words and gestures to credulous people, who purchase them as commodities
+of the greatest value.*
+
+     * A curious work would be the comparative history of the
+     agnuses of the pope and the pastils of the grand Lama.  It
+     would be worth while to extend this idea to religions
+     ceremonies in general, and to confront column by column, the
+     analogous or contrasting points of faith and superstitious
+     practices in all nations.  There is one more species of
+     superstition which it would be equally salutary to cure,
+     blind veneration for the great; and for this purpose it
+     would be alone sufficient to write a minute detail of the
+     private life of kings and princes.  No work could be so
+     philosophical as this; and accordingly we have seen what a
+     general outcry was excited among kings and the panders of
+     kings, when the Anecdotes of the Court of Berlin first
+     appeared.  What would be the alarm were the public put in
+     possession of the sequel of this work?  Were the people
+     fairly acquainted with all the absurdities of this species
+     of idol, they would no longer be exposed to covet their
+     specious pleasures of which the plausible and hollow
+     appearance disturbs their peace, and hinders them from
+     enjoying the much more solid happiness of their own
+     condition.
+
+Then the different nations, in a transport of fury, were going to
+tear in pieces the men who had thus abused them; but the legislator,
+arresting this movement of violence, addressed the chiefs and doctors:
+
+"What!" said he, "instructors of nations, is it thus that you have
+deceived them?"
+
+And the terrified priests replied.
+
+"O legislator! we are men. The people are so superstitious! they have
+themselves encouraged these errors."*
+
+     * Consider in this view the Brabanters.
+
+And the kings said:
+
+"O legislator! the people are so servile and so ignorant! they
+prostrated themselves before the yoke, which we scarcely dared to show
+them."*
+
+     * The inhabitants of Vienna, for example, who harnessed
+     themselves like cattle and drew the chariot of Leopold.
+
+Then the legislator, turning to the people--"People!" said he, "remember
+what you have just heard; they are two indelible truths. Yes, you
+yourselves cause the evils of which you complain; yourselves encourage
+the tyrants, by a base adulation of their power, by an imprudent
+admiration of their false beneficence, by servility in obedience,
+by licentiousness in liberty, and by a credulous reception of every
+imposition. On whom shall you wreak vengeance for the faults committed
+by your own ignorance and cupidity?"
+
+And the people, struck with confusion, remained in mournful silence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF CONTRADICTIONS.
+
+
+The legislator then resumed his discourse: "O nations!" said he, "we
+have heard the discussion of your opinions. The different sentiments
+which divide you have given rise to many reflections, and furnished
+several questions which we shall propose to you to solve.
+
+"First, considering the diversity and opposition of the creeds to which
+you are attached, we ask on what motives you found your persuasion? Is
+it from a deliberate choice that you follow the standard of one prophet
+rather than another? Before adopting this doctrine, rather than that,
+did you first compare? did you carefully examine them? Or have you
+received them only from the chance of birth, from the empire of
+education and habit? Are you not born Christians on the borders of the
+Tiber, Mussulmans on those of the Euphrates, Idolaters on the Indus,
+just as you are born fair in cold climates, and sable under the
+scorching sun of Africa? And if your opinions are the effect of your
+fortuitous position on the earth, of consanguinity, of imitation, how is
+it that such a hazard should be a ground of conviction, an argument of
+truth?
+
+"Secondly, when we reflect on the mutual proscriptions and arbitrary
+intolerance of your pretensions, we are frightened at the consequences
+that flow from your own principles. Nations! who reciprocally devote
+each other to the bolts of heavenly wrath, suppose that the universal
+Being, whom you revere, should this moment descend from heaven on this
+multitude; and, clothed with all his power, should sit on this throne
+to judge you; suppose that he should say to you: Mortals! it is your own
+justice that I am going to exercise upon you. Yes, of all the religious
+systems that divide you, one alone shall this day be preferred; all the
+others, all this multitude of standards, of nations, of prophets, shall
+be condemned to eternal destruction. This is not enough: among the
+particular sects of the chosen system, one only can be favored; all
+the others must be condemned: neither is this enough;--from this little
+remnant of a group I must exclude all those who have not fulfilled the
+conditions enjoined by its precepts. O men! to what a small number of
+elect have you limited your race! to what a penury of beneficence do you
+reduce the immensity of my goodness! to what a solitude of beholders do
+you condemn my greatness and my glory!
+
+"But," said the legislator rising, "no matter you have willed it so.
+Nations! here is an urn in which all your names are placed: one only is
+a prize: approach, and draw this tremendous lottery!" And the nations,
+seized with terror cried: "No, no; we are all brothers, all equal; we
+cannot condemn each other."
+
+"Then," said the legislator, resuming his seat: "O men! who dispute
+on so many subjects, lend an attentive ear to one problem which you
+exhibit, and which you ought to decide yourselves."
+
+And the people, giving great attention, he lifted an arm towards heaven,
+and, pointing to the sun, said:
+
+"Nations, does that sun, which enlightens you, appear square or
+triangular?"
+
+"No," answered they with one voice, "it is round."
+
+Then, taking the golden balance that was on the altar:
+
+"This gold," said the legislator, "that you handle every day, is it
+heavier than the same volume of copper?"
+
+"Yes," answered all the people, "gold is heavier than Copper."
+
+Then, taking the sword:
+
+"Is this iron," said the legislator, "softer than lead?"
+
+"No," said the people.
+
+"Is sugar sweet, and gall bitter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you love pleasure and hate pain?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thus, then, you are agreed in these points, and many others of the same
+nature.
+
+"Now, tell us, is there a cavern in the centre of the earth, or
+inhabitants in the moon?"
+
+This question caused a universal murmur. Every one answered
+differently--some yes, others no; one said it was probable, another said
+it was an idle and ridiculous question; some, that it was worth knowing.
+And the discord was universal.
+
+After some time the legislator, having obtained silence, said:
+
+"Explain to us, O Nations! this problem: we have put to you several
+questions which you have answered with one voice, without distinction
+of race or of sect: white men, black men, followers of Mahomet and of
+Moses, worshippers of Boudha and of Jesus, all have returned the same
+answer. We then proposed another question, and you have all disagreed!
+Why this unanimity in one case, and this discordance in the other?"
+
+And the group of simple men and savages answered and said: "The reason
+of this is plain. In the first case we see and feel the objects, and we
+speak from sensation; in the second, they are beyond the reach of our
+senses--we speak of them only from conjecture."
+
+"You have resolved the problem," said the legislator; "and your own
+consent has established this first truth:
+
+"That whenever objects can be examined and judged of by your senses,
+you are agreed in opinion; and that you only differ when the objects are
+absent and beyond your reach.
+
+"From this first truth flows another equally clear and worthy of notice.
+Since you agree on things which you know with certainty, it follows that
+you disagree only on those which you know not with certainty, and about
+which you are not sure; that is to say, you dispute, you quarrel, you
+fight, for that which is uncertain, that of which you doubt. O men! is
+this wisdom?
+
+"Is it not, then, demonstrated that truth is not the object of your
+contests? that it is not her cause which you defend, but that of your
+affections, and your prejudices? that it is not the object, as it really
+is in itself, that you would verify, but the object as you would have
+it; that is to say, it is not the evidence of the thing that you would
+enforce, but your own personal opinion, your particular manner of seeing
+and judging? It is a power that you wish to exercise, an interest that
+you wish to satisfy, a prerogative that you arrogate to yourself; it is
+a contest of vanity. Now, as each of you, on comparing himself to every
+other, finds himself his equal and his fellow, he resists by a feeling
+of the same right. And your disputes, your combats, your intolerance,
+are the effect of this right which you deny each other, and of the
+intimate conviction of your equality.
+
+"Now, the only means of establishing harmony is to return to nature,
+and to take for a guide and regulator the order of things which she has
+founded; and then your accord will prove this other truth:
+
+"That real beings have in themselves an identical, constant and uniform
+mode of existence; and that there is in your organs a like mode of being
+affected by them.
+
+"But at the same time, by reason of the mobility of these organs as
+subject to your will, you may conceive different affections, and find
+yourselves in different relations with the same objects; so that you are
+to them like a mirror, capable of reflecting them truly as they are, or
+of distorting and disfiguring them.
+
+"Hence it follows, that whenever you perceive objects as they are,
+you agree among yourselves, and with the objects; and this similitude
+between your sensations and their manner of existence, is what
+constitutes their truth with respect to you; and, on the contrary,
+whenever you differ in opinion, your disagreement is a proof that you do
+not represent them such as they are,--that you change them.
+
+"Hence, also, it follows, that the causes of your disagreement exist
+not in the objects themselves, but in your minds, in your manner of
+perceiving or judging.
+
+"To establish, therefore, a uniformity of opinion, it is necessary first
+to establish the certainty, completely verified, that the portraits
+which the mind forms are perfectly like the originals; that it reflects
+the objects correctly as they exist. Now, this result cannot be obtained
+but in those cases where the objects can be brought to the test, and
+submitted to the examination of the senses. Everything which cannot
+be brought to this trial is, for that reason alone, impossible to be
+determined; there exists no rule, no term of comparison, no means of
+certainty, respecting it.
+
+"From this we conclude, that, to live in harmony and peace, we must
+agree never to decide on such subjects, and to attach to them no
+importance; in a word, we must trace a line of distinction between those
+that are capable of verification, and those that are not; and separate
+by an inviolable barrier the world of fantastical beings from the world
+of realities; that is to say, all civil effect must be taken away from
+theological and religious opinions.
+
+"This, O ye people of the earth! is the object proposed by a great
+nation freed from her fetters and her prejudices; this is the work
+which, under her eye and by her orders, we had undertaken, when your
+kings and your priests came to interrupt it. O kings and priests! you
+may suspend, yet for a while, the solemn publication of the laws of
+nature; but it is no longer in your power to annihilate or to subvert
+them."
+
+
+A general shout then arose from every part of the assembly; and the
+nations universally, and with one voice, testified their assent to the
+proposals of the delegates: "Resume," said they, "your holy and sublime
+labors, and bring them to perfection. Investigate the laws which nature,
+for our guidance, has implanted in our breasts, and collect from them
+an authentic and immutable code; nor let this code be any longer for one
+family only, but for us all without exception. Be the legislators of the
+whole human race, as you are the interpreters of nature herself. Show
+us the line of partition between the world of chimeras and that of
+realities; and teach us, after so many religions of error and delusion,
+the religion of evidence and truth!"
+
+
+Then the delegates, having resumed their enquiries into the physical and
+constituent attributes of man, and examined the motives and affections
+which govern him in his individual and social state, unfolded in these
+words the laws on which nature herself has founded his happiness.
+
+
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.
+
+OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+Q. What is the law of nature?
+
+A. It is the constant and regular order of events, by which God governs
+the universe; an order which his wisdom presents to the senses and
+reason of men, as an equal and common rule for their actions, to guide
+them, without distinction of country or sect, towards perfection and
+happiness.
+
+Q. Give a clear definition of the word law.
+
+A. The word law, taken literary, signifies lecture,* because originally,
+ordinances and regulations were the lectures, preferably to all others,
+made to the people, in order that they might observe them, and not incur
+the penalties attached to their infraction: whence follows the original
+custom explaining the true idea.
+
+The definition of law is, "An order or prohibition to act with the
+express clause of a penalty attached to the infraction, or of a
+recompense attached to the observance of that order."
+
+     * From the Latin word lex, lectio.  Alcoran likewise
+     signifies lecture and is only a literal translation of the
+     word law.
+
+Q. Do such orders exist in nature?
+
+A. Yes.
+
+Q. What does the word nature signify?
+
+A. The word nature bears three different significations.
+
+1. It signifies the universe, the material world: in this first sense
+we say the beauties of nature, the riches of nature, that is to say, the
+objects in the heavens and on the earth exposed to our sight;
+
+2. It signifies the power that animates, that moves the universe,
+considering it as a distinct being, such as the soul is to the body;
+in this second sense we say, "The intentions of nature, the
+incomprehensible secrets of nature."
+
+3. It signifies the partial operations of that power on each being, or
+on each class of beings; and in this third sense we say, "The nature of
+man is an enigma; every being acts according to its nature."
+
+Wherefore, as the actions of each being, or of each species of beings,
+are subjected to constant and general rules, which cannot be infringed
+without interrupting and troubling the general or particular order,
+those rules of action and of motion are called natural laws, or laws of
+nature.
+
+Q. Give me examples of those laws.
+
+A. It is a law of nature, that the sun illuminates successively the
+surface of the terrestrial globe;--that its presence causes both light
+and heat;--that heat acting upon water, produces vapors;--that those
+vapors rising in clouds into the regions of the air, dissolve into rain
+or snow, and renew incessantly the waters of fountains and rivers.
+
+It is a law of nature, that water flows downwards; that it endeavors
+to find its level; that it is heavier than air; that all bodies tend
+towards the earth; that flame ascends towards the heavens;--that it
+disorganizes vegetables and animals; that air is essential to the life
+of certain animals; that, in certain circumstances, water suffocates and
+kills them; that certain juices of plants, certain minerals attack
+their organs, and destroy their life, and so on in a multitude of other
+instances.
+
+Wherefore, as all those and similar facts are immutable, constant, and
+regular, so many real orders result from them for man to conform himself
+to, with the express clause of punishment attending the infraction of
+them, or of welfare attending their observance. So that if man pretends
+to see clear in darkness, if he goes in contradiction to the course of
+the seasons, or the action of the elements; if he pretends to remain
+under water without being drowned, to touch fire without burning
+himself, to deprive himself of air without being suffocated, to swallow
+poison without destroying himself, he receives from each of those
+infractions of the laws of nature a corporeal punishment proportionate
+to his fault; but if on the contrary, he observes and practises each of
+those laws according to the regular and exact relations they have to him
+he preserves his existence, and renders it as happy as it can be: and
+as the only and common end of all those laws, considered relatively to
+mankind, is to preserve, and render them happy, it has been agreed
+upon to reduce the idea to one simple expression, and to call them
+collectively the law of nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CHARACTERS OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+Q. What are the characters of the law of nature?
+
+A. There can be assigned ten principal ones.
+
+Q. Which is the first?
+
+A. To be inherent to the existence of things, and, consequently,
+primitive and anterior to every other law: so that all those which
+man has received, are only imitations of it, and their perfection is
+ascertained by the resemblance they bear to this primordial model.
+
+Q. Which is the second?
+
+A. To be derived immediately from God, and presented by him to each man,
+whereas all other laws are presented to us by men, who may be either
+deceived or deceivers.
+
+Q. Which is the third?
+
+A. To be common to all times, and to all countries, that is to say, one
+and universal.
+
+Q. Is no other law universal?
+
+A. No: for no other is agreeable or applicable to all the people of the
+earth; they are all local and accidental, originating from circumstances
+of places and of persons; so that if such a man had not existed, or such
+an event happened, such a law would never have been enacted.
+
+Q. Which is the fourth character?
+
+A. To be uniform and invariable.
+
+Q. Is no other law uniform and invariable?
+
+A. No: for what is good and virtue according to one, is evil and vice
+according to another; and what one and the same law approves of at one
+time, it often condemns at another.
+
+Q. Which is the fifth character?
+
+A. To be evident and palpable, because it consists entirely of facts
+incessantly present to the senses, and to demonstration.
+
+Q. Are not other laws evident?
+
+A. No: for they are founded on past and doubtful facts, on equivocal and
+suspicious testimonies, and on proofs inaccessible to the senses.
+
+Q. Which is the sixth character?
+
+A. To be reasonable, because its precepts and entire doctrine are
+conformable to reason, and to the human understanding.
+
+Q. Is no other law reasonable?
+
+A. No: for all are in contradiction to the reason and the understanding
+of men, and tyrannically impose on him a blind and impracticable belief.
+
+Q. Which is the seventh character?
+
+A. To be just, because in that law, the penalties are proportionate to
+the infractions.
+
+Q. Are not other laws just?
+
+A. No: for they often exceed bounds, either in rewarding deserts, or in
+punishing delinquencies, and consider as meritorious or criminal, null
+or indifferent actions.
+
+Q. Which is the eighth character?
+
+A. To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature, all men
+being brothers and equal in rights, it recommends to them only peace and
+toleration, even for errors.
+
+Q. Are not other laws pacific?
+
+A. No: for all preach dissension, discord, and war, and divide mankind
+by exclusive pretensions of truth and domination.
+
+Q. Which is the ninth character?
+
+A. To be equally beneficent to all men, in teaching them the true means
+of becoming better and happier.
+
+Q. Are not other laws beneficent likewise?
+
+A. No: for none of them teach the real means of attaining happiness; all
+are confined to pernicious or futile practices; and this is evident from
+facts, since after so many laws, so many religions, so many legislators
+and prophets, men are still as unhappy and ignorant, as they were six
+thousand years ago.
+
+Q. Which is the last character of the law of nature?
+
+A. That it is alone sufficient to render men happier and better, because
+it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws, either civil or
+religious, that is to say, it constitutes essentially the moral part of
+them; so that if other laws were divested of it, they would be reduced
+to chimerical and imaginary opinions devoid of any practical utility.
+
+Q. Recapitulate all those characters.
+
+A. We have said that the law of nature is,
+
+     1.  Primitive;     6.  Reasonable;
+     2.  Immediate;     7.  Just;
+     3.  Universal;     8.  Pacific;
+     4.  Invariable;    9.  Beneficent: and
+     5.  Evident;      10.  Alone sufficient.
+
+And such is the power of all these attributes of perfection and truth,
+that when in their disputes the theologians can agree upon no article of
+belief, they recur to the law of nature, the neglect of which, say they,
+forced God to send from time to time prophets to proclaim new laws; as
+if God enacted laws for particular circumstances, as men do; especially
+when the first subsists in such force, that we may assert it to have
+been at all times and in all countries the rule of conscience for every
+man of sense or understanding.
+
+Q. If, as you say, it emanates immediately from God, does it teach his
+existence?
+
+A. Yes, most positively: for, to any man whatever, who observes with
+reflection the astonishing spectacle of the universe, the more he
+meditates on the properties and attributes of each being, on
+the admirable order and harmony of their motions, the more it is
+demonstrated that there exists a supreme agent, a universal and identic
+mover, designated by the appellation of God; and so true it is that the
+law of nature suffices to elevate him to the knowledge of God, that all
+which men have pretended to know by supernatural means, has constantly
+turned out ridiculous and absurd, and that they have ever been obliged
+to recur to the immutable conceptions of natural reason.
+
+Q. Then it is not true that the followers of the law of nature are
+atheists?
+
+A. No; it is not true; on the contrary, they entertain stronger and
+nobler ideas of the Divinity than most other men; for they do not
+sully him with the foul ingredients of all the weaknesses and passions
+entailed on humanity.
+
+Q. What worship do they pay to him?
+
+A. A worship wholly of action; the practice and observance of all the
+rules which the supreme wisdom has imposed on the motion of each being;
+eternal and unalterable rules, by which it maintains the order
+and harmony of the universe, and which, in their relations to man,
+constitute the law of nature.
+
+Q. Was the law of nature known before this period:
+
+A. It has been at all times spoken of: most legislators pretend to adopt
+it as the basis of their laws; but they only quote some of its precepts,
+and have only vague ideas of its totality.
+
+Q. Why.
+
+A. Because, though simple in its basis, it forms in its developements
+and consequences, a complicated whole which requires an extensive
+knowledge of facts, joined to all the sagacity of reasoning.
+
+Q. Does not instinct alone teach the law of nature?
+
+A. No; for by instinct is meant nothing more than that blind sentiment
+by which we are actuated indiscriminately towards everything that
+flatters the senses.
+
+Q. Why, then, is it said that the law of nature is engraved in the
+hearts of all men.
+
+A. It is said for two reasons: first, because it has been remarked, that
+there are acts and sentiments common to all men, and this proceeds from
+their common organization; secondly, because the first philosophers
+believed that men were born with ideas already formed, which is now
+demonstrated to be erroneous.
+
+Q. Philosophers, then, are fallible?
+
+A. Yes, sometimes.
+
+Q. Why so?
+
+A. First, because they are men; secondly, because the ignorant call all
+those who reason, right or wrong, philosophers; thirdly, because those
+who reason on many subjects, and who are the first to reason on them,
+are liable to be deceived.
+
+Q. If the law of nature be not written, must it not become arbitrary and
+ideal?
+
+A. No: because it consists entirely in facts, the demonstration of which
+can be incessantly renewed to the senses, and constitutes a science as
+accurate and precise as geometry and mathematics; and it is because the
+law of nature forms an exact science, that men, born ignorant and living
+inattentive and heedless, have had hitherto only a superficial knowledge
+of it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF NATURE RELATING TO MAN.
+
+
+Q. Explain the principles of the law of nature with relation to man.
+
+A. They are simple; all of them are comprised in one fundamental and
+single precept.
+
+Q. What is that precept?
+
+A. It is self-preservation.
+
+Q. Is not happiness also a precept of the law of nature?
+
+A. Yes: but as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only from
+the development of man's faculties and his social system, it is not
+the immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some measure,
+a superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental object of
+preservation.
+
+Q. How does nature order man to preserve himself?
+
+A. By two powerful and involuntary sensations, which it has attached,
+as two guides, two guardian Geniuses to all his actions: the one a
+sensation of pain, by which it admonishes him of, and deters him
+from, everything that tends to destroy him; the other, a sensation of
+pleasure, by which it attracts and carries him towards everything that
+tends to his preservation and the development of his existence.
+
+Q. Pleasure, then, is not an evil, a sin, as casuists pretend?
+
+A. No, only inasmuch as it tends to destroy life and health which, by
+the avowal of those same casuists, we derive from God himself.
+
+Q. Is pleasure the principal object of our existence, as some
+philosophers have asserted?
+
+A. No; not more than pain; pleasure is an incitement to live as pain is
+a repulsion from death.
+
+Q. How do you prove this assertion?
+
+A. By two palpable facts: One, that pleasure, when taken immoderately,
+leads to destruction; for instance, a man who abuses the pleasure of
+eating or drinking, attacks his health, and injures his life. The other,
+that pain sometimes leads to self-preservation; for instance, a man who
+permits a mortified member to be cut off, suffers pain in order not to
+perish totally.
+
+Q. But does not even this prove that our sensations can deceive us
+respecting the end of our preservation?
+
+A. Yes; they can momentarily.
+
+Q. How do our sensations deceive us?
+
+A. In two ways: by ignorance, and by passion.
+
+Q. When do they deceive us by ignorance?
+
+A. When we act without knowing the action and effect of objects on our
+senses: for example, when a man touches nettles without knowing
+their stinging quality, or when he swallows opium without knowing its
+soporiferous effects.
+
+Q. When do they deceive us by passion?
+
+A. When, conscious of the pernicious action of objects, we abandon
+ourselves, nevertheless, to the impetuosity of our desires and
+appetites: for example, when a man who knows that wine intoxicates, does
+nevertheless drink it to excess.
+
+Q. What is the result?
+
+A. That the ignorance in which we are born, and the unbridled appetites
+to which we abandon ourselves, are contrary to our preservation; that,
+therefore, the instruction of our minds and the moderation of our
+passions are two obligations, two laws, which spring directly from the
+first law of preservation.
+
+Q. But being born ignorant, is not ignorance a law of nature?
+
+A. No more than to remain in the naked and feeble state of infancy. Far
+from being a law of nature, ignorance is an obstacle to the practice of
+all its laws. It is the real original sin.
+
+Q. Why, then, have there been moralists who have looked upon it as a
+virtue and perfection?
+
+A. Because, from a strange or perverted disposition, they confounded the
+abuse of knowledge with knowledge itself; as if, because men abuse the
+power of speech, their tongues should be cut out; as if perfection and
+virtue consisted in the nullity, and not in the proper development of
+our faculties.
+
+Q. Instruction, then, is indispensable to man's existence?
+
+A. Yes, so indispensable, that without it he is every instant assailed
+and wounded by all that surrounds him; for if he does not know the
+effects of fire, he burns himself; those of water he drowns himself;
+those of opium, he poisons himself; if, in the savage state, he does
+not know the wiles of animals, and the art of seizing game, he perishes
+through hunger; if in the social state, he does not know the course
+of the seasons, he can neither cultivate the ground, nor procure
+nourishment; and so on, of all his actions, respecting all his wants.
+
+Q. But can man individually acquire this knowledge necessary to his
+existence, and to the development of his faculties?
+
+A. No; not without the assistance of his fellow men, and by living in
+society.
+
+Q. But is not society to man a state against nature?
+
+A. No: it is on the contrary a necessity, a law that nature imposed
+on him by the very act of his organization; for, first, nature has so
+constituted man, that he cannot see his species of another sex without
+feeling emotions and an attraction which induce him to live in a family,
+which is already a state of society; secondly, by endowing him with
+sensibility, she organized him so that the sensations of others reflect
+within him, and excite reciprocal sentiments of pleasure and of grief,
+which are attractions, and indissoluble ties of society; thirdly, and
+finally, the state of society, founded on the wants of man, is only a
+further means of fulfilling the law of preservation: and to pretend that
+this state is out of nature, because it is more perfect, is the same
+as to say, that a bitter and wild fruit of the forest, is no longer the
+production of nature, when rendered sweet and delicious by cultivation
+in our gardens.
+
+Q. Why, then, have philosophers called the savage state the state of
+perfection?
+
+A. Because, as I have told you, the vulgar have often given the name of
+philosophers to whimsical geniuses, who, from moroseness, from wounded
+vanity, or from a disgust to the vices of society, have conceived
+chimerical ideas of the savage state, in contradiction with their own
+system of a perfect man.
+
+Q. What is the true meaning of the word philosopher?
+
+A. The word philosopher signifies a lover of wisdom; and as wisdom
+consists in the practice of the laws of nature, the true philosopher is
+he who knows those laws, and conforms the whole tenor of his conduct to
+them.
+
+Q. What is man in the savage state?
+
+A. A brutal, ignorant animal, a wicked and ferocious beast.
+
+Q. Is he happy in that state?
+
+A. No; for he only feels momentary sensations, which are habitually of
+violent wants which he cannot satisfy, since he is ignorant by nature,
+and weak by being isolated from his race.
+
+Q. Is he free?
+
+A. No; he is the most abject slave that exists; for his life depends
+on everything that surrounds him: he is not free to eat when hungry,
+to rest when tired, to warm himself when cold; he is every instant in
+danger of perishing; wherefore nature offers but fortuitous examples of
+such beings; and we see that all the efforts of the human species,
+since its origin, sorely tends to emerge from that violent state by the
+pressing necessity of self-preservation.
+
+Q. But does not this necessity of preservation engender in individuals
+egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary to the
+social state?
+
+A. No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our neighbor, it
+is no longer self-love, but the hatred of others. Self-love, taken in
+its true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest
+support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in
+return they should injure us.
+
+Thus mans preservation, and the unfolding of his faculties, directed
+towards this end, teach the true law of nature in the production of the
+human being; and it is from this essential principle that are derived,
+are referred, and in its scale are weighed, all ideas of good and evil,
+of vice and virtue, of just and unjust, of truth or error, of lawful or
+forbidden, on which is founded the morality of individual, or of social
+man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+BASIS OF MORALITY; OF GOOD, OF EVIL, OF SIN, OF CRIME, OF VICE AND OF
+VIRTUE.
+
+
+Q. What is good, according to the law of nature?
+
+A. It is everything that tends to preserve and perfect man.
+
+Q. What is evil?
+
+A. That which tends to man's destruction or deterioration.
+
+Q. What is meant by physical good and evil, and by moral good and evil?
+
+A. By the word physical is understood, whatever acts immediately on the
+body. Health is a physical good; and sickness a physical evil. By moral,
+is meant what acts by consequences more or less remote. Calumny is a
+moral evil; a fair reputation is a moral good, because both one and the
+other occasion towards us, on the part of other men, dispositions and
+habitudes,* which are useful or hurtful to our preservation, and which
+attack or favor our means of existence.
+
+     * It is from this word habitudes, (reiterated actions,) in
+     Latin mores, that the word moral, and all its family, are
+     derived.
+
+Q. Everything that tends to preserve, or to produce is therefore a good?
+
+A. Yes; and it is for that reason that certain legislators have classed
+among the works agreeable to the divinity, the cultivation of a field
+and the fecundity of a woman.
+
+Q. Whatever tends to cause death is, therefore, an evil?
+
+A. Yes; and it is for that reason some legislators have extended the
+idea of evil and of sin even to the killing of animals.
+
+Q. The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of nature?
+
+A. Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other evil can
+be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.
+
+Q. What is a sin in the law of nature?
+
+A. Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for the
+preservation and perfection of man and of society.
+
+Q. Can intention be a merit or a crime?
+
+A. No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a commencement
+of sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.
+
+Q. What is virtue according to the law of nature?
+
+A. It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to
+society.
+
+Q. What is meant by the word individual?
+
+A. It means a man considered separately from every other.
+
+Q. What is vice according to the law of nature?
+
+A. It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to
+society.
+
+Q. Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and abstracted
+from the senses?
+
+A. No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate, and that
+end is always to destroy or preserve the body.
+
+Q. Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?
+
+A. Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they attack
+or which they favor; and according to the number of persons in whom
+those faculties are favored or injured.
+
+Q. Give me some examples?
+
+A. The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of
+saving his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men, than
+that of saving only the life of one, and an action useful to the whole
+human race is more virtuous than an action that is only useful to one
+single nation.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue,
+and forbid that of evil and vice?
+
+A. By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue
+for the preservation of our body, and by the losses which result to our
+existence from the practice of evil and vice.
+
+Q. Its precepts are then in action?
+
+A. Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect and in
+its future consequences.
+
+Q. How do you divide the virtues?
+
+A. We divide them in three classes, first, individual virtues, as
+relative to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relative to a
+family; thirdly, social virtues, as relative to society.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+OF INDIVIDUAL VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q. Which are the individual virtues?
+
+A. There are five principal ones, to wit: first, science, which
+comprises prudence and wisdom; secondly, temperance, comprising sobriety
+and chastity; thirdly, courage, or strength of body and mind; fourthly,
+activity, that is to say, love of labor and employment of time; fifthly,
+and finally, cleanliness, or purity of body, as well in dress as in
+habitation.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe science?
+
+A. Because the man acquainted with the causes and effects of things
+attends in a careful and sure manner to his preservation, and to the
+development of his faculties. Science is to him the eye and the light,
+which enable him to discern clearly and accurately all the objects
+with which he is conversant, and hence by an enlightened man is meant a
+learned and well-informed man. With science and instruction a man never
+wants for resources and means of subsistence; and upon this principle a
+philosopher, who had been shipwrecked, said to his companions, that were
+inconsolable for the loss of their wealth: "For my part, I carry all my
+wealth within me."
+
+Q. Which is the vice contrary to science?
+
+A. It is ignorance.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature forbid ignorance?
+
+A. By the grievous detriments resulting from it to our existence; for
+the ignorant man who knows neither causes nor effects, commits every
+instant errors most pernicious to himself and to others; he resembles a
+blind man groping his way at random, and who, at every step, jostles or
+is jostled by every one he meets.
+
+Q. What difference is there between an ignorant and a silly man?
+
+A. The same difference as between him who frankly avows his blindness
+and the blind man who pretends to sight; silliness is the reality of
+ignorance, to which is superadded the vanity of knowledge.
+
+Q. Are ignorance and silliness common?
+
+A. Yes, very common; they are the usual and general distempers of
+mankind: more than three thousand years ago the wisest of men said: "The
+number of fools is infinite;" and the world has not changed.
+
+Q. What is the reason of it?
+
+A. Because much labor and time are necessary to acquire instruction,
+and because men, born ignorant and indolent, find it more convenient to
+remain blind, and pretend to see clear.
+
+Q. What difference is there between a learned and a wise man?
+
+A. The learned knows, and the wise man practices.
+
+Q. What is prudence?
+
+A. It is the anticipated perception, the foresight of the effects and
+consequences of every action; by means of which foresight, man
+avoids the dangers which threaten him, while he seizes on and creates
+opportunities favorable to him: he thereby provides for his present and
+future safety in a certain and secure manner, whereas the imprudent
+man, who calculates neither his steps nor his conduct, nor efforts, nor
+resistance, falls every instant into difficulties and dangers, which
+sooner or later impair his faculties and destroy his existence.
+
+Q. When the Gospel says, "Happy are the poor of spirit," does it mean
+the ignorant and imprudent?
+
+A. No; for, at the same time that it recommends the simplicity of doves,
+it adds the prudent cunning of serpents. By simplicity of mind is meant
+uprightness, and the precept of the Gospel is that of nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ON TEMPERANCE.
+
+
+Q. What is temperance?
+
+A. It is a regular use of our faculties, which makes us never exceed in
+our sensations the end of nature to preserve us; it is the moderation of
+the passions.
+
+Q. Which is the vice contrary to temperance?
+
+A. The disorder of the passions, the avidity of all kind of enjoyments,
+in a word, cupidity.
+
+Q. Which are the principal branches of temperance?
+
+A. Sobriety, and continence or chastity.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe sobriety?
+
+A. By its powerful influence over our health. The sober man digests with
+comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are
+clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his
+business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity;
+he does not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and
+gladness, the wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured
+him. Thus, from one virtue alone, generous nature derives innumerable
+recompenses.
+
+Q. How does it prohibit gluttony?
+
+A. By the numerous evils that are attached to it. The glutton, oppressed
+with aliments, digests with anxiety; his head, troubled by the fumes
+of indigestion, is incapable of conceiving clear and distinct ideas;
+he abandons himself with violence to the disorderly impulse of lust and
+anger, which impair his health; his body becomes bloated, heavy, and
+unfit for labor; he endures painful and expensive distempers; he seldom
+lives to be old; and his age is replete with infirmities and sorrow.
+
+Q. Should abstinence and fasting be considered as virtuous actions?
+
+A. Yes, when one has eaten too much; for then abstinence and fasting
+are simple and efficacious remedies; but when the body is in want of
+aliment, to refuse it any, and let it suffer from hunger or thirst, is
+delirium and a real sin against the law of nature.
+
+Q. How is drunkenness considered in the law of nature?
+
+A. As a most vile and pernicious vice. The drunkard, deprived of
+the sense and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the
+divinity: he debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable even to
+guide his steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts
+and even risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him
+to the ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes
+in his drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous bargains, and injures his
+fortune; he makes use of opprobrious language, which creates him enemies
+and repentance; he fills his house with trouble and sorrow, and ends by
+a premature death or by a cacochymical old age.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature interdict absolutely the use of wine?
+
+A. No; it only forbids the abuse; but as the transition from the use to
+the abuse is easy and prompt among the generality of men, perhaps
+the legislators, who have proscribed the use of wine, have rendered a
+service to humanity.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature forbid the use of certain kinds of meat, or of
+certain vegetables, on particular days, during certain seasons?
+
+A. No; it absolutely forbids only whatever is injurious to health;
+its precepts, in this respect, vary according to persons, and even
+constitute a very delicate and important science for the quality, the
+quantity, and the combination of aliments have the greatest influence,
+not only over the momentary affections of the soul, but even over its
+habitual disposition. A man is not the same when fasting as after a
+meal, even if he were sober. A glass of spirituous liquor, or a dish of
+coffee, gives degrees of vivacity, of mobility, of disposition to anger,
+sadness, or gaiety; such a meat, because it lies heavy on the
+stomach, engenders moroseness and melancholy; such another, because
+it facilitates digestion, creates sprightliness, and an inclination
+to oblige and to love. The use of vegetables, because they have little
+nourishment, enfeebles the body, and gives a disposition to repose,
+indolence, and ease; the use of meat, because it is full of nourishment,
+and of spirituous liquors, because they stimulate the nerves, creates
+vivacity, uneasiness, and audacity. Now from those habitudes of aliment
+result habits of constitution and of the organs, which form afterwards
+different kinds of temperaments, each of which is distinguished by
+a peculiar characteristic. And it is for this reason that, in hot
+countries especially, legislators have made laws respecting regimen
+or food. The ancients were taught by long experience that the dietetic
+science constituted a considerable part of morality; among the
+Egyptians, the ancient Persians, and even among the Greeks, at the
+Areopagus, important affairs were examined fasting; and it has been
+remarked that, among those people, where public affairs were discussed
+during the heat of meals, and the fumes of digestion, deliberations were
+hasty and violent, and the results of them frequently unreasonable, and
+productive of turbulence and confusion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ON CONTINENCE.
+
+
+Q. Does the law of nature prescribe continence?
+
+A. Yes: because a moderate use of the most lively of pleasures is not
+only useful, but indispensable, to the support of strength and health:
+and because a simple calculation proves that, for some minutes of
+privation, you increase the number of your days, both in vigor of body
+and of mind.
+
+Q. How does it forbid libertinism?
+
+A. By the numerous evils which result from it to the physical and the
+moral existence. He who carries it to an excess enervates and pines
+away; he can no longer attend to study or labor; he contracts idle
+and expensive habits, which destroy his means of existence, his
+public consideration, and his credit; his intrigues occasion continual
+embarrassment, cares, quarrels and lawsuits, without mentioning the
+grievous deep-rooted distempers, and the loss of his strength by
+an inward and slow poison; the stupid dullness of his mind, by the
+exhaustion of the nervous system; and, in fine, a premature and infirm
+old age.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature look on that absolute chastity so recommended
+in monastical institutions, as a virtue?
+
+A. No: for that chastity is of no use either to the society that
+witnesses, or the individual who practises it; it is even prejudicial to
+both. First, it injures society by depriving it of population, which
+is one of its principal sources of wealth and power; and as bachelors
+confine all their views and affections to the term of their lives, they
+have in general an egotism unfavorable to the interests of society.
+
+In the second place, it injures the individuals who practise it, because
+it deprives them of a number of affections and relations which are
+the springs of most domestic and social virtues; and besides, it often
+happens, from circumstances of age, regimen, or temperament, that
+absolute continence injures the constitution and causes severe diseases,
+because it is contrary to the physical laws on which nature has founded
+the system of the reproduction of beings; and they who recommend
+so strongly chastity, even supposing them to be sincere, are in
+contradiction with their own doctrine, which consecrates the law of
+nature by the well known commandment: increase and multiply.
+
+Q. Why is chastity considered a greater virtue in women than in men?
+
+A. Because a want of chastity in women is attended with inconveniences
+much more serious and dangerous for them and for society; for, without
+taking into account the pains and diseases they have in common with
+men, they are further exposed to all the disadvantages and perils that
+precede, attend, and follow child-birth. When pregnant contrary to law,
+they become an object of public scandal and contempt, and spend the
+remainder of their lives in bitterness and misery. Moreover, all the
+expense of maintaining and educating their fatherless children falls on
+them: which expense impoverishes them, and is every way prejudicial to
+their physical and moral existence. In this situation, deprived of the
+freshness and health that constitute their charm, carrying with them an
+extraneous and expensive burden, they are less prized by men, they
+find no solid establishment, they fall into poverty, misery, and
+wretchedness, and thus drag on in sorrow their unhappy existence.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature extend so far as the scruples of desires and
+thoughts.
+
+A. Yes; because, in the physical laws of the human body, thoughts and
+desires inflame the senses, and soon provoke to action: now, by another
+law of nature in the organization of our body, those actions become
+mechanical wants which recur at certain periods of days or of weeks, so
+that, at such a time, the want is renewed of such an action and such a
+secretion; if this action and this secretion be injurious to health, the
+habitude of them becomes destructive of life itself. Thus thoughts and
+desires have a true and natural importance.
+
+Q. Should modesty be considered as a virtue?
+
+A. Yes; because modesty, inasmuch as it is a shame of certain actions,
+maintains the soul and body in all those habits useful to good order,
+and to self-preservation. The modest woman is esteemed, courted, and
+established, with advantages of fortune which ensure her existence,
+and render it agreeable to her, while the immodest and prostitute are
+despised, repulsed, and abandoned to misery and infamy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ON COURAGE AND ACTIVITY.
+
+
+Q. Are courage and strength of body and mind virtues in the law of
+nature?
+
+A. Yes, and most important virtues; for they are the efficacious and
+indispensable means of attending to our preservation and welfare. The
+courageous and strong man repulses oppression, defends his life, his
+liberty, and his property; by his labor he procures himself an abundant
+subsistence, which he enjoys in tranquillity and peace of mind. If he
+falls into misfortunes, from which his prudence could not protect him,
+he supports them with fortitude and resignation; and it is for this
+reason that the ancient moralists have reckoned strength and courage
+among the four principal virtues.
+
+Q. Should weakness and cowardice be considered as vices?
+
+A. Yes, since it is certain that they produce innumerable calamities.
+The weak or cowardly man lives in perpetual cares and agonies; he
+undermines his health by the dread, oftentimes ill founded, of attacks
+and dangers: and this dread which is an evil, is not a remedy; it
+renders him, on the contrary, the slave of him who wishes to oppress
+him; and by the servitude and debasement of all his faculties, it
+degrades and diminishes his means of existence, so far as the seeing his
+life depend on the will and caprice of another man.
+
+Q. But, after what you have said on the influence of aliments, are not
+courage and force, as well as many other virtues, in a great measure the
+effect of our physical constitution and temperament?
+
+A. Yes, it is true; and so far, that those qualities are transmitted by
+generation and blood, with the elements on which they depend: the most
+reiterated and constant facts prove that in the breed of animals of
+every kind, we see certain physical and moral qualities, attached to
+the individuals of those species, increase or decay according to the
+combinations and mixtures they make with other breeds.
+
+Q. But, then, as our will is not sufficient to procure us those
+qualities, is it a crime to be destitute of them?
+
+A. No, it is not a crime, but a misfortune; it is what the ancients
+call an unlucky fatality; but even then we have it yet in our power to
+acquire them; for, as soon as we know on what physical elements such
+or such a quality is founded, we can promote its growth, and hasten its
+developments, by a skillful management of those elements; and in this
+consists the science of education, which, according as it is directed,
+meliorates or degrades individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch
+as totally to change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it
+is of the greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature
+by which those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily
+effected.
+
+Q. Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of
+nature?
+
+A. Because the man who works and employs his time usefully, derives from
+it a thousand precious advantages to his existence. If he is born poor,
+his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and still more so, if he is
+sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon acquires a competency, and
+enjoys the sweets of life; his very labor gives him virtues; for, while
+he occupies his body and mind, he is not affected with unruly desires,
+time does not lie heavy on him, he contracts mild habits, he augments
+his strength and health, and attains a peaceful and happy old age.
+
+Q. Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?
+
+A. Yes, and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the
+others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even
+the science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which
+accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured
+with disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the
+desires of his senses, which, becoming every day more inordinate, render
+him intemperate, gluttonous, lascivious, enervated, cowardly, vile, and
+contemptible. By the certain effect of all those vices, he ruins his
+fortune, consumes his health, and terminates his life in all the agonies
+of sickness and of poverty.
+
+Q. From what you say, one would think that poverty was a vice?
+
+A. No, it is not a vice; but it is still less a virtue, for it is by far
+more ready to injure than to be useful; it is even commonly the result,
+or the beginning of vice, for the effect of all individual vices is to
+lead to indigence, and to the privation of the necessaries of life; and
+when a man is in want of necessaries, he is tempted to procure them by
+vicious means, that is to say, by means injurious to society. All
+the individual virtues tend, on the contrary, to procure to a man an
+abundant subsistence; and when he has more than he can consume, it
+is much easier for him to give to others, and to practice the actions
+useful to society.
+
+Q. Do you look upon opulence as a virtue?
+
+A. No; but still less as a vice: it is the use alone of wealth that
+can be called virtuous or vicious, according as it is serviceable or
+prejudicial to man and to society. Wealth is an instrument, the use and
+employment alone of which determine its virtue or vice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ON CLEANLINESS.
+
+
+Q. Why is cleanliness included among the virtues?
+
+A. Because it is, in reality, one of the most important among them, on
+account of its powerful influence over the health and preservation of
+the body. Cleanliness, as well in dress as in residence, obviates
+the pernicious effects of the humidity, baneful odors, and contagious
+exhalations, proceeding from all things abandoned to putrefaction.
+Cleanliness, maintains free transpiration; it renews the air, refreshes
+the blood, and disposes even the mind to cheerfulness.
+
+From this it appears that persons attentive to the cleanliness of their
+bodies and habitations are, in general, more healthy, and less subject
+to disease, than those who live in filth and nastiness; and it is
+further remarked, that cleanliness carries with it, throughout all the
+branches of domestic administration, habits of order and arrangement,
+which are the chief means and first elements of happiness.
+
+Q. Uncleanliness or filthiness is, then, a real vice?
+
+A. Yes, as real a one as drunkenness, or as idleness, from which in a
+great measure it is derived. Uncleanliness is the second, and often the
+first, cause of many inconveniences, and even of grievous disorders; it
+is a fact in medicine, that it brings on the itch, the scurf, tetters,
+leprosies, as much as the use of tainted or sour aliments; that it
+favors the contagious influence of the plague and malignant fevers,
+that it even produces them in hospitals and prisons; that it occasions
+rheumatisms, by incrusting the skin with dirt, and thereby preventing
+transpiration; without reckoning the shameful inconvenience of being
+devoured by vermin--the foul appendage of misery and depravity.
+
+Most ancient legislators, therefore, considered cleanliness, which they
+called purity, as one of the essential dogmas of their religions. It
+was for this reason that they expelled from society, and even punished
+corporeally those who were infected with distempers produced by
+uncleanliness; that they instituted and consecrated ceremonies of
+ablutions baths, baptisms, and of purifications, even by fire and the
+aromatic fumes of incense, myrrh, benjamin, etc., so that the entire
+system of pollutions, all those rites of clean and unclean things,
+degenerated since into abuses and prejudices, were only founded
+originally on the judicious observation, which wise and learned men
+had made, of the extreme influence that cleanliness in dress and abode
+exercises over the health of the body, and by an immediate consequence
+over that of the mind and moral faculties.
+
+Thus all the individual virtues have for their object, more or less
+direct, more or less near, the preservation of the man who practises
+them and by the preservation of each man, they lead to that of families
+and society, which are composed of the united sum of individuals.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ON DOMESTIC VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q. What do you mean be domestic virtues?
+
+A. I mean the practice of actions useful to a family, supposed to live
+in the same house.*
+
+     * Domestic is derived from the Latin word domus, a house.
+
+Q. What are those virtues?
+
+A. They are economy, paternal love, filial love, conjugal love,
+fraternal love, and the accomplishment of the duties of master and
+servant.
+
+Q. What is economy?
+
+A. It is, according to the most extensive meaning of the word, the
+proper administration of every thing that concerns the existence of
+the family or house; and as subsistence holds the first rank, the word
+economy in confined to the employment of money for the wants of life.
+
+Q. Why is economy a virtue?
+
+A. Because a man who makes no useless expenses acquires a
+superabundancy, which is true wealth, and by means of which he procures
+for himself and his family everything that is really convenient and
+useful; without mentioning his securing thereby resources against
+accidental and unforeseen losses, so that he and his family enjoy
+an agreeable and undisturbed competency, which is the basis of human
+felicity.
+
+Q. Dissipation and prodigality, therefore, are vices?
+
+A. Yes, for by them man, in the end, is deprived of the necessaries
+of life; he falls into poverty and wretchedness; and his very friends,
+fearing to be obliged to restore to him what he has spent with or for
+them, avoid him as a debtor does his creditor, and he remains abandoned
+by the whole world.
+
+Q. What is paternal love?
+
+A. It is the assiduous care taken by parents to make their children
+contract the habit of every action useful to themselves and to society.
+
+Q. Why is paternal tenderness a virtue in parents?
+
+A. Because parents, who rear their children in those habits, procure for
+themselves, during the course of their lives, enjoyments and helps that
+give a sensible satisfaction at every instant, and which assure to them,
+when advanced in years, supports and consolations against the wants and
+calamities of all kinds with which old age is beset.
+
+Q. Is paternal love a common virtue?
+
+A. No; notwithstanding the ostentation made of it by parents, it is
+a rare virtue. They do not love their children, they caress and spoil
+them. In them they love only the agents of their will, the instruments
+of their power, the trophies of their vanity, the pastime of their
+idleness. It is not so much the welfare of their children that they
+propose to themselves, as their submission and obedience; and if among
+children so many are seen ungrateful for benefits received, it
+is because there are among parents as many despotic and ignorant
+benefactors.
+
+Q. Why do you say that conjugal love is a virtue?
+
+A. Because the concord and union resulting from the love of the married,
+establish in the heart of the family a multitude of habits useful to its
+prosperity and preservation. The united pair are attached to, and seldom
+quit their home; they superintend each particular direction of it; they
+attend to the education of their children; they maintain the respect and
+fidelity of domestics; they prevent all disorder and dissipation;
+and from the whole of their good conduct, they live in ease and
+consideration; while married persons who do not love one another, fill
+their house with quarrels and troubles, create dissension between their
+children and the servants, leaving both indiscriminately to all kinds of
+vicious habits; every one in turn spoils, robs, and plunders the house;
+the revenues are absorbed without profit; debts accumulate; the married
+pair avoid each other, or contend in lawsuits; and the whole family
+falls into disorder, ruin, disgrace and want.
+
+Q. Is adultery an offence in the law of nature?
+
+A. Yes; for it is attended with a number of habits injurious to the
+married and to their families. The wife or husband, whose affections
+are estranged, neglect their house, avoid it, and deprive it, as much as
+they can, of its revenues or income, to expend them with the object of
+their affections; hence arise quarrels, scandal, lawsuits, the neglect
+of their children and servants, and at last the plundering and ruin of
+the whole family; without reckoning that the adulterous woman commits
+a most grievous theft, in giving to her husband heirs of foreign blood,
+who deprive his real children of their legitimate portion.
+
+Q. What is filial love?
+
+A. It is, on the side of children, the practice of those actions useful
+to themselves and to their parents.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe filial love?
+
+A. By three principal motives:
+
+1. By sentiment; for the affectionate care of parents inspires, from the
+most tender age, mild habits of attachment.
+
+2. By justice; for children owe to their parents a return and indemnity
+for the cares, and even for the expenses, they have caused them.
+
+3. By personal interest; for, if they use them ill, they give to their
+own children examples of revolt and ingratitude, which authorize them,
+at a future day, to behave to themselves in a similar manner.
+
+Q. Are we to understand by filial love a passive and blind submission?
+
+A. No; but a reasonable submission, founded on the knowledge of the
+mutual rights and duties of parents and children; rights and duties,
+without the observance of which their mutual conduct is nothing but
+disorder.
+
+Q. Why is fraternal love a virtue?
+
+A. Because the concord and union, which result from the love of
+brothers, establish the strength, security, and conservation of the
+family: brothers united defend themselves against all oppression,
+they aid one another in their wants, they help one another in their
+misfortunes, and thus secure their common existence; while brothers
+disunited, abandoned each to his own personal strength, fall into
+all the inconveniences attendant on an insulated state and individual
+weakness. This is what a certain Scythian king ingeniously expressed
+when, on his death-bed, calling his children to him, he ordered them to
+break a bundle of arrows. The young men, though strong, being unable to
+effect it, he took them in his turn, and untieing them, broke each of
+the arrows separately with his fingers. "Behold," said he, "the effects
+of union; united together, you will be invincible; taken separately, you
+will be broken like reeds."
+
+Q. What are the reciprocal duties of masters and of servants?
+
+A. They consist in the practice of the actions which are respectively
+and justly useful to them; and here begin the relations of society; for
+the rule and measure of those respective actions is the equilibrium or
+equality between the service and the recompense, between what the one
+returns and the other gives; which is the fundamental basis of all
+society.
+
+Thus all the domestic and individual virtues refer, more or less
+mediately, but always with certitude, to the physical object of the
+amelioration and preservation of man, and are thereby precepts resulting
+from the fundamental law of nature in his formation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE SOCIAL VIRTUES; JUSTICE.
+
+
+Q. What is society?
+
+A. It is every reunion of men living together under the clauses of
+an expressed or tacit contract, which has for its end their common
+preservation.
+
+Q. Are the social virtues numerous?
+
+A. Yes; they are in as great number as the kinds of actions useful to
+society; but all may be reduced to one principle.
+
+Q. What is that fundamental principle?
+
+A. It is justice, which alone comprises all the virtues of society.
+
+Q. Why do you say that justice is the fundamental and almost only virtue
+of society?
+
+A. Because it alone embraces the practice of all the actions useful
+to it; and because all the other virtues, under the denominations
+of charity, humanity, probity, love of one's country, sincerity,
+generosity, simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only varied forms
+and diversified applications of the axiom, "Do not to another what you
+do not wish to be done to yourself," which is the definition of justice.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe justice?
+
+A. By three physical attributes, inherent in the organization of man.
+
+Q. What are those attributes?
+
+A. They are equality, liberty, and property.
+
+Q. How is equality a physical attribute of man?
+
+A. Because all men, having equally eyes, hands, mouths, ears, and the
+necessity of making use of them, in order to live, have, by this reason
+alone, an equal right to life, and to the use of the aliments which
+maintain it; they are all equal before God.
+
+Q. Do you suppose that all men hear equally, see equally, feel equally,
+have equal wants, and equal passions?
+
+A. No; for it is evident, and daily demonstrated, that one is short, and
+another long-sighted; that one eats much, another little; that one has
+mild, another violent passions; in a word, that one is weak in body and
+mind, while another is strong in both.
+
+Q. They are, therefore, really unequal?
+
+A. Yes, in the development of their means, but not in the nature and
+essence of those means. They are made of the same stuff, but not in
+the same dimensions; nor are the weight and value equal. Our language
+possesses no one word capable of expressing the identity of nature, and
+the diversity of its form and employment. It is a proportional equality;
+and it is for this reason I have said, equal before God, and in the
+order of nature.
+
+Q. How is liberty a physical attribute of man?
+
+A. Because all men having senses sufficient for their preservation--no
+one wanting the eye of another to see, his ear to hear, his mouth to
+eat, his feet to walk--they are all, by this very reason, constituted
+naturally independent and free; no man is necessarily subjected to
+another, nor has he a right to dominate over him.
+
+Q. But if a man is born strong, has he a natural right to master the
+weak man?
+
+A. No; for it is neither a necessity for him, nor a convention between
+them; it is an abusive extension of his strength; and here an abuse is
+made of the word right, which in its true meaning implies, justice or
+reciprocal faculty.
+
+Q. How is property a physical attribute of man?
+
+A. Inasmuch as all men being constituted equal or similar to one
+another, and consequently independent and free, each is the absolute
+master, the full proprietor of his body and of the produce of his labor.
+
+Q. How is justice derived from these three attributes?
+
+A. In this, that men being equal and free, owing nothing to each other,
+have no right to require anything from one another only inasmuch as
+they return an equal value for it; or inasmuch as the balance of what is
+given is in equilibrium with what is returned: and it is this equality,
+this equilibrium which is called justice, equity;* that is to say that
+equality and justice are but one and the same word, the same law
+of nature, of which the social virtues are only applications and
+derivatives.
+
+     * Aequitas, aequilibrium, aequalitas, are all of the same
+     family.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q. Explain how the social virtues are derived from the law of nature.
+How is charity or the love of one's neighbor a precept and application
+of it?
+
+A. By reason of equality and reciprocity; for when we injure another,
+we give him a right to injure us in return; thus, by attacking the
+existence of our neighbor, we endanger our own, from the effect of
+reciprocity; on the other hand, by doing good to others, we have room
+and right to expect an equivalent exchange; and such is the character of
+all social virtues, that they are useful to the man who practises them,
+by the right of reciprocity which they give him over those who are
+benefited by them.
+
+Q. Charity is then nothing but justice?
+
+A. No: it is only justice; with this slight difference, that strict
+justice confines itself to saying, "Do not to another the harm you would
+not wish he should do to you;" and that charity, or the love of one's
+neighbor, extends so far as to say, "Do to another the good which you
+would wish to receive from him." Thus when the gospel said, that this
+precept contained the whole of the law and the prophets, it announced
+nothing more than the precept of the law of nature.
+
+Q. Does it enjoin forgiveness of injuries?
+
+A. Yes, when that forgiveness implies self-preservation.
+
+Q. Does it prescribe to us, after having received a blow on one cheek,
+to hold out the other?
+
+A. No; for it is, in the first place, contrary to the precept of loving
+our neighbor as ourselves, since thereby we should love, more than
+ourselves, him who makes an attack on our preservation. Secondly, such
+a precept in its literal sense, encourages the wicked to oppression
+and injustice. The law of nature has been more wise in prescribing a
+calculated proportion of courage and moderation, which induces us to
+forget a first or unpremediated injury, but which punishes every act
+tending to oppression.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature prescribe to do good to others beyond the
+bounds of reason and measure?
+
+A. No; for it is a sure way of leading them to ingratitude. Such is the
+force of sentiment and justice implanted in the heart of man, that he
+is not even grateful for benefits conferred without discretion. There is
+only one measure with them, and that is to be just.
+
+Q. Is alms-giving a virtuous action?
+
+A. Yes, when it is practised according to the rule first mentioned;
+without which it degenerates into imprudence and vice, inasmuch as it
+encourages laziness, which is hurtful to the beggar and to society;
+no one has a right to partake of the property and fruits of another's
+labor, without rendering an equivalent of his own industry.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature consider as virtues faith and hope, which are
+often joined with charity?
+
+A. No; for they are ideas without reality; and if any effects result
+from them, they turn rather to the profit of those who have not those
+ideas, than of those who have them; so that faith and hope may be called
+the virtues of dupes for the benefit of knaves.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature prescribe probity?
+
+A. Yes, for probity is nothing more than respect for one's own rights
+in those of another; a respect founded on a prudent and well combined
+calculation of our interests compared to those of others.
+
+Q. But does not this calculation, which embraces the complicated
+interests and rights of the social state, require an enlightened
+understanding and knowledge, which make it a difficult science?
+
+A. Yes, and a science so much the more delicate as the honest man
+pronounces in his own cause.
+
+Q. Probity, then, shows an extension and justice in the mind?
+
+A. Yes, for an honest man almost always neglects a present interest, in
+order not to destroy a future one; whereas the knave does the contrary,
+and loses a great future interest for a present smaller one.
+
+Q. Improbity, therefore, is a sign of false judgment and a narrow mind?
+
+A. Yes, and rogues may be defined ignorant and silly calculators; for
+they do not understand their true interest, and they pretend to cunning:
+nevertheless, their cunning only ends in making known what they are--in
+losing all confidence and esteem, and the good services resulting from
+them for their physical and social existence. They neither live in
+peace with others, nor with themselves; and incessantly menaced by their
+conscience and their enemies, they enjoy no other real happiness but
+that of not being hanged.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature forbid robbery?
+
+A. Yes, for the man who robs another gives him a right to rob him; from
+that moment there is no security in his property, nor in his means of
+preservation: thus in injuring others, he, by a counterblow, injures
+himself.
+
+Q. Does it interdict even an inclination to rob?
+
+A. Yes; for that inclination leads naturally to action, and it is for
+this reason that envy is considered a sin?
+
+Q. How does it forbid murder?
+
+A. By the most powerful motives of self-preservation; for, first, the
+man who attacks exposes himself to the risk of being killed, by the
+right of defence; secondly, if he kills, he gives to the relations and
+friends of the deceased, and to society at large, an equal right of
+killing him; so that his life is no longer in safety.
+
+Q. How can we, by the law of nature, repair the evil we have done?
+
+A. By rendering a proportionate good to those whom we have injured.
+
+Q. Does it allow us to repair it by prayers, vows, offerings to God,
+fasting and mortifications?
+
+A. No: for all those things are foreign to the action we wish to repair:
+they neither restore the ox to him from whom it has been stolen, honor
+to him whom we have deprived of it, nor life to him from whom it has
+been taken away; consequently they miss the end of justice; they are
+only perverse contracts by which a man sells to another goods which do
+not belong to him; they are a real depravation of morality, inasmuch
+as they embolden to commit crimes through the hope of expiating them;
+wherefore, they have been the real cause of all the evils by which
+the people among whom those expiatory practices were used, have been
+continually tormented.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature order sincerity?
+
+A. Yes; for lying, perfidy, and perjury create distrust, quarrels,
+hatred, revenge, and a crowd of evils among men, which tend to their
+common destruction; while sincerity and fidelity establish confidence,
+concord, and peace, besides the infinite good resulting from such a
+state of things to society.
+
+Q. Does it prescribe mildness and modesty?
+
+A. Yes; for harshness and obduracy, by alienating from us the hearts of
+other men, give them an inclination to hurt us; ostentation and vanity,
+by wounding their self-love and jealousy, occasion us to miss the end of
+a real utility.
+
+Q. Does it prescribe humility as a virtue?
+
+A. No; for it is a propensity in the human heart to despise secretly
+everything that presents to it the idea of weakness; and self-debasement
+encourages pride and oppression in others; the balance must be kept in
+equipoise.
+
+Q. You have reckoned simplicity of manners among the social virtues;
+what do you understand by that word?
+
+A. I mean the restricting our wants and desires to what is truly useful
+to the existence of the citizen and his family; that is to say, the man
+of simple manners has but few wants, and lives content with a little.
+
+Q. How is this virtue prescribed to us?
+
+A. By the numerous advantages which the practice of it procures to the
+individual and to society; for the man whose wants are few, is free at
+once from a crowd of cares, perplexities, and labors; he avoids many
+quarrels and contests arising from avidity and a desire of gain; he
+spares himself the anxiety of ambition, the inquietudes of possession,
+and the uneasiness of losses; finding superfluity everywhere, he is the
+real rich man; always content with what he has, he is happy at little
+expense; and other men, not fearing any competition from him, leave him
+in quiet, and are disposed to render him the services he should stand
+in need of. And if this virtue of simplicity extends to a whole people,
+they insure to themselves abundance; rich in everything they do not
+consume, they acquire immense means of exchange and commerce; they work,
+fabricate, and sell at a lower price than others, and attain to all
+kinds of prosperity, both at home and abroad.
+
+Q. What is the vice contrary to this virtue?
+
+A. It is cupidity and luxury.
+
+Q. Is luxury a vice in the individual and in society?
+
+A. Yes, and to that degree, that it may be said to include all the
+others; for the man who stands in need of many things, imposes thereby
+on himself all the anxiety, and submits to all the means just or unjust
+of acquiring them. Does he possess an enjoyment, he covets another; and
+in the bosom of superfluity, he is never rich; a commodious dwelling is
+not sufficient for him, he must have a beautiful hotel; not content with
+a plenteous table, he must have rare and costly viands: he must have
+splendid furniture, expensive clothes, a train of attendants, horses,
+carriages, women, theatrical representations and games. Now, to supply
+so many expenses, much money must be had; and he looks on every method
+of procuring it as good and even necessary; at first he borrows,
+afterwards he steals, robs, plunders, turns bankrupt, is at war with
+every one, ruins and is ruined.
+
+Should a nation be involved in luxury, it occasions on a larger scale
+the same devastations; by reason that it consumes its entire produce,
+it finds itself poor even with abundance; it has nothing to sell to
+foreigners; its manufactures are carried on at a great expense, and
+are sold too dear; it becomes tributary for everything it imports; it
+attacks externally its consideration, power, strength, and means of
+defence and preservation, while internally it undermines and falls
+into the dissolution of its members. All its citizens being covetous
+of enjoyments, are engaged in a perpetual struggle to obtain them; all
+injure or are near injuring themselves; and hence arise those habits
+and actions of usurpation, which constitute what is denominated moral
+corruption, intestine war between citizen and citizen. From luxury
+arises avidity, from avidity, invasion by violence and perfidy; from
+luxury arises the iniquity of the judge, the venality of the witness,
+the improbity of the husband, the prostitution of the wife, the obduracy
+of parents, the ingratitude of children, the avarice of the master, the
+dishonesty of the servant, the dilapidation of the administrator, the
+perversity of the legislator, lying, perfidy, perjury, assassination,
+and all the disorders of the social state; so that it was with a
+profound sense of truth, that ancient moralists have laid the basis of
+the social virtues on simplicity of manners, restriction of wants, and
+contentment with a little; and a sure way of knowing the extent of
+a man's virtues and vices is, to find out if his expenses are
+proportionate to his fortune, and calculate, from his want of money, his
+probity, his integrity in fulfilling his engagements, his devotion to
+the public weal, and his sincere or pretended love of his country.
+
+Q. What do you mean by the word country?
+
+A. I mean the community of citizens who, united by fraternal sentiments,
+and reciprocal wants, make of their respective strength one common
+force, the reaction of which on each of them assumes the noble and
+beneficent character of paternity. In society, citizens form a bank of
+interest; in our country we form a family of endearing attachments; it
+is charity, the love of one's neighbor extended to a whole nation. Now
+as charity cannot be separated from justice, no member of the family can
+pretend to the enjoyment of its advantages, except in proportion to his
+labor; if he consumes more than it produces, he necessarily encroaches
+on his fellow-citizens; and it is only by consuming less than what
+he produces or possesses, that he can acquire the means of making
+sacrifices and being generous.
+
+Q. What do you conclude from all this?
+
+A. I conclude from it that all the social virtues are only the habitude
+of actions useful to society and to the individual who practices them;
+That they refer to the physical object of man's preservation; That
+nature having implanted in us the want of that preservation, has made
+a law to us of all its consequences, and a crime of everything that
+deviates from it; That we carry in us the seed of every virtue, and of
+every perfection; That it only requires to be developed; That we are
+only happy inasmuch as we observe the rules established by nature for
+the end of our preservation; And that all wisdom, all perfection, all
+law, all virtue, all philosophy, consist in the practice of these axioms
+founded on our own organization:
+
+
+Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself; Live for thy
+fellow citizens, that they may live for thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY.*
+
+     * In 1797, Dr. Priestly published a pamphlet, entitled,
+     "Observation on the increase of infidelity, with
+     animadversions upon the writings of several modern
+     unbelievers, and especially the Ruins of Mr. Volney." The
+     motto to this tract was:
+
+"Minds of little penetration rest naturally on the surface of things.
+They do not like to pierce deep into them, for fear of labor and
+trouble; sometimes still more for fear of truth."
+
+This Letter is an answer from Volney, taken from the Anti-Jacobin Review
+of March and April, 1799.
+
+
+SIR.--I received in due time your pamphlet on the increase of
+infidelity, together with the note without date which accompanied it.*
+My answer has been delayed by the incidents of business, and even by
+ill health, which you will surely excuse: this delay has, besides, no
+inconvenience in it. The question between us is not of a very urgent
+nature: the world would not go on less well with or without my answer
+as with or without your book. I might, indeed, have dispensed with
+returning you any answer at all; and I should have been warranted in
+so doing, by the manner in which you have stated the debate, and by the
+opinion pretty generally received that, on certain occasions, and with
+certain persons, the most noble reply is silence. You seem to have been
+aware of this yourself, considering the extreme precautions you have
+taken to deprive me of this resource; but as according to our French
+customs, any answer is an act of civility, I am not willing to concede
+the advantage of politeness--besides, although silence is sometimes
+very significant, its eloquence is not understood by every one, and
+the public which has not leisure to analyze disputes (often of little
+interest) has a reasonable right to require at least some preliminary
+explanations; reserving to itself, should the discussion degenerate into
+the recriminative clamors of an irritated self-love, to allow the right
+of silence to him in whom it becomes the virtue of moderation.
+
+     * Dr. Priestly sent his pamphlet to Volney, desiring his
+     answer to the strictures on his opinions in his Ruins of
+     Empires.
+
+I have read, therefore, your animadversions on my Ruins, which you are
+pleased to class among the writings of modern unbelievers, and since you
+absolutely insist on my expressing my opinion before the public, I shall
+now fulfill this rather disagreeable task with all possible brevity,
+for the sake of economizing the time of our readers. In the first place,
+sir, it appears evidently, from your pamphlet, that your design is less
+to attack my book than my personal and moral character; and in order
+that the public may pronounce with accuracy on this point, I submit
+several passages fitted to throw light on the subject.
+
+You say, in the preface of your discourses, p. 12, "There are, however,
+unbelievers more ignorant than Mr. Paine, Mr. Volney, Lequino, and
+others in France say," &c.
+
+Also in the preface of your present observations, p. 20. "I can
+truly say that in the writings of Hume, Mr. Gibbon, Voltaire, Mr.
+Volney--there is nothing of solid argument: all abound in gross mistakes
+and misrepresentations." Idem, p. 38--"Whereas had he (Mr. Volney)
+given attention to the history of the times in which Christianity was
+promulgated . . . he could have no more doubt . . . &c., it is as much
+in vain to argue with such a person as this, as with a Chinese or even a
+Hottentot."
+
+Idem, p. 119--"Mr. Volney, if we may judge from his numerous quotations
+of ancient writers in all the learned languages, oriental as well as
+occidental, must be acquainted with all; for he makes no mention of any
+translation, and yet if we judge from this specimen of his knowledge of
+them, he cannot have the smallest tincture of that of the Hebrew or even
+of the Greek."
+
+And, at last, after having published and posted me in your very title
+page, as an unbeliever and an infidel; after having pointed me out in
+your motto as one of those superficial spirits who know not how to find
+out, and are unwilling to encounter, truth; you add, p. 124,
+immediately after an article in which you speak of me under all these
+denominations--
+
+"The progress of infidelity, in the present age, is attended with a
+circumstance which did not so frequently accompany it in any former
+period, at least, in England, which is, that unbelievers in revelation
+generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God
+so as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a
+Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of
+no sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and
+misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the
+main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can
+you hold any converse with a man of such bad connexions? In the second
+place, your invitation, or rather, your summons to me, to point out
+the mistakes which I think you have made with respect to my opinions,
+suggest to me several observations.
+
+First. You suppose that the public attaches a high importance to your
+mistakes and to my opinions: but I cannot act upon a supposition. Am I
+not an unbeliever?
+
+Secondly. You say, p. 18, that the public will expect it from me: Where
+are the powers by which you make the public speak and act? Is this also
+a revelation?
+
+Thirdly. You require me to point out your mistakes. I do not know that I
+am under any such obligation: I have not reproached you with them; it
+is not, indeed, very correct to ascribe to me, by selection or
+indiscriminately, as you have done, all the opinions scattered through
+my book, since, having introduced many different persons, I was under
+the necessity of making them deliver different sentiments, according to
+their different characters. The part which belongs to me is that of a
+traveler, resting upon the ruins and meditating on the causes of the
+misfortunes of the human race. To be consistent with yourself you ought
+to have assigned to me that of the Hottentot or Samoyde savage, who
+argues with the Doctors, chap. xxiii, and I should have accepted it; you
+have preferred that of the erudite historian, chap. xxii, nor do I look
+upon this as a mistake; I discover on the contrary, an insidious design
+to engage me in a duel of self-love before the public, wherein you would
+excite the exclusive interest of the spectators by supporting the cause
+which they approve; while the task which you would impose on me,
+would only, in the event of success, be attended with sentiments of
+disapprobation. Such is your artful purpose, that, in attacking me
+as doubting the existence of Jesus, you might secure to yourself,
+by surprise, the favor of every Christian sect, although your own
+incredulity in his divine nature is not less subversive of Christianity
+than the profane opinion, which does not find in history the proof
+required by the English law to establish a fact: to say nothing of
+the extraordinary kind of pride assumed in the silent, but palpable,
+comparison of yourself to Paul and to Christ, by likening your labors to
+theirs as tending to the same object, p. 10, preface. Nevertheless, as
+the first impression of an attack always confers an advantage, you
+have some ground for expecting you may obtain the apostolic crown;
+unfortunately for your purpose I entertain no disposition to that of
+martrydom: and however glorious it might be to me to fall under the arm
+of him who has overcome Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire and even Frederick II., I
+find myself under the necessity of declining your theological challenge,
+for a number of substantial reasons.
+
+1. Because, to religious quarrels there is no end, since the prejudices
+of infancy and education almost unavoidably exclude impartial reasoning,
+and besides, the vanity of the champions becomes committed by the very
+publicity of the contest, never to give up a first assertion, whence
+result a spirit of sectarism and faction.
+
+2. Because no one has a right to ask of me an account of my religious
+opinions. Every inquisition of this kind is a pretension to sovereignty,
+a first step towards persecution; and the tolerant spirit of this
+country, which you invoke, has much less in view to engage men to speak,
+than to invite them to be silent.
+
+3. Because, supposing I do hold the opinions you attribute to me, I wish
+not to engage my vanity so as never to retract, nor to deprive myself
+of the resource of a conversion on some future day after more ample
+information.
+
+4. And because, reverend sir, if, in the support of your own thesis, you
+should happen to be discomfited before the Christian audience, it would
+be a dreadful scandal; and I will not be a cause for scandal, even for
+the sake of good.
+
+5. Because in this metaphysical contest our arms are too unequal; you
+speaking in your mother tongue, which I scarcely lisp, might bring forth
+huge volumes, while I could hardly oppose pages; and the public, who
+would read neither production, might take the weight of the books for
+that of reasoning.
+
+6. And because, being endowed with the gift of faith in a pretty
+sufficient quantity, you might swallow in a quarter of an hour more
+articles than my logic would digest in a week.
+
+7. Because again, if you were to oblige me to attend your sermons, as
+you have compelled me to read your pamphlet, the congregation would
+never believe that a man powdered and adorned like any worldling, could
+be in the right against a man dressed out in a large hat, with straight
+hair,* and a mortified countenance, although the gospel, speaking of the
+pharisees of other times, who were unpowdered, says that when one fasts
+he must anoint his head and wash his face.**
+
+     * Dr. Priestly has discarded his wig since he went to
+     America, and wears his own hair.  Editor A. J. Reveiw.
+
+     ** St. Matthew, Chapter VI. verses 16 and 17.
+
+8. Because, finally, a dispute to one having nothing else to do would be
+a gratification, while to me, who can employ my time better, it would be
+an absolute loss.
+
+I shall not then, reverend sir, make you my confessor in matters of
+religion, but I will disclose to you my opinion, as a man of letters, on
+the composition of your book. Having in former days, read many works of
+theology, I was curious to learn whether by any chemical process you had
+discovered real beings in that world of invisibles. Unfortunately, I am
+obliged to declare to the public, which, according to your expression,
+p. 19, "hopes to be instructed, to be led into truth, and not into error
+by me," that I have not found in your book a single new argument,
+but the mere repetition of what is told over and over in thousands of
+volumes, the whole fruit of which has been to procure for their authors
+a cursory mention in the dictionary of heresies. You everywhere lay down
+that as proved which remains to be proved; with this peculiarity,
+that, as Gibbon says, firing away your double battery against those who
+believe too much, and those who believe too little, you hold out your
+own peculiar sensations, as to the precise criterion of truth; so that
+we must all be just of your size in order to pass the gate of that
+New Jerusalem which you are building. After this, your reputation as
+a divine might have become problematical with me; but recollecting the
+principle of the association of ideas so well developed by Locke, whom
+you hold in estimation, and whom, for that reason I am happy to cite to
+you, although to him I owe that pernicious use of my understanding which
+makes me disbelieve what I do not comprehend--I perceive why the public
+having originally attached the idea of talents to the name of Mr.
+Priestly, doctor in chemistry, continued by habit to associate it with
+the name of Mr. Priestly, doctor in divinity; which, however, is not the
+same thing: an association of ideas the more vicious as it is liable
+to be moved inversely.* Happily you have yourself raised a bar of
+separation between your admirers, by advising us in the first page
+of your preface, that your present book is especially destined for
+believers. To cooperate, however, with you, sir, in this judicious
+design, I must observe that it is necessary to retrench two passages,
+seeing they afford the greatest support to the arguments of unbelievers.
+
+     * Mr. Blair, doctor of divinity, and Mr. Black, doctor in
+     chemistry, met at the coffee house in Edinburg: a new
+     theological pamphlet written by doctor Priestly was thrown
+     upon the table, "Really," said Dr. Blair, "this man had
+     better confine himself to chemistry, for he is absolutely
+     ignorant in theology:"--"I beg your pardon," answered Dr.
+     Black, "he is in the right, he is a minister of the gospel,
+     he ought to adhere to his profession, for in truth he knows
+     nothing of chemistry."
+
+You say, p. 15, "What is manifestly contrary to natural reason cannot be
+received by it;"--and p. 62, "With respect to intellect, men and brute
+animals are born in the same state, having the same external senses,
+which are the only inlets to all ideas, and consequently the source of
+all the knowledge and of all the mental habits they ever acquire."
+
+Now if you admit, with Locke, and with us infidels, that every one has
+the right of rejecting whatever is contrary to his natural reason, and
+that all our ideas and all our knowledge are acquired only by the inlets
+of our external senses; What becomes of the system of revelation, and of
+that order of things in times past, which is so contradictory to that
+of the time present? unless we consider it as a dream of the human brain
+during the state of superstitious ignorance.
+
+With these two single phrases, I could overturn the whole edifice of
+your faith. Dread not, however, sir, in me such overflowing zeal. For
+the same reason that I have not the frenzy of martyrdom, I have not that
+of making proselytes. It becomes those ardent, or rather acrimonious
+tempers, who mistake the violence of their sentiments for the enthusiasm
+of truth; the ambition of noise and rumor, for the love of glory; and
+for the love of their neighbor, the detestation of his opinions, and the
+secret desire of dominion.
+
+As for me, who have not received from nature the turbulent qualities of
+an apostle, and never sustained in Europe the character of a dissenter,
+I am come to America neither to agitate the conscience of men, nor to
+form a sect, nor to establish a colony, in which, under the pretext of
+religion, I might erect a little empire to myself. I have never been
+seen evangelizing my ideas, either in temples or in public meetings. I
+have never likewise practiced that quackery of beneficence, by which
+a certain divine, imposing a tax upon the generosity of the public,
+procures for himself the honors of a more numerous audience, and the
+merit of distributing at his pleasure a bounty which costs him nothing,
+and for which he receives grateful thanks dexterously stolen from the
+original donors.
+
+Either in the capacity of a stranger, or in that of a citizen, a sincere
+friend to peace, I carry into society neither the spirit of dissension,
+nor the desire of commotion; and because I respect in every one what
+I wish him to respect in me, the name of liberty is in my mind nothing
+else but the synonyma of justice.
+
+As a man, whether from moderation or indolence, a spectator of the world
+rather than an actor in it, I am every day less tempted to take on me
+the management of the minds or bodies of men: it is sufficient for an
+individual to govern his own passions and caprices.
+
+If by one of these caprices, I am induced to think it may be useful,
+sometimes, to publish my reflections, I do it without obstinacy or
+pretension to that implicit faith, the ridicule of which you desire
+to impart to me, p. 123. My whole book of the Ruins which you treat so
+ungratefully, since you thought it amusing, p. 122, evidently bears this
+character. By means of the contrasted opinions I have scattered through
+it, it breathes that spirit of doubt and uncertainty which appears to me
+the best suited to the weakness of the human mind, and the most adapted
+to its improvement, inasmuch as it always leaves a door open to new
+truths; while the spirit of dogmatism and immovable belief, limiting our
+progress to a first received opinion, binds us at hazard, and without
+resource, to the yoke of error or falsehood, and occasions the most
+serious mischiefs to society; since by combining with the passions, it
+engenders fanaticism, which, sometimes misled and sometimes misleading,
+though always intolerant and despotic, attacks whatever is not of
+its own nature; drawing upon itself persecution when it is weak, and
+practising persecution when it is powerful; establishing a religion of
+terror, which annihilates the faculties, and vitiates the conscience:
+so that, whether under a political or a religious aspect, the spirit
+of doubt is friendly to all ideas of liberty, truth, or genius, while a
+spirit of confidence is connected with the ideas of tyranny, servility,
+and ignorance.
+
+If, as is the fact, our own experience and that of others daily teaches
+us that what at one time appeared true, afterwards appeared demonstrably
+false, how can we connect with our judgments that blind and presumptuous
+confidence which pursues those of others with so much hatred?
+
+No doubt it is reasonable, and even honest, to act according to our
+present feelings and conviction: but if these feelings and their causes
+do vary by the very nature of things, how dare we impose upon ourselves
+or others an invariable conviction? How, above all, dare we require this
+conviction in cases where there is really no sensation, as happens
+in purely speculative questions, in which no palpable fact can be
+presented?
+
+Therefore, when opening the book of nature, (a more authentic one and
+more easy to be read than leaves of paper blackened over with Greek or
+Hebrew,) and when I reflected that the slightest change in the material
+world has not been in times past, nor is at present effected by the
+difference of so many religions and sects which have appeared and still
+exist on the globe, and that the course of the seasons, the path of the
+sun, the return of rain and drought, are the same for the inhabitants
+of each country, whether Christians, Mussulmans, Idolaters, Catholics,
+Protestants, etc., I am induced to believe that the universe is governed
+by laws of wisdom and justice, very different from those which human
+ignorance and intolerance would enact.
+
+And as in living with men of very opposite religious persuasions, I
+have had occasion to remark that their manners were, nevertheless, very
+analogous; that is to say, among the different Christian sects, among
+the Mahometans, and even among those people who were of no sect, I have
+found men who practise all the virtues, public and private, and that too
+without affectation; while others, who were incessantly declaiming of
+God and religion, abandoned themselves to every vicious habit which
+their belief condemned, I thereby became convinced that Ethics,
+the doctrines of morality, are the only essential, as they are only
+demonstrable, part of religion. And as, by your own avowal, the only end
+of religion is to render men better, in order to add to their happiness,
+p. 62, I have concluded that there are but two great systems of religion
+in the world, that of good sense and beneficence, and that of malice and
+hypocrisy.
+
+In closing this letter, I find myself embarrassed by the nature of the
+sentiment which I ought to express to you, for in declaring as you
+have done, p. 123, that you do not care for the contempt of such as me*
+(ignorant as you were of my opinion), you tell me plainly that you do
+not care for their esteem. I leave, therefore, to your discernment and
+taste to determine the sentiment most congenial to my situation and your
+desert.
+
+     * "And what does it do for me here, except, perhaps, expose
+     me to the contempt of such men as Mr. Volney, which,
+     however, I feel myself pretty well able to bear?" p. 124.
+     This language is the more surprising, as Dr. Priestly never
+     received anything from me but civilities.  In the year 1791
+     I sent him a dissertation of mine on the Chronology of the
+     Ancients, in consequence of some charts which he had himself
+     published.  His only answer was to abuse me in a pamphlet in
+     1792.  After this first abuse, on meeting me here last
+     winter, he procured me an invitation to dine with his friend
+     Mr. Russell, at whose house he lodged; after having shown me
+     polite attention at that dinner, he abuses me in his new
+     pamphlet.  After this second abuse he meets me in Spruce
+     Street, and takes me by the hand as a friend, and speaks of
+     me in a large company under that denomination.  Now I ask
+     the public, what kind of a man is Dr. Priestly?
+
+C. F. VOLNEY.
+
+Philadelphia, March 10, 1797.
+
+P. S. I do not accompany this public letter with a private note to Dr.
+Priestly, because communications of that nature carry an appearance of
+bravado, which, even in exercising the right of a necessary defence,
+appear to me imcompatible with decency and politeness.
+
+
+
+THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+(Compiled by the publisher from recognized authorities.)
+
+
+The Zodiac is an imaginary girdle or belt in the celestial sphere, which
+extends about eight degrees on each side of the Ecliptic. It is divided
+into twelve portions, called the signs of the Zodiac, within which all
+the planets make their revolutions. The Zodiac is so called from the
+animals represented upon it, and is supposed to have originated
+in remote ages and in latitudes where the camel and elephant were
+comparatively unknown. This pictorial representation of the zodiac was
+probably the origin, as M. Dupuis suggests, of the Arabian and Egyptian
+adoration of animals and birds, and has led in the natural progress of
+events to the adoration of images by both Christians and pagans.
+
+"The Signs of the Zodiac, (says Godfrey Higgins in The Anacalypsis) with
+the exception of the Scorpion, which was exchanged by Dan for the
+Eagle, were carried by the different tribes of the Israelites on their
+standards; and Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio or the Eagle--the
+four signs of Reuben, Judah, Ephriam, and Dan--were placed at the four
+corners, (the four cardinal points), of their encampment, evidently
+in allusion to the cardinal points of the sphere, the equinoxes and
+solstices, when the equinox was in Taurus. (See Parkhurst's Lexicon.)
+These coincidences prove that this religious system had its origin
+before the bull ceased to be an equinoctial sign, and prove also, that
+the religion of Moses was originally the same in its secret mysteries as
+that of the Heathen, or, if my reader likes it better, that the Heathen
+secret mysteries were the same as those of Moses."
+
+The Ecliptic, a great circle of the sphere, (shown on the preceding map
+by two parallel lines), is supposed to be drawn through the middle of
+the Zodiac, cutting the Equator at two points, (called the Equinoctial
+points), at an angle with the equinoctial of 23 degrees 28 minutes, (the
+sun's greatest declination), and is the path which the earth is supposed
+to describe amidst the fixed stars in performing its annual circuit
+around the sun. It is called the Ecliptic because the eclipses of the
+sun and moon always occur under it.
+
+The Signs are each the twelfth part of the Ecliptic or Zodiac, (30
+degrees,) and are reckoned from the point of intersection of the
+ecliptic and equator at the vernal equinox. They are named respectively
+Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
+Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces. These names are borrowed from
+the constellations of the zodiac of the same denomination, which
+corresponded when these divisions were originally made; but in
+consequence of the precession, recession, or retrocession of the
+equinoxes, (about 50 1/10" yearly, at the rate of about 72 years to a
+degree, displacing an entire sign in about 2152 years, and making
+an entire revolution of the equinoctial in about 25,868 years), the
+positions of these constellations in the heavens no longer correspond
+with the divisions of the ecliptic of the same name, but are in advance
+of them. Thus, the constellation Aries is now in that part of the
+ecliptic called Taurus, and the stars of Taurus are in Gemini, those of
+Gemini in Cancer, and so on throughout the ecliptic.
+
+The relative positions of the signs and constellations in the zodiac and
+ecliptic seem thus to have gradually changed with the revolving years;
+and the worship of the three constellations, Taurus, Aries, and Pisces,
+with which Christianity is so intimately connected, seems to have
+changed in a corresponding degree. The worship of the bull of Egypt--the
+celestial Taurus--has given place to that of the lamb of Palestine--the
+celestial Aries; and under the astronomical emblem Pisces--the twelfth
+sign of the zodiac--the dominant faith of to-day was appropriately
+taught by the twelve apostolic fishermen.
+
+It is from one of these chosen fishermen, St. Peter, that the Pope of
+Rome claims to have derived his arbitrary power for binding and loosing
+on earth those who are to be bound and loosed in heaven. (Matt. xvi,
+19.) The grave responsibility of wielding with justice and equity this
+tremendous power over the future destiny of mankind, seems never to have
+disconcerted any of the successors of St. Peter. They have all proved
+to be equally arrogant and intolerant, zealous for both temporal and
+spiritual domination, and merciless to those who have opposed their
+pretensions. The present incumbent of the papal chair, who modestly
+claims the attribute of infallibility, seems proud of his inherited
+title, The Great Fisherman! and hopes in the progress of time, with the
+assistance of his monks, bishops, and cardinals, to entangle all nations
+in his net of faith, and to dictate with unquestioned authority the
+religious worship of the entire human race.
+
+As the precession of the equinoxes still continues as of yore, and as
+the masses still continue credulous and devout, they may in succeeding
+ages be again called upon to worship the god Apis, when the sign of
+Taurus shall again coincide in the zodiac and the ecliptic; and Aries,
+"the lamb of God," may again be offered in the "fullness of time" as a
+sacrifice for mankind, again be crucified, and again shed his redeeming
+blood to wash away the sins of a believing world.
+
+M. Dupuis has satisfactorily shown in The History of all Religions that
+the twelve labors of the god and saviour Hercules were astronomical
+allegories--the history of the passage of the sun through the twelve
+signs of the zodiac--and these labors are so similar to the sufferings
+of Jesus, that the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst has been obliged, much against
+his inclination, to acknowledge that they "were types of what the
+real Saviour was to do and suffer." (Parkhurst, p.47.) An intimate
+connection, if not identity, is thus shown between ancient and modern
+belief--between the paganism of the past and the orthodoxy of the
+present.
+
+
+
+THE ZODIACAL SIGNS.
+
+
+ARIES, the Ram: (marked [symbol for ARIES])--A northern constellation,
+usually named as the first sign in the zodiac, into which, when the sun
+enters at the vernal equinox in March, the days and nights are of equal
+length. Aries has been regarded by the devout during many ages as the
+celestial representative, visible in the heavens, of "the Lamb of God
+that taketh away the sins of the world."
+
+TAURUS, the Bull:(marked thus, [symbol for TAURUS])--The second sign in
+the zodiac, which by the Arabians is called Ataur. This constellation
+was worshipped for ages by the idolatrous Egyptians as the heavenly
+representative of their god Osiris; and derives its name, according to
+Grecian fable, from the bull into which Jupiter transformed himself
+in order to carry Europa over into Crete; but the constellation was
+probably so named by the Egyptians to designate that period of the year,
+(April), in which cows mostly bring forth their young.
+
+"The Rev. Mr. Maurice in his work on the antiquities of India, has shown
+that the May-day festival and the May-pole of Great Britain with its
+garlands, etc., are the remains of an ancient festival of Egypt and
+India, and probably of Phoenicia, when these nations, in countries
+very distant, and from times very remote, have all, with one consent,
+celebrated the entrance of the sun into the sign of Taurus at the vernal
+equinox."
+
+GEMINI, the Twins: (marked thus, [symbol for GEMINI])--A zodiacal
+constellation, visible in May, containing the two bright stars Castor
+and Pollux, the fabled sons of Leda and Jupiter, who during their lives
+had cleared the Hellespont and neighboring seas of pirates, and were
+therefore deemed the protectors of navigators and sailors.
+
+CANCER, the Crab: (marked thus, [symbol for CANCER])--Is the fourth
+sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters on the 21st day of June, and is
+thence called the summer solstice. According to Grecian fable, the crab
+was transported to heaven at the request of Juno, after it had been
+slain by Hercules during his battle with the serpent Python, but the
+evident design of the name is to represent the apparent backward motion
+of the sun in June, which is said to resemble the motions of a crab.
+
+LEO, the Lion: ([symbol for LEO]).--Is the fifth sign in the zodiac,
+and contains one star of the first magnitude, called Regulus, or Cor
+Leonis--the Lion's Heart. The fervid heat of July, when the sun has
+attained its greatest power, is now symbolized in our almanacs by
+the figure of an enraged lion; and the feasts or sacrifices formerly
+celebrated among the ancients during this month, in honor of the sun,
+(which they also represented under the form of a lion,) were called
+Leonitica. The priests who performed the sacred rites were called
+Leones. This feast was sometimes called Mithriaca, because Mithra was
+the name of the sun among the Persians. The sacred writings abound with
+references to the "king of beasts;" among the most interesting of which
+is the story of the battle between the lion and Samson, the Jewish
+Herculus; while the most wonderful example of animal evolution on record
+is found in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where we are gravely
+informed that "the lion shall eat straw like the bullock."
+
+VIRGO, Virgin Mother, Venus, Eve, Isis, &c.--([symbol for VIRGO]).--Is
+the sixth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of
+August. The myths and fables regarding the virgin which abound among all
+nations and all religions, are both various and voluminous, and we may
+add somewhat improbable. They all agree, however, in this, that the
+female, shown on the preceding diagram, holding in her right hand a
+branch of ripened fruit,--the apples of Paradise,--was intended
+to represent the reproductive powers of nature,--the abundance,
+satisfaction and contentment which mortals enjoy during the happy period
+of harvest.
+
+LIBRA, the Balance.--The seventh sign of the zodiac, directly opposite
+to Aries, from which it is distant 180 degrees. It is marked thus
+[symbol for LIBRA], after the manner of a pair of scales; to denote,
+probably, that when the sun arrives at this part of the ecliptic, the
+days and nights are equal, as if weighed in a balance. Hence the
+period when the sun enters Libra, (about September 21st,) is called the
+Autumnal equinox. On the 25th of September was born John the Baptist,
+the forerunner of his cousin Jesus, who came to his exaltation of glory
+on the 25th of March, the Vernal equinox. "The equinoxes and solstices,"
+says Higgins, "equally marked the births and deaths of John and Jesus."
+The one preceded and prepared the way for the other, who receded.
+One advanced, the other declined. Jesus ascended, John descended.
+Astrologically speaking, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John
+iii, 30.)
+
+SCORPIO, the Scorpion.--The eighth sign of the zodiac, which the sun
+enters on the 23d of October, is marked thus [symbol for SCORPIO].
+Scorpio is fabled to have killed the great hunter Orion, and for that
+exploit to have been placed among the constellations. For this reason it
+is also said that when Scorpio rises Orion sets.
+
+SAGITTARIUS, the Archer: (marked thus, [symbol for SAGITTARIUS]) is the
+ninth zodiacal sign, and corresponds with the month of November. This
+sign is represented like a centaur and was fabled to be Crotus, the son
+of Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses.
+
+CAPRICORNUS, the Goat.([symbol for CAPRICORNUS])--The tenth sign of the
+zodiac, which the sun enters the 21st of December, (the longest night in
+the year,) called the winter solstice. This sign is drawn to represent
+the horns of a goat, and is fabled to have been Pan, who in the war of
+the giants was taken to heaven in the shape of a goat. Others claim
+that it was the goat of Amalthaea, which fed Jupiter with her milk.
+Macrobius, who calls Cancer and Capricorn the gates of the sun, makes
+the latter sign to represent his motion, after the manner of a goat
+climbing the mountains.
+
+AQUARIUS, the Water Bearer.--A constellation in the heavens so called,
+because during its rising there is usually an abundance of rain. It
+is the eleventh sign in the zodiac, reckoned from Aries, and is marked
+thus, [symbol for AQUARIUS]. It rises in January and sets in February,
+and is supposed by the poets to be Ganymede.
+
+PISCES, the Fishes, [symbol for PISCES].--The twelfth sign of the
+zodiac, rises in February and is represented by two fishes tied together
+by the tails. These fishes are fabled by the Greeks to be those into
+which Venus and Cupid were changed to escape from the giant Typhon. This
+fable may not be true, but that wonderful miracles were once performed
+with two small fishes is stated in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of
+St. Luke, where it is said that 5000 hungry mortals were cheaply, if
+not sumptuously regaled with two small fishes and five loaves of bread;
+while a large surplus of this piscatory diet, larger indeed than the
+original stock, still remained intact.
+
+In the vestibule or approaches to catholic churches is usually found a
+vase filled with water, (called Piscina,) and this water is considered
+holy. The Fish-days are observed as holy days, or fast days, in which
+Fish may be eaten and meat is forbidden; and learned writers have
+asserted that in the worship of Pisces may be found the true secret of
+the origin of the rite of baptism. The Fish-god Oannes, is said to have
+come out of the Erythraean Sea and taught the Babylonians all kinds of
+useful knowledge. Ionnes or Jonas went headlong into the sea and into
+a fish, and has kindly recorded for our instruction his remarkable
+adventures. The miraculous draughts of fishes in the apostolic age still
+excite the emulation of modern fishermen, who cannot even hope to rival
+the wonders that have been recorded. St. Peter is said to have secured
+ready money from the mouth of a fish that he caught with a hook and
+line in the sea of Galilee. (Matthew xvii, 27.) His success was justly
+rewarded, and to him was delegated the power of ruling the infant
+church. Pisces thus displaced Aries. The fisherman succeeded the
+shepherd. The precession of the equinoxes produced a new avatar; a new
+sign arose in the heavens; and a new saviour was born to save mankind.
+
+
+THE CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+
+SIRIUS, the Dog Star.--A bright star of the first magnitude in the
+mouth of the constellation Canis Major. This is the brightest star that
+appears in our firmament, and is supposed by some to be the nearest.
+
+LEPUS.--One of the southern constellations, placed near Orion, according
+to Grecian fable, because it was one of the animals which he hunted.
+
+ERIDANUS.--A winding southern constellation, near the Cetus, containing
+the bright star Achemar.
+
+CETUS, the Whale.--A southern constellation, and one of the forty-eight
+old asterisms. It is fabled to have been the sea monster sent by Neptune
+to devour Andromeda, which was killed by Perseus.
+
+CRATER, the Cup.--A southern constellation, near Hydra. This is supposed
+by Hyainus to be the cup which Apollo gave to the Corvus, or Raven.
+
+CORVUS.--One of the old constellations in the southern hemisphere, near
+Sagittarius. This bird is fabled to have been translated to heaven by
+Apollo for discovering to him the infidelity of the nymph Coronis.
+
+ARGO NAVIS, the Ship.--A constellation near to the Canis Major, and the
+name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four companions
+to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece, and was said to have been
+translated into the heavens.
+
+CANOPUS.--The name formerly given to a star in the second bend of
+Eridanus. A bright star of the first magnitude in the rudder of the ship
+Argo, which, according to Pliny, was visible at Alexandria in Egypt.
+
+CENTAURUS.--One of the forty-eight old constellations in the southern
+hemisphere, represented in the form of half man and half horse, who was
+fabled by the Greeks to have been Chiron, the tutor of Achilles.
+
+AVA, or ALTAR.--One of the old constellations, and fabled to have been
+that at which the giants entered into their conspiracy against the gods;
+wherefore Jupiter, in commemoration of the event, transplanted the altar
+into the heavens.
+
+PEGASUS.--One of the forty-eight old constellations of the northern
+hemisphere, figured in the form of a flying horse.
+
+DELPHINUS, or DOLPHIN.--A northern constellation, near Pegasus. The
+Dolphin is fabled to have been translated to heaven by Neptune.
+
+AQUILA, the Eagle.--In the Arabic Altair, but in the Persian tables the
+Flying Vulture. This is one of the old constellations, situated near
+Delphinus in the northern hemisphere. According to Grecian fable, Aquila
+represented Ganymede or Hebe, who was transported to heaven and made
+cup-bearer to Jupiter.
+
+SAGITTA--the Dart or Arrow, called by the Arabians Schahan. One of
+the old constellations in the northern hemisphere, near Aquila and
+Delphinus. It is fabled to have been the arrow with which Hercules slew
+the vulture that was devouring the liver of Prometheus who was, like
+Jesus, crucified for loving mankind.
+
+CYGNUS, the Swan.--An old constellation in the milky-way, between
+Equus and the Dragon. This is fabled to be the swan into which Jupiter
+transformed himself in order to deceive the virtuous Leda, wife of
+Tyndareus, king of Sparta. The Grecian matron, like the Jewish virgin,
+thus became the mother of a God.
+
+LYRA.--A northern constellation between Hercules and Cygnus, containing
+a white star of the first magnitude.
+
+MILKY-WAY.--Galaxy, or Via Lactia.--A broad luminous path or circle
+encompassing the heavens, which is easily discernible by its white
+appearance, from which it derives its name. It is supposed to be the
+blended light of innumerable fixed stars, which are not distinguishable
+with ordinary telescopes.
+
+HYDRA, the Serpent.--A southern constellation of great length, which is
+drawn to represent a serpent. The Hydra is fabled to have been placed in
+the heavens by Apollo, to frighten the Raven from drinking.
+
+ORION, the hunter.--A constellation of the southern hemisphere with
+respect to the ecliptic, but half southern and half northern with
+respect to the equinoctial. It is placed near the feet of the bull, and
+is composed of seventeen stars in the form of a sword, which has given
+occasion to the poets to speak of Orion's sword. He was described by
+the Greeks as a "mighty hunter," who for his exploits was placed in the
+heavens by Jupiter, between the Canis and the Lepus. He is believed by
+many to have been the "mighty hunter" spoken of in the bible, under the
+name of Nimrod. (See Gen. x: 8, 9; 1 Chron. i: 10; Micha v: 6, Job ix,
+9; Amos v, 8.)
+
+PERSEUS.--This constellation is named from Perseus, the son of Jupiter
+by Danae, who was translated into the heavens by the assistance of
+Minerva, for having released Andromeda from her confinement on the
+rock to which she was chained. He is represented in the preceding
+illustration holding a drawn sword in his right hand and in his left the
+head of Medusa, the Gorgon, whose terrifying appearance changed all who
+beheld her into stone, and whom he had destroyed with the assistance of
+the wings he had borrowed from Mercury, the helmet from Pluto, the sword
+from Vulcan, and the shield from Minerva.
+
+JOSEPH'S STABLE; AURIGA, the Wagoner:--A northern constellation between
+Perseus and Gemini, represented by the figure of an old man supporting
+a goat. He is said to have been taken to heaven by Jupiter after the
+invention of wagons.
+
+URSA MAJOR, the Bear.--One of the prominent northern constellations,
+situated near the north pole. It contains the stars called the Dipper.
+Ursa Minor contains the pole-star, which is shown in the extremity of
+the tail of the bear.
+
+ANDROMEDA.--A northern constellation, represented by a woman chained;
+as, according to Grecian fable, Andromeda, the daughter of Cassiopia,
+was bound to a rock by the Nereides, and afterwards released by Perseus.
+Minerva changed her into a constellation after her death, and placed her
+in the heavens.
+
+DRACO OR DRAGON.--A northern constellation, supposed to represent the
+Dragon that guarded the Hesperian fruit, and was killed by Hercules.
+It is said that Juno took it up to heaven and placed it among the
+constellations.
+
+BOOTIS, the Ox driver: so called because this constellation seems
+to follow the Great Bear as the driver follows his oxen. Bootis is
+represented as grasping in his right hand a sickle and in his left a
+club, and is fabled to have been Icarius, who was transported to heaven
+because he was a great cultivator of the vine; for when Bootes rises the
+works of ploughing and cultivation go forward.
+
+CORONA BOREALIS. Northern Crown.--One of the old northern
+constellations, between Hercules and Bootes.
+
+CORONA AUSTRALIS--Southern Crown.--One of the old constellations in the
+southern hemisphere, between Sagittarius and Scorpio. The Corona
+were fabled to be Menippe and Metioche, two daughters of Orion, who
+sacrificed themselves at the suggestion of an oracle, to protect
+Boeotia, their native country, from the ravages of a pestilence: it
+being the belief of idolatrous nations that an angry god could be
+propitiated by human sacrifices, and that the death of the innocent
+might atone for the sins of the guilty. The deities of Hades were
+astonished, it is said, at the patriotism and devotion of these Grecian
+maidens, who had so generously and uselessly sacrificed their lives.
+After their death two stars were seen to issue from the altars that
+still smoked with their blood, and these stars were placed in the
+heavens in the form of a crown or coronet.
+
+CEPHEUS AND CASSIOPIA.--One of the old asterism in the northern
+hemisphere, near the pole. According to Grecian fables, Cassiopia
+and her husband Cepheus, king of Etheopia, were placed among the
+constellations to witness the punishment inflicted on their daughter,
+Andromeda.
+
+TRIANGULARIUM.--A name for both one of the old and new constellations in
+the northern hemisphere, between Andromeda and Aries.
+
+SERPENTARIUS, called Ophiucus, is a constellation in the northern
+hemisphere, between Scorpio and Hercules.
+
+HERCULES, one of the old northern constellations. In Grecian mythology
+it was taught and believed that Hercules, the Theban, was born of a
+human mother and an immortal father, like other so-called saviours of
+mankind. His mother, the fair Alcmena, wife of Amphitryon, having found
+favor in the eyes of the god Jupiter, soon fell an unwilling victim
+to his celestial wiles. The life of the infant Hercules, born of this
+unnatural union, was threatened by the jealous Juno, the same as the
+life of the infant Jesus was threatened by the tyrant Herod. Like Jesus,
+Hercules devoted his life to the benefit of the human race, and like
+Jesus he was also worshipped after his death as a God in heaven. He is
+shown in the astrological chart, enveloped in the skin of the lion he
+has slain, with his club upraised, and his foot placed threateningly
+above the head of the Dragon, as if about to fulfill the scriptural
+prophecy, that "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Ruins, by C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1397 ***
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Ruins, by C. F. Volney,
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
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+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1397 ***</div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE RUINS,
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      OR, MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES: <br /> AND <br /> THE LAW OF
+      NATURE, <br /> <br /> by C. F. VOLNEY,
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      COMTE ET PAIR DE FRANCE. COMMANDEUR DE LA LEGION D'HONNEUR, MEMBRE DE<br />
+      L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE, ET DE PLUSIEURS AUTRES SOCIETES SAVANTES. <br />
+      DEPUTY TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF 1789, AND AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN EGYPT
+      AND SYRIA," "NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY," ETC.<br /> <br /> <br /> TO
+      WHICH IS ADDED <br /> <br /> VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY, A BIOGRAPHICAL
+      NOTICE BY COUNT DARU, AND THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS BY THE
+      EDITOR.
+    </h4>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will employ myself on
+        the means of effecting good for him, and build my own happiness on the
+        promotion of his.&mdash;Volney.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <h4>
+      NEW YORK, TWENTIETH CENTURY PUB. CO., 4 WARREN ST. 1890.
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Having recently purchased a set of stereotyped plates of Volney's Ruins,
+      with a view of reprinting the same, I found, on examination, that they
+      were considerably worn by the many editions that had been printed from
+      them and that they greatly needed both repairs and corrections. A careful
+      estimate showed that the amount necessary for this purpose would go far
+      towards reproducing this standard work in modern type and in an improved
+      form. After due reflection this course was at length decided upon, and all
+      the more readily, as by discarding the old plates and resetting the entire
+      work, the publisher was enabled to greatly enhance its value, by inserting
+      the translator's preface as it appeared in the original edition, and also
+      to restore many notes and other valuable material which had been
+      carelessly omitted in the American reprint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the
+      fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may be
+      appropriately referred to, in this connection. It is there stated, in
+      describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes, her
+      opulent metropolis, that "There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while
+      others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race
+      of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair,
+      founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious
+      systems which still govern the universe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to prove
+      that this statement is substantially correct, and that we are in reality
+      indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid imagination of the
+      persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems now so
+      highly revered by the different branches of both the Semitic and Aryan
+      races. This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr. Volney's
+      writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of all
+      religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long concealed
+      beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the Egyptian
+      Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Dioderus, that "the
+      Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship, of
+      festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other
+      religious practice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That an imaginative and superstitious race of black men should have
+      invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system of
+      religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the intellects
+      of the leading representatives of modern theology,&mdash;that still clings
+      to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential influence the literature
+      and faith of the civilized and cultured nations of Europe and America, is
+      indeed a strange illustration of the mad caprice of destiny, of the
+      insignificant and apparently trivial causes that oft produce the most
+      grave and momentous results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The translation here given closely follows that published in Paris by
+      Levrault, Quai Malaquais, in 1802, which was under the direction and
+      careful supervision of the talented author; and whatever notes Count
+      Volney then thought necessary to insert in his work, are here carefully
+      reproduced without abridgment or modification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portrait, maps and illustrations are from a French edition of Volney's
+      complete works, published by Bossange Freres at No. 12 Rue de Seine,
+      Paris, in 1821,&mdash;one year after the death of Mr. Volney. It is a
+      presentation copy "on the part of Madame, the Countess de Volney, and of
+      the nephew of the author," and it may therefore be taken for granted that
+      Mr. Volney's portrait, as here given, is correct, and was satisfactory to
+      his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An explanation of the figures and diagrams shown on the map of the
+      Astrological Heaven of the Ancients has been added in the appendix by the
+      publisher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PETER ECKLER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      New York, January 3, 1890.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF THE ENGLISH EDITION PUBLISHED IN PARIS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      To offer the public a new translation of Volney's Ruins may require some
+      apology in the view of those who are acquainted with the work only in the
+      English version which already exists, and which has had a general
+      circulation. But those who are conversant with the book in the author's
+      own language, and have taken pains to compare it with that version, must
+      have been struck with the errors with which the English performance
+      abounds. They must have regretted the loss of many original beauties, some
+      of which go far in composing the essential merits of the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The energy and dignity of the author's manner, the unaffected elevation of
+      his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity of his diction, are
+      everywhere suited to his subject, which is solemn, novel, luminous,
+      affecting,&mdash;a subject perhaps the most universally interesting to the
+      human race that has ever been presented to their contemplation. It takes
+      the most liberal and comprehensive view of the social state of man,
+      develops the sources of his errors in the most perspicuous and convincing
+      manner, overturns his prejudices with the greatest delicacy and
+      moderation, sets the wrongs he has suffered, and the rights he ought to
+      cherish, in the clearest point of view, and lays before him the true
+      foundation of morals&mdash;his only means of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the work has already become a classical one, even in English, and as it
+      must become and continue to be so regarded in all languages in which it
+      shall be faithfully rendered, we wish it to suffer as little as possible
+      from a change of country;&mdash;that as much of the spirit of the original
+      be transfused and preserved as is consistent with the nature of
+      translation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How far we have succeeded in performing this service for the English
+      reader we must not pretend to determine. We believe, however, that we have
+      made an improved translation, and this without claiming any particular
+      merit on our part, since we have had advantages which our predecessor had
+      not. We have been aided by his labors; and, what is of still more
+      importance, our work has been done under the inspection of the author,
+      whose critical knowledge of both languages has given us a great facility
+      in avoiding such errors as might arise from hurry or mistake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paris, November 1, 1802.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE OF THE LONDON EDITION.*
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Published by T. Allman, 42 Holborn Hill, London, 1851.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The plan of this publication was formed nearly ten years ago; and
+      allusions to it may be seen in the preface to Travels in Syria and Egypt,
+      as well as at the end of that work, (published in 1787). The performance
+      was in some forwardness when the events of 1788 in France interrupted it.
+      Persuaded that a development of the theory of political truth could not
+      sufficiently acquit a citizen of his debt to society, the author wished to
+      add practice; and that particularly at a time when a single arm was of
+      consequence in the defence of the general cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same desire of public benefit which induced him to suspend his work,
+      has since engaged him to resume it, and though it may not possess the same
+      merit as if it had appeared under the circumstances that gave rise to it,
+      yet he imagines that at a time when new passions are bursting forth,&mdash;passions
+      that must communicate their activity to the religious opinions of men,&mdash;it
+      is of importance to disseminate such moral truths as are calculated to
+      operate as a curb and restraint. It is with this view he has endeavored to
+      give to these truths, hitherto treated as abstract, a form likely to gain
+      them a reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was found impossible not to shock the violent prejudices of some
+      readers; but the work, so far from being the fruit of a disorderly and
+      perturbed spirit, has been dictated by a sincere love of order and
+      humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After reading this performance it will be asked, how it was possible in
+      1784 to have had an idea of what did not take place till the year 1790?
+      The solution is simple. In the original plan the legislator was a
+      fictitious and hypothetical being: in the present, the author has
+      substituted an existing legislator; and the reality has only made the
+      subject additionally interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF2" id="link2H_PREF2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.*
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The copy from which this preface is reprinted was
+     published in Boston by Charles Gaylord, in 1833.  It was
+     given to the writer, when a mere lad, by a lady&mdash;almost a
+     stranger&mdash;who was traveling through the little hamlet on the
+     banks of the Hudson where he then resided.  This lady
+     assured me that the book was of great value, containing
+     noble and sublime truths; and the only condition she
+     attached to the gift was, that I should read it carefully
+     and endeavor to understand its meaning.  This I willingly
+     promised and faithfully performed; and all who have "climbed
+     the heights," and escaped from the thraldom of superstitious
+     faith, will concede the inestimable value of such a gift&mdash;
+     rich with the peace and consolation that the truth imparts.
+     &mdash;Pub.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If books were to be judged of by their volume, the following would have
+      but little value; if appraised by their contents, it will perhaps be
+      reckoned among the most instructive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In general, nothing is more important than a good elementary book; but,
+      also, nothing is more difficult to compose and even to read: and why?
+      Because, as every thing in it should be analysis and definition, all
+      should be expressed with truth and precision. If truth and precision are
+      wanting, the object has not been attained; if they exist, its very force
+      renders it abstract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first of these defects has been hitherto evident in all books of
+      morality. We find in them only a chaos of incoherent maxims, precepts
+      without causes, and actions without a motive. The pedants of the human
+      race have treated it like a little child: they have prescribed to it good
+      behavior by frightening it with spirits and hobgoblins. Now that the
+      growth of the human race is rapid, it is time to speak reason to it; it is
+      time to prove to men that the springs of their improvement are to be found
+      in their very organization, in the interest of their passions, and in all
+      that composes their existence. It is time to demonstrate that morality is
+      a physical and geometrical science, subject to the rules and calculations
+      of the other mathematical sciences: and such is the advantage of the
+      system expounded in this book, that the basis of morality being laid in it
+      on the very nature of things, it is both constant and immutable; whereas,
+      in all other theological systems, morality being built upon arbritary
+      opinions, not demonstrable and often absurd, it changes, decays, expires
+      with them, and leaves men in an absolute depravation. It is true that
+      because our system is founded on facts and not on reveries, it will with
+      much greater difficulty be extended and adopted: but it will derive
+      strength from this very struggle, and sooner or later the eternal religion
+      of Nature must overturn the transient religions of the human mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This book was published for the first time in 1793, under the title of The
+      French Citizen's Catechism. It was at first intended for a national work,
+      but as it may be equally well entitled the Catechism of men of sense and
+      honor, it is to be hoped that it will become a book common to all Europe.
+      It is possible that its brevity may prevent it from attaining the object
+      of a popular classical work, but the author will be satisfied if he has at
+      least the merit of pointing out the way to make a better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      VOLNEY'S RUINS;
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      OR MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The superior merits of this work are too well known to require
+      commendation; but as it is not generally known that there are in
+      circulation three English translations of it, varying materially in regard
+      to faithfulness and elegance of diction, the publisher of the present
+      edition inserts the following extracts for the information of purchasers
+      and readers:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PARIS TRANSLATION,
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      First published in this Country by Dixon and Sickels.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      INVOCATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hail, solitary ruins! holy sepulchres, and silent walls! you I invoke; to
+      you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret terror, the
+      vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious sentiments&mdash;sublime
+      contemplations. What useful lessons! what affecting and profound
+      reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult you. When the
+      whole earth, in chains and silence, bowed the neck before its tyrants, you
+      had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor, and confounding the
+      dust of the king with that of the meanest slave, had announced to man the
+      sacred dogma of Equality! Within your pale, in solitary adoration of
+      Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions of the dead; not such as
+      she is painted by the impassioned multitude, armed with fire and sword,
+      but under the august aspect of justice, poising in her hand the sacred
+      balance, wherein are weighed the actions of men at the gates of eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Tombs! what virtues are yours! you appal the tyrant's heart, and poison
+      with secret alarm his impious joys; he flies, with coward step, your
+      incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LONDON TRANSLATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      INVOCATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Solitary ruins, sacred tombs, ye mouldering and silent walls, all hail! To
+      you I address my invocation. While the vulgar shrink from your aspect with
+      secret terror, my heart finds in the contemplation a thousand delicious
+      sentiments, a thousand admirable recollections. Pregnant, I may truly call
+      you, with useful lessons, with pathetic and irresistible advice to the man
+      who knows how to consult you. A while ago the whole world bowed the neck
+      in silence before the tyrants that oppressed it; and yet in that hopeless
+      moment you already proclaimed the truths that tyrants hold in abhorrence:
+      mixing the dust of the proudest kings with that of the meanest slaves, you
+      called upon us to contemplate this example of Equality. From your caverns,
+      whither the musing and anxious love of Liberty led me, I saw escape its
+      venerable shade, and with unexpected felicity, direct its flight and
+      marshal my steps the way to renovated France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tombs! what virtues and potency do you exhibit! Tyrants tremble at your
+      aspect&mdash;you poison with secret alarm their impious pleasures&mdash;they
+      turn from you with impatience, and, coward like, endeavor to forget you
+      amid the sumptuousness of their palaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PHILADELPHIA TRANSLATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      INVOCATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hail, ye solitary ruins, ye sacred tombs, and silent walls! 'Tis your
+      auspicious aid that I invoke; 'tis to you my soul, wrapt in meditation,
+      pours forth its prayers! What though the profane and vulgar mind shrinks
+      with dismay from your august and awe-inspiring aspect; to me you unfold
+      the sublimest charms of contemplation and sentiment, and offer to my
+      senses the luxury of a thousand delicious and enchanting thoughts! How
+      sumptuous the feast to a being that has a taste to relish, and an
+      understanding to consult you! What rich and noble admonitions; what
+      exquisite and pathetic lessons do you read to a heart that is susceptible
+      of exalted feelings! When oppressed humanity bent in timid silence
+      throughout the globe beneath the galling yoke of slavery, it was you that
+      proclaimed aloud the birthright of those truths which tyrants tremble at
+      while they detect, and which, by sinking the loftiest head of the proudest
+      potentate, with all his boasted pageantry, to the level of mortality with
+      his meanest slave, confirmed and ratified by your unerring testimony the
+      sacred and immortal doctrine of Equality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Musing within the precincts of your inviting scenes of philosophic
+      solitude, whither the insatiate love of true-born Liberty had led me, I
+      beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character and habit of a
+      blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and instruments of murder, and
+      followed by a frantic and intoxicated multitude, but under the placid and
+      chaste aspect of Justice, holding with a pure and unsullied hand the
+      sacred scales in which the actions of mortals are weighed on the brink of
+      eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first translation was made and published in London soon after the
+      appearance of the work in French, and, by a late edition, is still adopted
+      without alteration. Mr. Volney, when in this country in 1797, expressed
+      his disapprobation of this translation, alleging that the translator must
+      have been overawed by the government or clergy from rendering his ideas
+      faithfully; and, accordingly, an English gentleman, then in Philadelphia,
+      volunteered to correct this edition. But by his endeavors to give the true
+      and full meaning of the author with great precision, he has so overloaded
+      his composition with an exuberance of words, as in a great measure to
+      dissipate the simple elegance and sublimity of the original. Mr. Volney,
+      when he became better acquainted with the English language, perceived this
+      defect; and with the aid of our countryman, Joel Barlow, made and
+      published in Paris a new, correct, and elegant translation, of which the
+      present edition is a faithful and correct copy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE OF THE LONDON EDITION.* </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PREF2"> PREFACE OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.* </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN EDITION. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> PARIS TRANSLATION, </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> LONDON TRANSLATION. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> PHILADELPHIA TRANSLATION. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> <big><b>LIFE OF VOLNEY.</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0002">
+        CHAPTER II. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0005">
+        CHAPTER V. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0008">
+        CHAPTER VIII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0011">
+        CHAPTER XI. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0014">
+        CHAPTER XIV. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0017">
+        CHAPTER XVII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0020">
+        CHAPTER XX. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0023">
+        CHAPTER XXIII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a href="#linknature"><b><big>THE LAW OF NATURE</big></b></a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER I. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0026">
+        CHAPTER II. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER III. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER IV. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0029">
+        CHAPTER V. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER VI. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER VII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0032">
+        CHAPTER VIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER IX.
+        </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER X. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XI. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0036">
+        CHAPTER XII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> <big><b>VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY.</b></big>
+        </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      LIFE OF VOLNEY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By Count Daru.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Constantine Francis Chassebeuf De Volney was born in 1757 at Craon, in
+      that intermediate condition of life, which is of all the happiest, since
+      it is deprived only of fortune's too dangerous favors, and can aspire to
+      the social and intellectual advantages reserved for a laudable ambition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his earliest youth, he devoted himself to the search after truth,
+      without being disheartened by the serious studies which alone can initiate
+      us into her secrets. After having become acquainted with the ancient
+      languages, the natural sciences and history, and being admitted into the
+      society of the most eminent literary characters, he submitted, at the age
+      of twenty, to an illustrious academy, the solution of one of the most
+      difficult problems that the history of antiquity has left open for
+      discussion. This attempt received no encouragement from the learned men
+      who were appointed his judges; and the author's only appeal from their
+      sentence was to his courage and his efforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after, a small inheritance having fallen to his lot, the difficulty
+      was how to spend it (these are his own words.) He resolved to employ it in
+      acquiring, by a long voyage, a new fund of information, and determined to
+      visit Egypt and Syria. But these countries could not be explored to
+      advantage without a knowledge of the language. Our young traveller was not
+      to be discouraged by this difficulty. Instead of learning Arabic in
+      Europe, he withdrew to a convent of Copts, until he had made himself
+      master of an idiom that is spoken by so many nations of the East. This
+      resolution showed one of those undaunted spirits that remain unshaken amid
+      the trials of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although, like other travellers, he might have amused us with an account
+      of his hardships and the perils surmounted by his courage, he overcame the
+      temptation of interrupting his narrative by personal adventures. He
+      disdained the beaten track. He does not tell us the road he took, the
+      accidents he met with, or the impressions he received. He carefully avoids
+      appearing upon the stage; he is an inhabitant of the country, who has long
+      and well observed it, and who describes its physical, political, and moral
+      state. The allusion would be entire if an old Arab could be supposed to
+      possess all the erudition, all the European philosophy, which are found
+      united and in their maturity in a traveller of twenty-five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though a master in all those artifices by which a narration is
+      rendered interesting, the young man is not to be discerned in the pomp of
+      labored descriptions. Although possessed of a lively and brilliant
+      imagination, he is never found unwarily explaining by conjectural systems
+      the physical or moral phenomena he describes. In his observations he
+      unites prudence with science. With these two guides he judges with
+      circumspection, and sometimes confesses himself unable to account for the
+      effects he has made known to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus his account has all the qualities that persuade&mdash;accuracy and
+      candor. And when, ten years later, a vast military enterprise transported
+      forty thousand travellers to the classic ground, which he had trod
+      unattended, unarmed and unprotected, they all recognized a sure guide and
+      an enlightened observer in the writer who had, as it seemed, only preceded
+      them to remove or point out a part of the difficulties of the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unanimous testimony of all parties proved the accuracy of his account
+      and the justness of his observations; and his Travels in Egypt and Syria
+      were, by universal suffrage, recommended to the gratitude and the
+      confidence of the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the work had undergone this trial it had obtained in the learned
+      world such a rapid and general success, that it found its way into Russia.
+      The empress, then (in 1787) upon the throne, sent the author a medal,
+      which he received with respect, as a mark of esteem for his talents, and
+      with gratitude, as a proof of the approbation given to his principles. But
+      when the empress declared against France, Volney sent back the honorable
+      present, saying: "If I obtained it from her esteem, I can only preserve
+      her esteem by returning it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The revolution of 1789, which had drawn upon France the menaces of
+      Catharine, had opened to Volney a political career. As deputy in the
+      assembly of the states-general, the first words he uttered there were in
+      favor of the publicity of their deliberations. He also supported the
+      organization of the national guards, and that of the communes and
+      departments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the period when the question of the sale of the domain lands was
+      agitated (in 1790), he published an essay in which he lays down the
+      following principles: "The force of a State is in proportion to its
+      population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in proportion
+      to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest, that is to
+      the spirit of property. Whence it follows, that the nearer the cultivator
+      approaches the passive condition of a mercenary, the less industry and
+      activity are to be expected from him; and, on the other hand, the nearer
+      he is to the condition of a free and entire proprietor, the more extension
+      he gives to his own forces, to the produce of his lands, and the general
+      prosperity of the State."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The author draws this conclusion, that a State is so much the more
+      powerful as it includes a greater number of proprietors,&mdash;that is, a
+      greater division of property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conducted into Corsica by that spirit of observation which belongs only to
+      men whose information is varied and extensive, he perceived at the first
+      glance all that could be done for the improvement of agriculture in that
+      country: but he knew that, for a people firmly attached to ancient
+      customs, there can exist no other demonstration or means of persuasion
+      than example. He purchased a considerable estate, and made experiments on
+      those kinds of tillage that he hoped to naturalize in that climate. The
+      sugar-cane, cotton, indigo and coffee soon demonstrated the success of his
+      efforts. This success drew upon him the notice of the government. He was
+      appointed director of agriculture and commerce in that island, where,
+      through ignorance, all new methods are introduced with such difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible to calculate all the good that might have resulted from
+      this peaceable magistracy; and we know that neither instruction, zeal, nor
+      a persevering courage was wanting to him who had undertaken it. Of this he
+      had given convincing proofs. It was in obedience to another sentiment, no
+      less respectable, that he voluntarily interrupted the course of his
+      labors. When his fellow citizens of Angers appointed him their deputy in
+      the constituent assembly, he resigned the employment he held under
+      government, upon the principle that no man can represent the nation and be
+      dependent for a salary upon those by whom it is administered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through respect for the independence of his legislative functions, he had
+      ceased to occupy the place he possessed in Corsica before his election,
+      but he had not ceased to be a benefactor of that country. He returned
+      thither after the session of the constituent assembly. Invited into that
+      island by the principal inhabitants, who were anxious to put into practice
+      his lessons, he spent there a part of the years 1792 and 1793.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his return he published a work entitled: An Account of the Present
+      State of Corsica. This was an act of courage; for it was not a physical
+      description, but a political review of the condition of a population
+      divided into several factions and distracted by violent animosities.
+      Volney unreservedly revealed the abuses, solicited the interest of France
+      in favor of the Corsicans, without flattering them, and boldly denounced
+      their defects and vices; so that the philosopher obtained the only
+      recompense he could expect from his sincerity&mdash;he was accused by the
+      Corsicans of heresy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To prove that he had not merited this reproach, he published soon after a
+      short treatise entitled: The Law of Nature, or Physical Principles of
+      Morality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was soon exposed to a much more dangerous charge, and this, it must be
+      confessed, he did merit. This philosopher, this worthy citizen, who in our
+      first National assembly had seconded with his wishes and his talents the
+      establishment of an order of things which he considered favorable to the
+      happiness of his country, was accused of not being sincerely attached to
+      that liberty for which he had contended; that is to say, of being averse
+      to anarchy. An imprisonment of ten months, which only ended after the 9th
+      of Thermidor, was a new trial reserved for his courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment at which he recovered his liberty, was when the horror inspired
+      by criminal excesses had recalled men to those noble sentiments which
+      fortunately are one of the first necessaries of civilized life. They
+      sought for consolations in study and literature after so many misfortunes,
+      and organized a plan of public instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in the first place necessary to insure the aptitude of those to
+      whom education should be confided; but as the systems were various, the
+      best methods and a unity of doctrine were to be determined. It was not
+      enough to interrogate the masters, they were to be formed, new ones were
+      to be created, and for that purpose a school was opened in 1794, wherein
+      the celebrity of the professors promised new instruction even to the best
+      informed. This was not, as was objected, beginning the edifice at the
+      roof, but creating architects, who were to superintend all the arts
+      requisite for constructing the building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The more difficult their functions were, the greater care was to be taken
+      in the choice of the professors; but France, though then accused of being
+      plunged in barbarism, possessed men of transcendent talents, already
+      enjoying the esteem of all Europe, and we may be bold to say, that by
+      their labors, our literary glory had likewise extended its conquests.
+      Their names were proclaimed by the public voice, and Volney's was
+      associated with those of the men most illustrious in science and in
+      literature.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Lagrange, Laplace, Berthollet, Garat, Bernardin de Saint-
+     Pierre, Daubenton, Hauy, Volney, Sicard, Monge, Thouin, La
+     Harpe, Buache Mentelle.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This institution, however, did not answer the expectations that had been
+      formed of it, because the two thousand students that assembled from all
+      parts of France were not equally prepared to receive these transcendent
+      lessons, and because it had not been sufficiently ascertained how far the
+      theory of education should be kept distinct from education itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Volney's Lectures on History, which were attended by an immense concourse
+      of auditors, became one of his chief claims to literary glory. When forced
+      to interrupt them, by the suppression of the Normal school, he might have
+      reasonably expected to enjoy in his retirement that consideration which
+      his recent functions had added to his name. But, disgusted with the scenes
+      he had witnessed in his native land, he felt that passion revive within
+      him which, in his youth, had led him to visit Africa and Asia. America,
+      civilized within a century, and free only within a few years, fixed his
+      attention. There every thing was new,&mdash;the inhabitants, the
+      constitution, the earth itself. These were objects worthy of his
+      observation. When embarking for this voyage, however, he felt emotions
+      very different from those which formerly accompanied him into Turkey. Then
+      in the prime of life, he joyfully bid adieu to a land where peace and
+      plenty reigned, to travel amongst barbarians; now, mature in years, but
+      dismayed at the spectacle and experience of injustice and persecution, it
+      was with diffidence, as we learn from himself, that he went to implore
+      from a free people an asylum for a sincere friend of that liberty that had
+      been so profaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our traveller had gone to seek for repose beyond the seas. He there found
+      himself exposed to aggression from a celebrated philosopher, Dr.
+      Priestley. Although the subject of this discussion was confined to the
+      investigation of some speculative opinions, published by the French writer
+      in his work entitled The Ruins, the naturalist in this attack employed a
+      degree of violence which added nothing to the force of his arguments, and
+      an acrimony of expression not to be expected from a philosopher. M.
+      Volney, though accused of Hottentotism and ignorance, preserved in his
+      defence, all the advantages that the scurrility of his adversary gave over
+      him. He replied in English, and Priestley's countrymen could only
+      recognize the Frenchman in the refinement and politeness of his answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst M. Volney was travelling in America, there had been formed in
+      France a literary body which, under the name of Institute, had attained in
+      a very few years a distinguished rank amongst the learned societies of
+      Europe. The name of the illustrious traveller was inscribed in it at its
+      formation, and he acquired new rights to the academical honors conferred
+      on him during his absence, by the publication of his observations On the
+      Climate and Soil of the United States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These rights were further augmented by the historical and physiological
+      labors of the Academician. An examination and justification of The
+      Chronology of Herodotus, with numerous and profound researches on The
+      History of the most Ancient Nations, occupied for a long time him who had
+      observed their monuments and traces in the countries they inhabited. The
+      trial he had made of the utility of the Oriental languages inspired him
+      with an ardent desire to propagate the knowledge of them; and to be
+      propagated, he felt how necessary it was to render it less difficult. In
+      this view he conceived the project of applying to the study of the idioms
+      of Asia, a part of the grammatical notions we possess concerning the
+      languages of Europe. It only appertains to those conversant with their
+      relations of dissimilitude or conformity to appreciate the possibility of
+      realizing this system. The author has, however, already received the most
+      flattering encouragement and the most unequivocal appreciation, by the
+      inscription of his name amongst the members of the learned and illustrious
+      society founded by English commerce in the Indian peninsula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Volney developed his system in three works,* which prove that this idea
+      of uniting nations separated by immense distances and such various idioms,
+      had never ceased to occupy him for twenty-five years. Lest those essays,
+      of the utility of which he was persuaded, should be interrupted by his
+      death, with the clay-cold hand that corrected his last work, he drew up a
+      will which institutes a premium for the prosecution of his labors. Thus he
+      prolonged, beyond the term of a life entirely devoted to letters, the
+      glorious services he had rendered to them.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * On the Simplification of Oriental Languages, 1795. The
+     European Alphabet Applied to the Languages of Asia, 1819.
+     Hebrew Simplified, 1820.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is not the place, nor does it belong to me to appreciate the merit of
+      the writings which render Volney's name illustrious. His name had been
+      inscribed in the list of the Senate, and afterwards of the House of Peers.
+      The philosopher who had travelled in the four quarters of the world, and
+      observed their social state, had other titles to his admission into this
+      body, than his literary glory. His public life, his conduct in the
+      constituent assembly, his independent principles, the nobleness of his
+      sentiments, the wisdom and fixity of his opinions, had gained him the
+      esteem of those who can be depended upon, and with whom it is so agreeable
+      to discuss political interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although no man had a better right to have an opinion, no one was more
+      tolerant for the opinions of others. In State assemblies as well as in
+      Academical meetings, the man whose counsels were so wise, voted according
+      to his conscience, which nothing could bias; but the philosopher forgot
+      his superiority to hear, to oppose with moderation, and sometimes to
+      doubt. The extent and variety of his information, the force of his reason,
+      the austerity of his manners, and the noble simplicity of his character,
+      had procured him illustrious friends in both hemispheres; and now that
+      this erudition is extinct in the tomb,* we may be allowed at least to
+      predict that he was one of the very few whose memory shall never die.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * He died in Paris on the 20th of April, 1820.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A list of the Works Published by Count Volney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRAVELS IN EGYPT AND SYRIA during the years 1783, 1784, and 1785: 2 vols.
+      8vo.&mdash;1787.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHRONOLOGY OF THE TWELVE CENTURIES that preceded the entrance of Xerxes
+      into Greece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TURKISH WAR, in 1788.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE RUINS, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires&mdash;1791.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT STATE OF CORSICA&mdash;1793.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE LAW OF NATURE, or Physical Principles of Morality&mdash;1793.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ON THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES&mdash;1795. A LETTER TO DR.
+      PRIESTLEY&mdash;1797.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LECTURES ON HISTORY, delivered at the Normal School in the year 3&mdash;1800.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ON THE CLIMATE AND SOIL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, to which is added
+      an account of Florida, of the French colony of Scioto, of some Canadian
+      Colonies, and of the Savages&mdash;1803.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPORT MADE TO THE CELTIC ACADEMY ON THE RUSSIAN WORK OF PROFESSOR PALLAS,
+      entitled "A Comparative Vocabulary of all the Languages in the World."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CHRONOLOGY OF HERODOTUS conformable with his Text&mdash;1808 and 1809.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY, 3 vols. 8vo.&mdash;1814
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE EUROPEAN ALPHABET Applied to the Languages of Asia&mdash;1819.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A HISTORY OF SAMUEL&mdash;1819. HEBREW SIMPLIFIED&mdash;1820. INVOCATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hail solitary ruins, holy sepulchres and silent walls! you I invoke; to
+      you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret terror, the
+      vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious sentiments&mdash;sublime
+      contemplations. What useful lessons, what affecting and profound
+      reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult you! When the
+      whole earth, in chains and silence bowed the neck before its tyrants, you
+      had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor; and confounding the
+      dust of the king with that of the meanest slave, had announced to man the
+      sacred dogma of Equality. Within your pale, in solitary adoration of
+      Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions of the dead; not such as
+      she is painted by the impassioned multitude, armed with fire and sword,
+      but under the august aspect of Justice, poising in her hand the sacred
+      balance wherein are weighed the actions of men at the gates of eternity!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Tombs! what virtues are yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and poison
+      with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward step, your
+      incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.* You punish
+      the powerful oppressor; you wrest from avarice and extortion their
+      ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the feeble whom they have despoiled; you
+      compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of the rich; you
+      console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from distress; and
+      you give to the soul that just equipoise of strength and sensibility which
+      constitutes wisdom&mdash;the true science of life. Aware that all must
+      return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the burdens of
+      grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires within the limits
+      of justice; yet, knowing that he must run his destined course of life, he
+      fills with employment all its hours, and enjoys the comforts that fortune
+      has allotted him. You thus impose on the impetuous sallies of cupidity a
+      salutary rein! you calm the feverish ardor of enjoyments which disturb the
+      senses; you free the soul from the fatiguing conflict of the passions;
+      elevate it above the paltry interests which torment the crowd; and
+      surveying, from your commanding position, the expanse of ages and nations,
+      the mind is only accessible to the great affections&mdash;to the solid
+      ideas of virtue and of glory.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The cathedral of St. Denis is the tomb of the kings of
+     France; and it was because the towers of that edifice are
+     seen from the Castle of St. Germain, that Louis XIV. quitted
+     that admirable residence, and established a new one in the
+     savage forests of Versailles.
+
+     (This note, like many others, has been omitted from the
+     American editions.  It seems pertinent to the subject, and
+     is explanatory of the text.&mdash;Pub.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ah! when the dream of life is over, what will then avail all its
+      agitations, if not one trace of utility remains behind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Ruins! to your school I will return! I will seek again the calm of your
+      solitudes; and there, far from the afflicting spectacle of the passions, I
+      will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will employ myself on the
+      means of effecting good for him, and build my own happiness on the
+      promotion of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE RUINS OF EMPIRES. <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE JOURNEY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the eleventh year of the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid, son of Ahmid, emperor
+      of the Turks; when the Nogais-Tartars were driven from the Crimea, and a
+      Mussulman prince of the blood of Gengis-Kahn became the vassal and guard
+      of a Christian woman and queen,* I was travelling in the Ottoman
+      dominions, and through those provinces which were anciently the kingdoms
+      of Egypt and Syria.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the eleventh year of Abd-ul-Hamid, that is 1784 of the
+     Christian era, and 1198 of the Hegira.  The emigration of
+     the Tartars took place in March, immediately on the
+     manifesto of the empress, declaring the Crimea to be
+     incorporated with Russia.  The Mussulman prince of the blood
+     of Gengis-khan was Chahin-Guerai. Gengis-Khan was borne and
+     served by the kings whom he conquered: Chahin, on the
+     contrary, after selling his country for a pension of eighty
+     thousand roubles, accepted the commission of captain of
+     guards to Catherine II.  He afterwards returned home, and
+     according to custom was strangled by the Turks.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      My whole attention bent on whatever concerns the happiness of man in a
+      social state, I visited cities, and studied the manners of their
+      inhabitants; entered palaces, and observed the conduct of those who
+      govern; wandered over fields, and examined the condition of those who
+      cultivated them: and nowhere perceiving aught but robbery and devastation,
+      tyranny and wretchedness, my heart was oppressed with sorrow and
+      indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw daily on my road fields abandoned, villages deserted, and cities in
+      ruin. Often I met with ancient monuments, wrecks of temples, palaces and
+      fortresses, columns, aqueducts and tombs. This spectacle led me to
+      meditate on times past, and filled my mind with contemplations the most
+      serious and profound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrived at the city of Hems, on the border of the Orontes, and being in
+      the neighborhood of Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to visit its
+      celebrated ruins. After three days journeying through arid deserts, having
+      traversed the Valley of Caves and Sepulchres, on issuing into the plain, I
+      was suddenly struck with a scene of the most stupendous ruins&mdash;a
+      countless multitude of superb columns, stretching in avenues beyond the
+      reach of sight. Among them were magnificent edifices, some entire, others
+      in ruins; the earth every where strewed with fragments of cornices,
+      capitals, shafts, entablatures, pilasters, all of white marble, and of the
+      most exquisite workmanship. After a walk of three-quarters of an hour
+      along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of a vast edifice, formerly a
+      temple dedicated to the Sun; and accepting the hospitality of some poor
+      Arabian peasants, who had built their hovels on the area of the temple, I
+      determined to devote some days to contemplate at leisure the beauty of
+      these stupendous ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daily I visited the monuments which covered the plain; and one evening,
+      absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the Valley of Sepulchres. I
+      ascended the heights which surround it from whence the eye commands the
+      whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun had sunk
+      below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind the
+      distant mountains of Syria; the full-orbed moon was rising in the east, on
+      a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was clear, the
+      air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the horrors of
+      approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered the sultry
+      emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given their camels to
+      repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and uniform plain;
+      profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only of the jackal,*
+      and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard at distant
+      intervals. Darkness now increased, and through the dusk could only be
+      discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls. The solitude of the
+      place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene, impressed
+      on my mind a religious pensiveness. The aspect of a great city deserted,
+      the memory of times past, compared with its present state, all elevated my
+      mind to high contemplations. I sat on the shaft of a column, my elbow
+      reposing on my knee, and head reclining on my hand, my eyes fixed,
+      sometimes on the desert, sometimes on the ruins, and fell into a profound
+      reverie.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * An animal resembling a dog and a fox.  It preys on other
+     small animals, and upon the bodies of the dead on the field
+     of battle. It is the Canis aureus of Linnaeus.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE REVERIE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Here, said I, once flourished an opulent city; here was the seat of a
+      powerful empire. Yes! these places now so wild and desolate, were once
+      animated by a living multitude; a busy crowd thronged in these streets,
+      now so solitary. Within these walls, where now reigns the silence of
+      death, the noise of the arts, and the shouts of joy and festivity
+      incessantly resounded; these piles of marble were regular palaces; these
+      fallen columns adorned the majesty of temples; these ruined galleries
+      surrounded public places. Here assembled a numerous people for the sacred
+      duties of their religion, and the anxious cares of their subsistence; here
+      industry, parent of enjoyments, collected the riches of all climes, and
+      the purple of Tyre was exchanged for the precious thread of Serica;* the
+      soft tissues of Cassimere for the sumptuous tapestry of Lydia; the amber
+      of the Baltic for the pearls and perfumes of Arabia; the gold of Ophir for
+      the tin of Thule.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The precious thread of Serica.&mdash;That is, the silk
+     originally derived from the mountainous country where the
+     great wall terminates, and which appears to have been the
+     cradle of the Chinese empire.  The tissues of Cassimere.&mdash;
+     The shawls which Ezekiel seems to have described under the
+     appellation of Choud-choud.  The gold of Ophir.&mdash;This
+     country, which was one of the twelve Arab cantons, and which
+     has so much and so unsuccessfully been sought for by the
+     antiquarians, has left, however, some trace of itself in
+     Ofor, in the province of Oman, upon the Persian Gulf,
+     neighboring on one side to the Sabeans, who are celebrated
+     by Strabo for their abundance of gold, and on the other to
+     Aula or Hevila, where the pearl fishery was carried on.  See
+     the 27th chapter of Ezekiel, which gives a very curious and
+     extensive picture of the commerce of Asia at that period.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And now behold what remains of this powerful city: a miserable skeleton!
+      What of its vast domination: a doubtful and obscure remembrance! To the
+      noisy concourse which thronged under these porticoes, succeeds the
+      solitude of death. The silence of the grave is substituted for the busy
+      hum of public places; the affluence of a commercial city is changed into
+      wretched poverty; the palaces of kings have become a den of wild beasts;
+      flocks repose in the area of temples, and savage reptiles inhabit the
+      sanctuary of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed? how have
+      so many labors been annihilated? Do thus perish then the works of men&mdash;thus
+      vanish empires and nations?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the history of former times revived in my mind; I remembered those
+      ancient ages when many illustrious nations inhabited these countries; I
+      figured to myself the Assyrian on the banks of the Tygris, the Chaldean on
+      the banks of the Euphrates, the Persian reigning from the Indus to the
+      Mediterranean. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of
+      Jerusalem and Samaria, the warlike states of the Philistines, and the
+      commercial republics of Phoenicia. This Syria, said I, now so depopulated,
+      then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns,
+      villages, and hamlets.* In all parts were seen cultivated fields,
+      frequented roads, and crowded habitations. Ah! whither have flown those
+      ages of life and abundance?&mdash;whither vanished those brilliant
+      creations of human industry? Where are those ramparts of Nineveh, those
+      walls of Babylon, those palaces of Persepolis, those temples of Balbec and
+      of Jerusalem? Where are those fleets of Tyre, those dock-yards of Arad,
+      those work-shops of Sidon, and that multitude of sailors, of pilots, of
+      merchants, and of soldiers? Where those husbandmen, harvests, flocks, and
+      all the creation of living beings in which the face of the earth rejoiced?
+      Alas! I have passed over this desolate land! I have visited the palaces,
+      once the scene of so much splendor, and I beheld nothing but solitude and
+      desolation. I sought the ancient inhabitants and their works, and found
+      nothing but a trace, like the foot-prints of a traveller over the sand.
+      The temples are fallen, the palaces overthrown, the ports filled up, the
+      cities destroyed; and the earth, stripped of inhabitants, has become a
+      place of sepulchres. Great God! whence proceed such fatal revolutions?
+      What causes have so changed the fortunes of these countries? Wherefore are
+      so many cities destroyed? Why has not this ancient population been
+      reproduced and perpetuated?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * According to Josephus and Strabo, there were in Syria
+     twelve millions of souls, and the traces that remain of
+     culture and habitation confirm the calculation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thus absorbed in meditation, a crowd of new reflections continually poured
+      in upon my mind. Every thing, continued I, bewilders my judgment, and
+      fills my heart with trouble and uncertainty. When these countries enjoyed
+      what constitutes the glory and happiness of man, they were inhabited by
+      infidel nations: It was the Phoenician, offering human sacrifices to
+      Moloch, who gathered into his stores the riches of all climates; it was
+      the Chaldean, prostrate before his serpent-god,* who subjugated opulent
+      cities, laid waste the palaces of kings, and despoiled the temples of the
+      gods; it was the Persian, worshipper of fire, who received the tribute of
+      a hundred nations; they were the inhabitants of this very city, adorers of
+      the sun and stars, who erected so many monuments of prosperity and luxury.
+      Numerous herds, fertile fields, abundant harvests&mdash;whatsoever should
+      be the reward of piety&mdash;was in the hands of these idolaters. And now,
+      when a people of saints and believers occupy these fields, all is become
+      sterility and solitude. The earth, under these holy hands, produces only
+      thorns and briers. Man soweth in anguish, and reapeth tears and cares.
+      War, famine, pestilence, assail him by turns. And yet, are not these the
+      children of the prophets? The Mussulman, Christian, Jew, are they not the
+      elect children of God, loaded with favors and miracles? Why, then, do
+      these privileged races no longer enjoy the same advantages? Why are these
+      fields, sanctified by the blood of martyrs, deprived of their ancient
+      fertility? Why have those blessings been banished hence, and transferred
+      for so many ages to other nations and different climes?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The dragon Bell.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, revolving in my mind the vicissitudes which have
+      transmitted the sceptre of the world to people so different in religion
+      and manners from those in ancient Asia to the most recent of Europe, this
+      name of a natal land revived in me the sentiment of my country; and
+      turning my eyes towards France, I began to reflect on the situation in
+      which I had left her.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the year 1782, at the close of the American war.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I recalled her fields so richly cultivated, her roads so admirably
+      constructed, her cities inhabited by a countless people, her fleets spread
+      over every sea, her ports filled with the produce of both the Indies: and
+      then comparing the activity of her commerce, the extent of her navigation,
+      the magnificence of her buildings, the arts and industry of her
+      inhabitants, with what Egypt and Syria had once possessed, I was gratified
+      to find in modern Europe the departed splendor of Asia; but the charm of
+      my reverie was soon dissolved by a last term of comparison. Reflecting
+      that such had once been the activity of the places I was then
+      contemplating, who knows, said I, but such may one day be the abandonment
+      of our countries? Who knows if on the banks of the Seine, the Thames, the
+      Zuyder-Zee, where now, in the tumult of so many enjoyments, the heart and
+      the eye suffice not for the multitude of sensations,&mdash;who knows if
+      some traveller, like myself, shall not one day sit on their silent ruins,
+      and weep in solitude over the ashes of their inhabitants, and the memory
+      of their former greatness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words, my eyes filled with tears: and covering my head with the
+      fold of my mantle, I sank into gloomy meditations on all human affairs.
+      Ah! hapless man, said I in my grief, a blind fatality sports with thy
+      destiny!* A fatal necessity rules with the hand of chance the lot of
+      mortals! But no: it is the justice of heaven fulfilling its decrees!&mdash;a
+      God of mystery exercising his incomprehensible judgments! Doubtless he has
+      pronounced a secret anathema against this land: blasting with maledictions
+      the present, for the sins of past generations. Oh! who shall dare to
+      fathom the depths of the Omnipotent?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Fatality is the universal and rooted prejudice of the
+     East.  "It was written," is there the answer to every thing.
+     Hence result an unconcern and apathy, the most powerful
+     impediments to instruction and civilization.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And sunk in profound melancholy, I remained motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE APPARITION.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      While thus absorbed, a sound struck my ear, like the agitation of a
+      flowing robe, or that of slow footsteps on dry and rustling grass.
+      Startled, I opened my mantle, and looking about with fear and trembling,
+      suddenly, on my left, by the glimmering light of the moon, through the
+      columns and ruins of a neighboring temple, I thought I saw an apparition,
+      pale, clothed in large and flowing robes, such as spectres are painted
+      rising from their tombs. I shuddered: and while agitated and hesitating
+      whether to fly or to advance toward the object, a distinct voice, in
+      solemn tones, pronounced these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How long will man importune heaven with unjust complaint? How long, with
+      vain clamors, will he accuse Fate as the author of his calamities? Will he
+      forever shut his eyes to the light, and his heart to the admonitions of
+      truth and reason? The light of truth meets him everywhere; yet he sees it
+      not! The voice of reason strikes his ear; and he hears it not! Unjust man!
+      if for a moment thou canst suspend the delusion which fascinates thy
+      senses, if thy heart can comprehend the language of reason, interrogate
+      these ruins! Read the lessons which they present to thee! And you,
+      evidences of twenty centuries, holy temples! venerable tombs! walls once
+      so glorious, appear in the cause of nature herself! Approach the tribunal
+      of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust accusations! Come and
+      confound the declamations of a false wisdom or hypocritical piety, and
+      avenge the heavens and the earth of man who calumniates them both!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law, sports
+      with the destiny of mortals? What is that unjust necessity, which
+      confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of folly? In what
+      consist the anathemas of heaven over this land? Where is that divine
+      malediction which perpetuates the abandonment of these fields? Say,
+      monuments of past ages! have the heavens changed their laws and the earth
+      its motion? Are the fires of the sun extinct in the regions of space? Do
+      the seas no longer emit their vapors? Are the rains and the dews suspended
+      in the air? Do the mountains withhold their springs? Are the streams dried
+      up? And do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed? Answer, generation of
+      falsehood and iniquity, hath God deranged the primitive and settled order
+      of things which he himself assigned to nature? Hath heaven denied to
+      earth, and earth to its inhabitants, the blessings they formerly
+      dispensed? If nothing hath changed in the creation, if the same means now
+      exist which before existed, why then are not the present what former
+      generations were? Ah! it is falsely that you accuse fate and heaven! it is
+      unjustly that you accuse God as the cause of your evils! Say, perverse and
+      hypocritical race! if these places are desolate, if these powerful cities
+      are reduced to solitude, is it God who has caused their ruin? Is it his
+      hand which has overthrown these walls, destroyed these temples, mutilated
+      these columns, or is it the hand of man? Is it the arm of God which has
+      carried the sword into your cities, and fire into your fields, which has
+      slaughtered the people, burned the harvests, rooted up trees, and ravaged
+      the pastures, or is it the hand of man? And when, after the destruction of
+      crops, famine has ensued, is it the vengeance of God which has produced
+      it, or the mad fury of mortals? When, sinking under famine, the people
+      have fed on impure aliments, if pestilence ensues, is it the wrath of God
+      which sends it, or the folly of man? When war, famine and pestilence, have
+      swept away the inhabitants, if the earth remains a desert, is it God who
+      has depopulated it? Is it his rapacity which robs the husbandman, ravages
+      the fruitful fields, and wastes the earth, or is it the rapacity of those
+      who govern? Is it his pride which excites murderous wars, or the pride of
+      kings and their ministers? Is it the venality of his decisions which
+      overthrows the fortunes of families, or the corruption of the organs of
+      the law? Are they his passions which, under a thousand forms, torment
+      individuals and nations, or are they the passions of man? And if, in the
+      anguish of their miseries, they see not the remedies, is it the ignorance
+      of God which is to blame, or their ignorance? Cease then, mortals, to
+      accuse the decrees of Fate, or the judgments of the Divinity! If God is
+      good, will he be the author of your misery? If he is just, will he be the
+      accomplice of your crimes? No, the caprice of which man complains is not
+      the caprice of fate; the darkness that misleads his reason is not the
+      darkness of God; the source of his calamities is not in the distant
+      heavens, it is beside him on the earth; it is not concealed in the bosom
+      of the divinity; it dwells within himself, he bears it in his own heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thou murmurest and sayest: What! have an infidel people then enjoyed the
+      blessings of heaven and earth? Are the holy people of God less fortunate
+      than the races of impiety? Deluded man! where then is the contradiction
+      which offends thee? Where is the inconsistency which thou imputest to the
+      justice of heaven? Take into thine own hands the balance of rewards and
+      punishments, of causes and effects. Say: when these infidels observed the
+      laws of the heavens and the earth, when they regulated well-planned labors
+      by the order of the seasons and the course of the stars, should the
+      Almighty have disturbed the equilibrium of the universe to defeat their
+      prudence? When their hands cultivated these fields with toil and care,
+      should he have diverted the course of the rains, suspended the refreshing
+      dews, and planted crops of thorns? When, to render these arid fields
+      productive, their industry constructed aqueducts, dug canals, and led the
+      distant waters across the desert, should he have dried up their sources in
+      the mountains? Should he have blasted the harvests which art had
+      nourished, wasted the plains which peace had peopled, overthrown cities
+      which labor had created, or disturbed the order established by the wisdom
+      of man? And what is that infidelity which founded empires by its prudence,
+      defended them by its valor, and strengthened them by its justice&mdash;which
+      built powerful cities, formed capacious ports, drained pestilential
+      marshes, covered the ocean with ships, the earth with inhabitants; and,
+      like the creative spirit, spread life and motion throughout the world? If
+      such be infidelity, what then is the true faith? Doth sanctity consist in
+      destruction? The God who peoples the air with birds, the earth with
+      animals, the waters with fishes&mdash;the God who animates all nature&mdash;is
+      he then a God of ruins and tombs? Demands he devastation for homage, and
+      conflagration for sacrifice? Requires he groans for hymns, murderers for
+      votaries, a ravaged and desolate earth for his temple? Behold then, holy
+      and believing people, what are your works! behold the fruits of your
+      piety! You have massacred the people, burned their cities, destroyed
+      cultivation, reduced the earth to a solitude; and you ask the reward of
+      your works! Miracles then must be performed! The people whom you
+      extirpated must be recalled to life, the walls rebuilt which you have
+      overthrown, the harvests reproduced which you have destroyed, the waters
+      regathered which you have dispersed; the laws, in fine, of heaven and
+      earth reversed; those laws, established by God himself, in demonstration
+      of his magnificence and wisdom; those eternal laws, anterior to all codes,
+      to all the prophets those immutable laws, which neither the passions nor
+      the ignorance of man can pervert. But that passion which mistaketh, that
+      ignorance which observeth neither causes nor effects, hath said in its
+      folly: "All things flow from chance; a blind fatality poureth out good and
+      evil upon the earth; success is not to the prudent, nor felicity to the
+      wise;" or, assuming the language of hypocrisy, she hath said, "all things
+      are from God; he taketh pleasure in deceiving wisdom and confounding
+      reason." And Ignorance, applauding herself in her malice, hath said, "thus
+      will I place myself on a par with that science which confounds me&mdash;thus
+      will I excel that prudence which fatigues and torments me." And Avarice
+      hath added: "I will oppress the weak, and devour the fruits of his labors;
+      and I will say, it is fate which hath so ordained." But I! I swear by the
+      laws of heaven and earth, and by the law which is written in the heart of
+      man, that the hypocrite shall be deceived in his cunning&mdash;the
+      oppressor in his rapacity! The sun shall change his course, before folly
+      shall prevail over wisdom and knowledge, or ignorance surpass prudence, in
+      the noble and sublime art of procuring to man his true enjoyments, and of
+      building his happiness on an enduring foundation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE EXPOSITION
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the Phantom. Confused with this discourse, and my heart
+      agitated with different reflections, I remained long in silence. At
+      length, taking courage, I thus addressed him: Oh, Genius of tombs and
+      ruins! Thy presence, thy severity, hath disordered my senses; but the
+      justice of thy discourse restoreth confidence to my soul. Pardon my
+      ignorance. Alas, if man is blind, shall his misfortune be also his crime?
+      I may have mistaken the voice of reason; but never, knowingly, have I
+      rejected its authority. Ah! if thou readest my heart, thou knowest with
+      what enthusiasm it seeketh truth. Is it not in its pursuit that thou seest
+      me in this sequestered spot? Alas! I have wandered over the earth, I have
+      visited cities and countries; and seeing everywhere misery and desolation,
+      a sense of the evils which afflict my fellow men hath deeply oppressed my
+      soul. I have said, with a sigh: is man then born but for sorrow and
+      anguish? And I have meditated upon human misery that I might discover a
+      remedy. I have said, I will separate myself from the corruption of
+      society; I will retire far from palaces where the mind is depraved by
+      satiety and from the hovel where it is debased by misery. I will go into
+      the desert and dwell among ruins; I will interrogate ancient monuments on
+      the wisdom of past ages; I will invoke from the bosom of the tombs the
+      spirit which once in Asia gave splendor to states, and glory to nations; I
+      will ask of the ashes of legislators, by what secret causes do empires
+      rise and fall; from what sources spring the Prosperity and misfortunes of
+      nations, on what principles can the Peace of Society, and the happiness of
+      man be established?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ceased, and with submissive look awaited the answer of the Genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peace and happiness, said he, attend those who practice justice! Since thy
+      heart, O mortal, with sincerity seeketh truth; since thine eyes can still
+      recognize her through the mist of prejudice, thy prayer shall not be in
+      vain. I will unfold to thy view that truth thou invokest; I will teach thy
+      reason that knowledge thou seekest; I will reveal to thee the science of
+      ages and the wisdom of the tombs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then approaching and laying his hand on my head, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rise, mortal, and extricate thy senses from the dust in which thou movest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a celestial flame seemed to dissolve the bands which held us to
+      the earth; and, like a light vapor, borne on the wings of the Genius, I
+      felt myself wafted to the regions above. Thence, from the aerial heights,
+      looking down upon the earth, I perceived a scene altogether new. Under my
+      feet, floating in the void, a globe like that of the moon, but smaller and
+      less luminous, presented to me one of its phases; and that phase* had the
+      aspect of a disk varigated with large spots, some white and nebulous,
+      others brown, green or gray, and while I strained my sight to distinguish
+      what they were, the Genius exclaimed:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See Plate representing half the terrestrial globe,
+     opposite page 10.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Disciple of Truth, knowest thou that object?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, answered I, if I did not see the moon in another quarter of the
+      heavens, I should have supposed that to be her globe. It has the
+      appearance of that planet seen through the telescope during the
+      obscuration of an eclipse. These varigated spots might be mistaken for
+      seas and continents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are seas and continents, said he, and those of the very hemisphere
+      which you inhabit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What! said I, is that the earth&mdash;the habitation of man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, replied he, that brown space which occupies irregularly a great
+      portion of the disk, and envelops it almost on every side, is what you
+      call the great ocean, which advancing from the south pole towards the
+      equator, forms first the great gulf of India and Africa, then extends
+      eastward across the Malay islands to the confines of Tartary, while
+      towards the west it encircles the continents of Africa and of Europe, even
+      to the north of Asia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That square peninsula under our feet is the arid country of the Arabs; the
+      great continent on its left, almost as naked in its interior, with a
+      little verdure only towards its borders, is the parched soil inhabited by
+      black-men.* To the north, beyond a long, narrow and irregular sea,** are
+      the countries of Europe, rich in meadows and cultivated fields. On its
+      right, from the Caspian Sea, extend the snowy and naked plains of Tartary.
+      Returning in this direction that white space is the vast and barren desert
+      of Cobi, which separates China from the rest of the world. You see that
+      empire in the furrowed plain which obliquely rounds itself off from our
+      sight. On yonder coasts, those ragged tongues of land and scattered points
+      are the peninsulas and islands of the Malays, the wretched possessors of
+      the spices and perfumes. That triangle which advances so far into the sea,
+      is the too famous peninsula of India.*** You see the winding course of the
+      Ganges, the rough mountains of Thibet, the lovely valley of Cachemere, the
+      briny deserts of Persia, the banks of the Euphrates and Tygris, the deep
+      bed of the Jordan and the canals of the solitary Nile.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Africa.
+
+     ** The Mediterranean.
+
+     *** Of what real good has been the commerce of India to the
+     mass of the people?  On the contrary, how great the evil
+     occasioned by the superstition of this country having been
+     added the general superstition!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, said I, interrupting him, the sight of a mortal reaches not to
+      objects at such a distance. He touched my eyes, and immediately they
+      became piercing as those of an eagle; nevertheless the rivers still
+      appeared like waving lines, the mountains winding furrows, and the cities
+      little compartments like the squares of a chess-board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Genius proceeded to enumerate and point out the objects to me:
+      Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow valley watered
+      by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient
+      kingdom of Ethiopia.* Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of Thebes with
+      her hundred palaces,** the parent of cities, and monument of the caprice
+      of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others were
+      yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now
+      rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on
+      the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which
+      still govern the universe. Lower down, those dusky points are the pyramids
+      whose masses have astonished you. Beyond that, the coast, hemmed in
+      between the sea and a narrow ridge of mountains, was the habitation of the
+      Phoenicians. These were the famous cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon,
+      of Gaza, and of Berytus. That thread of water with no outlet, is the river
+      Jordan; and those naked rocks were once the theatre of events that have
+      resounded throughout the world. Behold that desert of Horeb, and that
+      Mount Sinai; where, by means beyond vulgar reach, a genius, profound and
+      bold, established institutions which have weighed on the whole human race.
+      On that dry shore which borders it, you perceive no longer any trace of
+      splendor; yet there was an emporium of riches. There were those famous
+      Ports of Idumea, whence the fleets of Phoenicia and Judea, coasting the
+      Arabian peninsula, went into the Persian gulf, to seek there the pearls of
+      Hevila, the gold of Saba and of Ophir. Yes, there on that coast of Oman
+      and of Barhain was the seat of that commerce of luxuries, which, by its
+      movements and revolutions, fixed the destinies of ancient nations.***
+      Thither came the spices and precious stones of Ceylon, the shawls of
+      Cassimere, the diamonds of Golconda, the amber of Maldivia, the musk of
+      Thibet, the aloes of Cochin, the apes and peacocks of the continent of
+      India, the incense of Hadramaut, the myrrh, the silver, the gold dust and
+      ivory of Africa; thence passing, sometimes by the Red Sea on the vessels
+      of Egypt and Syria, these luxuries nourished successively the wealth of
+      Thebes, of Sidon, of Memphis and of Jerusalem; sometimes, ascending the
+      Tygris and Euphrates, they awakened the activity of the Assyrians, Medes,
+      Chaldeans, and Persians; and that wealth, according to the use or abuse of
+      it, raised or reversed by turns their domination. Hence sprung the
+      magnificence of Persepolis, whose columns you still perceive; of Ecbatana,
+      whose sevenfold wall is destroyed; of Babylon,**** now leveled with the
+      earth; of Nineveh, of which scarce the name remains; of Thapsacus, of
+      Anatho, of Gerra, and of desolated Palmyra. O names for ever glorious!
+      fields of renown! countries of never-dying memory! what sublime lessons
+      doth your aspect offer! what profound truths are written on the surface of
+      your soil! remembrances of times past, return into my mind! places,
+      witnesses of the life of man in so many different ages, retrace for me the
+      revolutions of his fortune! say, what were their springs and secret
+      causes! say, from what sources he derived success and disgrace! unveil to
+      himself the causes of his evils! correct him by the spectacle of his
+      errors! teach him the wisdom which belongeth to him, and let the
+      experience of past ages become a means of instruction, and a germ of
+      happiness to present and future generations.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the new Encyclopedia 3rd vol. Antiquities is published
+     a memoir, respecting the chronology of the twelve ages
+     anterior to the passing of Xerxes into Greece, in which I
+     conceive myself to have proved that upper Egypt formerly
+     composed a distinct kingdom known to the Hebrews by the name
+     of Kous and to which the appellation of Ethiopia was
+     specially given.  This kingdom preserved its independence to
+     the time of Psammeticus; at which period, being united to
+     the Lower Egypt, it lost its name of Ethiopia, which
+     thenceforth was bestowed upon the nations of Nubia and upon
+     the different tribes of blacks, including Thebes, their
+     metropolis.
+
+     ** The idea of a city with a hundred gates, in the common
+     acceptation of the word, is so absurd, that I am astonished
+     the equivoque has not before been felt.
+
+     It has ever been the custom of the East to call palaces and
+     houses of the great by the name of gates, because the
+     principal luxury of these buildings consists in the singular
+     gate leading from the street into the court, at the farthest
+     extremity of which the palace is situated.  It is under the
+     vestibule of this gate that conversation is held with
+     passengers, and a sort of audience and hospitality given.
+     All this was doubtless known to Homer; but poets make no
+     commentaries, and readers love the marvellous.
+
+     This city of Thebes, now Lougsor, reduced to the condition
+     of a miserable village, has left astonishing monuments of
+     its magnificence.  Particulars of this may be seen in the
+     plates of Norden, in Pocock, and in the recent travels of
+     Bruce.  These monuments give credibility to all that Homer
+     has related of its splendor, and lead us to infer its
+     political power and external commerce.
+
+     Its geographical position was favorable to this twofold
+     object. For, on one side, the valley of the Nile, singularly
+     fertile, must have early occasioned a numerous population;
+     and, on the other, the Red Sea, giving communication with
+     Arabia and India, and the Nile with Abyssinia and the
+     Mediterranean, Thebes was thus naturally allied to the
+     richest countries on the globe; an alliance that procured it
+     an activity so much the greater, as Lower Egypt, at first a
+     swamp, was nearly, if not totally, uninhabited.  But when at
+     length this country had been drained by the canals and dikes
+     which Sesostris constructed, population was introduced
+     there, and wars arose which proved fatal to the power of
+     Thebes.  Commerce then took another route, and descended to
+     the point of the Red Sea, to the canals of Sesostris (see
+     Strabo), and wealth and activity were transferred to
+     Memphis.  This is manifestly what Diodorus means when he
+     tells us (lib. i. sect. 2), that as soon as Memphis was
+     established and made a wholesome and delicious abode, kings
+     abandoned Thebes to fix themselves there.  Thus Thebes
+     continued to decline, and Memphis to flourish, till the time
+     of Alexander, who, building Alexandria on the border of the
+     sea, caused Memphis to fall in its turn; so that prosperity
+     and power seem to have descended historically step by step
+     along the Nile; whence it results, both physically and
+     historically, that the existence of Thebes was prior to that
+     of the other cities.  The testimony of writers is very
+     positive in this respect.  "The Thebans," says Diodorus,
+     "consider themselves as the most ancient people of the
+     earth, and assert, that with them originated philosophy and
+     the science of the stars.  Their situation, it is true, is
+     infinitely favorable to astronomical observation, and they
+     have a more accurate division of time into mouths and years
+     than other nations" etc.
+
+     What Diodorus says of the Thebans, every author, and himself
+     elsewhere, repeat of the Ethiopians, which tends more firmly
+     to establish the identity of this place of which I have
+     spoken.  "The Ethiopians conceive themselves," says he, lib.
+     iii., "to be of greater antiquity than any other nation: and
+     it is probable that, born under the sun's path, its warmth
+     may have ripened them earlier than other men.  They suppose
+     themselves also to be the inventors of divine worship, of
+     festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and every
+     other religious practice.  They affirm that the Egyptians
+     are one of their colonies, and that the Delta, which was
+     formerly sea, became land by the conglomeration of the earth
+     of the higher country which was washed down by the Nile.
+     They have, like the Egyptians, two species of letters,
+     hieroglyphics, and the alphabet; but among the Egyptians the
+     first was known only to the priests, and by them transmitted
+     from father to son, whereas both species were common among
+     the Ethiopians."
+
+     "The Ethiopians," says Lucian, page 985, "were the first who
+     invented the science of the stars, and gave names to the
+     planets, not at random and without meaning, but descriptive
+     of the qualities which they conceived them to possess; and
+     it was from them that this art passed, still in an imperfect
+     state, to the Egyptians."
+
+     It would be easy to multiply citations upon this subject;
+     from all which it follows, that we have the strongest
+     reasons to believe that the country neighboring to the
+     tropic was the cradle of the sciences, and of consequence
+     that the first learned nation was a nation of Blacks; for it
+     is incontrovertible, that, by the term Ethiopians, the
+     ancients meant to represent a people of black complexion,
+     thick lips, and woolly hair.  I am therefore inclined to
+     believe, that the inhabitants of Lower Egypt were originally
+     a foreign colony imported from Syria and Arabia, a medley of
+     different tribes of savages, originally shepherds and
+     fishermen, who, by degrees formed themselves into a nation,
+     and who, by nature and descent, were enemies of the Thebans,
+     by whom they were no doubt despised and treated as
+     barbarians.
+
+     I have suggested the same ideas in my Travels into Syria,
+     founded upon the black complexion of the Sphinx.  I have
+     since ascertained that the antique images of Thebias have
+     the same characteristic; and Mr. Bruce has offered a
+     multitude of analogous facts; but this traveller, of whom I
+     heard some mention at Cairo, has so interwoven these facts
+     with certain systematic opinions, that we should have
+     recourse to his narratives with caution.
+
+     It is singular that Africa, situated so near us, should be
+     the least known country on the earth.  The English are at
+     this moment making explorations, the success of which ought
+     to excite our emulation.
+
+     *** Ailah (Eloth), and Atsiom-Gaber (Hesien-Geber.)  The
+     name of the first of these towns still subsists in its
+     ruins, at the point of the gulf of the Red Sea, and in the
+     route which the pilgrims take to Mecca.  Hesion has at
+     present no trace, any more than Quolzoum and Faran: it was,
+     however, the harbor for the fleets of Solomon.  The vessels
+     of this prince conducted by the Tyrians, sailed along the
+     coast of Arabia to Ophir, in the Persian Gulf, thus opening
+     a communication with the merchants of India and Ceylon.
+     That this navigation was entirely of Tyrian invention,
+     appears both from the pilots and shipbuilders employed by
+     the Jews, and the names that were given to the trading
+     islands, viz. Tyrus and Aradus, now Barhain.  The voyage was
+     performed in two different modes, either in canoes of osier
+     and rushes, covered on the outside with skins done over with
+     pitch: (these vessels were unable to quit the Red Sea, or so
+     much as to leave the shore.)  The second mode of carrying on
+     the trade was by means of vessels with decks of the size of
+     our river boats, which were able to pass the strait and to
+     weather the dangers of time ocean; but for this purpose it
+     was necessary to bring the wood from Mount Libanus and
+     Cilicia, where it is very fine and in great abundance.  This
+     wood was first conveyed in floats from Tarsus to Phoenicia,
+     for which reason the vessels were called ships of Tarsus;
+     from whence it has been ridiculously inferred, that they
+     went round the promontory of Africa as far as Tortosa in
+     Spain.  From Phoenicia it was transported on the backs of
+     camels to the Red Sea, which practice still continues,
+     because the shores of this sea are absolutely unprovided
+     with wood even for fuel.  These vessels spent a complete
+     year in their voyage, that is, sailed one year, sojourned
+     another, and did not return till the third.  This
+     tediousness was owing first to their cruising from port to
+     port, as they do at present; secondly, to their being
+     detained by the Monsoon currents; and thirdly, because,
+     according to the calculations of Pliny and Strabo, it was
+     the ordinary practice among the ancients to spend three
+     years in a voyage of twelve hundred leagues.  Such a
+     commerce must have been very expensive, particularly as they
+     were obliged to carry with them their provisions, and even
+     fresh water.  For this reason Solomon made himself master of
+     Palmyra, which was at that time inhabited, and was already
+     the magazine and high road of merchants by the way of the
+     Euphrates.  This conquest brought Solomon much nearer to the
+     country of gold and pearls.  This alternative of a route
+     either by the Red Sea or by the river Euphrates was to the
+     ancients, what in later times has been the alternative in a
+     voyage to the Indies, either by crossing the isthmus of Suez
+     or doubling the cape of Good Hope.  It appears that till the
+     time of Moses, this trade was carried on across the desert
+     of Syria and Thebais; that afterwards it fell into the hands
+     of the Phoenicians, who fixed its site upon the Red Sea; and
+     that it was mutual jealousy that induced the kings of
+     Nineveh and Babylon to undertake the destruction of Tyre and
+     Jerusalem.  I insist the more upon these facts, because I
+     have never seen any thing reasonable upon the subject.
+
+     **** It appears that Babylon occupied on the eastern banks
+     of the Euphrates a space of ground six leagues in length.
+     Throughout this space bricks are found by means of which
+     daily additions are made to the town of Helle.  Upon many of
+     these are characters written with a nail similar to those of
+     Persepolis.  I am indebted for these facts to M. de
+     Beauchamp, grand vicar of Babylon, a traveller equally
+     distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and for his
+     veracity.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CONDITION OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Genius, after some moments of silence, resumed in these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have told thee already, O friend of truth! that man vainly ascribes his
+      misfortunes to obscure and imaginary agents; in vain he seeks as the
+      source of his evils mysterious and remote causes. In the general order of
+      the universe his condition is, doubtless, subject to inconveniences, and
+      his existence governed by superior powers; but those powers are neither
+      the decrees of a blind fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical and
+      fantastic beings. Like the world of which he forms a part, man is governed
+      by natural laws, regular in their course, uniform in their effects,
+      immutable in their essence; and those laws,&mdash;the common source of
+      good and evil,&mdash;are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden
+      in codes of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings,
+      interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places, they are
+      present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his understanding, and
+      give to every action its reward or punishment. Let man then know these
+      laws! let him comprehend the nature of the elements which surround him,
+      and also his own nature, and he will know the regulators of his destiny;
+      he will know the causes of his evils and the remedies he should apply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the hidden power which animates the universe, formed the globe which
+      man inhabits, he implanted in the beings composing it, essential
+      properties which became the law of their individual motion, the bond of
+      their reciprocal relations, the cause of the harmony of the whole; he
+      thereby established a regular order of causes and effects, of principles
+      and consequences, which, under an appearance of chance, governs the
+      universe, and maintains the equilibrium of the world. Thus, he gave to
+      fire, motion and activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to
+      matter; he made air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood
+      less cohesive than steel; he decreed flame to ascend, stones to fall,
+      plants to vegetate; to man, who was to be exposed to the action of so many
+      different beings, and still to preserve his frail life, he gave the
+      faculty of sensation. By this faculty all action hurtful to his existence
+      gives him a feeling of pain and evil, and all which is salutary, of
+      pleasure and happiness. By these sensations, man, sometimes averted from
+      that which wounds his senses, sometimes allured towards that which soothes
+      them, has been obliged to cherish and preserve his own life; thus,
+      self-love, the desire of happiness, aversion to pain, become the essential
+      and primary laws imposed on man by nature herself&mdash;the laws which the
+      directing power, whatever it be, has established for his government&mdash;and
+      which laws, like those of motion in the physical world, are the simple and
+      fruitful principle of whatever happens in the moral world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such, then, is the condition of man: on one side, exposed to the action of
+      the elements which surround him, he is subject to many inevitable evils;
+      and if, in this decree, nature has been severe, on the other hand, just
+      and even indulgent she has not only tempered the evils with equivalent
+      good, she has also enabled him to increase the good and alleviate the
+      evil. She seems to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Feeble work of my hands, I owe thee nothing, and I give thee life; the
+      world wherein I placed thee was not made for thee, yet I give thee the use
+      of it; thou wilt find in it a mixture of good and evil; it is for thee to
+      distinguish them; for thee to guide thy footsteps in a path containing
+      thorns as well as roses. Be the arbiter of thine own fate; I put thy
+      destiny into thine own hands!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, man is made the architect of his own destiny; he, himself, hath been
+      the cause of the successes or reverses of his own fortune; and if, on a
+      review of all the pains with which he has tormented his own life, he finds
+      reason to weep over his own weakness or imprudence yet, considering the
+      beginnings from which he sat out, and the height attained, he has,
+      perhaps, still reason to presume on his strength, and to pride himself on
+      his genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PRIMITIVE STATE OF MAN.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Formed naked in body and in mind, man at first found himself thrown, as it
+      were by chance, on a rough and savage land: an orphan, abandoned by the
+      unknown power which had produced him, he saw not by his side beings
+      descended from heaven to warn him of those wants which arise only from his
+      senses, nor to instruct him in those duties which spring only from his
+      wants. Like to other animals, without experience of the past, without
+      foresight of the future, he wandered in the bosom of the forest, guided
+      only and governed by the affections of his nature. By the pain of hunger,
+      he was led to seek food and provide for his subsistence; by the inclemency
+      of the air, he was urged to cover his body, and he made him clothes; by
+      the attraction of a powerful pleasure, he approached a being like himself,
+      and he perpetuated his kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the impressions which he received from every object, awakening his
+      faculties, developed by degrees his understanding, and began to instruct
+      his profound ignorance: his wants excited industry, dangers formed his
+      courage; he learned to distinguish useful from noxious plants, to combat
+      the elements, to seize his prey, to defend his life; and thus he
+      alleviated its miseries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus self-love, aversion to pain, the desire of happiness, were the simple
+      and powerful excitements which drew man from the savage and barbarous
+      condition in which nature had placed him. And now, when his life is
+      replete with enjoyments, when he may count each day by the comforts it
+      brings, he may applaud himself and say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is I who have produced the comforts which surround me; it is I who am
+      the author of my own happiness; a safe dwelling, convenient clothing,
+      abundant and wholesome nourishment, smiling fields, fertile hills,
+      populous empires, all is my work; without me this earth, given up to
+      disorder, would have been but a filthy fen, a wild wood, a dreary desert."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, creative man, receive my homage! Thou hast measured the span of the
+      heavens, calculated the volume of the stars, arrested the lightning in its
+      clouds, subdued seas and storms, subjected all the elements. Ah! how are
+      so many sublime energies allied to so many errors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      PRINCIPLES OF SOCIETY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Wandering in the woods and on the banks of rivers in pursuit of game and
+      fish, the first men, beset with dangers, assailed by enemies, tormented by
+      hunger, by reptiles, by ravenous beasts, felt their own individual
+      weakness; and, urged by a common need of safety, and a reciprocal
+      sentiment of like evils, they united their resources and their strength;
+      and when one incurred a danger, many aided and succored him; when one
+      wanted subsistence, another shared his food with him. Thus men associated
+      to secure their existence, to augment their powers, to protect their
+      enjoyments; and self-love thus became the principle of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instructed afterwards by the experience of various and repeated accidents,
+      by the fatigues of a wandering life, by the distress of frequent scarcity,
+      men reasoned with themselves and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why consume our days in seeking scattered fruits from a parsimonious
+      soil? why exhaust ourselves in pursuing prey which eludes us in the woods
+      or waters? why not collect under our hands the animals that nourish us?
+      why not apply our cares in multiplying and preserving them? We will feed
+      on their increase, be clothed in their skins, and live exempt from the
+      fatigues of the day and solicitude for the morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And men, aiding one another, seized the nimble goat, the timid sheep; they
+      tamed the patient camel, the fierce bull, the impetuous horse; and,
+      applauding their own industry, they sat down in the joy of their souls,
+      and began to taste repose and comfort: and self-love, the principle of all
+      reasoning, became the incitement to every art, and every enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, therefore, men could pass long days in leisure, and in communication
+      of their thoughts, they began to contemplate the earth, the heavens, and
+      their own existence as objects of curiosity and reflection; they remarked
+      the course of the seasons, the action of the elements, the properties of
+      fruits and plants; and applied their thoughts to the multiplication of
+      their enjoyments. And in some countries, having observed that certain
+      seeds contained a wholesome nourishment in a small volume, convenient for
+      transportation and preservation, they imitated the process of nature; they
+      confided to the earth rice, barley, and corn, which multiplied to the full
+      measure of their hope; and having found the means of obtaining within a
+      small compass and without removal, plentiful subsistence and durable
+      stores, they established themselves in fixed habitations; they built
+      houses, villages, and towns; formed societies and nations; and self-love
+      produced all the developments of genius and of power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus by the aid of his own faculties, man has raised himself to the
+      astonishing height of his present fortune. Too happy if, observing
+      scrupulously the law of his being, he had faithfully fulfilled its only
+      and true object! But, by a fatal imprudence, sometimes mistaking,
+      sometimes transgressing its limits, he has launched forth into a labyrinth
+      of errors and misfortunes; and self-love, sometimes unruly, sometimes
+      blind, became a principle fruitful in calamities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SOURCES OF THE EVILS OF SOCIETY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In truth, scarcely were the faculties of men developed, when, inveigled by
+      objects which gratify the senses, they gave themselves up to unbridled
+      desires. The sweet sensations which nature had attached to their real
+      wants, to endear to them their existence, no longer satisfied them. Not
+      content with the abundance offered by the earth or produced by industry,
+      they wished to accumulate enjoyments and coveted those possessed by their
+      fellow men. The strong man rose up against the feeble, to take from him
+      the fruit of his labor; the feeble invoked another feeble one to repel the
+      violence. Two strong ones then said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why fatigue ourselves to produce enjoyments which we may find in the
+      hands of the weak? Let us join and despoil them; they shall labor for us,
+      and we will enjoy without labor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the strong associating for oppression and the weak for resistance, men
+      mutually afflicted each other; and a general and fatal discord spread over
+      the earth, in which the passions, assuming a thousand new forms, have
+      generated a continued chain of misfortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the same self-love which, moderate and prudent, was a principle of
+      happiness and perfection, becoming blind and disordered, was transformed
+      into a corrupting poison; and cupidity, offspring and companion of
+      ignorance, became the cause of all the evils that have desolated the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, ignorance and cupidity! these are the twin sources of all the
+      torments of man! Biased by these into false ideas of happiness, he has
+      mistaken or broken the laws of nature in his own relation with external
+      objects; and injuring his own existence, has violated individual morality;
+      shutting through these his heart to compassion, and his mind to justice,
+      he has injured and afflicted his equal, and violated social morality. From
+      ignorance and cupidity, man has armed against man, family against family,
+      tribe against tribe; and the earth is become a theatre of blood, of
+      discord, and of rapine. By ignorance and cupidity, a secret war,
+      fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from
+      citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and
+      oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation,
+      sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its own
+      bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism. Sometimes,
+      hypocritical and cunning, they have called from heaven a lying power, and
+      a sacrilegious yoke; and credulous cupidity has founded religious
+      despotism. By these have been perverted the ideas of good and evil, just
+      and unjust, vice and virtue; and nations have wandered in a labyrinth of
+      errors and calamities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cupidity of man and his ignorance,&mdash;these are the evil genii
+      which have wasted the earth! These are the decrees of fate which have
+      overthrown empires! These are the celestial anathemas which have smitten
+      these walls once so glorious, and converted the splendor of a populous
+      city into a solitude of mourning and of ruins! But as in the bosom of man
+      have sprung all the evils which have afflicted his life, there he also is
+      to seek and to find their remedies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT AND LAWS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In fact, it soon happened that men, fatigued with the evils they
+      reciprocally inflicted, began to sigh for peace; and reflecting on their
+      misfortunes and the causes of them, they said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are mutually injuring each other by our passions; and, aiming to grasp
+      every thing, we hold nothing. What one seizes to-day, another takes
+      to-morrow, and our cupidity reacts upon ourselves. Let us establish
+      judges, who shall arbitrate our rights, and settle our differences! When
+      the strong shall rise against the weak, the judge shall restrain him, and
+      dispose of our force to suppress violence; and the life and property of
+      each shall be under the guarantee and protection of all; and all shall
+      enjoy the good things of nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conventions were thus formed in society, sometimes express, sometimes
+      tacit, which became the rule for the action of individuals, the measure of
+      their rights, the law of their reciprocal relations; and persons were
+      appointed to superintend their observance, to whom the people confided the
+      balance to weigh rights, and the sword to punish transgressions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was established among individuals a happy equilibrium of force and
+      action, which constituted the common security. The name of equity and of
+      justice was recognized and revered over the earth; every one, assured of
+      enjoying in peace, the fruits of his toil, pursued with energy the objects
+      of his attention; and industry, excited and maintained by the reality or
+      the hope of enjoyment, developed, all the riches of art and of nature. The
+      fields were covered with harvests, the valleys with flocks, the hills with
+      fruits, the sea with vessels, and man became happy and powerful on the
+      earth. Thus did his own wisdom repair the disorder which his imprudence
+      had occasioned; and that wisdom was only the effect of his own
+      organization. He respected the enjoyments of others in order to secure his
+      own; and cupidity found its corrective in the enlightened love of self.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the love of self, the moving principle of every individual, becomes
+      the necessary foundation of every association; and on the observance of
+      that law of our nature has depended the fate of nations. Have the
+      factitious and conventional laws tended to that object and accomplished
+      that aim? Every one, urged by a powerful instinct, has displayed all the
+      faculties of his being; and the sum of individual felicities has
+      constituted the general felicity. Have these laws, on the contrary,
+      restrained the effort of man toward his own happiness? His heart, deprived
+      of its exciting principle, has languished in inactivity, and from the
+      oppression of individuals has resulted the weakness of the state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As self-love, impetuous and improvident, is ever urging man against his
+      equal, and consequently tends to dissolve society, the art of legislation
+      and the merit of administrators consists in attempering the conflict of
+      individual cupidities, in maintaining an equilibrium of powers, and
+      securing to every one his happiness, in order that, in the shock of
+      society against society, all the members may have a common interest in the
+      preservation and defence of the public welfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The internal splendor and prosperity of empires then, have had for their
+      efficient cause the equity of their laws and government; and their
+      respective external powers have been in proportion to the number of
+      persons interested, and their degree of interest in the public welfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, the multiplication of men, by complicating their
+      relations, having rendered the precise limitation of their rights
+      difficult, the perpetual play of the passions having produced incidents
+      not foreseen&mdash;their conventions having been vicious, inadequate, or
+      nugatory&mdash;in fine, the authors of the laws having sometimes mistaken,
+      sometimes disguised their objects; and their ministers, instead of
+      restraining the cupidity of others, having given themselves up to their
+      own; all these causes have introduced disorder and trouble into societies;
+      and the viciousness of laws and the injustice of governments, flowing from
+      cupidity and ignorance, have become the causes of the misfortunes of
+      nations, and the subversion of states.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GENERAL CAUSES OF THE PROSPERITY OF ANCIENT STATES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Such, O man who seekest wisdom, such have been the causes of revolution in
+      the ancient states of which thou contemplatest the ruins! To whatever spot
+      I direct my view, to whatever period my thoughts recur, the same
+      principles of growth or destruction, of rise or fall, present themselves
+      to my mind. Wherever a people is powerful, or an empire prosperous, there
+      the conventional laws are conformable with the laws of nature&mdash;the
+      government there procures for its citizens a free use of their faculties,
+      equal security for their persons and property. If, on the contrary, an
+      empire goes to ruin, or dissolves, it is because its laws have been
+      vicious, or imperfect, or trodden under foot by a corrupt government. If
+      the laws and government, at first wise and just, become afterwards
+      depraved, it is because the alternation of good and evil is inherent to
+      the heart of man, to a change in his propensities, to his progress in
+      knowledge, to a combination of circumstances and events; as is proved by
+      the history of the species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the infancy of nations, when men yet lived in the forest, subject to
+      the same wants, endowed with the same faculties, all were nearly equal in
+      strength; and that equality was a circumstance highly advantageous in the
+      composition of society: as every individual, thus feeling himself
+      sufficiently independent of every other, no one was the slave, none
+      thought of being the master of another. Man, then a novice, knew neither
+      servitude nor tyranny; furnished with resources sufficient for his
+      existence, he thought not of borrowing from others; owning nothing,
+      requiring nothing, he judged the rights of others by his own, and formed
+      ideas of justice sufficiently exact. Ignorant, moreover, in the art of
+      enjoyments, unable to produce more than his necessaries, possessing
+      nothing superfluous, cupidity remained dormant; or if excited, man,
+      attacked in his real wants, resisted it with energy, and the foresight of
+      such resistance ensured a happy balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus original equality, in default of compact, maintained freedom of
+      person, security of property, good manners, and order. Every one labored
+      by himself and for himself; and the mind of man, being occupied, wandered
+      not to culpable desires. He had few enjoyments, but his wants were
+      satisfied; and as indulgent nature had made them less than his resources,
+      the labor of his hands soon produced abundance&mdash;abundance,
+      population; the arts unfolded, culture extended, and the earth, covered
+      with numerous inhabitants, was divided into different dominions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The relations of man becoming complicated, the internal order of societies
+      became more difficult to maintain. Time and industry having generated
+      riches, cupidity became more active; and because equality, practicable
+      among individuals, could not subsist among families, the natural
+      equilibrium was broken; it became necessary to supply it by a factitious
+      equilibrium; to set up chiefs, to establish laws; and in the primitive
+      inexperience, it necessarily happened that these laws, occasioned by
+      cupidity, assumed its character. But different circumstances concurred to
+      correct the disorder, and oblige governments to be just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      States, in fact, being weak at first, and having foreign enemies to fear,
+      the chiefs found it their interest not to oppress their subjects; for, by
+      lessening the confidence of the citizens in their government, they would
+      diminish their means of resistance&mdash;they would facilitate foreign
+      invasion, and by exercising arbitrary power, have endangered their very
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the interior, the firmness of the people repelled tyranny; men had
+      contracted too long habits of independence; they had too few wants, and
+      too much consciousness of their own strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      States being of a moderate size, it was difficult to divide their citizens
+      so as to make use of some for the oppression of others. Their
+      communications were too easy, their interest too clear and simple:
+      besides, every one being a proprietor and cultivator, no one needed to
+      sell himself, and the despot could find no mercenaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, then, dissensions arose, they were between family and family, faction
+      and faction, and they interested a great number. The troubles, indeed,
+      were warmer; but fears from abroad pacified discord at home. If the
+      oppression of a party prevailed, the earth being still unoccupied, and
+      man, still in a state of simplicity, finding every where the same
+      advantages, the oppressed party emigrated, and carried elsewhere their
+      independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ancient states then enjoyed within themselves numerous means of
+      prosperity and power. Every one finding his own well-being in the
+      constitution of his country, took a lively interest in its preservation.
+      If a stranger attacked it, having to defend his own field, his own house,
+      he carried into combat all the passions of a personal quarrel; and,
+      devoted to his own interests, he was devoted to his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As every action useful to the public attracted its esteem and gratitude,
+      every one became eager to be useful; and self-love multiplied talents and
+      civic virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every citizen contributing equally by his talents and person, armies and
+      funds were inexhaustible, and nations displayed formidable masses of
+      power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The earth being free, and its possession secure and easy, every one was a
+      proprietor; and the division of property preserved morals, and rendered
+      luxury impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one cultivating for himself, culture was more active, produce more
+      abundant; and individual riches became public wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The abundance of produce rendering subsistence easy, population was rapid
+      and numerous, and states attained quickly the term of their plenitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Productions increasing beyond consumption, the necessity of commerce
+      arose; and exchanges took place between people and people; which augmented
+      their activity and reciprocal advantages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fine, certain countries, at certain times, uniting the advantages of
+      good government with a position on the route of the most active
+      circulation, they became emporiums of flourishing commerce and seats of
+      powerful domination. And on the shores of the Nile and Mediterranean, of
+      the Tygris and Euphrates, the accumulated riches of India and of Europe
+      raised in successive splendor a hundred different cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people, growing rich, applied their superfluity to works of common and
+      public use; and this was in every state, the epoch of those works whose
+      grandeur astonishes the mind; of those wells of Tyre, of those dykes of
+      the Euphrates, of those subterranean conduits of Media,* of those
+      fortresses of the desert, of those aqueducts of Palmyra, of those temples,
+      of those porticoes. And such labors might be immense, without oppressing
+      the nations; because they were the effect of an equal and common
+      contribution of the force of individuals animated and free.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See respecting these monuments my Travels into Syria, vol.
+     ii. p. 214.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      From the town or village of Samouat the course of the Euphrates is
+      accompanied with a double bank, which descends as far as its junction with
+      the Tygris, and from thence to the sea, being a length of about a hundred
+      leagues, French measure. The height of these artificial banks is not
+      uniform, but increases as you advance from the sea; it may be estimated at
+      from twelve to fifteen feet. But for them, the inundation of the river
+      would bury the country around, which is flat, to an extent of twenty or
+      twenty-five leagues and even notwithstanding these banks, there has been
+      in modern times an overflow, which has covered the whole triangle formed
+      by the junction of this river to the Tygris, being a space of country of
+      one hundred and thirty square leagues. By the stagnation of these waters
+      an epidemical disease of the most fatal nature was occasioned. It follows
+      from hence, 1. That all the flat country bordering upon these rivers, was
+      originally a marsh; 2. That this marsh could not have been inhabited
+      previously to the construction of the banks in question; 3. That these
+      banks could not have been the work but of a population prior as to date;
+      and the elevation of Babylon, therefore, must have been posterior to that
+      of Nineveh, as I think I have chronologically demonstrated in the memoir
+      above cited. See Encyclopedia, vol. xiii, of Antiquities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The modern Aderbidjan, which was a part of Medea, the mountains of
+      Koulderstan, and those of Diarbekr, abound with subterranean canals, by
+      means of which the ancient inhabitants conveyed water to their parched
+      soil in order to fertilize it. It was regarded as a meritorious act and a
+      religious duty prescribed by Zoroaster, who, instead of preaching
+      celibacy, mortifications, and other pretended virtues of the monkish sort,
+      repeats continually in the passages that are preserved respecting him in
+      the Sad-der and the Zend-avesta:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That the action most pleasing to God is to plough and cultivate the
+      earth, to water it with running streams, to multiply vegetation and living
+      beings, to have numerous flocks, young and fruitful virgins, a multitude
+      of children," etc., etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the aqueducts of Palmyra it appears certain, that, besides those
+      which conducted water from the neighboring hills, there was one which
+      brought it even from the mountains of Syria. It is to be traced a long way
+      into the Desert where it escapes our search by going under ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus ancient states prospered, because their social institutions conformed
+      to the true laws of nature; and because men, enjoying liberty and security
+      for their persons and their property, might display all the extent of
+      their faculties,&mdash;all the energies of their self-love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GENERAL CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONS AND RUIN OF ANCIENT STATES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Cupidity had nevertheless excited among men a constant and universal
+      conflict, which incessantly prompting individuals and societies to
+      reciprocal invasions, occasioned successive revolutions, and returning
+      agitations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And first, in the savage and barbarous state of the first men, this
+      audacious and fierce cupidity produced rapine, violence, and murder, and
+      retarded for a long time the progress of civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When afterwards societies began to be formed, the effect of bad habits,
+      communicated to laws and governments, corrupted their institutions and
+      objects, and established arbitrary and factitious rights, which depraved
+      the ideas of justice, and the morality of the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus one man being stronger than another, their inequality&mdash;an
+      accident of nature&mdash;was taken for her law;* and the strong being able
+      to take the life of the weak, and yet sparing him, arrogated over his
+      person an abusive right of property; and the slavery of individuals
+      prepared the way for the slavery of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      *Almost all the ancient philosophers and politicians have laid it down as
+      a principle that men are born unequal, that nature his created some to be
+      free, and others to be slaves. Expressions of this kind are to be found in
+      Aristotle, and even in Plato, called the divine, doubtless in the same
+      sense as the mythological reveries which he promulgated. With all the
+      people of antiquity, the Gauls, the Romans, the Athenians, the right of
+      the strongest was the right of nations; and from the same principle are
+      derived all the political disorders and public national crimes that at
+      present exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because the head of a family could be absolute in his house, he made his
+      own affections and desires the rule of his conduct; he gave or resumed his
+      goods without equality, without justice; and paternal despotism laid the
+      foundation of despotism in government.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Upon this single expression it would be easy to write a
+     long and important chapter.  We might prove in it, beyond
+     contradiction, that all the abuses of national governments,
+     have sprung from those of domestic government, from that
+     government called patriarchal, which superficial minds have
+     extolled without having analyzed it. Numberless facts
+     demonstrate, that with every infant people, in every savage
+     and barbarous state, the father, the chief of the family, is
+     a despot, and a cruel and insolent despot.  The wife is his
+     slave, the children his servants.  This king sleeps or
+     smokes his pipe, while his wife and daughters perform all
+     the drudgery of the house, and even that of tillage and
+     cultivation, as far as occupations of this nature are
+     practised in such societies; and no sooner have the boys
+     acquired strength then they are allowed to beat the females
+     and make them serve and wait upon them as they do upon their
+     fathers.  Similar to this is the state of our own
+     uncivilized peasants.  In proportion as civilization
+     spreads, the manners become milder, and the condition of the
+     women improves, till, by a contrary excess, they arrive at
+     dominion, and then a nation becomes effeminate and corrupt.
+     It is remarkable that parental authority is great in
+     proportion as the government is despotic.  China, India, and
+     Turkey are striking examples of this. One would suppose that
+     tyrants gave themselves accomplices and interested subaltern
+     despots to maintain their authority.  In opposition to this
+     the Romans will be cited, but it remains to be proved that
+     the Romans were men truly free and their quick passage from
+     their republican despotism to their abject servility under
+     the emperors, gives room at least for considerable doubt as
+     to that freedom.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In societies formed on such foundations, when time and labor had developed
+      riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more artful, but not less
+      active. Under the mask of union and civil peace, it fomented in the bosom
+      of every state an intestine war, in which the citizens, divided into
+      contending corps of orders, classes, families, unremittingly struggled to
+      appropriate to themselves, under the name of supreme power, the ability to
+      plunder every thing, and render every thing subservient to the dictates of
+      their passions; and this spirit of encroachment, disguised under all
+      possible forms, but always the same in its object and motives, has never
+      ceased to torment the nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, opposing itself to all social compact, or breaking that which
+      already existed, it committed the inhabitants of a country to the
+      tumultuous shock of all their discords; and states thus dissolved, and
+      reduced to the condition of anarchy, were tormented by the passions of all
+      their members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes a nation, jealous of its liberty, having appointed agents to
+      administer its government, these agents appropriated the powers of which
+      they had only the guardianship: they employed the public treasures in
+      corrupting elections, gaining partisans, in dividing the people among
+      themselves. By these means, from being temporary they became perpetual;
+      from elective, hereditary; and the state, agitated by the intrigues of the
+      ambitious, by largesses from the rich and factious, by the venality of the
+      poor and idle, by the influence of orators, by the boldness of the wicked,
+      and the weakness of the virtuous, was convulsed with all the
+      inconveniences of democracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chiefs of some countries, equal in strength and mutually fearing each
+      other, formed impious pacts, nefarious associations; and, apportioning
+      among themselves all power, rank, and honor, unjustly arrogated privileges
+      and immunities; erected themselves into separate orders and distinct
+      classes; reduced the people to their control; and, under the name of
+      aristocracy, the state was tormented by the passions of the wealthy and
+      the great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sacred impostors, in other countries, tending by other means to the same
+      object, abused the credulity of the ignorant. In the gloom of their
+      temples, behind the curtain of the altar, they made their gods act and
+      speak; gave forth oracles, worked miracles, ordered sacrifices, levied
+      offerings, prescribed endowments; and, under the names of theocracy and of
+      religion, the state became tormented by the passions of the priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes a nation, weary of its dissensions or of its tyrants, to lessen
+      the sources of evil, submitted to a single master; but if it limited his
+      powers, his sole aim was to enlarge them; if it left them indefinite, he
+      abused the trust confided to him; and, under the name of monarchy, the
+      state was tormented by the passions of kings and princes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the factions, availing themselves of the general discontent,
+      flattered the people with the hope of a better master; dealt out gifts and
+      promises, deposed the despot to take his place; and their contests for the
+      succession, or its partition, tormented the state with the disorders and
+      devastations of civil war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fine, among these rivals, one more adroit, or more fortunate, gained
+      the ascendency, and concentrated all power within himself. By a strange
+      phenomenon, a single individual mastered millions of his equals, against
+      their will and without their consent; and the art of tyranny sprung also
+      from cupidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, observing the spirit of egotism which incessantly divides
+      mankind, the ambitious man fomented it with dexterity, flattered the
+      vanity of one, excited the jealousy of another, favored the avarice of
+      this, inflamed the resentment of that, and irritated the passions of all;
+      then, placing in opposition their interests and prejudices, he sowed
+      divisions and hatreds, promised to the poor the spoils of the rich, to the
+      rich the subjection of the poor; threatened one man by another, this class
+      by that; and insulating all by distrust, created his strength out of their
+      weakness, and imposed the yoke of opinion, which they mutually riveted on
+      each other. With the army he levied contributions, and with contributions
+      he disposed of the army: dealing out wealth and office on these
+      principles, he enchained a whole people in indissoluble bonds, and they
+      languished under the slow consumption of despotism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the same principle, varying its action under every possible form, was
+      forever attenuating the consistence of states, and an eternal circle of
+      vicissitudes flowed from an eternal circle of passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this spirit of egotism and usurpation produced two effects equally
+      operative and fatal: the one a division and subdivision of societies into
+      their smallest fractions, inducing a debility which facilitated their
+      dissolution; the other, a preserving tendency to concentrate power in a
+      single hand,* which, engulfing successively societies and states, was
+      fatal to their peace and social existence.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is remarkable that this has in all instances been the
+     constant progress of societies; beginning with a state of
+     anarchy or democracy, that is, with a great division of
+     power they have passed to aristocracy, and from aristocracy
+     to monarchy.  Does it not hence follow that those who
+     constitute states under the democratic form, destine them to
+     undergo all the intervening troubles between that and
+     monarchy; but it should at the same time be proved that
+     social experience is already exhausted for the human race,
+     and that this spontaneous movement is not solely the effect
+     of ignorance.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thus, as in a state, a party absorbed the nation, a family the party, and
+      an individual the family; so a movement of absorption took place between
+      state and state, and exhibited on a larger scale in the political order,
+      all the particular evils of the civil order. Thus a state having subdued a
+      state, held it in subjection in the form of a province; and two provinces
+      being joined together formed a kingdom; two kingdoms being united by
+      conquest, gave birth to empires of gigantic size; and in this
+      conglomeration, the internal strength of states, instead of increasing,
+      diminished; and the condition of the people, instead of ameliorating,
+      became daily more abject and wretched, for causes derived from the nature
+      of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because, in proportion as states increased in extent, their administration
+      becoming more difficult and complicated, greater energies of power were
+      necessary to move such masses; and there was no longer any proportion
+      between the duties of sovereigns and their ability to perform their
+      duties:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because despots, feeling their weakness, feared whatever might develop the
+      strength of nations, and studied only how to enfeeble them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because nations, divided by the prejudices of ignorance and hatred,
+      seconded the wickedness of their governments; and availing themselves
+      reciprocally of subordinate agents, aggravated their mutual slavery:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because, the balance between states being destroyed, the strong more
+      easily oppressed the weak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, because in proportion as states were concentrated, the people,
+      despoiled of their laws, of their usages, and of the government of their
+      choice, lost that spirit of personal identification with their government,
+      which had caused their energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And despots, considering empires as their private domains and the people
+      as their property, gave themselves up to depredations, and to all the
+      licentiousness of the most arbitrary authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the strength and wealth of nations were diverted to private
+      expense and personal caprice; and kings, fatigued with gratification,
+      abandoned themselves to all the extravagancies of factitious and depraved
+      taste.* They must have gardens mounted on arcades, rivers raised over
+      mountains, fertile fields converted into haunts for wild beasts; lakes
+      scooped in dry lands, rocks erected in lakes, palaces built of marble and
+      porphyry, furniture of gold and diamonds. Under the cloak of religion,
+      their pride founded temples, endowed indolent priests, built, for vain
+      skeletons, extravagant tombs, mausoleums and pyramids;** millions of hands
+      were employed in sterile labors; and the luxury of princes, imitated by
+      their parasites, and transmitted from grade to grade to the lowest ranks,
+      became a general source of corruption and impoverishment.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is equally worthy of remark, that the conduct and
+     manners of princes and kings of every country and every age,
+     are found to be precisely the same at similar periods,
+     whether of the formation or dissolution of empires.  History
+     every where presents the same pictures of luxury and folly;
+     of parks, gardens, lakes, rocks, palaces, furniture, excess
+     of the table, wine, women, concluding with brutality.
+
+     The absurd rock in the garden of Versailles has alone cost
+     three millions.  I have sometimes calculated what might have
+     been done with the expense of the three pyramids of Gizah,
+     and I have found that it would easily have constructed from
+     the Red Sea to Alexandria, a canal one hundred and fifty
+     feet wide and thirty deep, completely covered in with cut
+     stones and a parapet, together with a fortified and
+     commercial town, consisting of four hundred houses,
+     furnished with cisterns.  What a difference in point of
+     utility between such a canal and these pyramids!
+
+     ** The learned Dupuis could not be persuaded that the
+     pyramids were tombs; but besides the positive testimony of
+     historians, read what Diodorus says of the religious and
+     superstitious importance every Egyptian attached to building
+     his dwelling eternal, b. 1.
+
+     During twenty years, says Herodotus, a hundred thousand men
+     labored every day to build the pyramid of the Egyptian
+     Cheops.  Supposing only three hundred days a year, on
+     account of the sabbath, there will be 30 millions of days'
+     work in a year, and 600 millions in twenty years; at 15 sous
+     a day, this makes 450 millions of francs lost, without any
+     further benefit.  With this sum, if the king had shut the
+     isthmus of Suez by a strong wall, like that of China, the
+     destinies of Egypt might have been entirely changed.
+     Foreign invasions would have been prevented, and the Arabs
+     of the desert would neither have conquered nor harassed that
+     country.  Sterile labors! how many millions lost in putting
+     one stone upon another, under the forms of temples and
+     churches!  Alchymists convert stones into gold; but
+     architects change gold into stone.  Woe to the kings (as
+     well as subjects) who trust their purse to these two classes
+     of empirics!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And in the insatiable thirst of enjoyment, the ordinary revenues no longer
+      sufficing, they were augmented; the cultivator, seeing his labors increase
+      without compensation, lost all courage; the merchant, despoiled, was
+      disgusted with industry; the multitude, condemned to perpetual poverty,
+      restrained their labor to simple necessaries; and all productive industry
+      vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The surcharge of taxes rendering lands a burdensome possession, the poor
+      proprietor abandoned his field, or sold it to the powerful; and fortune
+      became concentrated in a few hands. All the laws and institutions favoring
+      this accumulation, the nation became divided into a group of wealthy
+      drones, and a multitude of mercenary poor; the people were degraded with
+      indigence, the great with satiety, and the number of those interested in
+      the preservation of the state decreasing, its strength and existence
+      became proportionally precarious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, emulation finding no object, science no encouragement,
+      the mind sunk into profound ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The administration being secret and mysterious, there existed no means of
+      reform or amelioration. The chiefs governing by force or fraud, the people
+      viewed them as a faction of public enemies; and all harmony ceased between
+      the governors and governed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And these vices having enervated the states of the wealthy part of Asia,
+      the vagrant and indigent people of the adjacent deserts and mountains
+      coveted the enjoyments of the fertile plains; and, urged by a cupidity
+      common to all, attacked the polished empires, and overturned the thrones
+      of their despots. These revolutions were rapid and easy; because the
+      policy of tyrants had enfeebled the subjects, razed the fortresses,
+      destroyed the warriors; and because the oppressed subjects remained
+      without personal interest, and the mercenary soldiers without courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And hordes of barbarians having reduced entire nations to slavery, the
+      empires, formed of conquerors and conquered, united in their bosom two
+      classes essentially opposite and hostile. All the principles of society
+      were dissolved: there was no longer any common interest, no longer any
+      public spirit; and there arose a distinction of casts and races, which
+      reduced to a regular system the maintenance of disorder; and he who was
+      born of this or that blood, was born a slave or a tyrant&mdash;property or
+      proprietor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The oppressors being less numerous than the oppressed it was necessary to
+      perfect the science of oppression, in order to support this false
+      equilibrium. The art of governing became the art of subjecting the many to
+      the few. To enforce an obedience so contrary to instinct, the severest
+      punishments were established, and the cruelty of the laws rendered manners
+      atrocious. The distinction of persons establishing in the state two codes,
+      two orders of criminal justice, two sets of laws, the people, placed
+      between the propensities of the heart and the oath uttered from the mouth,
+      had two consciences in contradiction with each other; and the ideas of
+      justice and injustice had no longer any foundation in the understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under such a system, the people fell into dejection and despair; and the
+      accidents of nature were added to the other evils which assailed them.
+      Prostrated by so many calamities, they attributed their causes to superior
+      and hidden powers; and, because they had tyrants on earth, they fancied
+      others in heaven; and superstition aggravated the misfortunes of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatal doctrines and gloomy and misanthropic systems of religion arose,
+      which painted their gods, like their despots, wicked and envious. To
+      appease them, man offered up the sacrifice of all his enjoyments. He
+      environed himself in privations, and reversed the order of nature.
+      Conceiving his pleasures to be crimes, his sufferings expiations, he
+      endeavored to love pain, and to abjure the love of self. He persecuted his
+      senses, hated his life; and a self-denying and anti-social morality
+      plunged nations into the apathy of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But provident nature having endowed the heart of man with hope
+      inexhaustible, when his desires of happiness were baffled on this earth,
+      he pursued it into another world. By a sweet illusion he created for
+      himself another country&mdash;an asylum where, far from tyrants, he should
+      recover the rights of nature, and thence resulted new disorders. Smitten
+      with an imaginary world, man despised that of nature. For chimerical
+      hopes, he neglected realities. His life began to appear a troublesome
+      journey&mdash;a painful dream; his body a prison, the obstacle to his
+      felicity; and the earth, a place of exile and of pilgrimage, not worthy of
+      culture. Then a holy indolence spread over the political world; the fields
+      were deserted, empires depopulated, monuments neglected and deserts
+      multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism, combining their
+      operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation and ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus agitated by their own passions, men, whether collectively or
+      individually taken, always greedy and improvident, passing from slavery to
+      tyranny, from pride to baseness, from presumption to despondency, have
+      made themselves the perpetual instruments of their own misfortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These, then, are the principles, simple and natural, which regulated the
+      destiny of ancient states. By this regular and connected series of causes
+      and effects, they rose or fell, in proportion as the physical laws of the
+      human heart were respected or violated; and in the course of their
+      successive changes, a hundred different nations, a hundred different
+      empires, by turns humbled, elevated, conquered, overthrown, have repeated
+      for the earth their instructive lessons. Yet these lessons were lost for
+      the generations which have followed! The disorders in times past have
+      reappeared in the present age! The chiefs of the nations have continued to
+      walk in the paths of falsehood and tyranny!&mdash;the people to wander in
+      the darkness of superstition and ignorance!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since then, continued the Genius, with renewed energy, since the
+      experience of past ages is lost for the living&mdash;since the errors of
+      progenitors have not instructed their descendants, the ancient examples
+      are about to reappear; the earth will see renewed the tremendous scenes it
+      has forgotten. New revolutions will agitate nations and empires; powerful
+      thrones will again be overturned, and terrible catastrophes will again
+      teach mankind that the laws of nature and the precepts of wisdom and truth
+      cannot be infringed with impunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LESSONS OF TIMES PAST REPEATED ON THE PRESENT.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the Genius. Struck with the justice and coherence of his
+      discourse, assailed with a crowd of ideas, repugnant to my habits yet
+      convincing to my reason, I remained absorbed in profound silence. At
+      length, while with serious and pensive mien, I kept my eyes fixed on Asia,
+      suddenly in the north, on the shores of the Black sea, and in the fields
+      of the Crimea, clouds of smoke and flame attracted my attention. They
+      appeared to rise at the same time from all parts of the peninsula; and
+      passing by the isthmus into the continent, they ran, as if driven by a
+      westerly wind, along the oozy lake of Azof, and disappeared in the grassy
+      plains of Couban; and following more attentively the course of these
+      clouds, I observed that they were preceded or followed by swarms of moving
+      creatures, which, like ants or grasshoppers disturbed by the foot of a
+      passenger, agitated themselves with vivacity. Sometimes these swarms
+      appeared to advance and rush against each other; and numbers, after the
+      concussion, remained motionless. While disquieted at this spectacle, I
+      strained my sight to distinguish the objects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you see, said the Genius, those flames which spread over the earth, and
+      do you comprehend their causes and effects?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! Genius, I answered, I see those columns of flame and smoke, and
+      something like insects, accompanying them; but, when I can scarcely
+      discern the great masses of cities and monuments, how should I discover,
+      such little creatures? I can just perceive that these insects mimic
+      battle, for they advance, retreat, attack and pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no mimicry, said the Genius, these are real battles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what, said I, are those mad animalculae, which destroy each other?
+      Beings of a day! will they not perish soon enough?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Genius, touching my sight and hearing, again directed my eyes
+      towards the same object. Look, said he, and listen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! wretches, cried I, oppressed with grief, these columns of flame! these
+      insects! oh! Genius, they are men. These are the ravages of war! These
+      torrents of flame rise from towns and villages! I see the squadrons who
+      kindle them, and who, sword in hand overrun the country: they drive before
+      them crowds of old men, women, and children, fugitive and desolate: I
+      perceive other horsemen, who with shouldered lances, accompany and guide
+      them. I even recognize them to be Tartars by their led horses,* their
+      kalpacks, and tufts of hair: and, doubtless, they who pursue, in
+      triangular hats and green uniforms, are Muscovites. Ah! I now comprehend,
+      a war is kindled between the empire of the Czars and that of the Sultans.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A Tartar horseman has always two horses, of which he leads
+     one in hand.  The Kalpeck is a bonnet made of the skin of a
+     sheep or other animal.  The part of the head covered by this
+     bonnet is shaved, with the exception of a tuft, about the
+     size of a crown piece, and which is suffered to grow to the
+     length of seven or eight inches, precisely where our priests
+     place their tonsure.  It is by this tuft of hair, worn by
+     the majority of Mussulmen, that the angel of the tomb is to
+     take the elect and carry them into paradise.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Not yet, replied the Genius; this is only a preliminary. These Tartars
+      have been, and might still he troublesome neighbors. The Muscovites are
+      driving them off, finding their country would be a convenient extension of
+      their own limits; and as a prelude to another revolution, the throne of
+      the Guerais is destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in fact, I saw the Russian standards floating over the Crimea: and
+      soon after their flag waving on the Euxine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, at the cry of the flying Tartars, the Mussulman empire was in
+      commotion. They are driving off our brethren, cried the children of
+      Mahomet: the people of the prophet are outraged! infidels occupy a
+      consecrated land and profane the temples of Islamism.* Let us arm; let us
+      rush to combat, to avenge the glory of God and our own cause.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is not in the power of the Sultan to cede to a foreign
+     power a province inhabited by true believers.  The people,
+     instigated by the lawyers, would not fail to revolt.  This
+     is one reason which has led those who know the Turks, to
+     regard as chimerical the ceding of Candia, Cyprus, and
+     Egypt, projected by certain European potentates.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And a general movement of war took place in both empires. In every part
+      armed men assembled. Provisions, stores, and all the murderous apparatus
+      of battle were displayed. The temples of both nations, besieged by an
+      immense multitude, presented a spectacle which fixed all my attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one side, the Mussulmen gathered before their mosques, washed their
+      hands and feet, pared their nails, and combed their beards; then spreading
+      carpets upon the ground, and turning towards the south, with their arms
+      sometimes crossed and sometimes extended, they made genuflexions and
+      prostrations, and recollecting the disasters of the late war, they
+      exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      God of mercy and clemency! hast thou then abandoned thy faithful people?
+      Thou who hast promised to thy Prophet dominion over nations, and stamped
+      his religion by so many triumphs, dost thou deliver thy true believers to
+      the swords of infidels?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Imans and the Santons said to the people:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is in chastisement of your sins. You eat pork; you drink wine; you
+      touch unclean things. God hath punished you. Do penance therefore; purify;
+      repeat the profession of faith;* fast from the rising to the setting sun;
+      give the tenth of your goods to the mosques; go to Mecca; and God will
+      render you victorious.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And the people, recovering courage, uttered loud cries:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is but one God, said they transported with fury, and Mahomet is his
+      prophet! Accursed be he who believeth not!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      God of goodness, grant us to exterminate these Christians; it is for thy
+      glory we fight, and our death is a martyrdom for thy name. And then,
+      offering victims, they prepared for battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other side, the Russians, kneeling, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We render thanks to God, and celebrate his power. He hath strengthened our
+      arm to humble his enemies. Hear our prayers, thou God of mercy! To please
+      thee, we will pass three days without eating either meat or eggs. Grant us
+      to extirpate these impious Mahometans, and to overturn their empire. To
+      thee we will consecrate the tenth of our spoil; to thee we will raise new
+      temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the priests filled the churches with clouds of smoke, and said to the
+      people:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We pray for you, God accepteth our incense, and blesseth your arms.
+      Continue to fast and to fight; confess to us your secret sins; give your
+      wealth to the church; we will absolve you from your crimes, and you shall
+      die in a state of grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they sprinkled water upon the people, dealt out to them, as amulets
+      and charms, small relics of the dead, and the people breathed war and
+      combat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Struck with this contrast of the same passions, and grieving for their
+      fatal consequences, I was considering the difficulty with which the common
+      judge could yield to prayers so contradictory; when the Genius, glowing
+      with anger, spoke with vehemence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What accents of madness strike my ear? What blind and perverse delirium
+      disorders the spirits of the nations? Sacrilegious prayers rise not from
+      the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their homicidal vows and impious
+      thanksgivings! Deluded mortals! is it thus you revere the Divinity? Say
+      then; how should he, whom you style your common father, receive the homage
+      of his children murdering one another? Ye victors! with what eye should he
+      view your hands reeking in the blood he hath created? And, what do you
+      expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans? Hath God the heart of a
+      mortal, with passions ever changing? Is he, like you, agitated with
+      vengeance or compassion, with wrath or repentance? What base conception of
+      the most sublime of beings! According to them, it would seem, that God
+      whimsical and capricious, is angered or appeased as a man: that he loves
+      and hates alternately; that he punishes or favors; that, weak or wicked,
+      he broods over his hatred; that, contradictory or perfidious, he lays
+      snares to entrap; that he punishes the evils he permits; that he foresees
+      but hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt judge, he is bribed by
+      offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes laws and revokes them; that,
+      like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes favors without reason, and can
+      only be appeased by servility. Ah! now I know the lying spirit of man!
+      Contemplating the picture which he hath drawn of the Divinity: No, said I,
+      it is not God who hath made man after the image of God; but man hath made
+      God after the image of man; he hath given him his own mind, clothed him
+      with his own propensities; ascribed to him his own judgments. And when in
+      this medley he finds the contradiction of his own principles, with
+      hypocritical humility, he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the
+      absurdities of his own mind the mysteries of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change him; he
+      hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him without
+      ceasing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imposters have arisen on the earth who have called themselves the
+      confidants of God; and, erecting themselves into teachers of the people,
+      have opened the ways of falsehood and iniquity; they have ascribed merit
+      to practices indifferent or ridiculous; they have supposed a virtue, in
+      certain postures, in pronouncing certain words, articulating certain
+      names; they have transformed into a crime the eating of certain meats, the
+      drinking of certain liquors, on one day rather than another. The Jew would
+      rather die than labor on the sabbath; the Persian would endure
+      suffocation, before he would blow the fire with his breath; the Indian
+      places supreme perfection in besmearing himself with cow-dung, and
+      pronouncing mysteriously the word Aum;* the Mussulman believes he has
+      expiated everything in washing his head and arms; and disputes, sword in
+      hand, whether the ablution should commence at the elbow, or finger ends;**
+      the Christian would think himself damned, if he ate flesh instead of milk
+      or butter. Oh sublime doctrines! Doctrines truly from heaven! Oh perfect
+      morals, and worthy of martyrdom or the apostolate! I will cross the seas
+      to teach these admirable laws to the savage people&mdash;to distant
+      nations; I will say unto them:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This word is, in the religion of the Hindoos, a sacred
+     emblem of the Divinity.  It is only to be pronounced in
+     secret, without being heard by any one.  It is formed of
+     three letters, of which the first, a, signifies the
+     principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the
+     conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who
+     puts an end to all, Chiven.  It is pronounced like the
+     monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three
+     Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega
+     mentioned in the New Testament.
+
+     ** This is one of the grand points of schism between the
+     partisans of Omar and those of Ali.  Suppose two Mahometans
+     to meet on a journey, and to accost each other with
+     brotherly affection: the hour of prayer arrives; one begins
+     his ablution at his fingers, the other at the elbow, and
+     instantly they are mortal enemies.  O sublime importance of
+     religious opinions!  O profound philosophy of the authors of
+     them!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Children of nature, how long will you walk in the paths of ignorance? how
+      long will you mistake the true principles of morality and religion? Come
+      and learn its lessons from nations truly pious and learned, in civilized
+      countries. They will inform you how, to gratify God, you must in certain
+      months of the year, languish the whole day with hunger and thirst; how you
+      may shed your neighbor's blood, and purify yourself from it by professions
+      of faith and methodical ablutions; how you may steal his property and be
+      absolved on sharing it with certain persons, who devote themselves to its
+      consumption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sovereign and invisible power of the universe! mysterious mover of nature!
+      universal soul of beings! thou who art unknown, yet revered by mortals
+      under so many names! being incomprehensible and infinite! God, who in the
+      immensity of the heavens directest the movement of worlds, and peoplest
+      the abyss of space with millions of suns! say what do these human insects,
+      which my sight no longer discerns on the earth, appear in thy eyes? To
+      thee, who art guiding stars in their orbits, what are those wormlings
+      writhing themselves in the dust? Of what import to thy immensity, their
+      distinctions of parties and sects? And of what concern the subtleties with
+      which their folly torments itself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your practices! In so many
+      centuries, during which you have been following or altering them, what
+      changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of nature? Is the sun
+      brighter? Is the course of the seasons varied? Is the earth more fruitful,
+      or its inhabitants more happy? If God be good, can your penances please
+      him? If infinite, can your homage add to his glory? If his decrees have
+      been formed on foresight of every circumstance, can your prayers change
+      them? Answer, O inconsistent mortals!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ye conquerors of the earth, who pretend you serve God! doth he need your
+      aid? If he wishes to punish, hath he not earthquakes, volcanoes, and
+      thunder? And cannot a merciful God correct without extermination?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ye Mussulmans, if God chastiseth you for violating the five precepts, how
+      hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them? If he governeth the earth
+      by the Koran, by what did he govern it before the days of the prophet,
+      when it was covered with so many nations who drank wine, ate pork, and
+      went not to Mecca, whom he nevertheless permitted to raise powerful
+      empires? How did he judge the Sabeans of Nineveh and of Babylon; the
+      Persian, worshipper of fire; the Greek and Roman idolators; the ancient
+      kingdoms of the Nile; and your own ancestors, the Arabians and Tartars?
+      How doth he yet judge so many nations who deny, or know not your worship&mdash;the
+      numerous castes of Indians, the vast empire of the Chinese, the sable race
+      of Africa, the islanders of the ocean, the tribes of America?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presumptuous and ignorant men, who arrogate the earth to yourselves! if
+      God were to gather all the generations past and present, what would be, in
+      their ocean, the sects calling themselves universal, of Christians and
+      Mussulmans? What would be the judgments of his equal and common justice
+      over the real universality of mankind? Therein it is that your knowledge
+      loseth itself in incoherent systems; it is there that truth shines with
+      evidence; and there are manifested the powerful and simple laws of nature
+      and reason&mdash;laws of a common and general mover&mdash;of a God
+      impartial and just, who sheds rain on a country without asking who is its
+      prophet; who causeth his sun to shine alike on all the races of men, on
+      the white as on the black, on the Jew, on the Mussulman, the Christian,
+      and the Idolater; who reareth the harvest wherever cultivated with
+      diligence; who multiplieth every nation where industry and order
+      prevaileth; who prospereth every empire where justice is practised, where
+      the powerful are restrained, and the poor protected by the laws; where the
+      weak live in safety, and all enjoy the rights given by nature and a
+      compact formed in justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the principles by which people are judged! this the true
+      religion which regulates the destiny of empires, and which, O Ottomans,
+      hath governed yours! Interrogate your ancestors, ask of them by what means
+      they rose to greatness; when few, poor and idolaters, they came from the
+      deserts of Tartary and encamped in these fertile countries; ask if it was
+      by Islamism, till then unknown to them, that they conquered the Greeks and
+      the Arabs, or was it by their courage, their prudence, moderation, spirit
+      of union&mdash;the true powers of the social state? Then the Sultan
+      himself dispensed justice, and maintained discipline. The prevaricating
+      judge, the extortionate governor, were punished, and the multitude lived
+      at ease. The cultivator was protected from the rapine of the janissary,
+      and the fields prospered; the highways were safe, and commerce caused
+      abundance. You were a band of plunderers, but just among yourselves. You
+      subdued nations, but did not oppress them. Harassed by their own princes,
+      they preferred being your tributaries. What matters it, said the
+      Christian, whether my ruler breaks or adores images, if he renders justice
+      to me? God will judge his doctrines in the heavens above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You were sober and hardy; your enemies timid and enervated; you were
+      expert in battle, your enemies unskillful; your leaders were experienced,
+      your soldiers warlike and disciplined. Booty excited ardor, bravery was
+      rewarded, cowardice and insubordination punished, and all the springs of
+      the human heart were in action. Thus you vanquished a hundred nations, and
+      of a mass of conquered kingdoms compounded an immense empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But other customs have succeeded; and in the reverses attending them, the
+      laws of nature have still exerted their force. After devouring your
+      enemies, your cupidity, still insatiable, has reacted on itself, and,
+      concentrated in your own bowels, has consumed you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having become rich, you have quarrelled for partition and enjoyment, and
+      disorder hath arisen in every class of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sultan, intoxicated with grandeur, has mistaken the object of his
+      functions; and all the vices of arbitrary power have been developed.
+      Meeting no obstacle to his appetites, he has become a depraved being; weak
+      and arrogant, he has kept the people at a distance; and their voice has no
+      longer instructed and guided him. Ignorant, yet flattered, neglecting all
+      instruction, all study, he has fallen into imbecility; unfit for business,
+      he has thrown its burdens on hirelings, and they have deceived him. To
+      satisfy their own passions, they have stimulated and nourished his; they
+      have multiplied his wants, and his enormous luxury has consumed
+      everything. The frugal table, plain clothing, simple dwelling of his
+      ancestors no longer sufficed. To supply his pomp, earth and sea have been
+      exhausted. The rarest furs have been brought from the poles; the most
+      costly tissues from the equator. He has devoured at a meal the tribute of
+      a city, and in a day that of a province. He has surrounded himself with an
+      army of women, eunuchs, and satellites. They have instilled into him that
+      the virtue of kings is to be liberal, and the munificence and treasures of
+      the people have been delivered into the hands of flatterers. In imitation
+      of their master, his servants must also have splendid houses, the most
+      exquisite furniture; carpets embroidered at great cost, vases of gold and
+      silver for the lowest uses, and all the riches of the empire have been
+      swallowed up in the Serai.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To supply this inordinate luxury, the slaves and women have sold their
+      influence, and venality has introduced a general depravation. The favor of
+      the sovereign has been sold to his vizier, and the vizier has sold the
+      empire. The law has been sold to the cadi, and the cadi has made sale of
+      justice. The altar has been sold to the priest, and the priest has sold
+      the kingdom of heaven. And gold obtaining everything, they have sacrificed
+      everything to obtain gold. For gold, friend has betrayed friend, the child
+      his parent, the servant his master, the wife her honor, the merchant his
+      conscience; and good faith, morals, concord, and strength were banished
+      from the state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pacha, who had purchased the government of his province, farmed it out
+      to others, who exercised every extortion. He sold in turn the collection
+      of the taxes, the command of the troops, the administration of the
+      villages; and as every employ has been transient, rapine, spread from rank
+      to rank, has been greedy and implacable. The revenue officer has fleeced
+      the merchant, and commerce was annihilated; the aga has plundered the
+      husbandman, and culture has degenerated. The laborer, deprived of his
+      stock, has been unable to sow; the tax was augmented, and he could not pay
+      it; the bastinado has been threatened, and he has borrowed. Money, from
+      want of security, being locked up from circulation, interest was therefore
+      enormous, and the usury of the rich has aggravated the misery of the
+      laborer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When excessive droughts and accidents of seasons have blasted the harvest,
+      the government has admitted no delay, no indulgence for the tax; and
+      distress bearing hard on the village, a part of its inhabitants have taken
+      refuge in the cities; and their burdens falling on those who remained, has
+      completed their ruin, and depopulated the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If driven to extremity by tyranny and outrage, the villages have revolted,
+      the pacha rejoices. He wages war on them, assails their homes, pillages
+      their property, carries off their stock; and when the fields have become a
+      desert, he exclaims:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What care I? I leave these fields to-morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The earth wanting laborers, the rain of heaven and overflowing of torrents
+      have stagnated in marshes; and their putrid exhalations in a warm climate,
+      have caused epidemics, plagues, and maladies of all sorts, whence have
+      flowed additional suffering, penury, and ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! who can enumerate all the calamities of tyrannical government?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes the pachas declare war against each other, and for their
+      personal quarrels the provinces of the same state are laid waste.
+      Sometimes, fearing their masters, they attempt independence, and draw on
+      their subjects the chastisement of their revolt. Sometimes dreading their
+      subjects, they invite and subsidize strangers, and to insure their
+      fidelity set no bounds to their depredations. Here they persecute the rich
+      and despoil them under false pretences; there they suborn false witnesses,
+      and impose penalties for suppositious offences; everywhere they excite the
+      hatred of parties, encourage informations to obtain amercements, extort
+      property, seize persons; and when their short-sighted avarice has
+      accumulated into one mass all the riches of a country, the government, by
+      an execrable perfidy, under pretence of avenging its oppressed people,
+      takes to itself all their spoils, as if they were the culprits, and
+      uselessly sheds the blood of its agents for a crime of which it is the
+      accomplice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh wretches, monarchs or ministers, who sport with the lives and fortunes
+      of the people! Is it you who gave breath to man, that you dare take it
+      from him? Do you give growth to the plants of the earth, that you may
+      waste them? Do you toil to furrow the field? Do you endure the ardor of
+      the sun, and the torment of thirst, to reap the harvest or thrash the
+      grain? Do you, like the shepherd, watch through the dews of the night? Do
+      you traverse deserts, like the merchant? Ah! on beholding the pride and
+      cruelty of the powerful, I have been transported with indignation, and
+      have said in my wrath, will there never then arise on the earth men who
+      will avenge the people and punish tyrants? A handful of brigands devour
+      the multitude, and the multitude submits to be devoured! Oh! degenerate
+      people! Know you not your rights? All authority is from you, all power is
+      yours. Unlawfully do kings command you on the authority of God and of
+      their lance&mdash;Soldiers be still; if God supports the Sultan he needs
+      not your aid; if his sword suffices, he needs not yours; let us see what
+      he can do alone. The soldiers grounded their arms; and behold these
+      masters of the world, feeble as the meanest of their subjects! People!
+      know that those who govern are your chiefs, not your masters; your agents,
+      not your owners; that they have no authority over you, but by you, and for
+      you; that your wealth is yours and they accountable for it; that, kings or
+      subjects, God has made all men equal, and no mortal has the right to
+      oppress his fellow-creatures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this nation and its chiefs have mistaken these holy truths. They must
+      abide then the consequences of their blindness. The decree is past; the
+      day approaches when this colossus of power shall be crushed and crumbled
+      under its own mass. Yes, I swear it, by the ruins of so many empires
+      destroyed. The empire of the Crescent shall follow the fate of the
+      despotism it has copied. A nation of strangers shall drive the Sultan from
+      his metropolis. The throne of Orkhan shall be overturned. The last shoot
+      of his trunk shall be broken off; and the horde of Oguzians,* deprived of
+      their chief, shall disperse like that of the Nagois. In this dissolution,
+      the people of the empire, loosened from the yoke which united them, shall
+      resume their ancient distinctions, and a general anarchy shall follow, as
+      happened in the empire of the Sophis;** until there shall arise among the
+      Arabians, Armenians, or Greeks, legislators who may compose new states.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Before the Turks took the name of their chief, Othman I.,
+     they bore that of Oguzians; and it was under this
+     appellation that they were driven out of Tartary by Gengis,
+     and came from the borders of Giboun to settle themselves in
+     Anatolia.
+
+     ** In Persia, after the death of Thamas-Koulikan, each
+     province had its chief, and for forty years these chiefs
+     were in a constant state of war.  In this view the Turks do
+     not say without reason: "Ten years of a tyrant are less
+     destructive than a single night of anarchy."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Oh! if there were on earth men profound and bold! what elements for
+      grandeur and glory! But the hour of destiny has already come; the cry of
+      war strikes my ear; and the catastrophe begins. In vain the Sultan leads
+      forth his armies; his ignorant warriors are beaten and dispersed. In vain
+      he calls his subjects; their hearts are ice. Is it not written? say they,
+      what matters who is our master? We cannot lose by the change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain the true believers invoke heaven and the prophet. The prophet is
+      dead; and heaven without pity answers:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cease to invoke me. You have caused your own misfortunes; cure them
+      yourselves. Nature has established laws; your part is to obey them.
+      Observe, reason, and profit by experience. It is the folly of man which
+      ruins him; let his wisdom save him. The people are ignorant; let them gain
+      instruction. Their chiefs are wicked; let them correct and amend; for such
+      is Nature's decree. Since the evils of society spring from cupidity and
+      ignorance, men will never cease to be persecuted, till they become
+      enlightened and wise; till they practise justice, founded on a knowledge
+      of their relations and of the laws of their organization.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A singular moral phenomenon made its appearance in Europe
+     in the year 1788.  A great nation, jealous of its liberty,
+     contracted a fondness for a nation the enemy of liberty; a
+     nation friendly to the arts, for a nation that detests them;
+     a mild and tolerant nation, for a persecuting and fanatic
+     one; a social and gay nation, for a nation whose
+     characteristics are gloom and misanthropy; in a word, the
+     French were smitten with a passion for the Turks: they were
+     desirous of engaging in a war for them, and that at a time
+     when revolution in their own country was just at its
+     commencement. A man, who perceived the true nature of the
+     situation, wrote a book to dissuade them from the war: it
+     was immediately pretended that he was paid by the
+     government, which in reality wished the war, and which was
+     upon the point of shutting him up in a state prison. Another
+     man wrote to recommend the war: he was applauded, and his
+     word taken for the science, the politeness, and importance
+     of the Turks.  It is true that he believed in his own
+     thesis, for he has found among them people who cast a
+     nativity, and alchymists who ruined his fortune; as he found
+     Martinists at Paris, who enabled him to sup with Sesostris,
+     and Magnetizers who concluded with destroying his existence.
+     Notwithstanding this, the Turks were beaten by the Russians,
+     and the man who then predicted the fall of their empire,
+     persists in the prediction.  The result of this fall will be
+     a complete change of the political system, as far as it
+     relates to the coast of the Mediterranean.  If, however, the
+     French become important in proportion as they become free,
+     and if they make use of the advantage they will obtain,
+     their progress may easily prove of the most honorable sort;
+     inasmuch as, by the wise decrees of fate, the true interest
+     of mankind evermore accords with their true morality.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      WILL THE HUMAN RACE IMPROVE?
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At these words, oppressed with the painful sentiment with which their
+      severity overwhelmed me: Woe to the nations! cried I, melting in tears;
+      woe to myself! Ah! now it is that I despair of the happiness of man! Since
+      his miseries proceed from his heart; since the remedy is in his own power,
+      woe for ever to his existence! Who, indeed will ever be able to restrain
+      the lust of wealth in the strong and powerful? Who can enlighten the
+      ignorance of the weak? Who can teach the multitude to know their rights,
+      and force their chiefs to perform their duties? Thus the race of man is
+      always doomed to suffer! Thus the individual will not cease to oppress the
+      individual, a nation to attack a nation; and days of prosperity, of glory,
+      for these regions, shall never return. Alas! conquerors will come; they
+      will drive out the oppressors, and fix themselves in their place; but,
+      inheriting their power, they will inherit their rapacity; and the earth
+      will have changed tyrants, without changing the tyranny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, turning to the Genius, I exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, despair hath settled on my soul. Knowing the nature of man, the
+      perversity of those who govern, and the debasement of the governed&mdash;this
+      knowledge hath disgusted me with life; and since there is no choice but to
+      be the accomplice or the victim of oppression, what remains to the man of
+      virtue but to mingle his ashes with those of the tomb?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Genius then gave me a look of severity, mingled with compassion; and
+      after a few moments of silence, he replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Virtue, then, consists in dying! The wicked man is indefatigable in
+      consummating his crime, and the just is discouraged from doing good at the
+      first obstacle he encounters! But such is the human heart. A little
+      success intoxicates man with confidence; a reverse overturns and confounds
+      him. Always given up to the sensation of the moment, he seldom judges
+      things from their nature, but from the impulse of his passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortal, who despairest of the human race, on what profound combination of
+      facts hast thou established thy conclusion? Hast thou scrutinized the
+      organization of sentient beings, to determine with precision whether the
+      instinctive force which moves them on to happiness is essentially weaker
+      than that which repels them from it? or, embracing in one glance the
+      history of the species, and judging the future by the past, hast thou
+      shown that all improvement is impossible? Say! hath human society, since
+      its origin, made no progress toward knowledge and a better state? Are men
+      still in their forests, destitute of everything, ignorant, stupid and
+      ferocious? Are all the nations still in that age when nothing was seen
+      upon the globe but brutal robbers and brutal slaves? If at any time, in
+      any place, individuals have ameliorated, why shall not the whole mass
+      ameliorate? If partial societies have made improvements, what shall hinder
+      the improvement of society in general? And if the first obstacles are
+      overcome, why should the others be insurmountable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Art thou disposed to think that the human race degenerates? Guard against
+      the illusion and paradoxes of the misanthrope. Man, discontented with the
+      present, imagines for the past a perfection which never existed, and which
+      only serves to cover his chagrin. He praises the dead out of hatred to the
+      living, and beats the children with the bones of their ancestors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To prove this pretended retrograde progress from perfection we must
+      contradict the testimony of reason and of fact; and if the facts of
+      history are in any measure uncertain, we must contradict the living fact
+      of the organization of man; we must prove that he is born with the
+      enlightened use of his senses; that, without experience, he can
+      distinguish aliment from poison; that the child is wiser than the old man;
+      that the blind walks with more safety than the clear-sighted; that the
+      civilized man is more miserable than the savage; and, indeed, that there
+      is no ascending scale in experience and instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believe, young man, the testimony of monuments, and the voice of the
+      tombs. Some countries have doubtless fallen from what they were at certain
+      epochs; but if we weigh the wisdom and happiness of their inhabitants,
+      even in those times, we shall find more of splendor than of reality in
+      their glory; we shall find, in the most celebrated of ancient states,
+      enormous vices and cruel abuses, the true causes of their decay; we shall
+      find in general that the principles of government were atrocious; that
+      insolent robberies, barbarous wars and implacable hatreds were raging from
+      nation to nation;* that natural right was unknown; that morality was
+      perverted by senseless fanaticism and deplorable superstition; that a
+      dream, a vision, an oracle, were constantly the causes of vast commotions.
+      Perhaps the nations are not yet entirely cured of all these evils; but
+      their intensity at least is diminished, and the experience of the past has
+      not been wholly lost. For the last three centuries, especially, knowledge
+      has increased and been extended; civilization, favored by happy
+      circumstances, has made a sensible progress; inconveniences and abuses
+      have even turned to its advantage; for if states have been too much
+      extended by conquest, the people, by uniting under the same yoke, have
+      lost the spirit of estrangement and division which made them all enemies
+      one to the other. If the powers of government have been more concentrated,
+      there has been more system and harmony in their exercise. If wars have
+      become more extensive in the mass, they are less bloody in detail. If men
+      have gone to battle with less personality, less energy, their struggles
+      have been less sanguinary and less ferocious; they have been less free,
+      but less turbulent; more effeminate, but more pacific. Despotism itself
+      has rendered them some service; for if governments have been more
+      absolute, they have been more quiet and less tempestuous. If thrones have
+      become a property and hereditary, they have excited less dissensions, and
+      the people have suffered fewer convulsions; finally, if the despots,
+      jealous and mysterious, have interdicted all knowledge of their
+      administration, all concurrence in the management of public affairs, the
+      passions of men, drawn aside from politics, have fixed upon the arts, and
+      the sciences of nature; and the sphere of ideas in every direction has
+      been enlarged; man, devoted to abstract studies, has better understood his
+      place in the system of nature, and his relations in society; principles
+      have been better discussed, final causes better explained, knowledge more
+      extended, individuals better instructed, manners more social, and life
+      more happy. The species at large, especially in certain countries, has
+      gained considerably; and this amelioration cannot but increase in future,
+      because its two principal obstacles, those even which, till then, had
+      rendered it slow and sometimes retrograde,&mdash;the difficulty of
+      transmitting ideas and of communicating them rapidly,&mdash;have been at
+      last removed.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Read the history of the wars of Rome and Carthage, of
+     Sparta and Messina, of Athens and Syracuse, of the Hebrews
+     and the Phoenicians: yet these are the nations of which
+     antiquity boasts as being most polished!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, among the ancients, each canton, each city, being isolated from
+      all others by the difference of its language, the consequence was
+      favorable to ignorance and anarchy. There was no communication of ideas,
+      no participation of discoveries, no harmony of interests or of wills, no
+      unity of action or design; besides, the only means of transmitting and of
+      propagating ideas being that of speech, fugitive and limited, and that of
+      writing, tedious of execution, expensive and scarce, the consequence was a
+      hindrance of present instruction, loss of experience from one generation
+      to another, instability, retrogression of knowledge, and a perpetuity of
+      confusion and childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the modern world, especially in Europe, great nations having allied
+      themselves in language, and established vast communities of opinions, the
+      minds of men are assimilated, and their affections extended; there is a
+      sympathy of opinion and a unity of action; then that gift of heavenly
+      Genius, the holy art of printing, having furnished the means of
+      communicating in an instant the same idea to millions of men, and of
+      fixing it in a durable manner, beyond the power of tyrants to arrest or
+      annihilate, there arose a mass of progressive instruction, an expanding
+      atmosphere of science, which assures to future ages a solid amelioration.
+      This amelioration is a necessary effect of the laws of nature; for, by the
+      law of sensibility, man as invincibly tends to render himself happy as the
+      flame to mount, the stone to descend, or the water to find its level. His
+      obstacle is his ignorance, which misleads him in the means, and deceives
+      him in causes and effects. He will enlighten himself by experience; he
+      will become right by dint of errors; he will grow wise and good because it
+      is his interest so to be. Ideas being communicated through the nation,
+      whole classes will gain instruction; science will become a vulgar
+      possession, and all men will know what are the principles of individual
+      happiness and of public prosperity. They will know the relations they bear
+      to society, their duties and their rights; they will learn to guard
+      against the illusions of the lust of gain; they will perceive that the
+      science of morals is a physical science, composed, indeed, of elements
+      complicated in their operation, but simple and invariable in their nature,
+      since they are only the elements of the organization of man. They will see
+      the propriety of being moderate and just, because in that is found the
+      advantage and security of each; they will perceive that the wish to enjoy
+      at the expense of another is a false calculation of ignorance, because it
+      gives rise to reprisal, hatred, and vengeance, and that dishonesty is the
+      never-failing offspring of folly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Individuals will feel that private happiness is allied to public good:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weak, that instead of dividing their interests, they ought to unite
+      them, because equality constitutes their force:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rich, that the measure of enjoyment is bounded by the constitution of
+      the organs, and that lassitude follows satiety:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor, that the employment of time, and the peace of the heart, compose
+      the highest happiness of man. And public opinion, reaching kings on their
+      thrones, will force them to confine themselves to the limits of regular
+      authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even chance itself, serving the cause of nations, will sometimes give them
+      feeble chiefs, who, through weakness, will suffer them to become free; and
+      sometimes enlightened chiefs, who, from a principle of virtue, will free
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when nations, free and enlightened, shall become like great
+      individuals, the whole species will have the same facilities as particular
+      portions now have; the communication of knowledge will extend from one to
+      another, and thus reach the whole. By the law of imitation, the example of
+      one people will be followed by others, who will adopt its spirit and its
+      laws. Even despots, perceiving that they can no longer maintain their
+      authority without justice and beneficence, will soften their sway from
+      necessity, from rivalship; and civilization will become universal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There will be established among the several nations an equilibrium of
+      force, which, restraining them all within the bounds of the respect due to
+      their reciprocal rights, shall put an end to the barbarous practice of
+      war, and submit their disputes to civil arbitration.* The human race will
+      become one great society, one individual family, governed by the same
+      spirit, by common laws, and enjoying all the happiness of which their
+      nature is susceptible.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * What is a people?  An individual of the society at large.
+     What a war?  A duel between two individual people.  In what
+     manner ought a society to act when two of its members fight?
+     Interfere and reconcile, or repress them.  In the days of
+     the Abbe de Saint Pierre this was treated as a dream, but
+     happily for the human race it begins to be realized.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Doubtless this great work will be long accomplishing; because the same
+      movement must be given to an immense body; the same leaven must assimilate
+      an enormous mass of heterogeneous parts. But this movement shall be
+      effected; its presages are already to be seen. Already the great society,
+      assuming in its course the same characters as partial societies have done,
+      is evidently tending to a like result. At first disconnected in all its
+      parts, it saw its members for a long time without cohesion; and this
+      general solitude of nations formed its first age of anarchy and childhood;
+      divided afterwards by chance into irregular sections, called states and
+      kingdoms, it has experienced the fatal effects of an extreme inequality of
+      wealth and rank; and the aristocracy of great empires has formed its
+      second age; then, these lordly states disputing for preeminence, have
+      exhibited the period of the shock of factions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At present the contending parties, wearied with discord, feel the want of
+      laws, and sigh for the age of order and of peace. Let but a virtuous chief
+      arise! a just, a powerful people appear! and the earth will raise them to
+      supreme power. The world is waiting for a legislative people; it wishes
+      and demands it; and my heart attends the cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then turning towards the west: Yes, continued he, a hollow sound already
+      strikes my ear; a cry of liberty, proceeding from far distant shores,
+      resounds on the ancient continent. At this cry, a secret murmur against
+      oppression is raised in a powerful nation; a salutary inquietude alarms
+      her respecting her situation; she enquires what she is, and what she ought
+      to be; while, surprised at her own weakness, she interrogates her rights,
+      her resources, and what has been the conduct of her chiefs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet another day&mdash;a little more reflection&mdash;and an immense
+      agitation will begin; a new-born age will open! an age of astonishment to
+      vulgar minds, of terror to tyrants, of freedom to a great nation, and of
+      hope to the human race!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE GREAT OBSTACLE TO IMPROVEMENT.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Genius ceased. But preoccupied with melancholy thoughts, my mind
+      resisted persuasion; fearing, however, to shock him by my resistance, I
+      remained silent. After a while, turning to me with a look which pierced my
+      soul, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thou art silent, and thy heart is agitated with thoughts which it dares
+      not utter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, troubled and terrified, I replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, pardon my weakness. Doubtless thy mouth can utter nothing but
+      truth; but thy celestial intelligence can seize its rays, where my gross
+      faculties can discern nothing but clouds. I confess it; conviction has not
+      penetrated my soul, and I feared that my doubts might offend thee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what is doubt, replied he, that it should be a crime? Can man feel
+      otherwise than as he is affected? If a truth be palpable, and of
+      importance in practice, let us pity him that misconceives it. His
+      punishment will arise from his blindness. If it be uncertain or equivocal,
+      how is he to find in it what it has not? To believe without evidence or
+      proof, is an act of ignorance and folly. The credulous man loses himself
+      in a labyrinth of contradictions; the man of sense examines and discusses,
+      that he may be consistent in his opinions. The honest man will bear
+      contradiction; because it gives rise to evidence. Violence is the argument
+      of falsehood; and to impose a creed by authority is the act and indication
+      of a tyrant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, said I, encouraged by these words, since my reason is free, I
+      strive in vain to entertain the flattering hope with which you endeavor to
+      console me. The sensible and virtuous soul is easily caught with dreams of
+      happiness; but a cruel reality constantly awakens it to suffering and
+      wretchedness. The more I meditate on the nature of man, the more I examine
+      the present state of societies, the less possible it appears to realize a
+      world of wisdom and felicity. I cast my eye over the whole of our
+      hemisphere; I perceive in no place the germ, nor do I foresee the
+      instinctive energy of a happy revolution. All Asia lies buried in profound
+      darkness. The Chinese, governed by an insolent despotism,* by strokes of
+      the bamboo and the cast of lots, restrained by an immutable code of
+      gestures, and by the radical vices of an ill-constructed language,**
+      appear to be in their abortive civilization nothing but a race of
+      automatons. The Indian, borne down by prejudices, and enchained in the
+      sacred fetters of his castes, vegetates in an incurable apathy. The
+      Tartar, wandering or fixed, always ignorant and ferocious, lives in the
+      savageness of his ancestors. The Arab, endowed with a happy genius, loses
+      its force and the fruits of his virtue in the anarchy of his tribes and
+      the jealousy of his families. The African, degraded from the rank of man,
+      seems irrevocably doomed to servitude. In the North I see nothing but
+      vilified serfs, herds of men with which landlords stock their estates.
+      Ignorance, tyranny, and wretchedness have everywhere stupified the
+      nations; and vicious habits, depraving the natural senses, have destroyed
+      the very instinct of happiness and of truth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The emperor of China calls himself the son of heaven; that
+     is, of God: for in the opinion of the Chinese, the material
+     of heaven, the arbiter of fatality, is the Deity himself.
+     "The emperor only shows himself once in ten months, lest the
+     people, accustomed to see him, might lose their respect; for
+     he holds it as a maxim that power can only be supported by
+     force, that the people have no idea of justice, and are not
+     to be governed but by coercion."  Narrative of two Mahometan
+     travellers in 851 and 877, translated by the Abbe Renaudot
+     in 1718.
+
+     Notwithstanding what is asserted by the missionaries, this
+     situation has undergone no change.  The bamboo still reigns
+     in China, and the son of heaven bastinades, for the most
+     trivial fault, the Mandarin, who in his turn bastinades the
+     people.  The Jesuits may tell us that this is the best
+     governed country in the world, and its inhabitants the
+     happiest of men: but a single letter from Amyot has
+     convinced me that China is a truly Turkish government, and
+     the account of Sonnerat confirms it.  See Vol. II. of Voyage
+     aux Indes, in 4to.
+
+     ** As long as the Chinese shall in writing make use of their
+     present characters, they can be expected to make no progress
+     in civilization.  The necessary introductory step must be
+     the giving them an alphabet like our own, or of substituting
+     in the room of their language that of the Tartars.  The
+     improvement made in the latter by M. de Lengles, is
+     calculated to introduce this change. See the Mantchou
+     alphabet, the production of a mind truly learned in the
+     formation of language.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In some parts of Europe, indeed, reason has begun to dawn, but even there,
+      do nations partake of the knowledge of individuals? Are the talents and
+      genius of governors turned to the benefit of the people? And those nations
+      which call themselves polished, are they not the same that for the last
+      three centuries have filled the earth with their injustice? Are they not
+      those who, under the pretext of commerce, have desolated India,
+      depopulated a new continent, and, at present, subject Africa to the most
+      barbarous slavery? Can liberty be born from the bosom of despots? and
+      shall justice be rendered by the hands of piracy and avarice? O Genius, I
+      have seen the civilized countries; and the mockery of their wisdom has
+      vanished before my sight. I saw wealth accumulated in the hands of a few,
+      and the multitude poor and destitute. I have seen all rights, all powers
+      concentered in certain classes, and the mass of the people passive and
+      dependent. I have seen families of princes, but no families of the nation.
+      I have seen government interests, but no public interests or spirit. I
+      have seen that all the science of government was to oppress prudently; and
+      the refined servitude of polished nations appeared to me only the more
+      irremediable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One obstacle above all has profoundly struck my mind. On looking over the
+      world, I have seen it divided into twenty different systems of religion.
+      Every nation has received, or formed, opposite opinions; and every one
+      ascribing to itself the exclusive possession of the truth, must believe
+      the other to be wrong. Now if, as must be the fact in this discordance of
+      opinion, the greater part are in error, and are honest in it, then it
+      follows that our mind embraces falsehood as it does truth; and if so, how
+      is it to be enlightened? When prejudice has once seized the mind, how is
+      it to be dissipated? How shall we remove the bandage from our eyes, when
+      the first article in every creed, the first dogma in all religion, is the
+      absolute proscription of doubt, the interdiction of examination, and the
+      rejection of our own judgment? How is truth to make herself known?&mdash;If
+      she resorts to arguments and proofs, the timid man stifles the voice of
+      his own conscience; if she invokes the authority of celestial powers, he
+      opposes it with another authority of the same origin, with which he is
+      preoccupied; and he treats all innovation as blasphemy. Thus man in his
+      blindness, has riveted his own chains, and surrendered himself forever,
+      without defence, to the sport of his ignorance and his passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To dissolve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy events
+      would be necessary. A whole nation, cured of the delirium of superstition,
+      must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism. Freed from the yoke of
+      false doctrine, a whole people must impose upon itself that of true
+      morality and reason. This people should be courageous and prudent, wise
+      and docile. Each individual, knowing his rights, should not transgress
+      them. The poor should know how to resist seduction, and the rich the
+      allurements of avarice. There should be found leaders disinterested and
+      just, and their tyrants should be seized with a spirit of madness and
+      folly. This people, recovering its rights, should feel its inability to
+      exercise them in person, and should name its representatives. Creator of
+      its magistrates, it should know at once to respect them and to judge them.
+      In the sudden reform of a whole nation, accustomed to live by abuses, each
+      individual displaced should bear with patience his privations, and submit
+      to a change of habits. This nation should have the courage to conquer its
+      liberty; the power to defend it, the wisdom to establish it, and the
+      generosity to extend it to others. And can we ever expect the union of so
+      many circumstances? But suppose that chance in its infinite combinations
+      should produce them, shall I see those fortunate days. Will not my ashes
+      long ere then be mouldering in the tomb?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, sunk in sorrow, my oppressed heart no longer found utterance. The
+      Genius answered not, but I heard him whisper to himself:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us revive the hope of this man; for if he who loves his fellow
+      creatures be suffered to despair, what will become of nations? The past is
+      perhaps too discouraging; I must anticipate futurity, and disclose to the
+      eye of virtue the astonishing age that is ready to begin; that, on viewing
+      the object she desires, she may be animated with new ardor, and redouble
+      her efforts to attain it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE NEW AGE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely had he finished these words, when a great tumult arose in the
+      west; and turning to that quarter, I perceived, at the extremity of the
+      Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a prodigious movement&mdash;such
+      as when a violent sedition arises in a vast city&mdash;a numberless
+      people, rushing in all directions, pour through the streets and fluctuate
+      like waves in the public places. My ear, struck with the cries which
+      resounded to the heavens, distinguished these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is this new prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We
+      are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and we
+      are in want of subsistence? We are active and laborious, and we live in
+      indigence! We pay enormous tributes, and we are told they are not
+      sufficient! We are at peace without, and our persons and property are not
+      safe within. Who, then, is the secret enemy that devours us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some voices from the midst of the multitude replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raise a discriminating standard; and let all those who maintain and
+      nourish mankind by useful labors gather round it; and you will discover
+      the enemy that preys upon you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The standard being raised, this nation divided itself at once into two
+      bodies of unequal magnitude and contrasted appearance. The one,
+      innumerable, and almost total, exhibited in the poverty of its clothing,
+      in its emaciated appearance and sun-burnt faces, the marks of misery and
+      labor; the other, a little group, an insignificant faction, presented in
+      its rich attire embroidered with gold and silver, and in its sleek and
+      ruddy faces, the signs of leisure and abundance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considering these men more attentively, I found that the great body was
+      composed of farmers, artificers, merchants, all professions useful to
+      society; and that the little group was made up of priests of every order,
+      of financiers, of nobles, of men in livery, of commanders of armies; in a
+      word, of the civil, military, and religious agents of government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two bodies being assembled face to face, and regarding each other
+      with astonishment, I saw indignation and rage arising in one side, and a
+      sort of panic in the other. And the large body said to the little one: Why
+      are you separated from us? Are you not of our number?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, replied the group; you are the people; we are a privileged class, who
+      have our laws, customs, and rights, peculiar to ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;And what labor do you perform in our society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIVILEGED CLASS.&mdash;None; we are not made to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;How, then, have you acquired these riches?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIVILEGED CLASS.&mdash;By taking the pains to govern you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;What! is this what you call governing? We toil and you
+      enjoy! we produce and you dissipate! Wealth proceeds from us, and you
+      absorb it. Privileged men! class who are not the people; form a nation
+      apart, and govern yourselves.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This dialogue between the people and the indolent classes,
+     is applicable to every society; it contains the seeds of all
+     the political vices and disorders that prevail, and which
+     may thus be defined: Men who do nothing, and who devour the
+     substance of others; and men who arrogate to themselves
+     particular rights and exclusive privileges of wealth and
+     indolence.  Compare the Mamlouks of Egypt, the nobility of
+     Europe, the Nairs of India, the Emirs of Arabia, the
+     patricians of Rome, the Christian clergy, the Imans, the
+     Bramins, the Bonzes, the Lamas, etc., etc., and you will
+     find in all the same characteristic feature:&mdash;Men living in
+     idleness at the expense of those who labor.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then the little group, deliberating on this new state of things, some of
+      the most honorable among them said: We must join the people and partake of
+      their labors and burdens, for they are men like us, and our riches come
+      from them; but others arrogantly exclaimed: It would be a shame, an
+      infamy, for us to mingle with the crowd; they are born to serve us. Are we
+      not men of another race&mdash;the noble and pure descendants of the
+      conquerors of this empire? This multitude must be reminded of our rights
+      and its own origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NOBLES.&mdash;People! know you not that our ancestors conquered this
+      land, and that your race was spared only on condition of serving us? This
+      is our social compact! this the government constituted by custom and
+      prescribed by time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;O conquerors, pure of blood! show us your genealogies! we
+      shall then see if what in an individual is robbery and plunder, can be
+      virtuous in a nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And forthwith, voices were heard in every quarter calling out the nobles
+      by their names; and relating their origin and parentage, they told how the
+      grandfather, great-grandfather, or even father, born traders and
+      mechanics, after acquiring wealth in every way, had purchased their
+      nobility for money: so that but very few families were really of the
+      original stock. See, said these voices, see these purse-proud commoners
+      who deny their parents! see these plebian recruits who look upon
+      themselves as illustrious veterans! and peals of laughter were heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the civil governors said: these people are mild, and naturally
+      servile; speak to them of the king and of the law, and they will return to
+      their duty. People! the king wills, the sovereign ordains!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;The king can will nothing but the good of the people; the
+      sovereign can only ordain according to law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CIVIL GOVERNORS.&mdash;The law commands you to be submissive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;The law is the general will; and we will a new order of
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CIVIL GOVERNORS.&mdash;You are then a rebel people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;A nation cannot revolt; tyrants only are rebels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CIVIL GOVERNORS.&mdash;The king is on our side; he commands you to submit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Kings are inseparable from their nations. Our king cannot be
+      with you; you possess only his phantom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the military governors came forward. The people are timorous, said
+      they; we must threaten them; they will submit only to force. Soldiers,
+      chastise this insolent multitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Soldiers, you are of our blood! Will you strike your
+      brothers, your relatives? If the people perish who will nourish the army?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the soldiers, grounding their arms, said to the chiefs:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are likewise the people; show us the enemy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the ecclesiastical governors said: There is but one resource left.
+      The people are superstitious; we must frighten them with the names of God
+      and religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our dear brethren! our children! God has ordained us to govern you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Show us your credentials from God!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;You must have faith; reason leads astray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Do you govern without reason?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;God commands peace! Religion prescribes obedience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Peace supposes justice. Obedience implies conviction of a
+      duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;Suffering is the business of this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Show us the example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;Would you live without gods or kings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;We would live without oppressors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;You must have mediators, intercessors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Mediators with God and with the king! courtiers and priests,
+      your services are too expensive: we will henceforth manage our own
+      affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the little group said: We are lost! the multitude are enlightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people answered: You are safe; since we are enlightened we will
+      commit no violence; we only claim our rights. We feel resentments, but we
+      will forget them. We were slaves, we might command; but we only wish to be
+      free, and liberty is but justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A FREE AND LEGISLATIVE PEOPLE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Considering that all public power was now suspended, and that the habitual
+      restraint of the people had suddenly ceased, I shuddered with the
+      apprehension that they would fall into the dissolution of anarchy. But,
+      taking their affairs into immediate deliberation, they said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not enough that we have freed ourselves from tyrants and parasites;
+      we must prevent their return. We are men, and experience has abundantly
+      taught us that every man is fond of power, and wishes to enjoy it at the
+      expense of others. It is necessary, then, to guard against a propensity
+      which is the source of discord; we must establish certain rules of duty
+      and of right. But the knowledge of our rights, and the estimation of our
+      duties, are so abstract and difficult as to require all the time and all
+      the faculties of a man. Occupied in our own affairs, we have not leisure
+      for these studies; nor can we exercise these functions in our own persons.
+      Let us choose, then, among ourselves, such persons as are capable of this
+      employment. To them we will delegate our powers to institute our
+      government and laws. They shall be the representatives of our wills and of
+      our interests. And in order to attain the fairest representation possible
+      of our wills and our interests, let it be numerous, and composed of men
+      resembling ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having made the election of a numerous body of delegates, the people thus
+      addressed them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have hitherto lived in a society formed by chance, without fixed
+      agreements, without free conventions, without a stipulation of rights,
+      without reciprocal engagements,&mdash;and a multitude of disorders and
+      evils have arisen from this precarious state. We are now determined on
+      forming a regular compact; and we have chosen you to adjust the articles.
+      Examine, then, with care what ought to be its basis and its conditions;
+      consider what is the end and the principles of every association;
+      recognize the rights which every member brings, the powers which he
+      delegates, and those which he reserves to himself. Point out to us the
+      rules of conduct&mdash;the basis of just and equitable laws. Prepare for
+      us a new system of government; for we realize that the one which has
+      hitherto guided us is corrupt. Our fathers have wandered in the paths of
+      ignorance, and habit has taught us to follow in their footsteps.
+      Everything has been done by fraud, violence, and delusion; and the true
+      laws of morality and reason are still obscure. Clear up, then, their
+      chaos; trace out their connection; publish their code, and we will adopt
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people raised a large throne, in the form of a pyramid, and
+      seating on it the men they had chosen, said to them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We raise you to-day above us, that you may better discover the whole of
+      our relations, and be above the reach of our passions. But remember that
+      you are our fellow-citizens; that the power we confer on you is our own;
+      that we deposit it with you, but not as a property or a heritage; that you
+      must be the first to obey the laws you make; that to-morrow you redescend
+      among us, and that you will have acquired no other right but that of our
+      esteem and gratitude. And consider what a tribute of glory the world,
+      which reveres so many apostles of error, will bestow on the first assembly
+      of rational men, who shall have declared the unchangeable principles of
+      justice, and consecrated, in the face of tyrants, the rights of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      UNIVERSAL BASIS OF ALL RIGHT AND ALL LAW.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The men chosen by the people to investigate the true principles of morals
+      and of reason then proceeded in the sacred object of their mission; and,
+      after a long examination, having discovered a fundamental and universal
+      principle, a legislator arose and said to the people:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is the primordial basis, the physical origin of all justice and of
+      all right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever be the active power, the moving cause, that governs the universe,
+      since it has given to all men the same organs, the same sensations, and
+      the same wants, it has thereby declared that it has given to all the same
+      right to the use of its treasures, and that all men are equal in the order
+      of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, since this power has given to each man the necessary means of
+      preserving his own existence, it is evident that it has constituted them
+      all independent one of another; that it has created them free; that no one
+      is subject to another; that each one is absolute proprietor of his own
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Equality and liberty are, therefore, two essential attributes of man, two
+      laws of the Divinity, constitutional and unchangeable, like the physical
+      properties of matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, every individual being absolute master of his own person, it follows
+      that a full and free consent is a condition indispensable to all contracts
+      and all engagements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, since each individual is equal to another, it follows that the
+      balance of what is received and of what is given, should be strictly in
+      equilibrium; so that the idea of justice, of equity, necessarily imports
+      that of equality.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The etymology of the words themselves trace out to us this
+     connection: equilibrium, equalitas, equitas, are all of one
+     family, and the physical idea of equality, in the scales of
+     a balance, is the source and type of all the rest.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Equality and liberty are therefore the physical and unalterable basis of
+      every union of men in society, and of course the necessary and generating
+      principle of every law and of every system of regular government.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of
+     ideas in the first article, liberty being placed before
+     equality, from which it in reality springs.  This defect is
+     not to be wondered at; the science of the rights of man is a
+     new science: it was invented yesterday by the Americans,
+     to-day the French are perfecting it, but there yet remains a
+     great deal to be done.  In the ideas that constitute it
+     there is a genealogical order which, from us basis, physical
+     equality, to the minutest and most remote branches of
+     government, ought to proceed in an uninterrupted series of
+     inferences.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A disregard of this basis has introduced in your nation, and in every
+      other, those disorders which have finally roused you. It is by returning
+      to this rule that you may reform them, and reorganize a happy order of
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But observe, this reorganization will occasion a violent shock in your
+      habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices. Vicious contracts and abusive
+      claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill founded property
+      renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a state of nature.
+      Consider whether you can consent to so many sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, reflecting on the cupidity inherent in the heart of man, I thought
+      that this people would renounce all ideas of amelioration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, in a moment, a great number of men, advancing toward the pyramid,
+      made a solemn abjuration of all their distinctions and all their riches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Establish for us, said they, the laws of equality and liberty; we will
+      possess nothing in future but on the title of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Equality, liberty, justice,&mdash;these shall be our code, and shall be
+      written on our standards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people immediately raised a great standard, inscribed with these
+      three words, in three different colors. They displayed it over the pyramid
+      of the legislators, and for the first time the flag of universal justice
+      floated on the face of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people raised before the pyramid a new altar, on which they placed
+      a golden balance, a sword, and a book with this inscription:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TO EQUAL LAW, WHICH JUDGES AND PROTECTS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And having surrounded the pyramid and the altar with a vast amphitheatre,
+      all the people took their seats to hear the publication of the law. And
+      millions of men, raising at once their hands to heaven, took the solemn
+      oath to live equal, free, and just; to respect their reciprocal properties
+      and rights; to obey the law and its regularly chosen representatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A spectacle so impressive and sublime, so replete with generous emotions,
+      moved me to tears; and addressing myself to the Genius, I exclaimed: Let
+      me now live, for in future I have everything to hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CONSTERNATION AND CONSPIRACY OF TYRANTS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      But scarcely had the solemn voice of liberty and equality resounded
+      through the earth, when a movement of confusion, of astonishment, arose in
+      different nations. On the one hand, the people, warmed with desire, but
+      wavering between hope and fear, between the sentiment of right and the
+      habit of obedience, began to be in motion. The kings, on the other hand,
+      suddenly awakened from the sleep of indolence and despotism, were alarmed
+      for the safety of their thrones; while, on all sides, those clans of civil
+      and religious tyrants, who deceive kings and oppress the people, were
+      seized with rage and consternation; and, concerting their perfidious
+      plans, they said: Woe to us, if this fatal cry of liberty comes to the
+      ears of the multitude! Woe to us, if this pernicious spirit of justice be
+      propagated!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, pointing to the floating banner, they continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Consider what a swarm of evils are included in these three words! If all
+      men are equal, where is our exclusive right to honors and to power? If all
+      men are to be free, what becomes of our slaves, our vassals, our property?
+      If all are equal in the civil state, where is our prerogative of birth, of
+      inheritance? and what becomes of nobility? If they are all equal in the
+      sight of God, what need of mediators?&mdash;where is the priesthood? Let
+      us hasten, then, to destroy a germ so prolific, and so contagious. We must
+      employ all our cunning against this innovation. We must frighten the
+      kings, that they may join us in the cause. We must divide the people by
+      national jealousies, and occupy them with commotions, wars, and conquests.
+      They must be alarmed at the power of this free nation. Let us form a
+      league against the common enemy, demolish that sacrilegious standard,
+      overturn that throne of rebellion, and stifle in its birth the flame of
+      revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, indeed, the civil and religious tyrants of nations formed a general
+      combination; and, multiplying their followers by force and seduction, they
+      marched in hostile array against the free nation; and, surrounding the
+      altar and the pyramid of natural law, they demanded with loud cries:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is this new and heretical doctrine? what this impious altar, this
+      sacrilegious worship? True believers and loyal subjects! can you suppose
+      that truth has been first discovered to-day, and that hitherto you have
+      been walking in error? that those men, more fortunate than you, have the
+      sole privilege of wisdom? And you, rebel and misguided nation, perceive
+      you not that your new leaders are misleading you? that they destroy the
+      principles of your faith, and overturn the religion of your ancestors? Ah,
+      tremble! lest the wrath of heaven should kindle against you; and hasten by
+      speedy repentance to retrieve your error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, inaccessible to seduction as well as to fear, the free nation kept
+      silence, and rising universally in arms, assumed an imposing attitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the legislator said to the chiefs of nations:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If while we walked with a bandage on our eyes the light guided our steps,
+      why, since we are no longer blindfold, should it fly from our search? If
+      guides, who teach mankind to see for themselves, mislead and deceive them,
+      what can be expected from those who profess to keep them in darkness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But hark, ye leaders of nations! If you possess the truth, show it to us,
+      and we will receive it with gratitude, for we seek it with ardor, and have
+      a great interest in finding it. We are men, and liable to be deceived; but
+      you are also men, and equally fallible. Aid us then in this labyrinth,
+      where the human race has wandered for so many ages; help us to dissipate
+      the illusion of so many prejudices and vicious habits. Amid the shock of
+      so many opinions which dispute for our acceptance, assist us in
+      discovering the proper and distinctive character of truth. Let us this day
+      terminate the long combat with error. Let us establish between it and
+      truth a solemn contest, to which we will invite the opinions of men of all
+      nations. Let us convoke a general assembly of the nations. Let them be
+      judges in their own cause; and in the debate of all systems, let no
+      champion, no argument, be wanting, either on the side of prejudice or of
+      reason; and let the sentiment of a general and common mass of evidence
+      give birth to a universal concord of opinions and of hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE NATIONS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the legislator; and the multitude, seized with those emotions
+      which a reasonable proposition always inspires, expressed its applause;
+      while the tyrants, left without support, were overwhelmed with confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A scene of a new and astonishing nature then opened to my view. All that
+      the earth contains of people and of nations; men of every race and of
+      every region, converging from their various climates, seemed to assemble
+      in one allotted place; where, forming an immense congress, distinguished
+      in groups by the vast variety of their dresses, features, and complexion,
+      the numberless multitude presented a most unusual and affecting sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one side I saw the European, with his short close coat, pointed
+      triangular hat, smooth chin, and powdered hair; on the other side the
+      Asiatic, with a flowing robe, long beard, shaved head, and round turban.
+      Here stood the nations of Africa, with their ebony skins, their woolly
+      hair, their body girt with white and blue tissues of bark, adorned with
+      bracelets and necklaces of coral, shells, and glass; there the tribes of
+      the north, enveloped in their leathern bags; the Laplander, with his
+      pointed bonnet and his snow-shoes; the Samoyede, with his feverish body
+      and strong odor; the Tongouse, with his horned cap, and carrying his idols
+      pendant from his neck; the Yakoute, with his freckled face; the Kalmuc,
+      with his flat nose and little retorted eyes. Farther distant were the
+      Chinese, attired in silk, with their hair hanging in tresses; the
+      Japanese, of mingled race; the Malays, with wide-spreading ears, rings in
+      their noses, and palm-leaf hats of vast circumference;* and the tattooed
+      races of the isles of the southern ocean and of the continent of the
+      antipodes.** The view of so many varieties of the same species, of so many
+      extravagant inventions of the same understanding, and of so many
+      modifications of the same organization, affected me with a thousand
+      feelings and a thousand thoughts.*** I contemplated with astonishment this
+      gradation of color, which, passing from a bright carnation to a light
+      brown, a deeper brown, dusky, bronze, olive, leaden, copper, ends in the
+      black of ebony and of jet. And finding the Cassimerian, with his rosy
+      cheek, next to the sun-burnt Hindoo, and the Georgian by the side of the
+      Tartar, I reflected on the effects of climate hot or cold, of soil high or
+      low, marshy or dry, open or shaded. I compared the dwarf of the pole with
+      the giant of the temperate zones, the slender body of the Arab with the
+      ample chest of the Hollander; the squat figure of the Samoyede with the
+      elegant form of the Greek and the Sclavonian; the greasy black wool of the
+      Negro with the bright silken locks of the Dane; the broad face of the
+      Kalmuc, his little angular eyes and flattened nose, with the oval
+      prominent visage, large blue eyes, and aquiline nose of the Circassian and
+      Abazan. I contrasted the brilliant calicoes of the Indian, the
+      well-wrought stuffs of the European, the rich furs of the Siberian, with
+      the tissues of bark, of osiers, leaves and feathers of savage nations; and
+      the blue figures of serpents, flowers, and stars, with which they painted
+      their bodies. Sometimes the variegated appearance of this multitude
+      reminded me of the enamelled meadows of the Nile and the Euphrates, when,
+      after rains or inundations, millions of flowers are rising on every side.
+      Sometimes their murmurs and their motions called to mind the numberless
+      swarms of locusts which, issuing from the desert, cover in the spring the
+      plains of Hauran.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This species of the palm-tree is called Latanier.  Its
+     leaf, similar to a fan-mount, grows upon a stalk issuing
+     directly from the earth.  A specimen may be seen in the
+     botanic garden.
+
+     ** The country of the Papons of New Guinea.
+
+     *** A hall of costumes in one of the galleries of the Louvre
+     would, in every point of view, be an interesting
+     establishment.  It would furnish an admirable treat to the
+     curiosity of a great number of persons, excellent models to
+     the artist, and useful subjects of meditation to the
+     physician, the philosopher and the legislator.
+
+     Picture to yourself a collection of the various faces and
+     figures of every country and nation, exhibiting accurately,
+     color, features and form; what a field for investigation and
+     enquiry as to the influence of climate, customs, food, etc.
+     It might truly be called the science of man!  Buffon has
+     attempted a chapter of this nature, but it only serves to
+     exhibit more strikingly our actual ignorance. Such a
+     collection is said to have been begun at St. Petersburg, but
+     it is also said at the same time to be as imperfect as the
+     vocabulary of the three hundred languages.  The enterprise
+     would be worthy of the French nation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At the sight of so many rational beings, considering on the one hand the
+      immensity of thoughts and sensations assembled in this place, and on the
+      other hand, reflecting on the opposition of so many opinions, and the
+      shock of so many passions of men so capricious, I struggled between
+      astonishment, admiration, and secret dread&mdash;when the legislator
+      commanded silence, and attracted all my attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inhabitants of earth! a free and powerful nation addresses you with words
+      of justice and peace, and she offers you the sure pledges of her
+      intentions in her own conviction and experience. Long afflicted with the
+      same evils as yourselves, we sought for their source, and found them all
+      derived from violence and injustice, erected into law by the inexperience
+      of past ages, and maintained by the prejudices of the present. Then
+      abolishing our artificial and arbitrary institutions, and recurring to the
+      origin of all right and reason, we have found that there existed in the
+      very order of nature and in the physical constitution of man, eternal and
+      immutable laws, which only waited his observance to render him happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O men! cast your eyes on the heavens that give you light, and on the earth
+      that gives you bread! Since they offer the same bounties to you all&mdash;since
+      from the power that gives them motion you have all received the same life,
+      the same organs, have you not likewise all received the same right to
+      enjoy its benefits? Has it not hereby declared you all equal and free?
+      What mortal shall dare refuse to his fellow that which nature gives him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O nations! let us banish all tyranny and all discord; let us form but one
+      society, one great family; and, since human nature has but one
+      constitution, let there exist in future but one law, that of nature&mdash;but
+      one code, that of reason&mdash;but one throne, that of justice&mdash;but
+      one altar, that of union.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ceased; and an immense acclamation resounded to the skies. Ten thousand
+      benedictions announced the transports of the multitude; and they made the
+      earth re-echo JUSTICE, EQUALITY and UNION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But different emotions soon succeeded; soon the doctors and the chiefs of
+      nations exciting a spirit of dispute, there was heard a sullen murmur,
+      which growing louder, and spreading from group to group, became a vast
+      disorder; and each nation setting up exclusive pretensions, claimed a
+      preference for its own code and opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You are in error, said the parties, pointing one to the other. We alone
+      are in possession of reason and truth. We alone have the true law, the
+      real rule of right and justice, the only means of happiness and
+      perfection. All other men are either blind or rebellious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And great agitation prevailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the legislator, after enforcing silence, loudly exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What, O people! is this passionate emotion? Whither will this quarrel
+      conduct you? What can you expect from this dissension? The earth has been
+      for ages a field of disputation, and you have shed torrents of blood in
+      your controversies. What have you gained by so many battles and tears?
+      When the strong has subjected the weak to his opinion, has he thereby
+      aided the cause of truth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O nations! take counsel of your own wisdom. When among yourselves disputes
+      arise between families and individuals, how do you reconcile them? Do you
+      not give them arbitrators?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, cried the whole multitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do so then to the authors of your present dissensions. Order those who
+      call themselves your instructors, and who force their creeds upon you, to
+      discuss before you their reasons. Since they appeal to your interests,
+      inform yourselves how they support them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And you, chiefs and governors of the people! before dragging the masses
+      into the quarrels resulting from your diverse opinions, let the reasons
+      for and against your views be given. Let us establish one solemn
+      controversy, one public scrutiny of truth&mdash;not before the tribunal of
+      a corruptible individual, or of a prejudiced party, but in the grand forum
+      of mankind&mdash;guarded by all their information and all their interests.
+      Let the natural sense of the whole human race be our arbiter and judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SEARCH OF TRUTH.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The people expressed their applause, and the legislator continued: To
+      proceed with order, and avoid all confusion, let a spacious semicircle be
+      left vacant in front of the altar of peace and union; let each system of
+      religion, and each particular sect, erect its proper distinctive standard
+      on the line of this semicircle; let its chiefs and doctors place
+      themselves around the standard, and their followers form a column behind
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The semicircle being traced, and the order published, there instantly rose
+      an innumerable multitude of standards, of all colors and of every form,
+      like what we see in a great commercial port, when, on a day of rejoicing,
+      a thousand different flags and streamers are floating from a forest of
+      masts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sight of this prodigious diversity, I turned towards the Genius and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought that the earth was divided only into eight or ten systems of
+      faith, and I then despaired of a reconciliation; I now behold thousands of
+      different sects, and how can I hope for concord?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these, replied the Genius, are not all; and yet they will be
+      intolerant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as the groups advanced to take their stations, he pointed out to me
+      their distinctive marks, and thus began to explain their characters:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That first group, said he, with a green banner bearing a crescent, a
+      bandage, and a sabre, are the followers of the Arabian prophet. To say
+      there is a God, without knowing what he is; to believe the words of a man,
+      without understanding his language; to go into the desert to pray to God,
+      who is everywhere; to wash the hands with water, and not abstain from
+      blood; to fast all day, and eat all night; to give alms of their own
+      goods, and to plunder those of others; such are the means of perfection
+      instituted by Mahomet&mdash;such are the symbols of his followers; and
+      whoever does not bear them is a reprobate, stricken with anathema, and
+      devoted to the sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A God of clemency, the author of life, has instituted these laws of
+      oppression and murder: he made them for all the world, but has revealed
+      them only to one man; he established them from all eternity, though he
+      made them known but yesterday. These laws are abundantly sufficient for
+      all purposes, and yet a volume is added to them. This volume was to
+      diffuse light, to exhibit evidence, to lead men to perfection and
+      happiness; and yet every page was so full of obscurities, ambiguities, and
+      contradictions, that commentaries and explanations became necessary, even
+      in the life-time of its apostle. Its interpreters, differing in opinion,
+      divided into opposite and hostile sects. One maintains that Ali is the
+      true successor; the other contends for Omar and Aboubekre. This denies the
+      eternity of the Koran; that the necessity of ablutions and prayers. The
+      Carmite forbids pilgrimages, and allows the use of wine; the Hakemite
+      preaches the transmigration of souls. Thus they make up the number of
+      seventy-two sects, whose banners are before you.* In this contestation,
+      every one attributing the evidence of truth exclusively to himself, and
+      taxing all others with heresy and rebellion, turns against them its
+      sanguinary zeal. And their religion, which celebrates a mild and merciful
+      God, the common father of all men,&mdash;changed to a torch of discord, a
+      signal for war and murder, has not ceased for twelve hundred years to
+      deluge the earth in blood, and to ravage and desolate the ancient
+      hemisphere from centre to circumference.**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Mussulmen enumerate in common seventy-two sects, but I
+     read, while I resided among them, a work which gave an
+     account of more than eighty,&mdash;all equally wise and
+     important.
+
+     ** Read the history of Islamism by its own writers, and you
+     will be convinced that one of the principal causes of the
+     wars which have desolated Asia and Africa, since the days of
+     Mahomet, has been the apostolical fanaticism of its
+     doctrine.  Caesar has been supposed to have destroyed three
+     millions of men: it would be interesting to make a similar
+     calculation respecting every founder of a religious system.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Those men, distinguished by their enormous white turbans, their broad
+      sleeves, and their long rosaries, are the Imans, the Mollas, and the
+      Muftis; and near them are the Dervishes with pointed bonnets, and the
+      Santons with dishevelled hair. Behold with what vehemence they recite
+      their professions of faith! They are now beginning a dispute about the
+      greater and lesser impurities&mdash;about the matter and the manner of
+      ablutions,&mdash;about the attributes of God and his perfections&mdash;about
+      the Chaitan, and the good and wicked angels,&mdash;about death, the
+      resurrection, the interrogatory in the tomb, the judgment, the passage of
+      the narrow bridge not broader than a hair, the balance of works, the pains
+      of hell, and the joys of paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next to these, that second more numerous group, with white banners
+      intersected with crosses, are the followers of Jesus. Acknowledging the
+      same God with the Mussulmans, founding their belief on the same books,
+      admitting, like them, a first man who lost the human race by eating an
+      apple, they hold them, however, in a holy abhorrence; and, out of pure
+      piety, they call each other impious blasphemers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great point of their dissension consists in this, that after admitting
+      a God one and indivisible the Christian divides him into three persons,
+      each of which he believes to be a complete and entire God, without ceasing
+      to constitute an identical whole, by the indivisibility of the three. And
+      he adds, that this being, who fills the universe, has reduced himself to
+      the body of a man; and has assumed material, perishable, and limited
+      organs, without ceasing to be immaterial, infinite, and eternal. The
+      Mussulman who does not comprehend these mysteries, rejects them as
+      follies, and the visions of a distempered brain; though he conceives
+      perfectly well the eternity of the Koran, and the mission of the prophet:
+      hence their implacable hatreds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, the Christians, divided among themselves on many points, have
+      formed parties not less violent than the Mussulmans; and their quarrels
+      are so much the more obstinate, as the objects of them are inaccessible to
+      the senses and incapable of demonstration: their opinions, therefore, have
+      no other basis but the will and caprice of the parties. Thus, while they
+      agree that God is a being incomprehensible and unknown, they dispute,
+      nevertheless, about his essence, his mode of acting, and his attributes.
+      While they agree that his pretended transformation into man is an enigma
+      above the human understanding, they dispute on the junction or distinction
+      of his two wills and his two natures, on his change of substance, on the
+      real or fictitious presence, on the mode of incarnation, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence those innumerable sects, of which two or three hundred have already
+      perished, and three or four hundred others, which still subsist, display
+      those numberless banners which here distract your sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first in order, surrounded by a group in varied and fantastic dress,
+      that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black and speckled garments&mdash;with
+      heads shaved, or with tonsures, or with short hair&mdash;with red hats,
+      square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long beards, is the standard of the
+      Roman pontiff, who, uniting the civil government to the priesthood, has
+      erected the supremacy of his city into a point of religion, and made of
+      his pride an article of faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his right you see the Greek pontiff, who, proud of the rivalship of his
+      metropolis, sets up equal pretensions, and supports them against the
+      Western church by the priority of that of the East. On the left are the
+      standards of two recent chiefs,* who, shaking off a yoke that had become
+      tyrannical, have raised altar against altar in their reform, and wrested
+      half of Europe from the pope. Behind these are the subaltern sects,
+      subdivided from the principal divisions, the Nestorians, the Eutycheans,
+      the Jacobites, the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Presbyterians, the
+      Wicliffites, the Osiandrians, the Manicheans, the Pietists, the Adamites,
+      the Contemplatives, the Quakers, the Weepers, and a hundred others,** all
+      of distinct parties, persecuting when strong, tolerant when weak, hating
+      each other in the name of a God of peace, forming each an exclusive heaven
+      in a religion of universal charity, dooming each other to pains without
+      end in a future state, and realizing in this world the imaginary hell of
+      the other.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Luther and Calvin.
+
+     ** Consult upon this subject Dictionnaire des Herseies par
+     l'Abbe Pluquet, in two volumes 8vo.: a work admirably
+     calculated to inspire the mind with philosophy, in the sense
+     that the Lacedemonians taught the children temperance by
+     showing to them the drunken Helots.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      After this group, observing a lonely standard of the color of hyacinth,
+      round which were assembled men clad in all the different dresses of Europe
+      and Asia:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At least, said I, to the Genius, we shall find unanimity here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, said he, at first sight and by a momentary accident. Dost thou not
+      know that system of worship?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, perceiving in Hebrew letters the monogram of the name of God, and
+      the palms which the Rabbins held in their hands:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True, said I, these are the children of Moses, dispersed even to this day,
+      abhorring every nation, and abhorred and persecuted by all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, he replied, and for this reason, that, having neither the time nor
+      liberty to dispute, they have the appearance of unanimity. But no sooner
+      will they come together, compare their principles, and reason on their
+      opinions, than they will separate as formerly, at least into two principal
+      sects;* one of which, taking advantage of the silence of their legislator,
+      and adhering to the literal sense of his books, will deny everything that
+      is not clearly expressed therein; and on this principle will reject as
+      profane inventions, the immortality of the soul, its transmigration to
+      places of pain or pleasure, its resurrection, the final judgment, the good
+      and bad angels, the revolt of the evil Genius, and all the poetical belief
+      of a world to come. And this highly-favored people, whose perfection
+      consists in a slight mutilation of their persons,&mdash;this atom of a
+      people, which forms but a small wave in the ocean of mankind, and which
+      insists that God has made nothing but for them, will by its schism reduce
+      to one-half, its present trifling weight in the scale of the universe.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Sadducees and Pharisees.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He then showed me a neighboring group, composed of men dressed in white
+      robes, wearing a veil over their mouths, and ranged around a banner of the
+      color of the morning sky, on which was painted a globe cleft in two
+      hemispheres, black and white: The same thing will happen, said he, to
+      these children of Zoroaster,* the obscure remnant of a people once so
+      powerful. At present, persecuted like the Jews, and dispersed among all
+      nations, they receive without discussion the precepts of the
+      representative of their prophet. But as soon as the Mobed and the
+      Destours** shall assemble, they will renew the controversy about the good
+      and the bad principle; on the combats of Ormuzd, God of light, and
+      Ahrimanes, God of darkness; on the direct and allegorical sense; on the
+      good and evil Genii; on the worship of fire and the elements; on
+      impurities and ablutions; on the resurrection of the soul and body, or
+      only of the soul;*** on the renovation of the present world, and on that
+      which is to take its place. And the Parses will divide into sects, so much
+      the more numerous, as their families will have contracted, during their
+      dispersion, the manners and opinions of different nations.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * They are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name
+     of Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels.  They are
+     in Asia what the Jews are in Europe.  The name of their pope
+     or high priest is Mobed.
+
+     ** That is to say, their priests.  See, respecting the rites
+     of this religion, Henry Lord Hyde, and the Zendavesta.
+     Their costume is a robe with a belt of four knots, and a
+     veil over their mouth for fear of polluting the fire with
+     their breath.
+
+     *** The Zoroastrians are divided between two opinions; one
+     party believing that both soul and body will rise, the other
+     that it will be the soul only.  The Christians and
+     Mahometans have embraced the most solid of the two.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Next to these, remark those banners of an azure ground, painted with
+      monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and quadruple, with
+      heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of fishes and tortoises;
+      these are the ensigns of the sects of India, who find their gods in
+      various animals, and the souls of their fathers in reptiles and insects.
+      These men support hospitals for hawks, serpents, and rats, and they abhor
+      their fellow creatures! They purify themselves with the dung and urine of
+      cows, and think themselves defiled by the touch of a man! They wear a net
+      over the mouth, lest, in a fly, they should swallow a soul in a state of
+      penance,* and they can see a Pariah** perish with hunger! They acknowledge
+      the same gods, but they separate into hostile bands.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * According to the system of the Metempsychosis, a soul, to
+     undergo purification, passes into the body of some insect or
+     animal.  It is of importance not to disturb this penance, as
+     the work must in that case begin afresh.
+
+     ** This is the name of a cast or tribe reputed unclean,
+     because they eat of what has enjoyed life.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The first standard, retired from the rest, bearing a figure with four
+      heads, is that of Brama, who, though the creator of the universe, is
+      without temples or followers; but, reduced to serve as a pedestal to the
+      Lingam,* he contents himself with a little water which the Bramin throws
+      every morning on his shoulder, reciting meanwhile an idle canticle in his
+      praise.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, vol. 1.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The second, bearing a kite with a scarlet body and a white head, is that
+      of Vichenou, who, though preserver of the world, has passed part of his
+      life in wicked actions. You sometimes see him under the hideous form of a
+      boar or a lion, tearing human entrails, or under that of a horse,* shortly
+      to come armed with a sword to destroy the human race, blot out the stars,
+      annihilate the planets, shake the earth, and force the great serpent to
+      vomit a fire which shall consume the spheres.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the incarnations of Vichenou, or metamorphoses
+     of the sun.  He is to come at the end of the world, that is,
+     at the expiration of the great period, in the form of a
+     horse, like the four horses of the Apocalypse.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The third is that of Chiven, God of destruction and desolation, who has,
+      however, for his emblem the symbol of generation. He is the most wicked of
+      the three, and he has the most followers. These men, proud of his
+      character, express in their devotions to him their contempt for the other
+      gods,* his equals and brothers; and, in imitation of his inconsistencies,
+      while they profess great modesty and chastity, they publicly crown with
+      flowers, and sprinkle with milk and honey, the obscene image of the
+      Lingam.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * When a sectary of Chiven hears the name of Vichenou
+     pronounced, he stops his ears, runs, and purifies himself.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the rear of these, approach the smaller standards of a multitude of
+      gods&mdash;male, female, and hermaphrodite. These are friends and
+      relations of the principal gods, who have passed their lives in wars among
+      themselves, and their followers imitate them. These gods have need of
+      nothing, and they are constantly receiving presents; they are omnipotent
+      and omnipresent, and a priest, by muttering a few words, shuts them up in
+      an idol or a pitcher, to sell their favors for his own benefit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond these, that cloud of standards, which, on a yellow ground, common
+      to them all, bear various emblems, are those of the same god, who reins
+      under different names in the nations of the East. The Chinese adores him
+      in Fot,* the Japanese in Budso, the Ceylonese in Bedhou, the people of
+      Laos in Chekia, of Pegu in Phta, of Siam in Sommona-Kodom, of Thibet in
+      Budd and in La. Agreeing in some points of his history, they all celebrate
+      his life of penitence, his mortifications, his fastings, his functions of
+      mediator and expiator, the enmity between him and another god, his
+      adversary, their battles, and his ascendency. But as they disagree on the
+      means of pleasing him, they dispute about rites and ceremonies, and about
+      the dogmas of interior doctrine and of public doctrine. That Japanese
+      Bonze, with a yellow robe and naked head, preaches the eternity of souls,
+      and their successive transmigrations into various bodies; near him, the
+      Sintoist denies that souls can exist separate from the senses,** and
+      maintains that they are only the effect of the organs to which they
+      belong, and with which they must perish, as the sound of the flute
+      perishes with the flute. Near him, the Siamese, with his eyebrows shaved,
+      and a talipat screen*** in his hand, recommends alms, offerings, and
+      expiations, at the same time that he preaches blind necessity and
+      inexorable fate. The Chinese vo-chung sacrifices to the souls of his
+      ancestors; and next him, the follower of Confucius interrogates his
+      destiny in the cast of dice and the movement of the stars.**** That child,
+      surrounded by a swarm of priests in yellow robes and hats, is the Grand
+      Lama, in whom the god of Thibet has just become incarnate.*5 But a rival
+      has arisen who partakes this benefit with him; and the Kalmouc on the
+      banks of the Baikal, has a God similar to the inhabitant of Lasa. And they
+      agree, also, in one important point&mdash;that god can inhabit only a
+      human body. They both laugh at the stupidity of the Indian who pays homage
+      to cow-dung, though they themselves consecrate the excrements of their
+      high-priest.*6
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The original name of this god is Baits, which in Hebrew
+     signifies an egg.  The Arabs pronounce it Baidh, giving to
+     the dh an emphatic sound which makes it approach to dz.
+     Kempfer, an acurate traveler, writes it Budso, which must be
+     pronounced Boudso, whence is derived the name of Budsoist
+     and of Bonze, applied to the priests.  Clement of
+     Alexandria, in his Stromata, writes it Bedou, as it is
+     pronounced also by the Chingulais; and Saint Jerome, Boudda
+     and Boutta.  At Thibet they call it Budd; and hence the name
+     of the country called Boud-tan and Ti-budd: it was in this
+     province that this system of religion was first inculcated
+     in Upper Asia; La is a corruption of Allah, the name of God
+     in the Syriac language, from which many of the eastern
+     dialects appear to be derived.  The Chinese having neither b
+     nor d, have supplied their place by f and t, and have
+     therefore said Fout.
+
+     ** See in Kempfer the doctrine of the Sintoists, which is a
+     mixture of that of Epicurus and of the Stoics.
+
+     *** It is a leaf of the Latanier species of the palm-tree.
+     Hence the bonzes of Siam take the appellation of Talapoin.
+     The use of this screen is an exclusive privilege.
+
+     **** The sectaries of Confucius are no less addicted to
+     astrology than the bonzes.  It is indeed the malady of every
+     eastern nation.
+
+     *5 The Delai-La-Ma, or immense high priest of La, is the
+     same person whom we find mentioned in our old books of
+     travels, by the name of Prester John, from a corruption of
+     the Persian word Djehan, which signifies the world, to which
+     has been prefixed the French word prestre or pretre, priest.
+     Thus the priest world, and the god world are in the Persian
+     idiom the same.
+
+     *6 In a recent expedition the English have found certain
+     idols of the Lamas filled in the inside with sacred pastils
+     from the close stool of the high priest.  Mr. Hastings, and
+     Colonel Pollier, who is now at Lausanne, are living
+     witnesses of this fact, and undoubtedly worthy of credit.
+     It will be very extraordinary to observe, that this
+     disgusting ceremony is connected with a profound
+     philosophical system, to wit, that of the metempsychosis,
+     admitted by the Lamas.  When the Tartars swallow, the sacred
+     relics, which they are accustomed to do, they imitate the
+     laws of the universe, the parts of which are incessantly
+     absorbed and pass into the substance of each other.  It is
+     upon the model of the serpent who devours his tail, and this
+     serpent is Budd and the world.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      After these, a crowd of other banners, which no man could number, came
+      forward into sight; and the genius exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I should never finish the detail of all the systems of faith which divide
+      these nations. Here the hordes of Tartars adore, in the forms of beasts,
+      birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who, under a principal, but
+      indolent god, govern the universe. In their idolatry they call to mind the
+      ancient paganism of the West. You observe the fantastical dress of the
+      Chamans; who, under a robe of leather, hung round with bells and rattles,
+      idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of snakes and heads of owls, invoke,
+      with frantic cries and factitious convulsions, the dead to deceive the
+      living. There, the black tribes of Africa exhibit the same opinions in the
+      worship of their fetiches. See the inhabitant of Juida worship god in a
+      great snake, which, unluckily, the swine delight to eat.* The Teleutean
+      attires his god in a coat of several colors, like a Russian soldier.** The
+      Kamchadale, observing that everything goes wrong in his frozen country,
+      considers god as an old ill-natured man, smoking his pipe and hunting
+      foxes and martins in his sledge.***
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It frequently happens that the swine devour the very
+     species of serpents the negroes adore, which is a source of
+     great desolation in the country.  President de Brosses has
+     given us, in his History of the Fetiche, a curious
+     collection of absurdities of this nature.
+
+     ** The Teleuteans, a Tartar nation, paint God as wearing a
+     vesture of all colors, particularly red and green; and as
+     these constitute the uniform of the Russian dragoons, they
+     compare him to this description of soldiers.  The Egyptians
+     also dress the God World in a garment of every color.
+     Eusebius Proep. Evang. p 115.  The Teleuteans call God Bou,
+     which is only an alteration of Boudd, the God Egg and World.
+
+     *** Consult upon this subject a work entitled, Description
+     des Peuples, soumis a la Russie, and it will be found that
+     the picture is not overcharged.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But you may still behold a hundred savage nations who have none of the
+      ideas of civilized people respecting God, the soul, another world, and a
+      future life; who have formed no system of worship; and who nevertheless
+      enjoy the rich gifts of nature in the irreligion in which she has created
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS CONTRADICTIONS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The various groups having taken their places, an unbounded silence
+      succeeded to the murmurs of the multitude; and the legislator said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chiefs and doctors of mankind! You remark how the nations, living apart,
+      have hitherto followed different paths, each believing its own to be that
+      of truth. If, however, truth is one, and opinions are various, it is
+      evident that some are in error. If, then, such vast numbers of us are in
+      the wrong, who shall dare to say, "I am in the right?" Begin, therefore,
+      by being indulgent in your dissensions. Let us all seek truth as if no one
+      possessed it. The opinions which to this day have governed the world,
+      originating from chance, propagated in obscurity, admitted without
+      discussion, accredited by a love of novelty and imitation, have usurped
+      their empire in a clandestine manner. It is time, if they are well
+      founded, to give a solemn stamp to their certainty, and legitimize their
+      existence. Let us summon them this day to a general scrutiny, let each
+      propound his creed, let the whole assembly be the judge, and let that
+      alone be acknowledged as true which is so for the whole human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, by order of position, the representative of the first standard on
+      the left was allowed to speak:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not permitted to doubt," said their chief, "that our doctrine is
+      the only true and infallible one. FIRST, it is revealed by God himself&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So is ours," cried all the other standards, "and you are not permitted to
+      doubt it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But at least," said the legislator, "you must prove it, for we cannot
+      believe what we do not know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Our doctrine is proved," replied the first standard, "by numerous facts,
+      by a multitude of miracles, by resurrections of the dead, by rivers dried
+      up, by mountains removed&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And we also have numberless miracles," cried all the others, and each
+      began to recount the most incredible things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "THEIR miracles," said the first standard, "are imaginary, or the fictions
+      of the evil spirit, who has deluded them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are yours," said the others, "that are imaginary;" and each group,
+      speaking of itself, cried out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "None but ours are true, all the others are false."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legislator then asked: "Have you living witnesses of the facts?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," replied they all; "the facts are ancient, the witnesses are dead,
+      but their writings remain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Be it so," replied the legislator; "but if they contradict each other,
+      who shall reconcile them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just judge!" cried one of the standards, "the proof that our witnesses
+      have seen the truth is, that they died to confirm it; and our faith is
+      sealed by the blood of martyrs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And ours too," said the other standards; "we have thousands of martyrs
+      who have died in the most excruciating torments, without ever denying the
+      truth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Christians of every sect, the Mussulmans, the Indians, the
+      Japanese, recited endless legends of confessors, martyrs, penitents, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And one of these parties, having denied the martyrology of the others:
+      "Well," said they, "we will then die ourselves to prove the truth of our
+      belief."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And instantly a crowd of men, of every religion and of every sect,
+      presented themselves to suffer the torments of death. Many even began to
+      tear their arms, and to beat their heads and breasts, without discovering
+      any symptom of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the legislator, preventing them&mdash;"O men!" said he, "hear my words
+      with patience. If you die to prove that two and two make four, will your
+      death add any thing to this truth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No!" answered all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if you die to prove that they make five, will that make them five?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again they all answered, "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, then, is your persuasion to prove, if it changes not the existence
+      of things? Truth is one&mdash;your persuasions are various; many of you,
+      therefore, are in error. Now, if man, as is evident, can persuade himself
+      of error, what is the persuasion of man to prove?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If error has its martyrs, what is the sure criterion of truth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If the evil spirit works miracles, what is the distinctive character of
+      God?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Besides, why resort forever to incomplete and insufficient miracles?
+      Instead of changing the course of nature, why not rather change opinions?
+      Why murder and terrify men, instead of instructing and correcting them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O credulous, but opinionated mortals! none of us know what was done
+      yesterday, what is doing to-day even under our eyes; and we swear to what
+      was done two thousand years ago!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, the weakness and yet the pride of men! The laws of nature are
+      unchangeable and profound&mdash;our minds are full of illusion and
+      frivolity&mdash;and yet we would comprehend every thing&mdash;determine
+      every thing! Forgetting that it is easier for the whole human race to be
+      in error, than to change the nature of the smallest atom."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then," said one of the doctors, "let us lay aside the evidence of
+      fact, since it is uncertain; let us come to argument&mdash;to the proofs
+      inherent in the doctrine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came forward, with a look of confidence, an Iman of the law of
+      Mahomet; and, having advanced into the circle, turned towards Mecca, and
+      recited with great fervor his confession of faith. "Praise be to God,"
+      said he, with a solemn and imposing voice, "the light shines with full
+      evidence, and the truth has no need of examination." Then, showing the
+      Koran, he exclaimed: "Here is the light of truth in its proper essence.
+      There is no doubt in this book. It conducts with safety him who walks in
+      darkness, and who receives without discussion the divine word which
+      descended on the prophet, to save the simple and confound the wise. God
+      has established Mahomet his minister on earth; he has given him the world,
+      that he may subdue with the sword whoever shall refuse to receive his law.
+      Infidels dispute, and will not believe; their obduracy comes from God, who
+      has hardened their hearts to deliver them to dreadful punishments."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This passage contains the sense and nearly the very words
+     of the first chapter of the Koran; and the reader will
+     observe in general, that, in the pictures that follow, the
+     writer has endeavored to give as accurately as possible the
+     letter and spirit of the opinions of each party.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words a violent murmur arose on all sides, and silenced the
+      speaker. "Who is this man," cried all the groups, "who thus insults us
+      without a cause? What right has he to impose his creed on us as conqueror
+      and tyrant? Has not God endowed us, as well as him, with eyes,
+      understanding, and reason? And have we not an equal right to use them, in
+      choosing what to believe and what to reject? If he attacks us, shall we
+      not defend ourselves? If he likes to believe without examination, must we
+      therefore not examine before we believe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what is this luminous doctrine that fears the light? What is this
+      apostle of a God of clemency, who preaches nothing but murder and carnage?
+      What is this God of justice, who punishes blindness which he himself has
+      made? If violence and persecution are the arguments of truth, are
+      gentleness and charity the signs of falsehood?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man then advancing from a neighboring group, said to the Iman:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Admitting that Mahomet is the apostle of the best doctrine,&mdash;the
+      prophet of the true religion,&mdash;have the goodness at least to tell us
+      whether, in the practice of his doctrine, we are to follow his son-in-law
+      Ali, or his vicars Omar and Aboubekre?"*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the two grand parties into which the Mussulmans
+     are divided.  The Turks have embraced the second, the
+     Persians the first.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of these names a terrible schism arose among the Mussulmans
+      themselves. The partisans of Ali and those of Omar, calling out heretics
+      and blasphemers, loaded each other with execrations. The quarrel became so
+      violent that neighboring groups were obliged to interfere, to prevent
+      their coming to blows. At length, tranquillity being somewhat restored,
+      the legislator said to the Imans:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "See the consequences of your principles! If you yourselves were to carry
+      them into practice, you would destroy each other to the last man. Is it
+      not the first law of God that man should live?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, addressing himself to the other groups, he continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Doubtless this intolerant and exclusive spirit shocks every idea of
+      justice, and overturns the whole foundation of morals and society; but
+      before we totally reject this code of doctrine, is it not proper to hear
+      some of its dogmas? Let us not pronounce on the forms, without having some
+      knowledge of the substance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The groups having consented, the Iman began to expound how God, having
+      sent to the nations lost in idolatry twenty-four thousand prophets, had
+      finally sent the last, the seal and perfection of all, Mahomet; on whom be
+      the salvation of peace: how, to prevent the divine word from being any
+      longer perverted by infidels, the supreme goodness had itself written the
+      pages of the Koran. Then, explaining the particular dogmas of Islamism,
+      the Iman unfolded how the Koran, partaking of the divine nature, was
+      uncreated and eternal, like its author: how it had been sent leaf by leaf,
+      in twenty-four thousand nocturnal apparitions of the angel Gabriel: how
+      the angel announced himself by a gentle knocking, which threw the prophet
+      into a cold sweat: how in the vision of one night he had travelled over
+      ninety heavens, riding on the beast Borack, half horse and half woman:
+      how, endowed with the gift of miracles, he walked in the sunshine without
+      a shadow, turned dry trees to green, filled wells and cisterns with water,
+      and split in two the body of the moon: how, by divine command, Mahomet had
+      propagated, sword in hand, the religion the most worthy of God by its
+      sublimity, and the most proper for men by the simplicity of its practice;
+      since it consisted in only eight or ten points:&mdash;To profess the unity
+      of God; to acknowledge Mahomet as his only prophet; to pray five times a
+      day; to fast one month in the year; to go to Mecca once in our life; to
+      pay the tenth of all we possess; to drink no wine; to eat no pork; and to
+      make war upon the infidels.* He taught that by these means every Mussulman
+      becoming himself an apostle and martyr, should enjoy in this world many
+      blessings; and at his death, his soul, weighed in the balance of works,
+      and absolved by the two black angels, should pass the infernal pit on the
+      bridge as narrow as a hair and as sharp as the edge of a sword, and should
+      finally be received to a region of delight, which is watered with rivers
+      of milk and honey, and embalmed in all the perfumes of India and Arabia;
+      and where the celestial Houris&mdash;virgins always chaste&mdash;are
+      eternally crowning with repeated favors the elect of God, who preserve an
+      eternal youth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Whatever the advocates for the philosophy and civilization
+     of the Turks may assert, to make war upon infidels is
+     considered by them as an obligatory precept and an act of
+     religion.  See Reland de Relig. Mahom.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words an involuntary smile was seen on all their lips; and the
+      various groups, reasoning on these articles of faith, exclaimed with one
+      voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it possible that reasonable beings can admit such reveries? Would you
+      not think it a chapter from The Thousand and One Nights?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Samoyede advanced into the circle: "The paradise of Mahomet," said he,
+      "appears to me very good; but one of the means of gaining it is
+      embarrassing: for if we must neither eat nor drink between the rising and
+      setting sun, as he has ordered, how are we to practise that fast in my
+      country, where the sun continues above the horizon six months without
+      setting?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is impossible," cried all the Mussulman doctors, to support the
+      teaching of the prophet; but a hundred nations having attested the fact,
+      the infallibility of Mahomet could not but receive a severe shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is singular," said an European, "that God should be constantly
+      revealing what takes place in heaven, without ever instructing us what is
+      doing on the earth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For my part," said an American, "I find a great difficulty in the
+      pilgrimage. For suppose twenty-five years to a generation, and only a
+      hundred millions of males on the globe,&mdash;each being obliged to go to
+      Mecca once in his life,&mdash;there must be four millions a year on the
+      journey; and as it would be impracticable for them to return the same
+      year, the numbers would be doubled&mdash;that is, eight millions: where
+      would you find provisions, lodgings, water, vessels, for this universal
+      procession? Here must be miracles indeed!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The proof," said a catholic doctor, "that the religion of Mahomet is not
+      revealed, is that the greater part of the ideas which serve for its basis
+      existed a long time before, and that it is only a confused mixture of
+      truths disfigured and taken from our holy religion and from that of the
+      Jews; which an ambitious man has made to serve his projects of domination,
+      and his worldly views. Look through his book; you will see nothing there
+      but the histories of the Bible and the Gospel travestied into absurd
+      fables&mdash;into a tissue of vague and contradictory declamations, and
+      ridiculous or dangerous precepts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Analyze the spirit of these precepts, and the conduct of their apostle;
+      you will find there an artful and audacious character, which, to obtain
+      its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of the people it had to
+      govern. It is speaking to simple men, and it entertains them with
+      miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and it flatters their vanity by
+      despising science; they are poor and rapacious, and it excites their
+      cupidity by the hope of pillage; having nothing at first to give them on
+      earth, it tells them of treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire
+      death as a supreme good; it threatens cowards with hell; it rewards the
+      brave with paradise; it sustains the weak with the opinion of fatality; in
+      short, it produces the attachment it wants by all the allurements of
+      sense, and all the power of the passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How different is the character of our religion! and how completely does
+      its empire, founded on the counteraction of the natural temper, and the
+      mortification of all our passions, prove its divine origin! How forcibly
+      does its mild and compassionate morality, its affections altogether
+      spiritual, attest its emanation from God! Many of its doctrines, it is
+      true, soar above the reach of the understanding, and impose on reason a
+      respectful silence; but this more fully demonstrates its revelation, since
+      the human mind could never have imagined such mysteries."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, holding the Bible in one hand and the four Gospels in the other, the
+      doctor began to relate that, in the beginning, God, after passing an
+      eternity in idleness, took the resolution, without any known cause, of
+      making the world out of nothing; that having created the whole universe in
+      six days, he found himself fatigued on the seventh; that having placed the
+      first human pair in a garden of delights, to make them completely happy,
+      he forbade their tasting a particular fruit which he placed within their
+      reach; that these first parents, having yielded to the temptation, all
+      their race (which were not yet born) had been condemned to bear the
+      penalty of a fault which they had not committed; that, after having left
+      the human race to damn themselves for four or five thousand years, this
+      God of mercy ordered a well beloved son, whom he had engendered without a
+      mother, and who was as old as himself, to go and be put to death on the
+      earth; and this for the salvation of mankind; of whom much the greater
+      portion, nevertheless, have ever since continued in the way of perdition;
+      that to remedy this new difficulty, this same God, born of a virgin,
+      having died and risen from the dead, assumes a new existence every day,
+      and in the form of a piece of bread, multiplies himself by millions at the
+      voice of one of the basest of men. Then, passing on to the doctrine of the
+      sacraments, he was going to treat at large on the power of absolution and
+      reprobation, of the means of purging all sins by a little water and a few
+      words, when, uttering the words indulgence, power of the pope, sufficient
+      grace, and efficacious grace, he was interrupted by a thousand cries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a horrible abuse," cried the Lutherans, "to pretend to remit sins
+      for money."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The notion of the real presence," cried the Calvinists, "is contrary to
+      the text of the Gospel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The pope has no right to decide anything of himself," cried the
+      Jansenists; and thirty other sects rising up, and accusing each other of
+      heresies and errors, it was no longer possible to hear anything
+      distinctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence being at last restored, the Mussulmans observed to the legislator:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Since you have rejected our doctrine as containing things incredible, can
+      you admit that of the Christians? Is not theirs still more contrary to
+      common sense and justice? A God, immaterial and infinite, to become a man!
+      to have a son as old as himself! This god-man to become bread, to be eaten
+      and digested! Have we any thing equal to that? Have the Christians an
+      exclusive right of setting up a blind faith? And will you grant them
+      privileges of belief to our detriment?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some savage tribes then advanced: "What!" said they, "because a man and
+      woman ate an apple six thousand years ago, all the human race are damned?
+      And you call God just? What tyrant ever rendered children responsible for
+      the faults of their fathers? What man can answer for the actions of
+      another? Does not this overturn every idea of justice and of reason?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Others exclaimed: "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these pretended
+      facts? Can we receive them without examining the evidence? The least
+      action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are ordered to
+      believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Jewish Rabbin then addressing the assembly, said: "As to the fundamental
+      facts, we are sureties; but with regard to their form and their
+      application, the case is different, and the Christians are here condemned
+      by their own arguments. For they cannot deny that we are the original
+      source from which they are derived&mdash;the primitive stock on which they
+      are grafted; and hence the reasoning is very short: Either our law is from
+      God, and then theirs is a heresy, since it differs from ours, or our law
+      is not from God, and then theirs falls at the same time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you must make this distinction," replied the Christian: "Your law is
+      from God as typical and preparative, but not as final and absolute: you
+      are the image of which we are the substance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We know," replied the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but they
+      are absolutely gratuitous and false. Your system turns altogether on
+      mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical interpretations.* With
+      violent distortions on the letter of our books, you substitute the most
+      chimerical ideas for the true ones, and find in them whatever pleases you;
+      as a roving imagination will find figures in the clouds. Thus you have
+      made a spiritual Messiah of that which, in the spirit of our prophets, is
+      only a temporal king. You have made a redemption of the human race out of
+      the simple re-establishment of our nation. Your conception of the Virgin
+      is founded on a single phrase, of which you have changed the meaning. Thus
+      you make from our Scriptures whatever your fancy dictates; you even find
+      there your trinity; though there is not a word that has the most distant
+      allusion to such a thing; and it is an invention of profane writers,
+      admitted into your system with a host of other opinions, of every religion
+      and of every sect, during the anarchy of the first three centuries of your
+      era."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * When we read the Fathers of the church, and see upon what
+     arguments they have built the edifice of religion, we are
+     inexpressibly astonished with their credulity or their
+     knavery: but allegory was the rage of that period; the
+     Pagans employed it to explain the actions of their gods, and
+     the Christians acted in the same spirit when they employed
+     it after their fashion.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, the Christian doctors, crying sacrilege and blasphemy,
+      sprang forward in a transport of fury to fall upon the Jew; and a troop of
+      monks, in motley dresses of black and white, advanced with a standard on
+      which were painted pincers, gridirons, lighted fagots, and the words
+      Justice, Charity, Mercy.* "It is necessary," said they, "to make an
+      example of these impious wretches, and burn them for the glory of God."
+      They began even to prepare the pile, when a Mussulman answered in a strain
+      of irony:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This, then, is that religion of peace, that meek and beneficent system
+      which you so much extol! This is that evangelical charity which combats
+      infidelity with persuasive mildness, and repays injuries with patience! Ye
+      hypocrites! It is thus that you deceive mankind&mdash;thus that you
+      propagate your accursed errors! When you were weak, you preached liberty,
+      toleration, peace; when you are strong, you practise persecution and
+      violence&mdash;"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This description answers exactly to the banner of the
+     Inquisition of Spanish Jacobins.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And he was going to begin the history of the wars and slaughters of
+      Christianity, when the legislator, demanding silence, suspended this scene
+      of discord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The monks, affecting a tone of meekness and humility, exclaimed: "It is
+      not ourselves that we would avenge; it is the cause of God; it is the
+      glory of God that we defend."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what right have you, more than we," said the Imans, "to constitute
+      yourselves the representatives of God? Have you privileges that we have
+      not? Are you not men like us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To defend God," said another group, "to pretend to avenge him, is to
+      insult his wisdom and his power. Does he not know, better than men, what
+      befits his dignity?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," replied the monks, "but his ways are secret."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it remains for you to prove," said the Rabbins, "that you have the
+      exclusive privilege of understanding them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, proud of finding supporters to their cause, the Jews thought that
+      the books of Moses were going to be triumphant, when the Mobed (high
+      priest) of the Parses obtained leave to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have heard," said he, "the account of the Jews and Christians of the
+      origin of the world; and, though greatly mutilated, we find in it some
+      facts which we admit. But we deny that they are to be attributed to the
+      legislator of the Hebrews. It was not he who made known to men these
+      sublime truths, these celestial events. It was not to him that God
+      revealed them, but to our holy prophet Zoroaster: and the proof of this is
+      in the very books that they refer to. Examine with attention the laws, the
+      ceremonies, the precepts established by Moses in those books; you will not
+      find the slightest indication, either expressed or understood, of what
+      constitutes the basis of the Jewish and Christian theology. You nowhere
+      find the least trace of the immortality of the soul, or of a future life,
+      or of heaven, or of hell, or of the revolt of the principal angel, author
+      of the evils of the human race. These ideas were not known to Moses, and
+      the reason is very obvious: it was not till four centuries afterwards that
+      Zoroaster first evangelized them in Asia.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceive
+     myself to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400
+     years before Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not till
+      after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first kings, that
+      these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then their appearance was
+      obscure and gradual, according to the progress of the political relations
+      between your ancestors and ours. It was especially when, having been
+      conquered by the kings of Nineveh and Babylon and transported to the banks
+      of the Tygris and the Euphrates, where they resided for three successive
+      generations, that they imbibed manners and opinions which had been
+      rejected as contrary to their law. When our king Cyrus had delivered them
+      from slavery, their heart was won to us by gratitude; they became our
+      disciples and imitators; and they admitted our dogmas in the revision of
+      their books;* for your Genesis, in particular, was never the work of
+      Moses, but a compilation drawn up after the return from the Babylonian
+      captivity, in which are inserted the Chaldean opinions of the origin of
+      the world.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the first periods of the Christian church, not only the
+     most learned of those who have since been denominated
+     heretics, but many of the orthodox conceived Moses to have
+     written neither the law nor the Pentateuch, but that the
+     work was a compilation made by the elders of the people and
+     the Seventy, who, after the death of Moses, collected his
+     scattered ordinances, and mixed with them things that were
+     extraneous; similar to what happened as to the Koran of
+     Mahomet.  See Les Clementines, Homel. 2. sect. 51. and
+     Homel. 3. sect. 42.
+
+     Modern critics, more enlightened or more attentive than the
+     ancients, have found in Genesis in particular, marks of its
+     having been composed on the return from the captivity; but
+     the principal proofs have escaped them.  These I mean to
+     exhibit in an analysis of the book of Genesis, in which I
+     shall demonstrate that the tenth chapter, among others,
+     which treats of the pretended generations of the man called
+     Noah, is a real geographical picture of the world, as it was
+     known to the Hebrews at the epoch of the captivity, which
+     was bounded by Greece or Hellas at the West, mount Caucasus
+     at the North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egypt
+     at the South. All the pretended personages from Adam to
+     Abraham, or his father Terah, are mythological beings,
+     stars, constellations, countries. Adam is Bootes: Noah is
+     Osiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to say Capricorn,
+     or the celestial Genius that opened the year.  The
+     Alexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrod
+     was supposed by the Persians to be their first king, as
+     having invented the art of hunting, and that he was
+     translated into heaven, where he appears under the name of
+     Orion.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "At first the pure followers of the law, opposing to the emigrants the
+      letter of the text and the absolute silence of the prophet, endeavored to
+      repel these innovations; but they ultimately prevailed, and our doctrine,
+      modified by your ideas, gave rise to a new sect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You expected a king to restore your political independence; we announced
+      a God to regenerate and save mankind. From this combination of ideas, your
+      Essenians laid the foundation of Christianity: and whatever your
+      pretensions may be, Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your system
+      of spiritual beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting from
+      the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as they are
+      found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in six gahans,*
+      the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a divine place, under
+      the reign of perfect good; the introduction of evil into the world by the
+      great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the revolt and battles of the Genius of
+      evil and darkness against Ormuzd, God of good and of light; the division
+      of the angels into white and black, or good and bad; their hierarchal
+      orders, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end of the world
+      at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the lamb, the
+      regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the regions of
+      happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the bridge of the
+      bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of Mithras; the
+      unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism of new-born
+      children; the unction of the dead; the confession of sins; and, in a word,
+      he recited so many things analagous to those of the three preceding
+      religions, that his discourse seemed like a commentary or a continuation
+      of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods of
+     time. These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousands
+     of God or of light, meaning the six summer months.  In the
+     first, say the Persians, God created (arranged in order) the
+     heavens; in the second the waters; in the third the earth;
+     in the fourth trees; in the fifth animals; and in the sixth
+     man; corresponding with the account in Genesis.  For
+     particulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry Lord, ch. 2, on the
+     religion of the ancient Persians.  It is remarkable that the
+     same tradition is found in the sacred books of the
+     Etrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all things
+     had comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelve
+     thousand years, which period was distributed to the twelve
+     houses of the sun.  In the first thousand, God made heaven
+     and earth; in the second the firmament; in the third the sea
+     and the waters; in the fourth the sun, moon and stars; in
+     the fifth the souls of animals, birds, and reptiles; in the
+     sixth man.  See Suidas, at the word Tyrrhena; which shows
+     first the identity of their theological and astrological
+     opinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather confusion
+     of ideas, between absolute and systematical creation; that
+     is, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature,
+     which were at first the period of the year, and afterwards
+     periods of 60, of 600, of 25,000, of 36,000 and of 432,000
+     years.
+
+     ** The modern Parses and the ancient Mithriacs, who are the
+     same sect, observe all the Christian sacraments, even the
+     laying on of hands in confirmation.  The priest of Mithra,
+     says Tertullian, (de Proescriptione, ch. 40) promises
+     absolution from sin on confession and baptism; and, if I
+     rightly remember, Mithra marks his soldiers in the forehead,
+     with the chrism called in the Egyptian Kouphi; he celebrates
+     the sacrifice of bread, which is the resurrection, and
+     presents the crown to his followers, menacing them at the
+     same time with the sword, etc.
+
+     In these mysteries they tried the courage of the initiated
+     with a thousand terrors, presenting fire to his face, a
+     sword to his breast, etc.; they also offered him a crown,
+     which he refused, saying, God is my crown: and this crown is
+     to be seen in the celestial sphere by the side of Bootes.
+     The personages in these mysteries were distinguished by the
+     names of the animal constellations.  The ceremony of mass is
+     nothing more than an imitation of these mysteries and those
+     of Eleusis.  The benediction, the Lord be with you, is a
+     literal translation of the formula of admission chou-k, am,
+     p-ka.  See Beausob. Hist. Du Manicheisme, vol. ii.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out against this
+      recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and worshippers of fire,
+      charged them with falsehood, interpolations, falsification of facts; and
+      there arose a violent dispute as to the dates of the events, their order
+      and succession, the origin of the doctrines, their transmission from
+      nation to nation, the authenticity of the books on which they are founded,
+      the epoch of their composition, the character of their compilers, and the
+      validity of their testimony. And the various parties, pointing out
+      reciprocally to each other, the contradictions, improbabilities, and
+      forgeries, accused one another of having established their belief on
+      popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd fables, invented without
+      discernment, and admitted without examination by unknown, partial, or
+      ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown epochs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various Indian
+      sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions of the Jews and
+      the Parses, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly set
+      themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the depositaries of
+      its archives? To hear their calculations of five or six thousand years, it
+      would seem that the world was of yesterday; whereas our monuments prove a
+      duration of many thousands of centuries. And for what reason are their
+      books to be preferred to ours? Are then the Vedes, the Chastres, and the
+      Pourans inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the Zadders?* And is
+      not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as valid as that of the
+      fathers and the gods of the West? Ah! if it were permitted to reveal our
+      mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did not justly conceal them
+      from every eye!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos; they are sometimes written
+      Vedams, Pouranams, Chastrans, because the Hindoos, like the Persians, are
+      accustomed to give a nasal sound to the terminations of their words, which
+      we represent by the affixes on and an, and the Portuguese by the affixes
+      om and am. Many of these books have been translated, thanks to the liberal
+      spirit of Mr. Hastings, who has founded at Calcutta a literary society,
+      and a printing press. At the same time, however, that we express our
+      gratitude to this society, we must be permitted to complain of its
+      exclusive spirit; the number of copies printed of each book being such as
+      it is impossible to purchase them even in England; they are wholly in the
+      hands of the East India proprietors. Scarcely even is the Asiatic
+      Miscellany known in Europe; and a man must be very learned in oriental
+      antiquity before he so much as hears of the Jones's, the Wilkins's, and
+      the Halhed's, etc. As to the sacred books of the Hindoos, all that are yet
+      in our hands are the Bhagvat Geeta, the Ezour-Vedam, the Bagavadam, and
+      certain fragments of the Chastres printed at the end of the Bhagvat Geeta.
+      These books are in Indostan what the Old and New Testament are in
+      Christendom, the Koran in Turkey, the Zadder and the Zendavesta among the
+      Parses, etc. When I have taken an extensive survey of their contents, I
+      have sometimes asked myself, what would be the loss to the human race if a
+      new Omar condemned them to the flames; and, unable to discover any
+      mischief that would ensue, I call the imaginary chest that contains them,
+      the box of Pandora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bramins stopping short at these words: "How can we admit your
+      doctrine," said the legislator, "if you will not make it known? And how
+      did its first authors propagate it, when, being alone possessed of it,
+      their own people were to them profane? Did heaven reveal it to be kept a
+      secret?"*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Vedas or Vedams are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos,
+     as the Bibles with us.  They are three in number; the Rick
+     Veda, the Yadjour Veda, and the Sama Veda; they are so
+     scarce in India, that the English could with great
+     difficulty find an original one, of which a copy is
+     deposited in the British Museum; they who reckon four Vedas,
+     include among them the Attar Veda, concerning ceremonies,
+     but which is lost.  There are besides commentaries named
+     Upanishada, one of which was published by Anquetil du Peron,
+     and entitled Oupnekhat, a curious work.  The date of these
+     books is more than twenty-five centuries prior to our era;
+     their contents prove that all the reveries of the Greek
+     metaphysicians come from India and Egypt.  Since the year
+     1788, the learned men of England are working in India a mine
+     of literature totally unknown in Europe, and which proves
+     that the civilization of India ascends to a very remote
+     antiquity.  After the Vedas come the Chastras amounting to
+     six.  They treat of theology and the Sciences. Afterwards
+     eighteen Pouranas, treating of Mythology and History. See
+     the Bahgouet-guita, the Baga Vadam, and the Ezour-Vedam,
+     etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the Bramins persisting in their silence: "Let them have the honor of
+      the secret," said a European: "Their doctrine is now divulged; we have
+      their books, and I can give you the substance of them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then beginning with an abstract of the four Vedes, the eighteen Pourans,
+      and the five or six Chastres, he recounted how a being, infinite, eternal,
+      immaterial and round, after having passed an eternity in
+      self-contemplation, and determining at last to manifest himself, separated
+      the male and female faculties which were in him, and performed an act of
+      generation, of which the Lingam remains an emblem; how that first act gave
+      birth to three divine powers, Brama, Bichen or Vichenou, and Chib or
+      Chiven;* whose functions were&mdash;the first to create, the second to
+      preserve, and the third to destroy, or change the form of the universe.
+      Then, detailing the history of their operations and adventures, he
+      explained how Brama, proud of having created the world and the eight
+      bobouns, or spheres of probation, thought himself superior to Chib, his
+      equal; how his pride brought on a battle between them, in which these
+      celestial globes were crushed like a basket of eggs; how Brama, vanquished
+      in this conflict, was reduced to serve as a pedestal to Chib,
+      metamorphosed into a Lingam; how Vichenou, the god mediator, has taken at
+      different times to preserve the world, nine mortal forms of animals; how
+      first, in shape of a fish, he saved from the universal deluge a family who
+      repeopled the earth; how afterwards, in the form of a tortoise,** he drew
+      from the sea of milk the mountain Mandreguiri (the pole); then, becoming a
+      boar, he tore the belly of the giant Ereuniachessen, who was drowning the
+      earth in the abyss of Djole, from whence he drew it out with his tusks;
+      how, becoming incarnate in a black shepherd, and under the name of
+      Christ-en, he delivered the world of the enormous serpent Calengem, and
+      then crushed his head, after having been wounded by him in the heel.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These names are differently pronounced according to the
+     different dialects; thus they say Birmah, Bremma, Brouma.
+     Bichen has been turned into Vichen by the easy exchange of a
+     B for a V, and into Vichenou by means of a grammatical
+     affix.  In the same manner Chib, which is synonymous with
+     Satan, and signifies adversary, is frequently written Chiba
+     and Chiv-en; he is called also Rouder and Routr-en, that is,
+     the destroyer.
+
+     ** This is the constellation testudo, or the lyre, which was
+     at first a tortoise, on account of its slow motion round the
+     Pole; then a lyre, because it is the shell of this reptile
+     on which the strings of the lyre are mounted.  See an
+     excellent memoir of M. Dupuis sur l'Origine des
+     Constellations.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, passing on to the history of the secondary Genii, he related how the
+      Eternal, to display his own glory, created various orders of angels, whose
+      business it was to sing his praises and to direct the universe; how a part
+      of these angels revolted under the guidance of an ambitious chief, who
+      strove to usurp the power of God, and to govern all; how God plunged them
+      into a world of darkness, there to undergo the punishment for their
+      crimes; how at last, touched with compassion, he consented to release
+      them, to receive them into favor, after they should undergo a long series
+      of probations; how, after creating for this purpose fifteen orbits or
+      regions of planets, and peopling them with bodies, he ordered these rebel
+      angels to undergo in them eighty-seven transmigrations; he then explained
+      how souls, thus purified, returned to the first source, to the ocean of
+      life and animation from which they had proceeded; and since all living
+      creatures contain portions of this universal soul, he taught how criminal
+      it was to deprive them of it. He was finally proceeding to explain the
+      rites and ceremonies, when, speaking of offerings and libations of milk
+      and butter made to gods of copper and wood, and then of purifications by
+      the dung and urine of cows, there arose a universal murmur, mixed with
+      peals of laughter, which interrupted the orator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each of the different groups began to reason on that religion: "They are
+      idolators," said the Mussulmans; "and should be exterminated." "They are
+      deranged in their intellect," said the followers of Confucius; "we must
+      try to cure them." "What ridiculous gods," said others, "are these
+      puppets, besmeared with grease and smoke! Are gods to be washed like dirty
+      children, from whom you must brush away the flies, which, attracted by
+      honey, are fouling them with their excrements!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a Bramin exclaimed with indignation: "These are profound mysteries,&mdash;emblems
+      of truth, which you are not worthy to hear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And in what respect are you more worthy than we?" exclaimed a Lama of
+      Tibet. "Is it because you pretend to have issued from the head of Brama,
+      and the rest of the human race from the less noble parts of his body? But
+      to support the pride of your distinctions of origin and castes, prove to
+      us in the first place that you are different from other men; establish, in
+      the next place, as historical facts, the allegories which you relate; show
+      us, indeed, that you are the authors of all this doctrine; for we will
+      demonstrate, if necessary, that you have only stolen and disfigured it;
+      that you are only the imitators of the ancient paganism of the West; to
+      which, by an ill assorted mixture, you have allied the pure and spiritual
+      doctrine of our gods&mdash;a doctrine totally detached from the senses,
+      and entirely unknown on earth till Beddou taught it to the nations."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * All the ancient opinions of the Egyptian and Grecian
+     theologians are to be found in India, and they appear to
+     have been introduced, by means of the commerce of Arabia and
+     the vicinity of Persia, time immemorial.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A number of groups having asked what was this doctrine, and who was this
+      god, of whom the greater part had never heard the name, the Lama resumed
+      and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the beginning, a sole-existent and self-existent God, having passed an
+      eternity in the contemplation of his own being, resolved to manifest his
+      perfections out of himself, and created the matter of the world. The four
+      elements being produced, but still in a state of confusion, he breathed on
+      the face of the waters, which swelled like an immense bubble in form of an
+      egg, which unfolding, became the vault or orb of heaven, enclosing the
+      world.* Having made the earth, and the bodies of animals, this God,
+      essence of motion, imparted to them a part of his own being to animate
+      them; for this reason, the soul of everything that breathes being a
+      portion of the universal soul, no one of them can perish; they only change
+      their form and mould in passing successively into different bodies. Of all
+      these forms, the one most pleasing to God is that of man, as most
+      resembling his own perfections. When a man, by an absolute disengagement
+      from his senses, is wholly absorbed in self-contemplation, he then
+      discovers the divinity, and becomes himself God. Of all the incarnations
+      of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest and most solemn was
+      that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in Kachemire, under the
+      name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of self-denial and
+      self-annihilation."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This cosmogony of the Lamas, the Bonzes, and even the
+     Bramins, as Henry Lord asserts, is literally that of the
+     ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians, says Porphyry, call Kneph,
+     intelligence, or efficient cause of the universe.  They
+     relate that this God vomited an egg, from which was produced
+     another God named Phtha or Vulcan, (igneous principle or the
+     sun) and they add, that this egg is the world.  Euseb.
+     Proep. Evang. p. 115.
+
+     They represent, says the same author in another place, the
+     God Kneph, or efficient cause, under the form of a man in
+     deep blue (the color of the sky) having in his hand a
+     sceptre, a belt round his body, and a small bonnet royal of
+     light feathers on his head, to denote how very subtile and
+     fugacious the idea of that being is. Upon which I shall
+     observe that Kneph in Hebrew signifies a wing, a feather,
+     and that this color of sky-blue is to be found in the
+     majority of the Indian Gods, and is, under the name of
+     Narayan, one of their most distinguishing epithets.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, pursuing the history of Fot, the Lama continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was born from the right flank of a virgin of royal blood, who did not
+      cease to be a virgin for having become a mother; that the king of the
+      country, uneasy at his birth, wished to destroy him, and for this purpose
+      ordered a massacre of all the males born at that period, that being saved
+      by shepherds, Beddou lived in the desert till the age of thirty years, at
+      which time he began his mission to enlighten men and cast out devils; that
+      he performed a multitude of the most astonishing miracles; that he spent
+      his life in fasting and severe penitence, and at his death, bequeathed to
+      his disciples a book containing his doctrines."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Lama began to read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He that leaveth his father and mother to follow me," says Fot, "becomes a
+      perfect Samanean (a heavenly man).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He that practices my precepts to the fourth degree of perfection,
+      acquires the faculty of flying in the air, of moving heaven and earth, of
+      prolonging or shortening his life (rising from the dead).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Samanean despises riches, and uses only what is strictly necessary;
+      he mortifies his body, silences his passions, desires nothing, forms no
+      attachments, meditates my doctrines without ceasing, endures injuries with
+      patience, and bears no malice to his neighbor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Heaven and earth shall perish," says Fot: "despise therefore your bodies,
+      which are composed of the four perishable elements, and think only of your
+      immortal soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Listen not to the flesh: fear and sorrow spring from the passions: stifle
+      the passions and you destroy fear and sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whoever dies without having embraced my religion," says Fot, "returns
+      among men, until he embraces it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lama was going on with his reading, when the Christians interrupted
+      him, crying out that this was their own religion adulterated&mdash;that
+      Fot was no other than Jesus himself disfigured, and that the Lamas were
+      the Nestorians and the Manicheans disguised and bastardized.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This is asserted by our missionaries, and among others by
+     Georgi in his unfinished work of the Thibetan alphabet: but
+     if it can be proved that the Manicheans were but
+     plagiarists, and the ignorant echo of a doctrine that
+     existed fifteen hundred years before them, what becomes of
+     the declarations of Georgi?  See upon this subject, Beausob.
+     Hist. du Manicheisme.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the Lama, supported by the Chamans, Bonzes, Gonnis, Talapoins of Siam,
+      of Ceylon, of Japan, and of China, proved to the Christians, even from
+      their own authors, that the doctrine of the Samaneans was known through
+      the East more than a thousand years before the Christian era; that their
+      name was cited before the time of Alexander, and that Boutta, or Beddou,
+      was known before Jesus.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The eastern writers in general agree in placing the birth
+     of Beddou 1027 years before Jesus Christ, which makes him
+     the contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion,
+     they confound him.  It is certain that his doctrine
+     notoriously existed at that epoch; it is found entire in
+     that of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the Indian gymnosophists.
+     But the gymnosophists are cited at the time of Alexander as
+     an ancient sect already divided into Brachmans and
+     Samaneans.  See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien.
+     Pythagoras lived in the ninth century before Jesus Christ;
+     See chronology of the twelve ages; and Orpheus is of still
+     greater antiquity.  If, as is the case, the doctrine of
+     Pythagoras and that of Orpheus are of Egyptian origin, that
+     of Beddou goes back to the common source; and in reality the
+     Egyptian priests recite, that Hermes as he was dying said:
+     "I have hitherto lived an exile from my country, to which I
+     now return.  Weep not for me, I ascend to the celestial
+     abode where each of you will follow in his turn: there God
+     is: this life is only death."&mdash;Chalcidius in Thinaeum.
+
+     Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, the
+     sectaries of Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans.  Farther, Hermes
+     is no other than Beddou himself; for among the Indians,
+     Chinese, Lamas, etc., the planet Mercury and the
+     corresponding day of the week (Wednesday) bear the name of
+     Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rank
+     of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his
+     pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that
+     Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who,
+     placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year;
+     hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius,
+     and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius,
+     having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence his
+     serpent, which is the Hydra, emblem of the Nile (Hydor,
+     humidity); and from this serpent he seems to have derived
+     his name of Hermes, as Remes (with a schin) in the oriental
+     languages, signifies serpent.  Now Beddou and Hermes being
+     the same names, it is manifest of what antiquity is the
+     system ascribed to the former.  As to the name of Samanean,
+     it is precisely that of Chaman, still preserved in Tartary,
+     China, and India.  The interpretation given to it is, man of
+     the woods, a hermit mortifying the flesh, such being the
+     characteristic of this sect; but its literal meaning is,
+     celestial (Samaoui) and explains the system of those who are
+     called by it.&mdash;The system is the same as that of the
+     sectaries of Orpheus, of the Essenians, of the ancient
+     Anchorets of Persia, and the whole eastern country.  See
+     Porphyry, de Abstin. Animal.
+
+     These celestial and penitent men carried in India their
+     insanity to such an extreme as to wish not to touch the
+     earth, and they accordingly lived in cages suspended from
+     the trees, where the people, whose admiration was not less
+     absurd, brought them provisions.  During the night there
+     were frequent robberies, rapes and murders, and it was at
+     length discovered that they were committed by those men,
+     who, descending from their cages, thus indemnified
+     themselves for their restraint during the day.  The Bramins,
+     their rivals, embraced the opportunity of exterminating
+     them; and from that time their name in India has been
+     synonymous with hypocrite.  See Hist. de la Chine, in 5
+     vols. quarto, at the note page 30; Hist. de Huns, 2 vols.
+     and preface to the Ezour-Vedam.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, retorting the pretensions of the Christians against themselves:
+      "Prove to us," said the Lama, "that you are not Samaneans degenerated, and
+      that the man you make the author of your sect is not Fot himself
+      disguised. Prove to us by historical facts that he even existed at the
+      epoch you pretend; for, it being destitute of authentic testimony,* we
+      absolutely deny it; and we maintain that your very gospels are only the
+      books of some Mithriacs of Persia, and the Essenians of Syria, who were a
+      branch of reformed Samaneans."**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * There are absolutely no other monuments of the existence
+     of Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus
+     (Antiq. Jud. lib. 18, c.3,) a single phrase in Tacitus
+     (Annal. lib. 15, c. 44), and the Gospels.  But the passage
+     in Josephus is unanimously acknowledged to be apocryphal,
+     and to have been interpolated towards the close of the third
+     century, (See Trad. de joseph, par M. Gillet); and that of
+     Tacitus in so vague and so evidently taken from the
+     deposition of the Christians before the tribunals, that it
+     may be ranked in the class of evangelical records.  It
+     remains to enquire of what authority are these records.
+     "All the world knows," says Faustus, who, though a
+     Manichean, was one of the most learned men of the third
+     century, "All the world knows that the gospels were neither
+     written by Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, but by certain
+     unknown persons, who rightly judging that they should not
+     obtain belief respecting things which they had not seen,
+     placed at the head of their recitals the names of
+     contemporary apostles." See Beausob. vol. i. and Hist. des
+     Apologistes de la Relig. Chret. par Burigni, a sagacious
+     writer, who has demonstrated the absolute uncertainty of
+     those foundations of the Christian religion; so that the
+     existence of Jesus is no better proved than that of Osiris
+     and Hercules, or that of Fot or Beddou, with whom, says M.
+     de Guignes, the Chinese continually confound him, for they
+     never call Jesus by any other name than Fot.  Hist. de Huns.
+
+     ** That is to say, from the pious romances formed out of the
+     sacred legends of the mysteries of Mithra, Ceres, Isis,
+     etc., from whence are equally derived the books of the
+     Hindoos and the Bonzes.  Our missionaries have long remarked
+     a striking resemblance between those books and the gospels.
+     M. Wilkins expressly mentions it in a note in the Bhagvat
+     Geeta.  All agree that Krisna, Fot, and Jesus have the same
+     characteristic features: but religious prejudice has stood
+     in the way of drawing from this circumstance the proper and
+     natural inference.  To time and reason must it be left to
+     display the truth.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, the Christians set up a general cry, and a new dispute was
+      about to begin; when a number of Chinese Chamans, and Talapoins of Siam,
+      came forward and said that they would settle the whole controversy. And
+      one of them speaking for the whole exclaimed: "It is time to put an end to
+      these frivolous contests by drawing aside the veil from the interior
+      doctrine that Fot himself revealed to his disciples on his death bed.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Budsoists have two doctrines, the one public and
+     ostensible, the other interior and secret, precisely like
+     the Egyptian priests. It may be asked, why this distinction?
+     It is, that as the public doctrine recommends offerings,
+     expiations, endowments, etc., the priests find their profit
+     in preaching it to the people; whereas the other, teaching
+     the vanity of worldly things, and attended with no lucre, it
+     is thought proper to make it known only to adepts. Can the
+     teachers and followers of this religion be better classed
+     than under the heads of knavery and credulity?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "All these theological opinions," continued he, "are but chimeras. All the
+      stories of the nature of the gods, of their actions and their lives, are
+      but allegories and mythological emblems, under which are enveloped
+      ingenious ideas of morals, and the knowledge of the operations of nature
+      in the action of the elements and the movement of the planets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The truth is, that all is reduced to nothing&mdash;that all is illusion,
+      appearance, dream; that the moral metempsychosis is only the figurative
+      sense of the physical metempsychosis, or the successive movement of the
+      elements of bodies which perish not, but which, having composed one body,
+      pass when that is dissolved, into other mediums and form other
+      combinations. The soul is but the vital principle which results from the
+      properties of matter, and from the action of the elements in those bodies
+      where they create a spontaneous movement. To suppose that this product of
+      the play of the organs, born with them, matured with them, and which
+      sleeps with them, can subsist when they cease, is the romance of a
+      wandering imagination, perhaps agreeable enough, but really chimerical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "God itself is nothing more than the moving principle, the occult force
+      inherent in all beings&mdash;the sum of their laws and properties&mdash;the
+      animating principle; in a word, the soul of the universe; which on account
+      of the infinite variety of its connections and its operations, sometimes
+      simple, sometimes multiple, sometimes active, sometimes passive, has
+      always presented to the human mind an unsolvable enigma. All that man can
+      comprehend with certainty is, that matter does not perish; that it
+      possesses essentially those properties by which the world is held together
+      like a living and organized being; that the knowledge of these laws with
+      respect to man is what constitutes wisdom; that virtue and merit consist
+      in their observance; and evil, sin, and vice, in the ignorance and
+      violation of them; that happiness and misery result from these by the same
+      necessity which makes heavy bodies descend and light ones rise, and by a
+      fatality of causes and effects, whose chain extends from the smallest atom
+      to the greatest of the heavenly bodies."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the very expressions of La Loubre, in his
+     description of the kingdom of Siam and the theology of the
+     Bronzes.  Their dogmas, compared with those of the ancient
+     philosophers of Greece and Italy, give a complete
+     representation of the whole system of the Stoics and
+     Epicureans, mixed with astrological superstitious, and some
+     traits of Pythagorism.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, a crowd of theologians of every sect cried out that this
+      doctrine was materialism, and that those who profess it were impious
+      atheists, enemies to God and man, who must be exterminated. "Very well,"
+      replied the Chamans, "suppose we are in error, which is not impossible,
+      since the first attribute of the human mind is to be subject to illusion;
+      but what right have you to take away from men like yourselves, the life
+      which Heaven has given them? If Heaven holds us guilty and in abhorrence,
+      why does it impart to us the same blessings as to you? And if it treats us
+      with forbearance, what authority have you to be less indulgent? Pious men!
+      who speak of God with so much certainty and confidence, be so good as to
+      tell us what it is; give us to comprehend what those abstract and
+      metaphysical beings are, which you call God and soul, substance without
+      matter, existence without body, life without organs or sensation. If you
+      know those beings by your senses or their reflections, render them in like
+      manner perceptible to us; or if you speak of them on testimony and
+      tradition, show us a uniform account, and give a determinate basis to our
+      creed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There now arose among the theologians a great controversy respecting God
+      and his nature, his manner of acting, and of manifesting himself; on the
+      nature of the soul and its union with the body; whether it exists before
+      the organs, or only after they are formed; on the future life, and the
+      other world. And every sect, every school, every individual, differing on
+      all these points, and each assigning plausible reasons, and respectable
+      though opposite authorities for his opinion, they fell into an
+      inextricable labyrinth of contradictions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the legislator, having commanded silence and recalled the dispute to
+      its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of nations; you came
+      together in search of truth. At first, every one of you, thinking he
+      possessed it, demanded of the others an implicit faith; but perceiving the
+      contrariety of your opinions, you found it necessary to submit them to a
+      common rule of evidence, and to bring them to one general term of
+      comparison; and you agreed that each should exhibit the proofs of his
+      doctrine. You began by alleging facts; but each religion and every sect,
+      being equally furnished with miracles and martyrs, each producing an equal
+      number of witnesses, and offering to support them by a voluntary death,
+      the balance on this first point, by right of parity, remained equal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You then passed to the trial of reasoning; but the same arguments
+      applying equally to contrary positions&mdash;the same assertions, equally
+      gratuitous, being advanced and repelled with equal force, and all having
+      an equal right to refuse his assent, nothing was demonstrated. What is
+      more, the confrontation of your systems has brought up more and
+      extraordinary difficulties; for amid the apparent or adventitious
+      diversities, you have discovered a fundamental resemblance, a common
+      groundwork; and each of you pretending to be the inventor, and first
+      depositary, have taxed each other with adulterations and plagiarisms; and
+      thence arises a difficult question concerning the transmission of
+      religious ideas from people to people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Finally, to complete your embarrassment: when you endeavored to explain
+      your doctrines to each other, they appeared confused and foreign, even to
+      their adherents; they were founded on ideas inaccessible to your senses;
+      you consequently had no means of judging of them, and you confessed
+      yourselves in this respect to be only the echoes of your fathers. Hence
+      follows this other question: how came they to the knowledge of your
+      fathers, who themselves had no other means than you to conceive them? So
+      that, on the one hand, the succession of these ideas being unknown, and on
+      the other, their origin and existence being a mystery, all the edifice of
+      your religious opinions becomes a complicated problem of metaphysics and
+      history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Since, however, these opinions, extraordinary as they may be, must have
+      had some origin; since even the most abstract and fantastical ideas have
+      some physical model, it may be useful to recur to this origin, and
+      discover this model&mdash;in a word, to find out from what source the
+      human understanding has drawn these ideas, at present so obscure, of God,
+      of the soul, of all immaterial beings, which make the basis of so many
+      systems; to unfold the filiation which they have followed, and the
+      alterations which they have undergone in their transmissions and
+      ramifications. If, then, there are any persons present who have made a
+      study of these objects, let them come forward, and endeavor, in the face
+      of nations, to dissipate the obscurity in which their opinions have so
+      long remained."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ORIGIN AND FILIATION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At these words, a new group, formed in an instant by men from various
+      standards, but not distinguished by any, came forward into the circle; and
+      one of them spoke in the name of the whole:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Delegates, friends of evidence and virtue! It is not surprising that the
+      subject in question should be enveloped in so many clouds, since, besides
+      its inherent difficulties, thought itself has always been encumbered with
+      superadded obstacles peculiar to this study, where all free enquiry and
+      discussion have been interdicted by the intolerance of every system. But
+      now that our views are permitted to expand, we will expose to open day,
+      and submit to the judgment of nations, that which unprejudiced minds,
+      after long researches, have found to be the most reasonable; and we do
+      this, not with the pretension of imposing a new creed, but with the hope
+      of provoking new lights, and obtaining better information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Doctors and instructors of nations! You know what thick darkness covers
+      the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach. Imposed
+      by authority, inculcated by education, and maintained by example, they
+      pass from age to age, and strengthen their empire from habit and
+      inattention. But if man, enlightened by reflection and experience, brings
+      to mature examination the prejudices of his childhood, he soon discovers a
+      multitude of incongruities and contradictions which awaken his sagacity
+      and excite his reasoning powers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At first, remarking the diversity and opposition of the creeds which
+      divide the nations, he takes courage to question the infallibility which
+      each of them claims, and arming himself with their reciprocal pretensions,
+      he conceives that his senses and his reason, derived immediately from God,
+      are a law not less holy, a guide not less sure, than the mediate and
+      contradictory codes of the prophets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he then examines the texture of these codes themselves, he observes
+      that their laws, pretended to be divine, that is, immutable and eternal,
+      have arisen from circumstances of times, places, and persons; that they
+      have issued one from the other, in a kind of genealogical order, borrowing
+      from each other reciprocally a common and similar fund of ideas, which
+      every lawgiver modifies according to his fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he ascends to the source of these ideas, he finds it involved in the
+      night of time, in the infancy of nations, even to the origin of the world,
+      to which they claim alliance; and there, placed in the darkness of chaos,
+      in the empire of fables and traditions, they present themselves,
+      accompanied with a state of things so full of prodigies, that it seems to
+      forbid all access to the judgment: but this state itself excites a first
+      effort of reason, which resolves the difficulty; for if the prodigies,
+      found in the theological systems, have really existed&mdash;if, for
+      instance, the metamorphoses, the apparitions, the conversations with one
+      or many gods, recorded in the books of the Indians, the Hebrews, the
+      Parses, are historical events, he must agree that nature in those times
+      was totally different from what it is at present; that the present race of
+      men are quite another species from those who then existed; and, therefore,
+      he ought not to trouble his head about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If, on the contrary, these miraculous events have really not existed in
+      the physical order of things, then he readily conceives that they are
+      creatures of the human intellect; and this faculty being still capable of
+      the most fantastical combinations, explains at once the phenomenon of
+      these monsters in history. It only remains, then, to find how and
+      wherefore they have been formed in the imagination. Now, if we examine
+      with care the subjects of these intellectual creations, analyze the ideas
+      which they combine and associate, and carefully weigh all the
+      circumstances which they allege, we shall find that this first obscure and
+      incredible state of things is explained by the laws of nature. We find
+      that these stories of a fabulous kind have a figurative sense different
+      from the apparent one; that these events, pretended to be marvellous, are
+      simple and physical facts, which, being misconceived or misrepresented,
+      have been disfigured by accidental causes dependent on the human mind, by
+      the confusion of signs employed to represent the ideas, the want of
+      precision in words, permanence in language, and perfection in writing; we
+      find that these gods, for instance, who display such singular characters
+      in every system, are only the physical agents of nature, the elements, the
+      winds, the stars, and the meteors, which have been personified by the
+      necessary mechanism of language and of the human understanding; that their
+      lives, their manners, their actions, are only their mechanical operations
+      and connections; and that all their pretended history is only the
+      description of these phenomena, formed by the first naturalists who
+      observed them, and misconceived by the vulgar who did not understand them,
+      or by succeeding generations who forgot them. In a word, all the
+      theological dogmas on the origin of the world, the nature of God, the
+      revelation of his laws, the manifestation of his person, are known to be
+      only the recital of astronomical facts, only figurative and emblematical
+      accounts of the motion of the heavenly bodies. We are convinced that the
+      very idea of a God, that idea at present so obscure, is, in its first
+      origin, nothing but that of the physical powers of the universe,
+      considered sometimes as a plurality by reason of their agencies and
+      phenomena, sometimes as one simple and only being by reason of the
+      universality of the machine and the connection of its parts; so that the
+      being called God has been sometimes the wind, the fire, the water, all the
+      elements; sometimes the sun, the stars, the planets, and their influence;
+      sometimes the matter of the visible world, the totality of the universe;
+      sometimes abstract and metaphysical qualities, such as space, duration,
+      motion, intelligence; and we everywhere see this conclusion, that the idea
+      of God has not been a miraculous revelation of invisible beings, but a
+      natural offspring of the human intellect&mdash;an operation of the mind,
+      whose progress it has followed and whose revolutions it has undergone, in
+      all the progress that has been made in the knowledge of the physical world
+      and its agents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is then in vain that nations attribute their religion to heavenly
+      inspirations; it is in vain that their dogmas pretend to a primeval state
+      of supernatural events: the original barbarity of the human race, attested
+      by their own monuments,* belies these assertions at once. But there is one
+      constant and indubitable fact which refutes beyond contradiction all these
+      doubtful accounts of past ages. From this position, that man acquires and
+      receives no ideas but through the medium of his senses,** it follows with
+      certainty that every notion which claims to itself any other origin than
+      that of sensation and experience, is the erroneous supposition of a
+      posterior reasoning: now, it is sufficient to cast an eye upon the sacred
+      systems of the origin of the world, and of the actions of the gods, to
+      discover in every idea, in every word, the anticipation of an order of
+      things which could not exist till a long time after. Reason, strengthened
+      by these contradictions, rejecting everything that is not in the order of
+      nature, and admitting no historical facts but those founded on
+      probabilities, lays open its own system, and pronounces itself with
+      assurance.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is the unanimous testimony of history, and even of
+     legends, that the first human beings were every where
+     savages, and that it was to civilize them, and teach them to
+     make bread, that the Gods manifested themselves.
+
+     ** The rock on which all the ancients have split, and which
+     has occasioned all their errors, has been their supposing
+     the idea of God to be innate and co-eternal with the soul;
+     and hence all the reveries developed in Plato and Jamblicus.
+     See the Timoeus, the Phedon, and De Mysteriis Egyptiorum,
+     sect. I, c. 3.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Before one nation had received from another nation dogmas already
+      invented; before one generation had inherited ideas acquired by a
+      preceding generation, none of these complicated systems could have existed
+      in the world. The first men, being children of nature, anterior to all
+      events, ignorant of all science, were born without any idea of the dogmas
+      arising from scholastic disputes; of rites founded on the practice of arts
+      not then known; of precepts framed after the development of passions; or
+      of laws which suppose a language, a state of society not then in being; or
+      of God, whose attributes all refer to physical objects, and his actions to
+      a despotic state of government; or of the soul, or of any of those
+      metaphysical beings, which we are told are not the objects of sense, and
+      for which, however, there can be no other means of access to the
+      understanding. To arrive at so many results, the necessary circle of
+      preceding facts must have been observed; slow experience and repeated
+      trials must have taught the rude man the use of his organs; the
+      accumulated knowledge of successive generations must have invented and
+      improved the means of living; and the mind, freed from the cares of the
+      first wants of nature, must have raised itself to the complicated art of
+      comparing ideas, of digesting arguments, and seizing abstract
+      similitudes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I. Origin of the idea of God: Worship of the elements and of the physical
+      powers of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was not till after having overcome these obstacles, and gone through a
+      long career in the night of history, that man, reflecting on his
+      condition, began to perceive that he was subjected to forces superior to
+      his own, and independent of his will. The sun enlightened and warmed him,
+      the fire burned him, the thunder terrified him, the wind beat upon him,
+      the water overwhelmed him. All beings acted upon him powerfully and
+      irresistibly. He sustained this action for a long time, like a machine,
+      without enquiring the cause; but the moment he began his enquiries, he
+      fell into astonishment; and, passing from the surprise of his first
+      reflections to the reverie of curiosity, he began a chain of reasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "First, considering the action of the elements on him, he conceived an
+      idea of weakness and subjection on his part, and of power and domination
+      on theirs; and this idea of power was the primitive and fundamental type
+      of every idea of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Secondly, the action of these natural existences excited in him
+      sensations of pleasure or pain, of good or evil; and by a natural effect
+      of his organization, he conceived for them love or aversion; he desired or
+      dreaded their presence; and fear or hope gave rise to the first idea of
+      religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then, judging everything by comparison, and remarking in these beings a
+      spontaneous movement like his own, he supposed this movement directed by a
+      will,&mdash;an intelligence of the nature of his own; and hence, by
+      induction, he formed a new reasoning. Having experienced that certain
+      practices towards his fellow creatures had the effect to modify their
+      affections and direct their conduct to his advantage, he resorted to the
+      same practices towards these powerful beings of the universe. He reasoned
+      thus with himself: When my fellow creature, stronger than I, is disposed
+      to do me injury, I abase myself before him, and my prayer has the art to
+      calm him. I will pray to these powerful beings who strike me. I will
+      supplicate the intelligences of the winds, of the stars, of the waters,
+      and they will hear me. I will conjure them to avert the evil and give me
+      the good that is at their disposal; I will move them by my tears, I will
+      soften them by offerings, and I shall be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thus simple man, in the infancy of his reason, spoke to the sun and to
+      the moon; he animated with his own understanding and passions the great
+      agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds, and vain actions, to change
+      their inflexible laws. Fatal error! He prayed the stone to ascend, the
+      water to mount above its level, the mountains to remove, and substituting
+      a fantastical world for the real one, he peopled it with imaginary beings,
+      to the terror of his mind and the torment of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In this manner the ideas of God and religion have sprung, like all
+      others, from physical objects; they were produced in the mind of man from
+      his sensations, from his wants, from the circumstances of his life, and
+      the progressive state of his knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, as the ideas of God had their first models in physical agents, it
+      followed that God was at first varied and manifold, like the form under
+      which he appeared to act. Every being was a Power, a Genius; and the first
+      men conceived the universe filled with innumerable gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Again the ideas of God have been created by the affections of the human
+      heart; they became necessarily divided into two classes, according to the
+      sensations of pleasure or pain, love or hatred, which they inspired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The forces of nature, the gods and genii, were divided into beneficent
+      and malignant, good and evil powers; and hence the universality of these
+      two characters in all the systems of religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were for a
+      long time confused and ill-digested. Savage men, wandering in the woods,
+      beset with wants and destitute of resources, had not the leisure to
+      combine principles and draw conclusions; affected with more evils than
+      they found pleasures, their most habitual sentiment was that of fear,
+      their theology terror; their worship was confined to a few salutations and
+      offerings to beings whom they conceived as greedy and ferocious as
+      themselves. In their state of equality and independence, no man offered
+      himself as mediator between men and gods as insubordinate and poor as
+      himself. No one having superfluities to give, there existed no parasite by
+      the name of priest, no tribute by the name of victim, no empire by the
+      name of altar. Their dogmas and their morals were the same thing, it was
+      only self-preservation; and religion, that arbitrary idea, without
+      influence on the mutual relations of men, was a vain homage rendered to
+      the visible powers of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such was the necessary and original idea of God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the orator, addressing himself to the savage nations, continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We appeal to you, men who have received no foreign and factitious ideas;
+      tell us, have you ever gone beyond what I have described? And you, learned
+      doctors, we call you to witness; is not this the unanimous testimony of
+      all ancient monuments?*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It clearly results, says Plutarch, from the verses of
+     Orpheus and the sacred books of the Egyptians and Phrygians,
+     that the ancient theology, not only of the Greeks, but of
+     all nations, was nothing more than a system of physics, a
+     picture of the operations of nature, wrapped up in
+     mysterious allegories and enigmatical symbols, in a manner
+     that the ignorant multitude attended rather to their
+     apparent than to their hidden meaning, and even in what they
+     understood of the latter, supposed there to be something
+     more deep than what they perceived.  Fragment of a work of
+     Plutarch now lost, quoted by Eusebius, Proepar. Evang. lib.
+     3, ch. 1, p. 83.
+
+     The majority of philosophers, says Porphyry, and among
+     others Haeremon (who lived in Egypt in the first age of
+     Christianity), imagine there never to have been any other
+     world than the one we see, and acknowledged no other Gods of
+     all those recognized by the Egyptians, than such as are
+     commonly called planets, signs of the Zodiac, and
+     constellations; whose aspects, that is, rising and setting,
+     are supposed to influence the fortunes of men; to which they
+     add their divisions of the signs into decans and dispensers
+     of time, whom they style lords of the ascendant, whose
+     names, virtues in relieving distempers, rising, setting, and
+     presages of future events, are the subjects of almanacs (for
+     be it observed, that the Egyptian priests had almanacs the
+     exact counterpart of Matthew Lansberg's); for when the
+     priests affirmed that the sun was the architect of the
+     universe, Chaeremon presently concludes that all their
+     narratives respecting Isis and Osiris, together with their
+     other sacred fables, referred in part to the planets, the
+     phases of the moon, and the revolution of the sun, and in
+     part to the stars of the daily and nightly hemispheres and
+     the river Nile; in a word, in all cases to physical and
+     natural existences and never to such as might be immaterial
+     and incorporeal. . . .
+
+     All these philosophers believe that the acts of our will and
+     the motion of our bodies depend on those of the stars to
+     which they are subjected, and they refer every thing to the
+     laws of physical necessity, which they call destiny or
+     Fatum, supposing a chain of causes and effects which binds,
+     by I know not what connection, all beings together, from the
+     meanest atom to the supremest power and primary influence of
+     the Gods; so that, whether in their temples or in their
+     idols, the only subject of worship is the power of destiny.
+     Porphyr. Epist. ad Janebonem.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      II. Second system: Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But those same monuments present us likewise a system more methodical and
+      more complicated&mdash;that of the worship of all the stars; adored
+      sometimes in their proper forms, sometimes under figurative emblems and
+      symbols; and this worship was the effect of the knowledge men had acquired
+      in physics, and was derived immediately from the first causes of the
+      social state; that is, from the necessities and arts of the first degree,
+      which are among the elements of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed, as soon as men began to unite in society, it became necessary for
+      them to multiply the means of subsistence, and consequently to attend to
+      agriculture: agriculture, to be carried on with success, requires the
+      observation and knowledge of the heavens. It was necessary to know the
+      periodical return of the same operations of nature, and the same phenomena
+      in the skies; indeed to go so far as to ascertain the duration and
+      succession of the seasons and the months of the year. It was indispensable
+      to know, in the first place, the course of the sun, who, in his zodiacal
+      revolution, shows himself the supreme agent of the whole creation; then,
+      of the moon, who, by her phases and periods, regulates and distributes
+      time; then, of the stars, and even of the planets, which by their
+      appearance and disappearance on the horizon and nocturnal hemisphere,
+      marked the minutest divisions. Finally, it was necessary to form a whole
+      system of astronomy,* or a calendar; and from these works there naturally
+      followed a new manner of considering these predominant and governing
+      powers. Having observed that the productions of the earth had a regular
+      and constant relation with the heavenly bodies; that the rise, growth, and
+      decline of each plant kept pace with the appearance, elevation, and
+      declination of the same star or the same group of stars; in short, that
+      the languor or activity of vegetation seemed to depend on celestial
+      influences, men drew from thence an idea of action, of power, in those
+      beings, superior to earthly bodies; and the stars, dispensing plenty or
+      scarcity, became powers, genii,** gods, authors of good and evil.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It continues to be repeated every day, on the indirect
+     authority of the book of Genesis, that astronomy was the
+     invention of the children of Noah.  It has been gravely
+     said, that while wandering shepherds in the plains of
+     Shinar, they employed their leisure in composing a planetary
+     system: as if shepherds had occasion to know more than the
+     polar star; and if necessity was not the sole motive of
+     every invention!  If the ancient shepherds were so studious
+     and sagacious, how does it happen that the modern ones are
+     so stupid, ignorant, and inattentive?  And it is a fact that
+     the Arabs of the desert know not so many as six
+     constellations, and understand not a word of astronomy.
+
+     ** It appears that by the word genius, the ancients denoted
+     a quality, a generative power; for the following words,
+     which are all of one family, convey this meaning: generare,
+     genos, genesis, genus, gens.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "As the state of society had already introduced a regular hierarchy of
+      ranks, employments and conditions, men, continuing to reason by
+      comparison, carried their new notions into their theology, and formed a
+      complicated system of divinities by gradation of rank, in which the sun,
+      as first god,* was a military chief or a political king: the moon was his
+      wife and queen; the planets were servants, bearers of commands,
+      messengers; and the multitude of stars were a nation, an army of heroes,
+      genii, whose office was to govern the world under the orders of their
+      chiefs. All the individuals had names, functions, attributes, drawn from
+      their relations and influences; and even sexes, from the gender of their
+      appellations.**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Sabeans, ancient and modern, says Maimonides,
+     acknowledge a principal God, the maker and inhabitant of
+     heaven; but on account of his great distance they conceive
+     him to be inaccessible; and in imitation of the conduct of
+     people towards their kings, they employ as mediators with
+     him, the planets and their angels, whom they call princes
+     and potentates, and whom they suppose to reside in those
+     luminous bodies as in palaces or tabernacles, etc.  More-
+     Nebuchim.
+
+     ** According as the gender of the object was in the language
+     of the nation masculine or feminine, the Divinity who bore
+     its name was male or female.  Thus the Cappadocians called
+     the moon God, and the sun Goddess: a circumstance which
+     gives to the same beings a perpetual variety in ancient
+     mythology.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "And as the social state had introduced certain usages and ceremonies,
+      religion, keeping pace with the social state, adopted similar ones; these
+      ceremonies, at first simple and private, became public and solemn; the
+      offerings became rich and more numerous, and the rites more methodical;
+      they assigned certain places for the assemblies, and began to have chapels
+      and temples; they instituted officers to administer them, and these became
+      priests and pontiffs: they established liturgies, and sanctified certain
+      days, and religion became a civil act, a political tie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But in this arrangement, religion did not change its first principles;
+      the idea of God was always that of physical beings, operating good or
+      evil, that is, impressing sensations of pleasure or pain: the dogma was
+      the knowledge of their laws, or their manner of acting; virtue and sin,
+      the observance or infraction of these laws; and morality, in its native
+      simplicity, was the judicious practice of whatever contributes to the
+      preservation of existence, the well-being of one's self and his fellow
+      creatures.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * We may add, says Plutarch, that these Egyptian priests
+     always regarded the preservation of health as a point of the
+     first importance, and as indispensably necessary to the
+     practice of piety and the service of the gods.  See his
+     account of Isis and Osiris, towards the end.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Should it be asked at what epoch this system took its birth, we shall
+      answer on the testimony of the monuments of astronomy itself; that its
+      principles appear with certainty to have been established about seventeen
+      thousand years ago,* and if it be asked to what people it is to be
+      attributed, we shall answer that the same monuments, supported by
+      unanimous traditions, attribute it to the first tribes of Egypt; and when
+      reason finds in that country all the circumstances which could lead to
+      such a system; when it finds there a zone of sky, bordering on the tropic,
+      equally free from the rains of the equator and the fogs of the North;**
+      when it finds there a central point of the sphere of the ancients, a
+      salubrious climate, a great, but manageable river, a soil fertile without
+      art or labor, inundated without morbid exhalations, and placed between two
+      seas which communicate with the richest countries, it conceives that the
+      inhabitant of the Nile, addicted to agriculture from the nature of his
+      soil, to geometry from the annual necessity of measuring his lands, to
+      commerce from the facility of communications, to astronomy from the state
+      of his sky, always open to observation, must have been the first to pass
+      from the savage to the social state; and consequently to attain the
+      physical and moral sciences necessary to civilized life.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The historical orator follows here the opinion of M.
+     Dupuis, who, in his learned memoirs concerning the Origin of
+     the Constellations and Origin of all Worship, has assigned
+     many plausible reasons to prove that Libra was formerly the
+     sign of the vernal, and Aries of the autumnal equinox; that
+     is, that since the origin of the actual astronomical system,
+     the precession of the equinoxes has carried forward by seven
+     signs the primitive order of the zodiac.  Now estimating the
+     precession at about seventy years and a half to a degree,
+     that is, 2,115 years to each sign; and observing that Aries
+     was in its fifteenth degree, 1,447 years before Christ, it
+     follows that the first degree of Libra could not have
+     coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194
+     years before Christ; now, if you add 1790 years since
+     Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the
+     origin of the Zodiac.  The vernal equinox coincided with the
+     first degree of Aries, 2,504 years before Christ, and with
+     the first degree of Taurus 4,619 years before Christ.  Now
+     it is to be observed, that the worship of the Bull is the
+     principal article in the theological creed of the Egyptians,
+     Persians, Japanese, etc.; from whence it clearly follows,
+     that some general revolution took place among these nations
+     at that time. The chronology of five or six thousand years
+     in Genesis is little agreeable to this hypothesis; but as
+     the book of Genesis cannot claim to be considered as a
+     history farther back than Abraham, we are at liberty to make
+     what arrangements we please in the eternity that preceded.
+     See on this subject the analysis of Genesis, in the first
+     volume of New Researches on Ancient History; see also Origin
+     of Constellatians, by Dupuis, 1781; the Origin of Worship,
+     in 3 vols. 1794, and the Chronological Zodiac, 1806.
+
+     ** M. Balli, in placing the first astronomers at
+     Selingenakoy, near the Bailkal paid no attention to this
+     twofold circumstance: it equally argues against their being
+     placed at Axoum on account of the rains, and the Zimb fly of
+     which Mr. Bruce speaks.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "It was, then, on the borders of the upper Nile, among a black race of
+      men, that was organized the complicated system of the worship of the
+      stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth and the
+      labors of agriculture; and this first worship, characterized by their
+      adoration under their own forms and natural attributes, was a simple
+      proceeding of the human mind. But in a short time, the multiplicity of the
+      objects of their relations, and their reciprocal influence, having
+      complicated the ideas, and the signs that represented them, there followed
+      a confusion as singular in its cause as pernicious in its effects."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III. Third system. Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As soon as this agricultural people began to observe the stars with
+      attention, they found it necessary to individualize or group them; and to
+      assign to each a proper name, in order to understand each other in their
+      designation. A great difficulty must have presented itself in this
+      business: First, the heavenly bodies, similar in form, offered no
+      distinguishing characteristics by which to denominate them; and, secondly,
+      the language in its infancy and poverty, had no expressions for so many
+      new and metaphysical ideas. Necessity, the usual stimulus of genius,
+      surmounted everything. Having remarked that in the annual revolution, the
+      renewal and periodical appearance of terrestrial productions were
+      constantly associated with the rising and setting of certain stars, and to
+      their position as relative to the sun, the fundamental term of all
+      comparison, the mind by a natural operation connected in thought these
+      terrestrial and celestial objects, which were connected in fact; and
+      applying to them a common sign, it gave to the stars, and their groups,
+      the names of the terrestrial objects to which they answered.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The ancients," says Maimonides, "directing all their
+     attention to agriculture, gave names to the stars derived
+     from their occupation during the year."  More Neb. pars 3.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Thus the Ethopian of Thebes named stars of inundation, or Aquarius, those
+      stars under which the Nile began to overflow;* stars of the ox or the
+      bull, those under which they began to plow; stars of the lion, those under
+      which that animal, driven from the desert by thirst, appeared on the banks
+      of the Nile; stars of the sheaf, or of the harvest virgin, those of the
+      reaping season; stars of the lamb, stars of the two kids, those under
+      which these precious animals were brought forth: and thus was resolved the
+      first part of the difficulty.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This must have been June.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Moreover, man having remarked in the beings which surrounded him certain
+      qualities distinctive and proper to each species, and having thence
+      derived a name by which to designate them, he found in the same source an
+      ingenious mode of generalizing his ideas; and transferring the name
+      already invented to every thing which bore any resemblance or analogy, he
+      enriched his language with a perpetual round of metaphors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thus the same Ethiopian having observed that the return of the inundation
+      always corresponded with the rising of a beautiful star which appeared
+      towards the source of the Nile, and seemed to warn the husbandman against
+      the coming waters, he compared this action to that of the animal who, by
+      his barking, gives notice of danger, and he called this star the dog, the
+      barker (Sirius). In the same manner he named the stars of the crab, those
+      where the sun, having arrived at the tropic, retreated by a slow
+      retrograde motion like the crab or cancer. He named stars of the wild
+      goat, or Capricorn, those where the sun, having reached the highest point
+      in his annuary tract, rests at the summit of the horary gnomon, and
+      imitates the goat, who delights to climb the summit of the rocks. He named
+      stars of the balance, or libra, those where the days and nights, being
+      equal, seemed in equilibrium, like that instrument; and stars of the
+      scorpion, those where certain periodical winds bring vapors, burning like
+      the venom of the scorpion. In the same manner he called by the name of
+      rings and serpents the figured traces of the orbits of the stars and the
+      planets, and such was the general mode of naming all the stars and even
+      the planets, taken by groups or as individuals, according to their
+      relations with husbandry and terrestrial objects, and according to the
+      analogies which each nation found between them and the objects of its
+      particular soil and climate.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The ancients had verbs from the substantives crab, goat,
+     tortoise, as the French have at present the verbs serpenter,
+     coquetter.  The history of all languages is nearly the same.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "From this it appeared that abject and terrestrial beings became
+      associated with the superior and powerful inhabitants of heaven; and this
+      association became stronger every day by the mechanism of language and the
+      constitution of the human mind. Men would say by a natural metaphor: The
+      bull spreads over the earth the germs of fecundity (in spring) he restores
+      vegetation and plenty: the lamb (or ram) delivers the skies from the
+      maleficent powers of winter; he saves the world from the serpent (emblem
+      of the humid season) and restores the empire of goodness (summer, joyful
+      season): the scorpion pours out his poison on the earth, and scatters
+      diseases and death. The same of all similar effects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This language, understood by every one, was attended at first with no
+      inconvenience; but in the course of time, when the calendar had been
+      regulated, the people, who had no longer any need of observing the
+      heavens, lost sight of the original meaning of these expressions; and the
+      allegories remaining in common use became a fatal stumbling block to the
+      understanding and to reason. Habituated to associate to the symbols the
+      ideas of their archetypes, the mind at last confounded them: then the same
+      animals, whom fancy had transported to the skies, returned again to the
+      earth; but being thus returned, clothed in the livery of the stars, they
+      claimed the stellary attributes, and imposed on their own authors. Then it
+      was that the people, believing that they saw their gods among them, could
+      pray to them with more convenience: they demanded from the ram of their
+      flock the influences which might be expected from the heavenly ram; they
+      prayed the scorpion not to pour out his venom upon nature; they revered
+      the crab of the sea, the scarabeus of the mud, the fish of the river; and
+      by a series of corrupt but inseparable analogies, they lost themselves in
+      a labyrinth of well connected absurdities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such was the origin of that ancient whimsical worship of the animals;
+      such is the train of ideas by which the character of the divinity became
+      common to the vilest of brutes, and by which was formed that theological
+      system, extremely comprehensive, complicated, and learned, which, rising
+      on the borders of the Nile, propagated from country to country by
+      commerce, war, and conquest, overspread the whole of the ancient world;
+      and which, modified by time, circumstances and prejudices, is still seen
+      entire among a hundred nations, and remains as the essential and secret
+      basis of the theology of those even who despise and reject it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some murmurs at these words being heard from various groups: "Yes!"
+      continued the orator, "hence arose, for instance, among you, nations of
+      Africa, the adoration of your fetiches, plants, animals, pebbles, pieces
+      of wood, before which your ancestors would not have had the folly to bow,
+      if they had not seen in them talismans endowed with the virtue of the
+      stars.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The ancient astrologers, says the most learned of the Jews
+     (Maimonides), having sacredly assigned to each planet a
+     color, an animal, a tree, a metal, a fruit, a plant, formed
+     from them all a figure or representation of the star, taking
+     care to select for the purpose a proper moment, a fortunate
+     day, such as the conjunction of the star, or some other
+     favorable aspect.  They conceived that by their magic
+     ceremonies they could introduce into those figures or idols
+     the influences of the superior beings after which they were
+     modeled.  These were the idols that the Chaldean-Sabeans
+     adored; and in the performance of their worship they were
+     obliged to be dressed in the proper color.  The astrologers,
+     by their practices, thus introduced idolatry, desirous of
+     being regarded as the dispensers of the favors of heaven;
+     and as agriculture was the sole employment of the ancients,
+     they succeeded in persuading them that the rain and other
+     blessings of the seasons were at their disposal.  Thus the
+     whole art of agriculture was exercised by rules of
+     astrology, and the priests made talismans or charms which
+     were to drive away locusts, flies, etc.  See Maimonides,
+     More Nebuchim, pars 3, c. 29.
+
+     The priests of Egypt, Persia, India, etc., pretended to bind
+     the Gods to their idols, and to make them come from heaven
+     at their pleasure.  They threatened the sun and moon, if
+     they were disobedient, to reveal the secret mysteries, to
+     shake the skies, etc., etc.  Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 198,
+     and Jamblicus de Mysteriis Aegypt.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Here, ye nations of Tartary, is the origin of your marmosets, and of all
+      that train of animals with which your chamans ornament their magical
+      robes. This is the origin of those figures of birds and of snakes which
+      savage nations imprint upon their skins with sacred and mysterious
+      ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ye inhabitants of India! in vain you cover yourselves with the veil of
+      mystery: the hawk of your god Vichenou is but one of the thousand emblems
+      of the sun in Egypt; and your incarnations of a god in the fish, the boar,
+      the lion, the tortoise, and all his monstrous adventures, are only the
+      metamorphoses of the sun, who, passing through the signs of the twelve
+      animals (or the zodiac), was supposed to assume their figures, and perform
+      their astronomical functions.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the very words of Jamblicus de Symbolis
+     Aegyptiorum, c. 2, sect. 7.  The sun was the grand Proteus,
+     the universal metamorphist.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "People of Japan, your bull, which breaks the mundane egg, is only the
+      bull of the zodiac, which in former times opened the seasons, the age of
+      creation, the vernal equinox. It is the same bull Apis which Egypt adored,
+      and which your ancestors, Jewish Rabbins, worshipped in the golden calf.
+      This is still your bull, followers of Zoroaster, which, sacrificed in the
+      symbolic mysteries of Mithra, poured out his blood which fertilized the
+      earth. And ye Christians, your bull of the Apocalypse, with his wings,
+      symbol of the air, has no other origin; and your lamb of God, sacrificed,
+      like the bull of Mithra, for the salvation of the world, is only the same
+      sun, in the sign of the celestial ram, which, in a later age, opening the
+      equinox in his turn, was supposed to deliver the world from evil, that is
+      to say, from the constellation of the serpent, from that great snake, the
+      parent of winter, the emblem of the Ahrimanes, or Satan of the Persians,
+      your school masters. Yes, in vain does your imprudent zeal consign
+      idolaters to the torments of the Tartarus which they invented; the whole
+      basis of your system is only the worship of the sun, with whose attributes
+      you have decorated your principal personage. It is the sun which, under
+      the name of Horus, was born, like your God, at the winter solstice, in the
+      arms of the celestial virgin, and who passed a childhood of obscurity,
+      indigence, and want, answering to the season of cold and frost. It is he
+      that, under the name of Osiris, persecuted by Typhon and by the tyrants of
+      the air, was put to death, shut up in a dark tomb, emblem of the
+      hemisphere of winter, and afterwards, ascending from the inferior zone
+      towards the zenith of heaven, arose again from the dead triumphant over
+      the giants and the angels of destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all over
+      your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole is his
+      zodiac;* your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets. Ye pontiffs
+      and prelates! your mitre, your crozier, your mantle are those of Osiris;
+      and that cross whose mystery you extol without comprehending it, is the
+      cross of Serapis, traced by the hands of Egyptian priests on the plan of
+      the figurative world; which, passing through the equinoxes and the
+      tropics, became the emblem of the future life and of the resurrection,
+      because it touched the gates of ivory and of horn, through which the soul
+      passed to heaven."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The Arabs," says Herodotus, "shave their heads in a
+     circle and about the temples, in imitation of Bacchus (that
+     is the sun), who shaves himself is this manner."  Jeremiah
+     speaks also of this custom.  The tuft of hair which the
+     Mahometans preserve, is taken also from the sun, who was
+     painted by the Egyptians at the winter solstice, as having
+     but a single hair upon his head. . . .
+
+     The robes of the goddess of Syria and of Diana of Ephesus,
+     from whence are borrowed the dress of the priests; have the
+     twelve animals of the zodiac painted on them. . . .
+
+     Rosaries are found upon all the Indian idols, constructed
+     more than four thousand years ago, and their use in the East
+     has been universal from time immemorial. . . .
+
+     The crozier is precisely the staff of Bootes or Osiris.
+     (See plate.)
+
+     All the Lamas wear the mitre or cap in the shape of a cone,
+     which was an emblem of the sun.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each other
+      with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator proceeded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas: First,
+      the figurative expressions under which an infant language was obliged to
+      describe the relations of objects; expressions which, passing afterwards
+      from a limited to a general sense, and from a physical to a moral one,
+      caused, by their ambiguities and synonymes, a great number of mistakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or finished,
+      twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had killed them, fought
+      them, conquered them; and of this was composed the historical life of
+      Hercules.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the
+     Constellations, before cited.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the seed time
+      and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and occupations, ran
+      through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he was taken for a
+      legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they framed from this the
+      history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of that description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this
+      conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.* Having said that the
+      planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and ascended to its
+      exaltation, they said that it had died, risen again, was carried into
+      heaven, etc.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of
+     Isis and Osiris.  The Hebrews say, in speaking of the
+     generations of the Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam.
+     From this continual equivoke of ancient language, proceeds
+     every mistake.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves, by which
+      men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of hieroglyphics, or
+      sacred characters, were the first invention of the mind. Thus, to give
+      warning of the inundation, and of the necessity of guarding against it,
+      they painted a boat, the ship Argo; to express the wind, they painted the
+      wing of a bird; to designate the season, or the month, they painted the
+      bird of passage, the insect, or the animal which made its appearance at
+      that period; to describe the winter, they painted a hog or a serpent,
+      which delight in humid places, and the combination of these figures
+      carried the known sense of words and phrases.* But as this sense could not
+      be fixed with precision, as the number of these figures and their
+      combinations became excessive, and overburdened the memory, the immediate
+      consequence was confusion and false interpretations. Genius afterwards
+      having invented the more simple art of applying signs to sounds, of which
+      the number is limited, and painting words, instead of thoughts,
+      alphabetical writing thus threw into disuetude hieroglyphical painting;
+      and its signification, falling daily into oblivion, gave rise to a
+      multitude of illusions, ambiguities, and errors.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The reader will doubtless see with pleasure some examples
+     of ancient hieroglyphics.
+
+     "The Egyptians (says Hor-appolo) represent eternity by the
+     figures of the sun and moon.  They designate the world by
+     the blue serpent with yellow scales (stars, it is the
+     Chinese Dragon).  If they were desirous of expressing the
+     year, they drew a picture of Isis, who is also in their
+     language called Sothis, or dog-star, one of the first
+     constellations, by the rising of which the year commences;
+     its inscription at Sais was, It is I that rise in the
+     constellation of the Dog.
+
+     "They also represent the year by a palm tree, and the month
+     by one of its branches, because it is the nature of this
+     tree to produce a branch every month.  They farther
+     represent it by the fourth part of an acre of land."  The
+     whole acre divided into four denotes the bissextile period
+     of four years.  The abbreviation of this figure of a field
+     in four divisions, is manifestly the letter ha or het, the
+     seventh in the Samaritan alphabet; and in general all the
+     letters of the alphabet are merely astronomical
+     hieroglyphics; and it is for this reason that the mode of
+     writing is from right to left, like the march of the stars.
+     &mdash;"They denote a prophet by the image of a dog, because the
+     dog star (Anoubis) by its rising gives notice of the
+     inundation.  Noubi, in Hebrew signifies prophet&mdash;They
+     represent inundation by a lion, because it takes place under
+     that sign: and hence, says Plutarch, the custom of placing
+     at the gates of temples figures of lions with water issuing
+     from their mouths.&mdash;They express the idea of God and destiny
+     by a star.  They also represent God, says Porphyry, by a
+     black stone, because his nature is dark and obscure.  All
+     white things express the celestial and luminous Gods: all
+     circular ones the world, the moon, the sun, the orbits; all
+     semicircular ones, as bows and crescents are descriptive of
+     the moon.  Fire and the Gods of Olympus they represent by
+     pyramids and obelisks (the name of the sun, Baal, is found
+     in this latter word): the sun by a cone (the mitre of
+     Osiris): the earth, by a cylinder (which revolves): the
+     generative power of the air by the phalus, and that of the
+     earth by a triangle, emblem of the female organ.  Euseb.
+     Proecep.  Evang. p. 98.
+
+     "Clay, says Jamblicus de Symbolis, sect. 7, c. 2. denotes
+     matter, the generative and nutrimental power, every thing
+     which receives the warmth and fermentation of life."
+
+     "A man sitting upon the Lotos or Nenuphar, represents the
+     moving spirit (the sun) which, in like manner as that plant
+     lives in the water without any communication with clay,
+     exists equally distinct from matter, swimming in empty
+     space, resting on itself: it is round also in all its parts,
+     like the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit of the Lotos.
+     (Brama has the eyes of the Lotos, says Chasler Nesdirsen, to
+     denote his intelligence: his eye swims over every thing,
+     like the flower of the Lotos on the waters.)  A man at the
+     helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun
+     which governs all.  And Porphyry tells us that the sun is
+     also represented by a man in a ship resting upon an
+     amphibious crocodile (emblem of air and water).
+
+     "At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a
+     sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and
+     the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which
+     represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of
+     the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at
+     the period of junction, to raise water into the clouds.
+     Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
+
+     "The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account
+     of his rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions
+     of the air where light abounds.
+
+     A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of
+     violence, because it is said to kill its father and to
+     ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical
+     inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on
+     the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A
+     fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1. Entrance, into
+     life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5.  Injustice. See
+     Isis and Osiris.
+
+     "The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus,
+     because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that
+     in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as
+     the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the
+     sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an opposite direction to its
+     own.
+
+     "They represent the world also by the number five, being
+     that of the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth,
+     water, air, fire, and ether, or spiritus.  The Indians have
+     the same number of elements, and according to Macrobius's
+     mystics, they are the supreme God, or primum mobile, the
+     intelligence, or mens, born of him, the soul of the world
+     which proceeds from him, the celestial spheres, and all
+     things terrestrial.  Hence, adds Plutarch, the analogy
+     between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
+
+     "The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because
+     like that animal he is of a reddish color.  Now Typhon
+     signifies whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in
+     Hebrew I find the three words clay, red, and ass to be
+     formed from the same root hamr).  Jamblicus has farther told
+     us that clay was the emblem of matter and he elsewhere adds,
+     that all evil and corruption proceeded from matter; which
+     compared with the phrase of Macrobius, all is perishable,
+     liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives us the
+     theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good
+     and evil of the ancients."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Finally, a third cause of confusion was the civil organization of ancient
+      states. When the people began to apply themselves to agriculture, the
+      formation of a rural calendar, requiring a continued series of
+      astronomical observations, it became necessary to appoint certain
+      individuals charged with the functions of watching the appearance and
+      disappearance of certain stars, to foretell the return of the inundation,
+      of certain winds, of the rainy season, the proper time to sow every kind
+      of grain. These men, on account of their service, were exempt from common
+      labor, and the society provided for their maintenance. With this
+      provision, and wholly employed in their observations, they soon became
+      acquainted with the great phenomena of nature, and even learned to
+      penetrate the secret of many of her operations. They discovered the
+      movement of the stars and planets, the coincidence of their phases and
+      returns with the productions of the earth and the action of vegetation;
+      the medicinal and nutritive properties of plants and fruits; the action of
+      the elements, and their reciprocal affinities. Now, as there was no other
+      method of communicating the knowledge of these discoveries but the
+      laborious one of oral instruction, they transmitted it only to their
+      relations and friends, it followed therefore that all science and
+      instruction were confined to a few families, who, arrogating it to
+      themselves as an exclusive privilege, assumed a professional distinction,
+      a corporation spirit, fatal to the public welfare. This continued
+      succession of the same researches and the same labors, hastened, it is
+      true, the progress of knowledge; but by the mystery which accompanied it,
+      the people were daily plunged in deeper shades, and became more
+      superstitious and more enslaved. Seeing their fellow mortals produce
+      certain phenomena, announce, as at pleasure, eclipses and comets, heal
+      diseases, and handle venomous serpents, they thought them in alliance with
+      celestial powers; and, to obtain the blessings and avert the evils which
+      they expected from above, they took them for mediators and interpreters;
+      and thus became established in the bosom of every state sacrilegious
+      corporations of hypocritical and deceitful men, who centered all powers in
+      themselves; and the priests, being at once astronomers, theologians,
+      naturalists, physicians, magicians, interpreters of the gods, oracles of
+      men, and rivals of kings, or their accomplices, established, under the
+      name of religion, an empire of mystery and a monopoly of instruction,
+      which to this day have ruined every nation. . . ."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the priests of all the groups interrupted the orator, and with loud
+      cries accused him of impiety, irreligion, blasphemy; and endeavored to cut
+      short his discourse; but the legislator observing that this was only an
+      exposition of historical facts, which, if false or forged, would be easily
+      refuted; that hitherto the declaration of every opinion had been free, and
+      without this it would be impossible to discover the truth, the orator
+      proceeded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, from all these causes, and from the continual associations of
+      ill-assorted ideas, arose a mass of disorders in theology, in morals, and
+      in traditions; first, because the animals represented the stars, the
+      characters of the animals, their appetites, their sympathies, their
+      aversions, passed over to the gods, and were supposed to be their actions;
+      thus, the god Ichneumon made war against the god Crocodile; the god Wolf
+      liked to eat the god Sheep; the god Ibis devoured the god Serpent; and the
+      deity became a strange, capricious, and ferocious being, whose idea
+      deranged the judgment of man, and corrupted his morals and his reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Again, because in the spirit of their worship every family, every nation,
+      took for its special patron a star or a constellation, the affections or
+      antipathies of the symbolic animal were transferred to its sectaries; and
+      the partisans of the god Dog were enemies to those of the god Wolf;* those
+      who adored the god Ox had an abhorrence to those who ate him; and religion
+      became the source of hatred and hostility,&mdash;the senseless cause of
+      frenzy and superstition.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are properly the words of Plutarch, who relates that
+     those various worships were given by a king of Egypt to the
+     different towns to disunite and enslave them, and these
+     kings had been taken from the cast of priests.  See Isis and
+     Osiris.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Besides, the names of those animal-stars having, for this same reason of
+      patronage, been conferred on countries, nations, mountains, and rivers,
+      these objects were taken for gods, and hence followed a mixture of
+      geographical, historical, and mythological beings, which confounded all
+      traditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Finally, by the analogy of actions which were ascribed to them, the
+      god-stars, having been taken for men, for heroes, for kings, kings and
+      heroes took in their turn the actions of gods for models, and by imitation
+      became warriors, conquerors, proud, lascivious, indolent, sanguinary; and
+      religion consecrated the crimes of despots, and perverted the principles
+      of government."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV. Fourth system. Worship of two Principles, or Dualism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the mean time, the astronomical priests, enjoying peace and abundance
+      in their temples, made every day new progress in the sciences, and the
+      system of the world unfolding gradually to their view, they raised
+      successively various hypotheses as to its agents and effects, which became
+      so many theological systems.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The voyages of the maritime nations and the caravans of the nomads of
+      Asia and Africa, having given them a knowledge of the earth from the
+      Fortunate Islands to Serica, and from the Baltic to the sources of the
+      Nile, the comparison of the phenomena of the various zones taught them the
+      rotundity of the earth, and gave birth to a new theory. Having remarked
+      that all the operations of nature during the annual period were reducible
+      to two principal ones, that of producing and that of destroying; that on
+      the greater part of the globe these two operations were performed in the
+      intervals of the two equinoxes; that is to say, during the six months of
+      summer every thing was procreating and multiplying, and that during winter
+      everything languished and almost died; they supposed in Nature two
+      contrary powers, which were in a continual state of contention and
+      exertion; and considering the celestial sphere in this view, they divided
+      the images which they figured upon it into two halves or hemispheres; so
+      that the constellations which were on the summer heaven formed a direct
+      and superior empire; and those which were on the winter heaven composed an
+      antipode and inferior empire. Therefore, as the constellations of summer
+      accompanied the season of long, warm, and unclouded days, and that of
+      fruits and harvests, they were considered as the powers of light,
+      fecundity, and creation; and, by a transition from a physical to a moral
+      sense, they became genii, angels of science, of beneficence, of purity and
+      virtue. And as the constellations of winter were connected with long
+      nights and polar fogs, they were the genii of darkness, of destruction, of
+      death; and by transition, angels of ignorance, of wickedness, of sin and
+      vice. By this arrangement the heaven was divided into two domains, two
+      factions; and the analogy of human ideas already opened a vast field to
+      the errors of imagination; but the mistake and the illusion were
+      determined, if not occasioned by a particular circumstance. (Observe plate
+      Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the projection of the celestial sphere, as traced by the astronomical
+      priests,* the zodiac and the constellations, disposed in circular order,
+      presented their halves in diametrical opposition; the hemisphere of
+      winter, antipode of that of summer, was adverse, contrary, opposed to it.
+      By a continual metaphor, these words acquired a moral sense; and the
+      adverse genii, or angels, became revolted enemies.** From that moment all
+      the astronomical history of the constellations was changed into a
+      political history; the heavens became a human state, where things happened
+      as on the earth. Now, as the earthly states, the greater part despotic,
+      had already their monarchs, and as the sun was apparently the monarch of
+      the skies, the summer hemisphere (empire of light) and its constellations
+      (a nation of white angels) had for king an enlightened God, a creator
+      intelligent and good. And as every rebel faction must have its chief, the
+      heaven of winter, the subterranean empire of darkness and woe, and its
+      stars, a nation of black angels, giants and demons, had for their chief a
+      malignant genius, whose character was applied by different people to the
+      constellation which to them was the most remarkable. In Egypt it was at
+      first the Scorpion, first zodiacal sign after Libra, and for a long time
+      chief of the winter signs ; then it was the Bear, or the polar Ass, called
+      Typhon, that is to say, deluge,** on account of the rains which deluge the
+      earth during the dominion of that star. At a later period,*** in
+      Persia,**** it was the Serpent, who, under the name of Abrimanes, formed
+      the basis of the system of Zoroaster; and it is the same, O Christians and
+      Jews! that has become your serpent of Eve (the celestial virgin,) and that
+      of the cross; in both cases it is the emblem of Satan, the enemy and great
+      adversary of the Ancient of Days, sung by Daniel.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The ancient priests had three kinds of spheres, which it
+     may be useful to make known to the reader.
+
+     "We read in Eusebius," says Porphyry, "that Zoroaster was
+     the first who, having fixed upon a cavern pleasantly
+     situated in the mountains adjacent to Persia, formed the
+     idea of consecrating it to Mithra (the sun) creator and
+     father of all things: that is to say, having made in this
+     cavern several geometrical divisions, representing the
+     seasons and the elements, he imitated on a small scale the
+     order and disposition of the universe by Mithra.  After
+     Zoroaster, it became a custom to consecrate caverns for the
+     celebration of mysteries: so that in like manner as temples
+     were dedicated to the Gods, rural altars to heroes and
+     terrestrial deities, etc., subterranean abodes to infernal
+     deities, so caverns and grottoes were consecrated to the
+     world, to the universe, and to the nymphs: and from hence
+     Pythagoras and Plato borrowed the idea of calling the earth
+     a cavern, a cave, de Antro Nympharum.
+
+     Such was the first projection of the sphere in relief;
+     though the Persians give the honor of the invention to
+     Zoroaster, it is doubtless due to the Egyptians; for we may
+     suppose from this projection being the most simple that it
+     was the most ancient; the caverns of Thebes, full of similar
+     pictures, tend to strengthen this opinion.
+
+     The following was the second projection: "The prophets or
+     hierophants," says Bishop Synnesius, "who had been initiated
+     in the mysteries, do not permit the common workmen to form
+     idols or images of the Gods; but they descend themselves
+     into the sacred caves, where they have concealed coffers
+     containing certain spheres upon which they construct those
+     images secretly and without the knowledge of the people, who
+     despise simple and natural things and wish for prodigies and
+     fables."  (Syn. in Calvit.)  That is, the ancient priests
+     had armillary spheres like ours; and this passage, which so
+     well agrees with that of Chaeremon, gives us the key to all
+     their theological astrology.
+
+     Lastly, they had flat models of the nature of Plate V. with
+     the difference that they were of a very complicated nature,
+     having every fictitious division of decan and subdecan, with
+     the hieroglyphic signs of their influence.  Kircher has
+     given us a copy of one of them in his Egyptian Oedipus, and
+     Gybelin a figured fragment in his book of the calendar
+     (under the name of the Egyptian Zodiac).  The ancient
+     Egyptians, says the astrologer Julius Firmicus, (Astron.
+     lib. ii. and lib. iv., c. 16), divide each sign of the
+     Zodiac into three sections; and each section was under the
+     direction of an imaginary being whom they called decan or
+     chief of ten; so that there were three decans a month, and
+     thirty-six a year.  Now these decans, who were also called
+     Gods (Theoi), regulated the destinies of mankind&mdash;and they
+     were placed particularly in certain stars.  They afterwards
+     imagined in every ten three other Gods, whom they called
+     arbiters; so that there were nine for every month, and these
+     were farther divided into an infinite number of powers.  The
+     Persians and Indians made their spheres on similar plans;
+     and if a picture thereof were to be drawn from the
+     description given by Scaliger at the end of Manilius, we
+     should find in it a complete explanation of their
+     hieroglyphics, for every article forms one.
+
+     ** If it was for this reason the Persians always wrote the
+     name of Ahrimanes inverted thus: ['Ahrimanes' upside down
+     and backwards].
+
+     *** Typhon, pronounced Touphon by the Greeks, is precisely
+     the touphan of the Arabs, which signifies deluge; and these
+     deluges in mythology are nothing more than winter and the
+     rains, or the overflowing of the Nile: as their pretended
+     fires which are to destroy the world, are simply the summer
+     season.  And it is for this reason that Aristotle (De
+     Meteor, lib. I. c. xiv), says, that the winter of the great
+     cyclic year is a deluge; and its summer a conflagration.
+     "The Egyptians," says Porphyry, "employ every year a
+     talisman in remembrance of the world: at the summer solstice
+     they mark their houses, flocks and trees with red, supposing
+     that on that day the whole world had been set on fire.  It
+     was also at the same period that they celebrated the pyrric
+     or fire dance."  And this illustrates the origin of
+     purification by fire and by water; for having denominated
+     the tropic of Cancer the gate of heaven, and the genial heat
+     of celestial fire, and that of Capricorn the gate of deluge
+     or of water, it was imagined that the spirit or souls who
+     passed through these gates in their way to and from heaven,
+     were roasted or bathed: hence the baptism of Mithra; and the
+     passage through flames, observed throughout the East long
+     before Moses.
+
+     **** That is when the ram became the equinoctial sign, or
+     rather when the alteration of the skies showed that it was
+     no longer the bull.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "In Syria, it was the hog or wild boar, enemy of Adonis; because in that
+      country the functions of the Northern Bear were performed by the animal
+      whose inclination for mire and dirt was emblematic of winter. And this is
+      the reason, followers of Moses and Mahomet! that you hold him in horror,
+      in imitation of the priests of Memphis and Balbec, who detested him as the
+      murderer of their God, the sun. This likewise, O Indians! is the type of
+      your Chib-en; and it has been likewise the Pluto of your brethren, the
+      Romans and Greeks; in like manner, your Brama, God the creator, is only
+      the Persian Ormuzd, and the Egyptian Osiris, whose very name expresses
+      creative power, producer of forms. And these gods received a worship
+      analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary; which worship was
+      divided into two branches, according to their characters. The good god
+      receives a worship of love and joy, from which are derived all religious
+      acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances, banquets, offerings of flowers,
+      milk, honey, perfumes; in a word, everything grateful to the senses and to
+      the soul.* The evil god, on the contrary, received a worship of fear and
+      pain; whence originated all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears,
+      desolations, mournings, self-denials, bloody offerings, and cruel
+      sacrifices.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * All the ancient festivals respecting the return and
+     exaltation of the sun were of this description: hence the
+     hilaria of the Roman calendar at the period of the passage,
+     Pascha, of the vernal equinox.  The dances were imitations
+     of the march of the planets. Those of the Dervises still
+     represent it to this day.
+
+     ** "Sacrifices of blood," says Porphyry, "were only offered
+     to Demons and evil Genii to avert their wrath.  Demons are
+     fond of blood, humidity, stench."  Apud. Euseb. Proep. Ev.,
+     p. 173.
+
+     "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "only offer bloody victims
+     to Typhon.  They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animal
+     immolated is held in execration and loaded with all the sins
+     of the people." The goat of Moses.  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+     Strabo says, speaking of Moses, and the Jews, "Circumcision
+     and the prohibition of certain kinds of meat sprung from
+     superstition." And I observe, respecting the ceremony of
+     circumcision, that its object was to take from the symbol of
+     Osiris, (Phallus) the pretended obstacle to fecundity: an
+     obstacle which bore the seal of Typhon, "whose nature," says
+     Plutarch, "is made up of all that hinders, opposes, causes
+     obstruction."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Hence arose that distinction of terrestrial beings into pure and impure,
+      sacred and abominable, according as their species were of the number of
+      the constellations of one of these two gods, and made part of his domain;
+      and this produced, on the one hand, the superstitions concerning
+      pollutions and purifications; and, on the other, the pretended efficacious
+      virtues of amulets and talismans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You conceive now," continued the orator, addressing himself to the
+      Persians, the Indians, the Jews, the Christians, the Mussulmans, "you
+      conceive the origin of those ideas of battles and rebellions, which
+      equally abound in all your mythologies. You see what is meant by white and
+      black angels, your cherubim and seraphim, with heads of eagles, of lions,
+      or of bulls; your deus, devils, demons, with horns of goats and tails of
+      serpents; your thrones and dominions, ranged in seven orders or
+      gradations, like the seven spheres of the planets; all beings acting the
+      same parts, and endowed with the same attributes in your Vedas, Bibles,
+      and Zend-avestas, whether they have for chiefs Ormuzd or Brama, Typhon or
+      Chiven, Michael or Satan;&mdash;whether they appear under the form of
+      giants with a hundred arms and feet of serpents, or that of gods
+      metamorphosed into lions, storks, bulls or cats, as they are in the sacred
+      fables of the Greeks and Egyptians. You perceive the successive filiation
+      of these ideas, and how, in proportion to their remoteness from their
+      source, and as the minds of men became refined, their gross forms have
+      been polished, and rendered less disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But in the same manner as you have seen the system of two opposite
+      principles or gods arise from that of symbols, interwoven into its
+      texture, your attention shall now be called to a new system which has
+      grown out of this, and to which this has served in its turn as the basis
+      and support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V. Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed, when the vulgar heard speak of a new heaven and another world,
+      they soon gave a body to these fictions; they erected therein a real
+      theatre of action, and their notions of astronomy and geography served to
+      strengthen, if not to originate, this illusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the one hand, the Phoenician navigators who passed the pillars of
+      Hercules, to fetch the tin of Thule and the amber of the Baltic, related
+      that at the extremity of the world, the end of the ocean (the
+      Mediterranean), where the sun sets for the countries of Asia, were the
+      Fortunate Islands, the abode of eternal spring; and beyond were the
+      hyperborean regions, placed under the earth (relatively to the tropics)
+      where reigned an eternal night.* From these stories, misunderstood, and no
+      doubt confusedly related, the imagination of the people composed the
+      Elysian fields,** regions of delight, placed in a world below, having
+      their heaven, their sun, and their stars; and Tartarus, a place of
+      darkness, humidity, mire, and frost. Now, as man, inquisitive of that
+      which he knows not, and desirous of protracting his existence, had already
+      interrogated himself concerning what was to become of him after his death,
+      as he had early reasoned on the principle of life which animates his body,
+      and which leaves it without deforming it, and as he had imagined airy
+      substances, phantoms, and shades, he fondly believed that he should
+      continue, in the subterranean world, that life which it was too painful
+      for him to lose; and these lower regions seemed commodious for the
+      reception of the beloved objects which he could not willingly resign.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Nights of six months duration.
+
+     ** Aliz, in the Phoenician or Hebrew language signifies
+     dancing and joyous.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "On the other hand, the astrological and geological priests told such
+      stories and made such descriptions of their heavens, as accorded perfectly
+      well with these fictions. Having, in their metaphorical language, called
+      the equinoxes and solstices the gates of heaven, the entrance of the
+      seasons, they explained these terrestrial phenomena by saying, that
+      through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the ram) and through
+      the gate of Cancer, descended the vivifying fires which give life to
+      vegetation in the spring, and the aqueous spirits which bring, at the
+      solstice, the inundation of the Nile; that through the gate of ivory
+      (Libra, formerly Sagittarius, or the bowman) and that of Capricorn, or the
+      urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens returned to their source,
+      and reascended to their origin; and the Milky Way, which passed through
+      the gates of the solstices, seemed to be placed there to serve them as a
+      road or vehicle.* Besides, in their atlas, the celestial scene presented a
+      river (the Nile, designated by the windings of the hydra), a boat, (the
+      ship Argo) and the dog Sirius, both relative to this river, whose
+      inundation they foretold. These circumstances, added to the preceding, and
+      still further explaining them, increased their probability, and to arrive
+      at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and
+      Acheron in the boat of the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates
+      of horn or ivory, guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions
+      were applied to a civil use, and thence received a further consistency.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     *See Macrob. Som. Scrip. c. 12.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Having remarked that in their burning climate the putrefaction of dead
+      bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in many of
+      their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead beyond the
+      limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the West. To go there,
+      it was necessary to pass the channels of the river, and consequently to be
+      received into a boat, and pay something to the ferryman, without which the
+      body, deprived of sepulture, must have been the prey of wild beasts. This
+      custom suggested to the civil and religious legislators the means of a
+      powerful influence on manners; and, addressing uncultivated and ferocious
+      men with the motives of filial piety and a reverence for the dead, they
+      established, as a necessary condition, their undergoing a previous trial,
+      which should decide whether the deceased merited to be admitted to the
+      rank of the family in the black city. Such an idea accorded too well with
+      all the others, not to be incorporated with them: the people soon adopted
+      it; and hell had its Minos and its Rhadamanthus, with the wand, the bench,
+      the ushers, and the urn, as in the earthly and civil state. It was then
+      that God became a moral and political being, a lawgiver to men, and so
+      much the more to be dreaded, as this supreme legislator, this final judge,
+      was inaccessible and invisible. Then it was that this fabulous and
+      mythological world, composed of such odd materials and disjointed parts,
+      became a place of punishments and of rewards, where divine justice was
+      supposed to correct what was vicious and erroneous in the judgment of men.
+      This spiritual and mystical system acquired the more credit, as it took
+      possession of man by all his natural inclinations. The oppressed found in
+      it the hope of indemnity, and the consolation of future vengeance; the
+      oppressor, expecting by rich offerings to purchase his impunity, formed
+      out of the errors of the vulgar an additional weapon of oppression; the
+      chiefs of nations, the kings and priests, found in this a new instrument
+      of domination by the privilege which they reserved to themselves of
+      distributing the favors and punishments of the great judge, according to
+      the merit or demerit of actions, which they took care to characterize as
+      best suited their system.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This, then, is the manner in which an invisible and imaginary world has
+      been introduced into the real and visible one; this is the origin of those
+      regions of pleasure and pain, of which you Persians have made your
+      regenerated earth, your city of resurrection, placed under the equator,
+      with this singular attribute, that in it the blessed cast no shade.* Of
+      these materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have you
+      formed your New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, your paradise, your heaven,
+      copied in all its parts from the astrological heaven of Hermes: and your
+      hell, ye Mussulmans, your bottomless pit, surmounted by a bridge, your
+      balance for weighing souls and good works, your last judgment by the
+      angels Monkir and Nekir, are likewise modeled from the mysterious
+      ceremonies of the cave of Mithras** and your heaven differs not in the
+      least from that of Osiris, of Ormuzd, and of Brama.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * There is on this subject a passage in Plutarch, so
+     interesting and explanatory of the whole of this system,
+     that we shall cite it entire.  Having observed that the
+     theory of good and evil had at all times occupied the
+     attention of philosophers and theologians, he adds: "Many
+     suppose there to be two gods of opposite inclinations, one
+     delighting in good, the other in evil; the first of these is
+     called particularly by the name of God, the second by that
+     of Genius or Demon.  Zoroaster has denominated them Oromaze
+     and Ahrimanes, and has said that of whatever falls under the
+     cognizance of our senses, light is the best representation
+     of the one, and darkness and ignorance of the other.  He
+     adds, that Mithra is an intermediate being, and it is for
+     this reason the Persians call Mithra the mediator or
+     intermediator.  Each of these Gods has distinct plants and
+     animals consecrated to him: for example, dogs, birds and
+     hedge-hogs belong to the good Genius, and all aquatic
+     animals to the evil one.
+
+     "The Persians also say, that Oromaze was born or formed out
+     of the purest light; Ahrimanes, on the contrary, out of the
+     thickest darkness: that Oromaze made six gods as good as
+     himself, and Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones: that
+     Oromaze afterwards multiplied himself threefold (Hermes
+     trismegistus) and removed to a distance as remote from the
+     sun as the sun is remote from the earth that he there formed
+     stars, and, among others, Sirius, which he placed in the
+     heavens as a guard and sentinel.  He made also twenty-four
+     other Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanes
+     created an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, and
+     from that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).
+     But Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth to
+     be made equal and smooth, that all men may live happy.
+
+     "Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one of
+     these Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years during
+     which the other is kept in subjection; that they afterwards
+     contend with equal weapons during a similar portion of time,
+     but that in the end the evil Genius will fall (never to rise
+     again).  Then men will become happy, and their bodies cast
+     no shade.  The God who mediates all these things reclines at
+     present in repose, waiting till he shall be pleased to
+     execute them."  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+     There is an apparent allegory through the whole of this
+     passage. The egg is the fixed sphere, the world: the six
+     Gods of Oromaze are the six signs of summer, those of
+     Ahrimanes the six signs of winter.  The forty-eight other
+     Gods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient
+     sphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze.  The
+     office of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that the
+     origin of these ideas was Egyptian: finally, the expression
+     that the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that the
+     bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that the
+     equator was considered as their true paradise.
+
+     ** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they
+     celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against
+     Celsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets
+     and the heavens. The initiated took the name of
+     constellations, and assumed the figures of animals.  One was
+     a lion, another a raven, and a third a ram.  Hence the use
+     of masks in the first representation of the drama.  See Ant.
+     Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244.  "In the mysteries of Ceres the
+     chief in the procession called himself the creator; the
+     bearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the person
+     nearest to the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon,
+     Mercury.  In Egypt there was a festival in which the men and
+     women represented the year, the age, the seasons, the
+     different parts of the day, and they walked in precession
+     after Bacchus.  Athen. lib. v., ch. 7.  In the cave of
+     Mithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the seven
+     spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and
+     descended.  This is precisely the ladder in Jacob's vision,
+     which shows that at that epoch a the whole system was
+     formed.  There is in the French king's library a superb
+     volume of pictures of the Indian Gods, in which the ladder
+     is represented with the souls of men mounting it."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      VI. Sixth System. The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe under
+      diverse Emblems.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "While the nations were wandering in the dark labyrinth of mythology and
+      fables, the physical priests, pursuing their studies and enquiries into
+      the order and disposition of the universe, came to new conclusions, and
+      formed new systems concerning powers and first causes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Long confined to simple appearances, they saw nothing in the movement of
+      the stars but an unknown play of luminous bodies rolling round the earth,
+      which they believed the central point of all the spheres; but as soon as
+      they discovered the rotundity of our planet, the consequences of this
+      first fact led them to new considerations; and from induction to induction
+      they rose to the highest conceptions in astronomy and physics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed, after having conceived this luminous idea, that the terrestrial
+      globe is a little circle inscribed in the greater circle of the heavens,
+      the theory of concentric circles came naturally into their hypothesis, to
+      determine the unknown circle of the terrestrial globe by certain known
+      portions of the celestial circle; and the measurement of one or more
+      degrees of the meridian gave with precision the whole circumference. Then,
+      taking for a compass the known diameter of the earth, some fortunate
+      genius applied it with a bold hand to the boundless orbits of the heavens;
+      and man, the inhabitant of a grain of sand, embracing the infinite
+      distances of the stars, launches into the immensity of space and the
+      eternity of time: there he is presented with a new order of the universe
+      of which the atom-globe which he inhabited appeared no longer to be the
+      centre; this important post was reserved to the enormous mass of the sun;
+      and that body became the flaming pivot of eight surrounding spheres, whose
+      movements were henceforth subjected to precise calculations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was indeed a great effort for the human mind to have undertaken to
+      determine the disposition and order of the great engines of nature; but
+      not content with this first effort, it still endeavored to develop the
+      mechanism, and discover the origin and the instinctive principle. Hence,
+      engaged in the abstract and metaphysical nature of motion and its first
+      cause, of the inherent or incidental properties of matter, its successive
+      forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space unbounded, the
+      physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of subtile reasoning and
+      scholastic controversy.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you will
+     find our assertions respecting the knowledge of the priests
+     amply proved.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "In the first place, the action of the sun on terrestrial bodies, teaching
+      them to regard his substance as a pure and elementary fire, they made it
+      the focus and reservoir of an ocean of igneous and luminous fluid, which,
+      under the name of ether, filled the universe and nourished all beings.
+      Afterwards, having discovered, by a physical and attentive analysis, this
+      same fire, or another perfectly resembling it, in the composition of all
+      bodies, and having perceived it to be the essential agent of that
+      spontaneous movement which is called life in animals and vegetation in
+      plants, they conceived the mechanism and harmony of the universe, as of a
+      homogeneous whole, of one identical body, whose parts, though distant, had
+      nevertheless an intimate relation;* and the world was a living being,
+      animated by the organic circulation of an igneous and even electrical
+      fluid,** which, by a term of comparison borrowed first from men and
+      animals, had the sun for a heart and a focus.***
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the very words of Jamblicus.  De Myst. Egypt.
+
+     ** The more I consider what the ancients understood by ether
+     and spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the stronger
+     do I find the analogy between it and the electrial fluid.  A
+     luminous fluid, principle of warmth and motion, pervading
+     the universe, forming the matter of the stars, having small
+     round particles, which insinuate themselves into bodies, and
+     fill them by dilating itself, be their extent what it will.
+     What can more strongly resemble electricity?
+
+     *** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun the
+     heart of the world.  Som. Scrip. c. 20.  The Egyptians, says
+     Plutarch, call the East the face, the North the right side,
+     and the South the left side of the world, because there the
+     heart is placed.  They continually compare the universe to a
+     man; and hence the celebrated microcosm of the Alchymists.
+     We observe, by the bye, that the Alchymists, Cabalists,
+     Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and every other such
+     sort of visionaries, are but the mistaken disciples of this
+     ancient school: we say mistaken, because, in spite of their
+     pretensions, the thread of the occult science is broken.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "From this time the physical theologians seem to have divided into several
+      classes; one class, grounding itself on these principles resulting from
+      observation; that nothing can be annihilated in the world; that the
+      elements are indestructible; that they change their combinations but not
+      their nature; that the life and death of beings are but the different
+      modifications of the same atoms; that matter itself possesses properties
+      which give rise to all its modes of existence; that the world is eternal,*
+      or unlimited in space and duration; said that the whole universe was God;
+      and, according to them, God was a being, effect and cause, agent and
+      patient, moving principle and thing moved, having for laws the invariable
+      properties that constitute fatality; and this class conveyed their idea by
+      the emblem of Pan (the great whole); or of Jupiter, with a forehead of
+      stars, body of planets, and feet of animals; or of the Orphic Egg,** whose
+      yolk, suspended in the center of a liquid, surrounded by a vault,
+      represented the globe of the sun, swimming in ether in the midst of the
+      vault of heaven;*** sometimes by a great round serpent, representing the
+      heavens where they placed the moving principle, and for that reason of an
+      azure color, studded with spots of gold, (the stars) devouring his tail&mdash;that
+      is, folding and unfolding himself eternally, like the revolutions of the
+      spheres; sometimes by that of a man, having his feet joined together and
+      tied, to signify immutable existence, wrapped in a cloak of all colors,
+      like the face of nature, and bearing on his head a sphere of gold,****
+      emblem of the sphere of the stars; or by that of another man, sometimes
+      seated on the flower of the lotos borne on the abyss of waters, sometimes
+      lying on a pile of twelve cushions, denoting the twelve celestial signs.
+      And here, Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Tibetans, and Chinese, is the
+      theology, which, founded by the Egyptians and transmitted to you, is
+      preserved in the pictures which you compose of Brama, of Beddou, of
+      Somona-Kodom of Omito. This, ye Jews and Christians, is likewise the
+      opinion of which you have preserved a part in your God moving on the face
+      of the waters, by an allusion to the wind*5 which, at the beginning of the
+      world, that is, the departure of the sun from the sign of Cancer,
+      announced the inundation of the Nile, and seemed to prepare the creation."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See the Pythagorean, Ocellus Lacunus.
+
+     ** Vide Oedip. Aegypt. Tome II., page 205.
+
+     *** This comparison of the sun with the yolk of an egg
+     refers: 1. To its round and yellow figure; 2. To its central
+     situation; 3. To the germ or principle of life contained in
+     the yolk.  May not the oval form of the egg allude to the
+     elipsis of the orbs?  I am inclined to this opinion.  The
+     word Orphic offers a farther observation.  Macrobius says
+     (Som. Scrip. c. 14. and c. 20), that the sun is the brain of
+     the universe, and that it is from analogy that the skull of
+     a human being is round, like the planet, the seat of
+     intelligence.  Now the word Oerph signifies in Hebrew the
+     brain and its seat (cervix): Orpheus, then, is the same as
+     Bedou or Baits; and the Bonzes are those very Orphics which
+     Plutarch represents as quacks, who ate no meat, vended
+     talismans and little stones, and deceived individuals, and
+     even governments themselves. See a learned memoir of Freret
+     sur les Orphiques, Acad. des Inscrp. vol. 25, in quarto.
+
+     **** See Porphyry in Eusebus. Proep. Evang., lib. 3, p. 115.
+
+     *5 The Northern or Etesian wind, which commences regularly
+     at the solstice, with the inundation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      VII. Seventh System. Worship of the SOUL of the WORLD, that is to say, the
+      Element of Fire, vital Principle of the Universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But others, disgusted at the idea of a being at once effect and cause,
+      agent and patient, and uniting contrary natures in the same nature,
+      distinguished the moving principle from the thing moved; and premising
+      that matter in itself was inert they pretended that its properties were
+      communicated to it by a distinct agent, of which itself was only the cover
+      or the case. This agent was called by some the igneous principle, known to
+      be the author of all motion; by others it was supposed to be the fluid
+      called ether, which was thought more active and subtile; and, as in
+      animals the vital and moving principle was called a soul, a spirit, and as
+      they reasoned constantly by comparisons, especially those drawn from human
+      beings, they gave to the moving principle of the universe the name of
+      soul, intelligence, spirit; and God was the vital spirit, which extended
+      through all beings and animated the vast body of the world. And this class
+      conveyed their idea sometimes by Youpiter,* essence of motion and
+      animation, principle of existence, or rather existence itself; sometimes
+      by Vulcan or Phtha, elementary principle of fire; or by the altar of
+      Vesta, placed in the center of her temple like the sun in the heavens;
+      sometimes by Kneph, a human figure, dressed in dark blue, having in one
+      hand a sceptre and a girdle (the zodiac), with a cap of feathers to
+      express the fugacity of thought, and producing from his mouth the great
+      egg.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This is the true pronunciation of the Jupiter of the
+     Latins. . . . Existence itself.  This is the signification
+     of the word You.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Now, as a consequence of this system, every being containing in itself a
+      portion of the igneous and etherial fluid, common and universal mover, and
+      this fluid soul of the world being God, it followed that the souls of all
+      beings were portions of God himself partaking of all his attributes, that
+      is, being a substance indivisible, simple, and immortal; and hence the
+      whole system of the immortality of the soul, which at first was eternity.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the system of the first spiritualists, the soul was not
+     created with, or at the same time as the body, in order to
+     be inserted in it: its existence was supposed to be anterior
+     and from all eternity.  Such, in a few words, is the
+     doctrine of Macrobius on this head.  Som. Seip. passim.
+
+     "There exists a luminous, igneous, subtile fluid, which
+     under the name of ether and spiritus, fills the universe.
+     It is the essential principle and agent of motion and life,
+     it is the Deity. When an earthly body is to be animated, a
+     small round particle of this fluid gravitates through the
+     milky way towards the lunar sphere; where, when it arrives,
+     it unites with a grosser air, and becomes fit to associate
+     with matter: it then enters and entirely fills the body,
+     animates it, suffers, grows, increases, and diminishes with
+     it; lastly, when the body dies, and its gross elements
+     dissolve, this incorruptible particle takes its leave of it,
+     and returns to the grand ocean of ether, if not retained by
+     its union with the lunar air: it is this air or gas, which,
+     retaining the shape of the body, becomes a phantom or ghost,
+     the perfect representation of the deceased.  The Greeks
+     called this phantom the image or idol of the soul; the
+     Pythagoreans, its chariot, its frame; and the Rabbinical
+     school, its vessel, or boat.  When a man had conducted
+     himself well in this world, his whole soul, that is its
+     chariot and ether, ascended to the moon, where a separation
+     took place: the chariot lived in the lunar Elysium, and the
+     ether returned to the fixed sphere, that is, to God: for the
+     fixed heaven, says Macrobius, was by many called by the name
+     of God (c. 14).  If a man had not lived virtuously, the soul
+     remained on earth to undergo purification, and was to wander
+     to and fro, like the ghosts of Homer, to whom this doctrine
+     must have been known, since he wrote after the time of
+     Pherecydes and Pythagoras, who were its promulgators in
+     Greece.  Herodotus upon this occasion says, that the whole
+     romance of the soul and its transmigrations was invented by
+     the Egyptians, and propagated in Greece by men, who
+     pretended to be its authors.  I know their names, adds he,
+     but shall not mention them (lib. 2).  Cicero, however, has
+     positively informed us, that it was Pherecydes, master of
+     Pythagoras.  Tuscul. lib. 1, sect. 16. Now admitting that
+     this system was at that period a novelty, it accounts for
+     Solomon's treating it as a fable, who lived 130 years before
+     Pherecydes.  'Who knoweth,' said he, 'the spirit of a man
+     that it goeth upwards?  I said in my heart concerning the
+     estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them and
+     that they might see that they themselves are beasts.  For
+     that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even
+     one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the
+     other; yea they have all one breath, so that a man hath no
+     pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'" Eccles. c.
+     iii: v. 18.
+
+     And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator of
+     Herodotus (M. Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justly
+     observes in note 389 of the second book; where he says also
+     that the immortality of the soul was not introduced among
+     the Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians.  In
+     other respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properly
+     analysed, appears to be merely a system of physics badly
+     understood.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Hence, also its transmigrations, known by the name of metempsychosis,
+      that is, the passage of the vital principle from one body to another; an
+      idea which arose from the real transmigration of the material elements.
+      And behold, ye Indians, ye Boudhists, ye Christians, ye Mussulmans! whence
+      are derived all your opinions on the spirituality of the soul; behold what
+      was the source of the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato, your masters, who
+      were themselves but the echoes of another, the last sect of visionary
+      philosophers, which we will proceed to examine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII. Eighth system. The WORLD-MACHINE: Worship of the Demi-Ourgos, or
+      Grand Artificer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hitherto the theologians, employing themselves in examining the fine and
+      subtile substances of ether or the generating fire, had not, however,
+      ceased to treat of beings palpable and perceptible to the senses; and
+      theology continued to be the theory of physical powers, placed sometimes
+      exclusively in the stars, and sometimes disseminated through the universe;
+      but at this period, certain superficial minds, losing the chain of ideas
+      which had directed them in their profound studies, or ignorant of the
+      facts on which they were founded, distorted all the conclusions that
+      flowed from them by the introduction of a strange and novel chimera. They
+      pretended that this universe, these heavens, these stars, this sun,
+      differed in no respect from an ordinary machine; and applying to this
+      first hypothesis a comparison drawn from the works of art, they raised an
+      edifice of the most whimsical sophisms. A machine, said they, does not
+      make itself; it has had an anterior workman; its very existence proves it.
+      The world is a machine; therefore it had an artificer.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * All the arguments of the spiritualists are founded on
+     this.  See Macrobius, at the end of the second book, and
+     Plato, with the comments of Marcilius Ficinus.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Here, then, is the Demi-Ourgos or grand artificer, constituted God
+      autocratical and supreme. In vain the ancient philosophy objected to this
+      by saying that the artificer himself must have had parents and
+      progenitors; and that they only added another step to the ladder by taking
+      eternity from the world, and giving it to its supposed author. The
+      innovators, not content with this first paradox, passed on to a second;
+      and, applying to their artificer the theory of the human understanding,
+      they pretended that the Demi-Ourgos had framed his machine on a plan
+      already existing in his understanding. Now, as their masters, the
+      naturalists, had placed in the regions of the fixed stars the great primum
+      mobile, under the name of intelligence and reason, so their mimics, the
+      spiritualists, seizing this idea, applied it to their Demi-Ourgos, and
+      making it a substance distinct and self-existent, they called it mens or
+      logos (reason or word). And, as they likewise admitted the existence of
+      the soul of the world, or solar principle, they found themselves obliged
+      to compose three grades of divine beings, which were: first, the
+      Demi-Ourgos, or working god; secondly, the logos, word or reason; thirdly,
+      the spirit or soul (of the world).* And here, Christians! is the romance
+      on which you have founded your trinity; here is the system which, born a
+      heretic in the temples of Egypt, transported a pagan into the schools of
+      Greece and Italy, is now found to be good, catholic, and orthodox, by the
+      conversion of its partisans, the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, to
+      Christianity.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the real types of the Christian Trinity.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "It is thus that God, after having been, First, The visible and various
+      action of the meteors and the elements;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Secondly, The combined powers of the stars, considered in their relations
+      to terrestrial beings;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirdly, These terrestrial beings themselves, by confounding the symbols
+      with their archetypes;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourthly, The double power of nature in its two principal operations of
+      producing and destroying;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifthly, The animated world, with distinction of agent and patient, of
+      effect and cause;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixthly, The solar principle, or the element of fire considered as the
+      only mover;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has thus become, finally, in the last resort, a chimerical and abstract
+      being, a scholastic subtilty, of substance without form, a body without a
+      figure, a very delirium of the mind, beyond the power of reason to
+      comprehend. But vainly does it seek in this last transformation to elude
+      the senses; the seal of its origin is imprinted upon it too deep to be
+      effaced; and its attributes, all borrowed from the physical attributes of
+      the universe, such as immensity, eternity, indivisibility,
+      incomprehensibility; or on the moral affections of man, such as goodness,
+      justice, majesty; its names* even, all derived from the physical beings
+      which were its types, and especially from the sun, from the planets, and
+      from the world, constantly bring to mind, in spite of its corrupters,
+      indelible marks of its real nature.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In our last analysis we found all the names of the Deity
+     to be derived from some material object in which it was
+     supposed to reside.  We have given a considerable number of
+     instances; let us add one more relative to our word God.
+     This is known to be the Deus of the Latins, and the Theos of
+     the Greeks.  Now by the confession of Plato (in Cratylo), of
+     Macrobius (Saturn, lib. 1, c. 24,) and of Plutarch (Isis and
+     Osiris) its root is thein, which signifies to wander, like
+     planein, that is to say, it is synonymous with planets;
+     because, add our authors, both the ancient Greeks and
+     Barbarians particularly worshipped the planets.  I know that
+     such enquiries into etymologies have been much decried: but
+     if, as is the case, words are the representative signs of
+     ideas, the genealogy of the one becomes that of the other,
+     and a good etymological dictionary would be the most perfect
+     history of the human understanding.  It would only be
+     necessary in this enquiry to observe certain precautions,
+     which have hitherto been neglected, and particularly to make
+     an exact comparison of the value of the letters of the
+     different alphabets.  But, to continue our subject, we shall
+     add, that in the Phoenician language, the word thah (with
+     ain) signifies also to wander, and appears to be the
+     derivation of thein.  If we suppose Deus to be derived from
+     the Greek Zeus, a proper name of You-piter, having zaw, I
+     live, for its root, its sense will be precisely that of you,
+     and will mean soul of the world, igneous principle.  (See
+     note p. 143).  Div-us, which only signifies Genius, God of
+     the second order, appears to me to come from the oriental
+     word div substituted for dib, wolf and chacal, one of the
+     emblems of the sun.  At Thebes, says Macrobius, the sun was
+     painted under the form of a wolf or chacal, for there are no
+     wolves in Egypt.  The reason of this emblem, doubtless, is
+     that the chacal, like the cock announces by its cries the
+     sun's rising; and this reason is confirmed by the analogy of
+     the words lykos, wolf, and lyke, light of the morning,
+     whence comes lux.
+
+     Dius, which is to be understood also of the sun, must be
+     derived from dih, a hawk.  "The Egyptians," says Porphyry
+     (Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 92,) "represent the sun under the
+     emblem of a hawk, because this bird soars to the highest
+     regions of air where light abounds."  And in reality we
+     continually see at Cairo large flights of these birds,
+     hovering in the air, from whence they descend not but to
+     stun us with their shrieks, which are like the monosyllable
+     dih: and here, as in the preceding example, we find an
+     analogy between the word dies, day, light, and dius, god,
+     sun.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Such is the chain of ideas which the human mind had already run through
+      at an epoch previous to the records of history; and since their continuity
+      proves that they were the produce of the same series of studies and
+      labors, we have every reason to place their origin in Egypt, the cradle of
+      their first elements. This progress there may have been rapid; because the
+      physical priests had no other food, in the retirement of the temples, but
+      the enigma of the universe, always present to their minds; and because in
+      the political districts into which that country was for a long time
+      divided, every state had its college of priests, who, being by turns
+      auxiliaries or rivals, hastened by their disputes the progress of science
+      and discovery.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * One of the proofs that all these systems were invented in
+     Egypt, is that this is the only country where we see a
+     complete body of doctrine formed from the remotest
+     antiquity.
+
+     Clemens Alexandrinus has transmitted to us (Stromat. lib.
+     6,) a curious detail of the forty-two volumes which were
+     borne in the procession of Isis.  "The priest," says he, "or
+     chanter, carries one of the symbolic instruments of music,
+     and two of the books of Mercury; one containing hymns of the
+     gods, the other the list of kings.  Next to him the
+     horoscope (the regulator of time,) carries a palm and a
+     dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the four
+     books of Mercury which treat of astrology: the first on the
+     order of the planets, the second on the risings of the sun
+     and moon, and the two last on the rising and aspect of the
+     stars.  Then comes the sacred author, with feathers on his
+     head (like Kneph) and a book in his hand, together with ink,
+     and a reed to write with, (as is still the practice among
+     the Arabs).  He must be versed in hieroglyphics, must
+     understand the description of the universe, the course of
+     the sun, moon, stars, and planets, be acquainted with the
+     division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes, with the course of
+     the Nile, with instruments, measures, sacred ornaments, and
+     sacred places.  Next comes the stole bearer, who carries the
+     cubit of justice, or measure of the Nile, and a cup for the
+     libations; he bears also in the procession ten volumes on
+     the subject of sacrifices, hymns, prayers, offerings,
+     ceremonies, festivals. Lastly arrives the prophet, bearing
+     in his bosom a pitcher, so as to be exposed to view; he is
+     followed by persons carrying bread (as at the marriage of
+     Cana.) This prophet, as president of the mysteries, learns
+     ten other sacred volumes, which treat of the laws, the gods,
+     and the discipline of the priests.  Now there are in all
+     forty-two volumes, thirty-six of which are studied and got
+     by heart by these personages, and the remaining six are set
+     apart to be consulted by the pastophores; they treat of
+     medicine, the construction of the human body (anatomy),
+     diseases, remedies, instruments, etc., etc."
+
+     We leave the reader to deduce all the consequences of an
+     Encyclopedia.  It is ascribed to Mercury; but Jamblicus
+     tells us that each book, composed by priests, was dedicated
+     to that god, who, on account of his title of genius or decan
+     opening the zodiac, presided over every enterprise.  He is
+     the Janus of the Romans, and the Guianesa of the Indians,
+     and it is remarkable that Yanus and Guianes are homonymous.
+     In short it appears that these books are the source of all
+     that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and Latins in
+     every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc.  What is
+     most to be regretted in their loss is that part which
+     related to the principles of medicine and diet, in which the
+     Egyptians appear to have made a considerable progress, and
+     to have delivered many useful observations.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "There happened early on the borders of the Nile, what has since been
+      repeated in every country; as soon as a new system was formed its novelty
+      excited quarrels and schisms; then, gaining credit by persecution itself,
+      sometimes it effaced antecedent ideas, sometimes it modified and
+      incorporated them; then, by the intervention of political revolutions, the
+      aggregation of states and the mixture of nations confused all opinions;
+      and the filiation of ideas being lost, theology fell into a chaos, and
+      became a mere logogriph of old traditions no longer understood. Religion,
+      having strayed from its object was now nothing more than a political
+      engine to conduct the credulous vulgar; and it was used for this purpose,
+      sometimes by men credulous themselves and dupes of their own visions, and
+      sometimes by bold and energetic spirits in pursuit of great objects of
+      ambition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX. Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World (You-piter).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such was the legislator of the Hebrews; who, wishing to separate his
+      nation from all others, and to form a distinct and solitary empire,
+      conceived the design of establishing its basis on religious prejudices,
+      and of raising around it a sacred rampart of opinions and of rites. But in
+      vain did he prescribe the worship of the symbols which prevailed in lower
+      Egypt and in Phoenicia;* for his god was nevertheless an Egyptian god,
+      invented by those priests of whom Moses had been the disciple; and
+      Yahouh,** betrayed by its very name, essence (of beings), and by its
+      symbol, the burning bush, is only the soul of the world, the moving
+      principle which the Greeks soon after adopted under the same denomination
+      in their you-piter, regenerating being, and under that of Ei,
+      existence,*** which the Thebans consecrated by the name of Kneph, which
+      Sais worshipped under the emblem of Isis veiled, with this inscription: I
+      am al that has been, all that is, and all that is to come, and no mortal
+      has raised my veil; which Pythagoras honored under the name of Vesta, and
+      which the stoic philosophy defined precisely by calling it the principle
+      of fire. In vain did Moses wish to blot from his religion every thing
+      which had relation to the stars; many traits call them to mind in spite of
+      all he has done. The seven planetary luminaries of the great candlestick;
+      the twelve stones, or signs in the Urim of the high priests; the feast of
+      the two equinoxes, (entrances and gates of the two hemispheres); the
+      ceremony of the lamb, (the celestial ram then in his fifteenth degree);
+      lastly, the name even of Osiris preserved in his song,**** and the ark, or
+      coffer, an imitation of the tomb in which that God was laid, all remain as
+      so many witnesses of the filiation of his ideas, and of their extraction
+      from the common source.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "At a certain period," says Plutarch (de Iside) "all the
+     Egyptians have their animal gods painted.  The Thebans are
+     the only people who do not employ painters, because they
+     worship a god whose form comes not under the senses, and
+     cannot be represented."  And this is the god whom Moses,
+     educated at Heliopolis, adopted; but the idea was not of his
+     invention.
+
+     ** Such is the true pronunciation of the Jehovah of the
+     moderns, who violate, in this respect, every rule of
+     criticism; since it is evident that the ancients,
+     particularly the eastern Syrians and Phoenicians, were
+     acquainted neither with the J nor the P which are of Tartar
+     origin.  The subsisting usage of the Arabs, which we have
+     re-established here, is confirmed by Diodorus, who calls the
+     god of Moses Iaw, (lib. 1), and Iaw and Yahouh are
+     manifestly the same word: the identity continues in that of
+     You-piter; but in order to render it more complete, we shall
+     demonstrate the signification to be the same.
+
+     In Hebrew, that is to say, in one of the dialects of the
+     common language of lower Asia, Yahouh is the participle of
+     the verb hih, to exist, to be, and signifies existing: in
+     other words, the principle of life, the mover or even motion
+     (the universal soul of beings).  Now what is Jupiter?  Let
+     us hear the Greeks and Latins explain their theology.  "The
+     Egyptians," says Diodorus, after Manatho, priest of Memphis,
+     "in giving names to the five elements, called spirit, or
+     ether, You-piter, on account of the true meaning of that
+     word: for spirit is the source of life, author of the vital
+     principle in animals; and for this reason they considered
+     him as the father, the generator of beings."  For the same
+     reason Homer says, father, and king of men and gods.  (Diod.
+     lib. 1, sect 1).
+
+     "Theologians," says Macrobius, "consider You-piter as the
+     soul of the world."  Hence the words of Virgil: " Muses let
+     us begin with You-piter; the world is full of You-piter."
+     (Somn. Scrip., ch. 17).  And in the Saturnalia, he says,
+     "Jupiter is the sun himself." It was this also which made
+     Virgil say, "The spirit nourishes the life (of beings), and
+     the soul diffused through the vast members (of the
+     universe), agitates the whole mass, and forms but one
+     immense body."
+
+     "Ioupiter," says the ancient verses of the Orphic sect,
+     which originated in Egypt; verses collected by Onomacritus
+     in the days of Pisistratus, "Ioupiter, represented with the
+     thunder in his hand, is the beginning, origin, end, and
+     middle of all things: a single and universal power, he
+     governs every thing; heaven, earth, fire, water, the
+     elements, day, and night.  These are what constitute his
+     immense body: his eyes are the sun and moon: he is space and
+     eternity: in fine," adds Porphyry.  "Jupiter is the world,
+     the universe, that which constitutes the essence and life of
+     all beings.  Now," continues the same author, "as
+     philosophers differed in opinion respecting the nature and
+     constituent parts of this god, and as they could invent no
+     figure that should represent all his attributes, they
+     painted him in the form of a man.  He is in a sitting
+     posture, in allusion to his immutable essence; the upper
+     part of his body is uncovered, because it is in the upper
+     regions of the universe (the stars) that he most
+     conspicuously displays himself.  He is covered from the
+     waist downwards, because respecting terrestrial things he is
+     more secret and concealed.  He holds a scepter in his left
+     hand, because on the left side is the heart, and the heart
+     is the seat of the understanding, which, (in human beings)
+     regulates every action."  Euseb. Proeper. Evang., p 100.
+
+     The following passage of the geographer and philosopher,
+     Strabo, removes every doubt as to the identity of the ideas
+     of Moses and those of the heathen theologians.
+
+     "Moses, who was one of the Egyptian priests, taught his
+     followers that it was an egregious error to represent the
+     Deity under the form of animals, as the Egyptians did, or in
+     the shape of man, as was the practice of the Greeks and
+     Africans.  That alone is the Deity, said he, which
+     constitutes heaven, earth, and every living thing; that
+     which we call the world, the sum of all things, nature; and
+     no reasonable person will think of representing such a being
+     by the image of any one of the objects around us.  It is for
+     this reason, that, rejecting every species of images or
+     idols, Moses wished the Deity to be worshipped without
+     emblems, and according to his proper nature; and he
+     accordingly ordered a temple worthy of him to be erected,
+     etc.  Geograph. lib. 16, p. 1104, edition of 1707.
+
+     The theology of Moses has, then, differed in no respect from
+     that of his followers, that is to say, from that of the
+     Stoics and Epicureans, who consider the Deity as the soul of
+     the world.  This philosophy appears to have taken birth, or
+     to have been disseminated when Abraham came into Egypt (200
+     years before Moses), since he quitted his system of idols
+     for that of the god Yahouh; so that we may place its
+     promulgation about the seventeenth or eighteenth century
+     before Christ; which corresponds with what we have said
+     before.
+
+     As to the history of Moses, Diodorus properly represents it
+     when he says, lib. 34 and 40, "That the Jews were driven out
+     of Egypt at a time of dearth, when the country was full of
+     foreigners, and that Moses, a man of extraordinary prudence
+     seized this opportunity of establishing his religion in the
+     mountains of Judea."  It will seem paradoxical to assert,
+     that the 600,000 armed men whom he conducted thither ought
+     to be reduced to 6,000; but I can confirm the assertion by
+     so many proofs drawn from the books themselves, that it will
+     be necessary to correct an error which appears to have
+     arisen from the mistake of the transcribers.
+
+     *** This was the monosyllable written on the gates of the
+     temple of Delphos.  Plutarch has made it the subject of a
+     dissertation.
+
+     **** These are the literal expressions of the book of
+     Deuteronomy, chap. XXXII.  "The works of Tsour are perfect."
+     Now Tsour has been translated by the word creator; its
+     proper signification is to give forms, and this is one of
+     the definitions of Osiris in Plutarch.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      X. Religion of Zoroaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such also was Zoroaster; who, five centuries after Moses, and in the time
+      of David, revived and moralized among the Medes and Bactrians, the whole
+      Egyptian system of Osiris and Typhon, under the names Ormuzd and
+      Ahrimanes; who called the reign of summer, virtue and good; the reign of
+      winter, sin and evil; the renewal of nature in spring, creation of the
+      world; the conjunction of the spheres at secular periods, resurrection;
+      and the Tartarus and Elysium of the astrologers and geographers were named
+      future life, hell and paradise. In a word, he did nothing but consecrate
+      the existing dreams of the mystical system.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XI. Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such again are the propagators of the dismal doctrine of the Samaneans;
+      who, on the basis of the Metempsychosis, have erected the misanthropic
+      system of self-denial, and of privations; who, laying it down as a
+      principle that the body is only a prison where the soul lives in an impure
+      confinement, that life is only a dream, an illusion, and the world only a
+      passage to another country, to a life without end, placed virtue and
+      perfection in absolute immobility, in the destruction of all sentiment, in
+      the abnegation of physical organs, in the annihilation of all our being;
+      whence resulted fasts, penances, macerations, solitude, contemplations,
+      and all the practices of the deplorable delirium of the Anchorites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XII. Brahmism, or Indian System.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And such, too, were the founders of the Indian System; who, refining
+      after Zoroaster on the two principles of creation and destruction,
+      introduced an intermediary principle, that of preservation, and on their
+      trinity in unity, of Brama, Chiven, and Vichenou, accumulated the
+      allegories of their ancient traditions, and the alembicated subtilities of
+      their metaphysics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These are the materials which existed in a scattered state for many
+      centuries in Asia; when a fortuitous concourse of events and
+      circumstances, on the borders of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean,
+      served to form them into new combinations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIII. Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun, under the
+      cabalistical names of Chrish-en, or Christ, and Ye-sus or Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In constituting a separate nation, Moses strove in vain to defend it
+      against the invasion of foreign ideas. An invisible inclination, founded
+      on the affinity of their origin, had constantly brought back the Hebrews
+      towards the worship of the neighboring nations; and the commercial and
+      political relations which necessarily existed between them, strengthened
+      this propensity from day to day. As long as the constitution of the state
+      remained entire, the coercive force of the government and the laws opposed
+      these innovations, and retarded their progress; nevertheless the high
+      places were full of idols; and the god Sun had his chariot and horses
+      painted in the palaces of the kings, and even in the temples of Yahouh;
+      but when the conquests of the sultans of Nineveh and Babylon had dissolved
+      the bands of civil power, the people, left to themselves and solicited by
+      their conquerors, restrained no longer their inclination for profane
+      opinions, and they were publicly established in Judea. First, the Assyrian
+      colonies, which came and occupied the lands of the tribes, filled the
+      kingdom of Samaria with dogmas of the Magi, which very soon penetrated
+      into the kingdom of Judea. Afterwards, Jerusalem being subjugated, the
+      Egyptians, the Syrians, the Arabs, entering this defenceless country,
+      introduced their opinions; and the religion of Moses was doubly mutilated.
+      Besides the priests and great men, being transported to Babylon and
+      educated in the sciences of the Chaldeans, imbibed, during a residence of
+      seventy years, the whole of their theology; and from that moment the
+      dogmas of the hostile Genius (Satan), the archangel Michael,* the ancient
+      of days (Ormuzd), the rebel angels, the battles in heaven, the immortality
+      of the soul, and the resurrection, all unknown to Moses, or rejected by
+      his total silence respecting them, were introduced and naturalized among
+      the Jews.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The names of the angels and of the months, such as
+     Gabriel, Michael, Yar, Nisan, etc., came from Babylon with
+     the Jews:" says expressly the Talmud of Jerusalem.  See
+     Beousob. Hist. du Manich. Vol. II, p. 624, where he proves
+     that the saints of the Almanac are an imitation of the 365
+     angels of the Persians; and Jamblicus in his Egyptian
+     Mysteries, sect. 2, c. 3, speaks of angels, archangels,
+     seraphims, etc., like a true Christian.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "The emigrants returned to their country with these ideas; and their
+      innovation at first excited disputes between their partisans the
+      Pharisees, and their opponents the Saducees, who maintained the ancient
+      national worship; but the former, aided by the propensities of the people
+      and their habits already contracted, and supported by the Persians, their
+      deliverers and masters, gained the ascendant over the latter; and the Sons
+      of Moses consecrated the theology of Zoroaster.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The whole philosophy of the gymnosophists," says Diogenes
+     Laertius on the authority of an ancient writer, "is derived
+     from that of the Magi, and many assert that of the Jews to
+     have the same origin."  Lib. 1. c. 9.  Megasthenes, an
+     historian of repute in the days of Seleucus Nicanor, and who
+     wrote particularly upon India, speaking of the philosophy of
+     the ancients respecting natural things, puts the Brachmans
+     and the Jews precisely on the same footing.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "A fortuitous analogy between two leading ideas was highly favorable to
+      this coalition, and became the basis of a last system, not less surprising
+      in the fortune it has had in the world, than in the causes of its
+      formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "After the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Samaria, some judicious
+      men foresaw the same destiny for Jerusalem, which they did not fail to
+      predict and publish; and their predictions had the particular turn of
+      being terminated by prayers for a re-establishment and regeneration,
+      uttered in the form of prophecies. The Hierophants, in their enthusiasm,
+      had painted a king as a deliverer, who was to re-establish the nation in
+      its ancient glory; the Hebrews were to become once more a powerful, a
+      conquering nation, and Jerusalem the capital of an empire extended over
+      the whole earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Events having realized the first part of these predictions, the ruin of
+      Jerusalem, the people adhered to the second with a firmness of belief in
+      proportion to their misfortunes; and the afflicted Jews expected, with the
+      impatience of want and desire, this victorious king and deliverer, who was
+      to come and save the nation of Moses, and restore the empire of David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the other hand, the sacred and mythological traditions of preceding
+      times had spread through all Asia a dogma perfectly analogous. The cry
+      there was a great mediator, a final judge, a future saviour, a king, god,
+      conqueror and legislator, who was to restore the golden age upon earth,*
+      to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the empire of
+      good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished these ideas
+      with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a consolation under
+      that deplorable state of suffering into which they had been plunged by the
+      devastations of successive conquests, and the barbarous despotism of their
+      governments. This conformity between the oracles of different nations, and
+      those of the prophets, excited the attention of the Jews; and doubtless
+      the prophets had the art to compose their descriptions after the style and
+      genius of the sacred books employed in the Pagan mysteries. There was
+      therefore a general expectation in Judea of a great ambassador, a final
+      Saviour; when a singular circumstance determined the epoch of his coming.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This is the reason of the application of the many Pagan
+     oracles to Jesus, and particularly the fourth eclogue of
+     Virgil, and the Sybilline verses so celebrated among the
+     ancients.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "It is found in the sacred books of the Persians and Chaldeans, that the
+      world, composed of a total revolution of twelve thousand, was divided into
+      two partial revolutions; one of which, the age and reign of good,
+      terminated in six thousand; the other, the age and reign of evil, was to
+      terminate in six thousand more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By these records, the first authors had understood the annual revolution
+      of the great celestial orb called the world, (a revolution composed of
+      twelve months or signs, divided each into a thousand parts), and the two
+      systematic periods, of winter and summer, composed each of six thousand.
+      These expressions, wholly equivocal and badly explained, having received
+      an absolute and moral, instead of a physical and astrological sense, it
+      happened that the annual world was taken for the secular world, the
+      thousand of the zodiacal divisions, for a thousand of years; and
+      supposing, from the state of things, that they lived in the age of evil,
+      they inferred that it would end with the six thousand pretended years.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * We have already seen this tradition current among the
+     Tuscans; it was disseminated through most nations, and shows
+     us what we ought to think of all the pretended creations and
+     terminations of the world, which are merely the beginnings
+     and endings of astronomical periods invented by astrologers.
+     That of the year or solar revolution, being the most simple
+     and perceptible, served as a model to the rest, and its
+     comparison gave rise to the most whimsical ideas.  Of this
+     description is the idea of the four ages of the world among
+     the Indians.  Originally these four ages were merely the
+     four seasons; and as each season was under the supposed
+     influence of a planet, it bore the name of the metal
+     appropriated to that planet; thus spring was the age of the
+     sun, or of gold; summer the age of the moon, or of silver;
+     autumn the age of Venus, or of brass; and winter the age of
+     Mars, or of iron.  Afterwards when astronomers invented the
+     great year of 25 and 36 thousand common years, which had for
+     its object the bringing back all the stars to one point of
+     departure and a general conjunction, the ambiguity of the
+     terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and the
+     myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which
+     were thus measured were easily converted into so many
+     revolutions of the sun.  Thus the different periods of
+     creation which have been so great a source of difficulty and
+     misapprehension to curious enquirers, were in reality
+     nothing more than hypothetical calculations of astronomical
+     periods.  In the same manner the creation of the world has
+     been attributed to different seasons of the year, just as
+     these different seasons have served for the fictitious
+     period of these conjunctions; and of consequence has been
+     adopted by different nations for the commencement of an
+     ordinary year.  Among the Egyptians this period fell upon
+     the summer solstice, which was the commencement of their
+     year; and the departure of the spheres, according to their
+     conjectures, fell in like manner upon the period when the
+     sun enters cancer.  Among the Persians the year commenced at
+     first in the spring, or when the sun enters Aries; and from
+     thence the first Christians were led to suppose that God
+     created the world in the spring: this opinion is also
+     favored by the book of Genesis; and it is farther
+     remarkable, that the world is not there said to be created
+     by the God of Moses (Yahouh), but by the Elohim or gods in
+     the plural, that is by the angels or genii, for so the word
+     constantly means in the Hebrew books.  If we farther observe
+     that the root of the word Elohim signifies strong or
+     powerful, and that the Egyptians called their decans strong
+     and powerful leaders, attributing to them the creation of
+     the world, we shall presently perceive that the book of
+     Genesis affirms neither more nor less than that the world
+     was created by the decans, by those very genii whom,
+     according to Sanchoniathon, Mercury excited against Saturn,
+     and who were called Elohim.  It may be farther asked why the
+     plural substantive Elohim is made to agree with the singular
+     verb bara (the Elohim creates). The reason is that after the
+     Babylonish captivity the unity of the Supreme Being was the
+     prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was therefore thought
+     proper to introduce a pious solecism in language, which it
+     is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the names
+     of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a
+     plural verb, to which Elohim is the nominative case
+     understood, as Raouben (Reuben), they have looked upon me,
+     and Samaonni (Simeon), they have granted me my prayer; to
+     wit, the Elohim.  The reason of this etymology is to be
+     found in the religious creeds of the wives of Jacob, whose
+     gods were the taraphim of Laban, that is, the angels of the
+     Persians, and Egyptian decans.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Now, according to calculations admitted by the Jews, they began to reckon
+      near six thousand years since the supposed creation of the world.* This
+      coincidence caused a fermentation in the public mind. Nothing was thought
+      of but the approaching end. They consulted the hierophants and the
+      mystical books, which differed as to the term; the great mediator, the
+      final judge, was expected and desired, to put an end to so many
+      calamities. This being was so much spoken of, that some person finally was
+      said to have seen him; and a first rumor of this sort was sufficient to
+      establish a general certainty. Popular report became an established fact:
+      the imaginary being was realized; and all the circumstances of
+      mythological tradition, being assembled around this phantom, produced a
+      regular history, of which it was no longer permitted to doubt.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * According to the computation of the Seventy, the period
+     elapsed consisted of about 5,600 years, and this computation
+     was principally followed.  It is well known how much, in the
+     first ages of the church, this opinion of the end of the
+     world agitated the minds of men.  In the sequel, the general
+     councils encouraged by finding that the general
+     conflagration did not come, pronounced the expectation that
+     prevailed heretical, and its believers were called
+     Millenarians; a circumstance curious enough, since it is
+     evident from the history of the gospels that Jesus Christ
+     was a Millenarian, and of consequence a heretic.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "These mythological traditions recounted that, in the beginning, a woman
+      and a man had by their fall introduced sin and misery into the world.
+      (Consult plate of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By this was denoted the astronomical fact, that the celestial virgin and
+      the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal equinox,
+      delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed, on falling
+      below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of evil,
+      Ahrimanes, represented by the constellation of the Serpent.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The Persians," says Chardin, "call the constellation of
+     the serpent Ophiucus, serpent of Eve: and this serpent
+     Ophiucas or Ophioneus plays a similar part in the theology
+     of the Phoenicians," for Pherecydes, their disciple and the
+     master of Pythagoras, said "that Ophioneus Serpentinus had
+     been chief of the rebels against Jupiter."  See Mars. Ficin.
+     Apol. Socrat. p. m. 797, col. 2.  I shall add that ephah
+     (with ain) signifies in Hebrew, serpent.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the man.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In a physical sense to seduce, seducere, means only to
+     attract, to draw after us.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "And in fact, the virgin, setting first, seems to draw the herdsman after
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight and
+      good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And in fact, the Virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit, which she
+      seems to offer to the Herdsman; and the branch, emblem of autumn, placed
+      in the picture of Mithra* between winter and summer, seems to open the
+      door and give knowledge, the key of good and evil.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See this picture in Hyde, page 111, edition of 1760.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and that a
+      cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to guard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the horizon,
+      Perseus rises on the other side;* and this Genius, with a sword in his
+      hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the garden and dominion
+      of fruits and flowers.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Rather the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so
+     beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his
+     hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the
+     horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the
+     serpents which surround it are Orphiucus and the Polar
+     Dragon, who then occupy the zenith. This shows us in what
+     manner the ancients composed all their figures and fables.
+     They took such constellations as they found at the same time
+     on the circle of the horizon, and collecting the different
+     parts, they formed groups which served them as an almanac in
+     hieroglyphic characters.  Such is the secret of all their
+     pictures, and the solution of all their mythological
+     monsters.  The virgin is also Andromeda, delivered by
+     Perseus from the whale that pursues her (pro-sequitor).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That of this virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a child, who
+      should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the world from sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This denotes the son, which, at the moment of the winter solstice,
+      precisely when the Persian Magi drew the horoscope of the new year, was
+      placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern
+      horizon; on this account he was figured in their astrological pictures
+      under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin,* and became
+      afterwards, at the vernal equinox, the ram, or the lamb, triumphant over
+      the constellation of the Serpent, which disappeared from the skies.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Such was the picture of the Persian sphere, cited by Aben
+     Ezra in the Coelam Poeticum of Blaeu, p. 71.  "The picture
+     of the first decan of the Virgin," says that writer.
+     "represents a beautiful virgin with flowing hair; sitting in
+     a chair, with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an
+     infant, called Jesus by some nations, and Christ in Greek."
+
+     In the library of the king of France is a manuscript in
+     Arabic, marked 1165, in which is a picture of the twelve
+     signs; and that of the Virgin represents a young woman with
+     an infant by her side: the whole scene indeed of the birth
+     of Jesus is to be found in the adjacent part of the heavens.
+     The stable is the constellation of the charioteer and the
+     goat, formerly Capricorn: a constellation called proesepe
+     Jovis Heniochi, stable of Iou; and the word Iou is found in
+     the name Iou-seph (Joseph).  At no great distance is the ass
+     of Typhon (the great she-bear), and the ox or bull, the
+     ancient attendants of the manger.  Peter the porter, is
+     Janus with his keys and bald forehead: the twelve apostles
+     are the genii of the twelve months, etc.  This Virgin has
+     acted very different parts in the various systems of
+     mythology: she has been the Isis of the Egyptians, who said
+     of her in one of their inscriptions cited by Julian, the
+     fruit I have brought forth is the sun.  The majority of
+     traits drawn by Plutarch apply to her, in the same manner as
+     those of Osiris apply to Bootes: also the seven principal
+     stars of the she-bear, called David's chariot, were called
+     the chariot of Osiris (See Kirker); and the crown that is
+     situated behind, formed of ivy, was called Chen-Osiris, the
+     tree of Osiris.  The Virgin has likewise been Ceres, whose
+     mysteries were the same with those of Isis and Mithra; she
+     has been the Diana of the Ephesians; the great goddess of
+     Syria, Cybele, drawn by lions; Minerva, the mother of
+     Bacchus; Astraea, a chaste virgin taken up into heaven at
+     the end of a golden age; Themis at whose feet is the balance
+     that was put in her hands; the Sybil of Virgil, who descends
+     into hell, or sinks below the hemisphere with a branch in
+     her hand, etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That, in his infancy, this restorer of divine and celestial nature would
+      live abased, humble, obscure and indigent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And this, because the winter sun is abased below the horizon; and that
+      this first period of his four ages or seasons, is a time of obscurity,
+      scarcity, fasting, and want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That, being put to death by the wicked, he had risen gloriously; that he
+      had reascended from hell to heaven, where he would reign forever
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is a sketch of the life of the sun; who, finishing his career at the
+      winter solstice, when Typhon and the rebel angels gain the dominion, seems
+      to be put to death by them; but who soon after is born again, and rises*
+      into the vault of heaven, where he reigns.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Resurgere, to rise a second time, cannot signify to return
+     to life, but in a metaphorical sense; but we see continually
+     mistakes of this kind result from the ambiguous meaning of
+     the words made use of in ancient tradition.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Finally, these traditions went so far as to mention even his astrological
+      and mythological names, and inform us that he was called sometimes Chris,
+      that is to say, preserver,* and from that, ye Indians, you have made your
+      god Chrish-en or Chrish-na; and, ye Greek and Western Christians, your
+      Chris-tos, son of Mary, is the same; sometimes he is called Yes, by the
+      union of three letters, which by their numerical value form the number
+      608, one of the solar periods.** And this, Europeans, is the name which,
+      with the Latin termination, is become your Yes-us or Jesus, the ancient
+      and cabalistic name attributed to young Bacchus, the clandestine son
+      (nocturnal) of the Virgin Minerva, who, in the history of his whole life,
+      and even of his death, brings to mind the history of the god of the
+      Christians, that is, of the star of day, of which they are each of them
+      the emblems."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Greeks used to express by X, or Spanish iota, the
+     aspirated ha of the Orientals, who said haris.  In Hebrew
+     heres signifies the sun, but in Arabic the meaning of the
+     radical word is, to guard, to preserve, and of haris,
+     guardian, preserver.  It is the proper epithet of Vichenou,
+     which demonstrates at once the identity of the Indian and
+     Christian Trinities, and their common origin.  It is
+     manifestly but one system, which divided into two branches,
+     one extending to the east, and the other to the west,
+     assumed two different forms: Its principal trunk is the
+     Pythagorean system of the soul of the world, or Iou-piter.
+     The epithet piter, or father, having been applied to the
+     demi-ourgos of Plato, gave rise to an ambiguity which caused
+     an enquiry to be made respecting the son of this father.  In
+     the opinion of the philosophers the son was understanding,
+     Nous and Logos, from which the Latins made their Verbum.
+     And thus we clearly perceive the origin of the eternal
+     father and of the Verbum his son, proceeding from him (Mens
+     Ex Deo nata, says Macrobius): the oenima or spiritus mundi,
+     was the Holy Ghost; and it is for this reason that Manes,
+     Pasilides, Valentinius, and other pretended heretics of the
+     first ages, who traced things to their source, said, that
+     God the Father was the supreme inaccessible light (that of
+     the heaven, the primum mobile, or the aplanes); the Son the
+     secondary light resident in the sun, and the Holy Ghost the
+     atmosphere of the earth (See Beausob. vol. II, p. 586):
+     hence, among the Syrians, the representation of the Holy
+     Ghost by a dove, the bird of Venus Urania, that is of the
+     air. The Syrians (says Nigidius de Germaico) assert that a
+     dove sat for a certain number of days on the egg of a fish,
+     and that from this incubation Venus was born: Sextus
+     Empiricus also observes (Inst. Pyrrh. lib. 3, c. 23) that
+     the Syrians abstain from eating doves; which intimates to us
+     a period commencing in the sign Pisces, in the winter
+     solstice.  We may farther observe, that if Chris comes from
+     Harisch by a chin, it will signify artificer, an epithet
+     belonging to the sun.  These variations, which must have
+     embarrassed the ancients, prove it to be the real type of
+     Jesus, as had been already remarked in the time of
+     Tertullian.  "Many, says this writer, suppose with greater
+     probability that the sun is our God, and they refer us to
+     the religion of the Persians."  Apologet. c. 16.
+
+     ** See a curious ode to the sun, by Martianus Capella,
+     translated by Gebelin.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Here a great murmur having arisen among all the Christian groups, the
+      Lamas, the Mussulmans and the Indians called them to order, and the orator
+      went on to finish his discourse:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know at present," said he, "how the rest of this system was composed
+      in the chaos and anarchy of the three first centuries; what a multitude of
+      singular opinions divided the minds of men, and armed them with an
+      enthusiasm and a reciprocal obstinacy; because, being equally founded on
+      ancient tradition, they were equally sacred. You know how the government,
+      after three centuries, having embraced one of these sects, made it the
+      orthodox, that is to say, the pre-dominant religion, to the exclusion of
+      the rest; which, being less in number, became heretics; you know how and
+      by what means of violence and seduction this religion was propagated,
+      extended, divided, and enfeebled; how, six hundred years after the
+      Christian innovation, another system was formed from it and from that of
+      the Jews; and how Mahomet found the means of composing a political and
+      theological empire at the expense of those of Moses and the vicars of
+      Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, if you take a review of the whole history of the spirit of all
+      religion, you will see that in its origin it has had no other author than
+      the sensations and wants of man; that the idea of God has had no other
+      type and model than those of physical powers, material beings, producing
+      either good or evil, by impressions of pleasure or pain on sensitive
+      beings; that in the formation of all these systems the spirit of religion
+      has always followed the same course, and been uniform in its proceedings;
+      that in all of them the dogma has never failed to represent, under the
+      name of gods, the operations of nature, and passions and prejudices of
+      men; that the moral of them all has had for its object the desire of
+      happiness and the aversion to pain; but that the people, and the greater
+      part of legislators, not knowing the route to be pursued, have formed
+      false, and therefore discordant, ideas of virtue and vice of good and
+      evil, that is to say, of what renders man happy or miserable; that in
+      every instance, the means and the causes of propagating and establishing
+      systems have exhibited the same scenes of passion and the same events;
+      everywhere disputes about words, pretexts for zeal, revolutions and wars
+      excited by the ambition of princes, the knavery of apostles, the credulity
+      of proselytes, the ignorance of the vulgar, the exclusive cupidity and
+      intolerant arrogance of all. Indeed, you will see that the whole history
+      of the spirit of religion is only the history of the errors of the human
+      mind, which, placed in a world that it does not comprehend, endeavors
+      nevertheless to solve the enigma; and which, beholding with astonishment
+      this mysterious and visible prodigy, imagines causes, supposes reasons,
+      builds systems; then, finding one defective, destroys it for another not
+      less so; hates the error that it abandons, misconceives the one that it
+      embraces, rejects the truth that it is seeking, composes chimeras of
+      discordant beings; and thus, while always dreaming of wisdom and
+      happiness, wanders blindly in a labyrinth of illusion and doubt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ALL RELIGIONS HAVE THE SAME OBJECT.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the orator in the name of those men who had studied the origin
+      and succession of religious ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theologians of various systems, reasoning on this discourse: "It is an
+      impious representation," said some, "whose tendency is nothing less than
+      to overturn all belief, to destroy subordination in the minds of men, and
+      annihilate our ministry and power." "It is a romance," said others, "a
+      tissue of conjectures, composed with art, but without foundation." The
+      moderate and prudent men added: "Supposing all this to be true, why reveal
+      these mysteries? Doubtless our opinions are full of errors; but these
+      errors are a necessary restraint on the multitude. The world has gone thus
+      for two thousand years; why change it now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A murmur of disapprobation, which never fails to rise at every innovation,
+      now began to increase; when a numerous group of the common classes of
+      people, and of untaught men of all countries and of every nation, without
+      prophets, without doctors, and without doctrine, advancing in the circle,
+      drew the attention of the whole assembly; and one of them, in the name of
+      all, thus addressed the multitude:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mediators and arbiters of nations! the strange relations which have
+      occupied the present debate were unknown to us until this day. Our
+      understanding, confounded and amazed at so many statements, some of them
+      learned, others absurd and all incomprehensible, remains in uncertainty
+      and doubt. One only reflection has struck us: on reviewing so many
+      prodigious facts, so many contradictory assertions, we ask ourselves: What
+      are all these discussions to us? What need have we of knowing what passed
+      five or six thousand years ago, in countries we never heard of, and among
+      men who will ever be unknown to us? True or false, what interest have we
+      in knowing whether the world has existed six thousand, or twenty-five
+      thousand years? Whether it was made of nothing, or of something; by
+      itself, or by a maker, who in his turn would require another maker? What!
+      we are not sure of what happens near us, and shall we answer for what
+      happens in the sun, in the moon, or in imaginary regions of space? We have
+      forgotten our own infancy, and shall we know the infancy of the world? And
+      who will attest what no one has seen? who will certify what no man
+      comprehends?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Besides, what addition or diminution will it make to our existence, to
+      answer yes or no to all these chimeras? Hitherto neither our fathers nor
+      ourselves have had the least knowledge or notion of them, and we do not
+      perceive that we have had on this account either more or less of the sun,
+      more or less of subsistence, more or less of good or of evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If the knowledge of these things is so necessary, why have we lived as
+      well without it as those who have taken so much trouble concerning it? If
+      this knowledge is superfluous, why should we burden ourselves with it
+      to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then addressing himself to the doctors and theologians:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What!" said he, "is it necessary that we, poor and ignorant men, whose
+      every moment is scarcely sufficient for the cares of life, and the labors
+      of which you take the profit,&mdash;is it necessary for us to learn the
+      numberless histories that you have recounted, to read the quantity of
+      books that you have cited, and to study the various languages in which
+      they are composed! A thousand years of life would not suffice&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not necessary," replied the doctors, "that you should acquire all
+      this science; we have it for you&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But even you," replied the simple men, "with all your science, you are
+      not agreed; of what advantage, then, is your science? Besides, how can you
+      answer for us? If the faith of one man is applicable to many, what need
+      have even you to believe? your fathers may have believed for you; and this
+      would be reasonable, since they have seen for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Farther, what is believing, if believing influences no action? And what
+      action is influenced by believing, for instance, that the world is or is
+      not eternal?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The latter would be offensive to God," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How prove you that?" replied the simple men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In our books," answered the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We do not understand them," returned the simple men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We understand them for you," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is the difficulty," replied the simple men. "By what right do you
+      constitute yourselves mediators between God and us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By his orders," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is the proof of these orders?" said the simple men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In our books," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We understand them not," said the simple men; "and how came this just God
+      to give you this privilege over us? Why did this common father oblige us
+      to believe on a less degree of evidence than you? He has spoken to you; be
+      it so; he is infallible, and deceives you not. But it is you who speak to
+      us! And who shall assure us that you are not in error yourselves, or that
+      you will not lead us into error? And if we should be deceived, how will
+      that just God save us contrary to law, or condemn us on a law which we
+      have not known?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has given you the natural law," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what is the natural law?" replied the simple men. "If that law is
+      sufficient, why has he given any other? If it is not sufficient, why did
+      he make it imperfect?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His judgments are mysteries," said the doctors, "and his justice is not
+      like that of men."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If his justice," replied the simple men, "is not like ours, by what rule
+      are we to judge of it? And, moreover, why all these laws, and what is the
+      object proposed by them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To render you more happy," replied a doctor, "by rendering you better and
+      more virtuous. It is to teach man to enjoy his benefits, and not injure
+      his fellows, that God has manifested himself by so many oracles and
+      prodigies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case," said the simple men, "there is no necessity for so many
+      studies, nor of such a variety of arguments; only tell us which is the
+      religion that best answers the end which they all propose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately, on this, every group, extolling its own morality above that
+      of all others, there arose among the different sects a new and most
+      violent dispute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is we," said the Mussulmans, "who possess the most excellent morals,
+      who teach all the virtues useful to men and agreeable to God. We profess
+      justice, disinterestedness, resignation to providence, charity to our
+      brethren, alms-giving, and devotion; we torment not the soul with
+      superstitious fears; we live without alarm, and die without remorse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How dare you speak of morals," answered the Christian priests, "you,
+      whose chief lived in licentiousness and preached impurity? You, whose
+      first precept is homicide and war? For this we appeal to experience: for
+      these twelve hundred years your fanatical zeal has not ceased to spread
+      commotion and carnage among the nations. If Asia, so flourishing in former
+      times, is now languishing in barbarity and depopulation, it is in your
+      doctrine that we find the cause; in that doctrine, the enemy of all
+      instruction, which sanctifies ignorance, which consecrates the most
+      absolute despotism in the governors, imposes the most blind and passive
+      obedience in the people, that has stupefied the faculties of man, and
+      brutalized the nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not so with our sublime and celestial morals; it was they which
+      raised the world from its primitive barbarity, from the senseless and
+      cruel superstitions of idolatry, from human sacrifices,* from the shameful
+      orgies of pagan mysteries; they it was that purified manners, proscribed
+      incest and adultery, polished savage nations, banished slavery, and
+      introduced new and unknown virtues, charity for men, their equality in the
+      sight of God, forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries, the restraint of
+      all the passions, the contempt of worldly greatness, a life completely
+      spiritual and completely holy!"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Read the cold declaration of Eusebius (Proep. Evang. lib.
+     I, p. 11,), who pretends that, since the coming of Christ,
+     there have been neither wars, nor tyrants, nor cannibals,
+     nor sodomites, nor persons committing incest, nor savages
+     destroying their parents, etc.  When we read these fathers
+     of the church we are astonished at their insincerity or
+     infatuation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "We admire," said the Mussulmans, "the ease with which you reconcile that
+      evangelical meekness, of which you are so ostentatious, with the injuries
+      and outrages with which you are constantly galling your neighbors. When
+      you criminate so severely the great man whom we revere, we might fairly
+      retort on the conduct of him whom you adore; but we scorn such advantages,
+      and confining ourselves to the real object in question, we maintain that
+      the morals of your gospel have by no means that perfection which you
+      ascribe to them; it is not true that they have introduced into the world
+      new and unknown virtues: for example, the equality of men in the sight of
+      God,&mdash;that fraternity and that benevolence which follow from it, were
+      formal doctrines of the sect of the Hermatics or Samaneans,* from whom you
+      descend. As to the forgiveness of injuries, the Pagans themselves had
+      taught it; but in the extent that you give it, far from being a virtue, it
+      becomes an immorality, a vice. Your so much boasted precept of turning one
+      cheek after the other, is not only contrary to every sentiment of man, but
+      is opposed to all ideas of justice. It emboldens the wicked by impunity,
+      debases the virtuous by servility, delivers up the world to despotism and
+      tyranny, and dissolves all society. Such is the true spirit of your
+      doctrines. Your gospels in their precepts and their parables, never
+      represent God but as a despot without any rules of equity; a partial
+      father treating a debauched and prodigal son with more favor than his
+      respectful and virtuous children; a capricious master, who gives the same
+      wages to workmen who had wrought but one hour, as to those who had labored
+      through the whole day; one who prefers the last comers to the first. The
+      moral is everywhere misanthropic and antisocial; it disgusts men with life
+      and with society; and tends only to encourage hermitism and celibacy.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The equality of mankind in a state of nature and in the
+     eyes of God was one of the principal tenets of the
+     Samaneans, and they appear to be the only ancients that
+     entertained this opinion.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "As to the manner in which you have practised these morals, we appeal in
+      our turn to the testimony of facts. We ask whether it is this evangelical
+      meekness which has excited your interminable wars between your sects, your
+      atrocious persecutions of pretended heretics, your crusades against
+      Arianism, Manicheism, Protestantism, without speaking of your crusades
+      against us, and of those sacrilegious associations, still subsisting, of
+      men who take an oath to continue them?* We ask you whether it be gospel
+      charity which has made you exterminate whole nations in America, to
+      annihilate the empires of Mexico and Peru; which makes you continue to
+      dispeople Africa and sell its inhabitants like cattle, notwithstanding
+      your abolition of slavery; which makes you ravage India and usurp its
+      dominions; and whether it be the same charity which, for three centuries
+      past, has led you to harrass the habitations of the people of three
+      continents, of whom the most prudent, the Chinese and Japanese, were
+      constrained to drive you off, that they might escape your chains and
+      recover their internal peace?"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The oath taken by the knights of the Order of Malta, is to
+     kill, or make the Mahometans prisoners, for the glory of
+     God.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Here the Bramins, the Rabbins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, the Priests of the
+      Molucca islands, and the coasts of Guinea, loading the Christian doctors
+      with reproaches: "Yes!" cried they, "these men are robbers and hypocrites,
+      who preach simplicity, to surprise confidence; humility, to enslave with
+      more ease; poverty, to appropriate all riches to themselves. They promise
+      another world, the better to usurp the present; and while they speak to
+      you of tolerance and charity, they burn, in the name of God, the men who
+      do not worship him in their manner."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lying priests," retorted the missionaries, "it is you who abuse the
+      credulity of ignorant nations to subjugate them. It is you who have made
+      of your ministry an art of cheating and imposture; you have converted
+      religion into a traffic of cupidity and avarice. You pretend to hold
+      communications with spirits, and they give for oracles nothing but your
+      wills. You feign to read the stars, and destiny decrees only your desires.
+      You cause idols to speak, and the gods are but the instruments of your
+      passions. You have invented sacrifices and libations, to collect for your
+      own profit the milk of flocks, and the flesh and fat of victims; and under
+      the cloak of piety you devour the offerings of the gods, who cannot eat,
+      and the substance of the people who are forced to labor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you," replied the Bramins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, "you sell to the
+      credulous living, your vain prayers for the souls of the dead. With your
+      indulgences and your absolutions you have usurped the power of God
+      himself; and making a traffic of his favors and pardons, you have put
+      heaven at auction; and by your system of expiations you have formed a
+      tariff of crimes, which has perverted all consciences."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * As long as it shall be possible to obtain purification
+     from crimes and exemption from punishment by means of money
+     or other frivolous practices; as long as kings and great men
+     shall suppose that building temples or instituting
+     foundations, will absolve them from the guilt of oppression
+     and homicide; as long as individuals shall imagine that they
+     may rob and cheat, provided they observe fast during Lent,
+     go to confession, and receive extreme unction, it is
+     impossible there should exist in society any morality or
+     virtue; and it is from a deep conviction of truth, that a
+     modern philosopher has called the doctrine of expiations la
+     verola des societes.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Add to this," said the Imans, "that these men have invented the most
+      insidious of all systems of wickedness,&mdash;the absurd and impious
+      obligation of recounting to them the most intimate secrets of actions and
+      of thoughts (confessions); so their insolent curiosity has carried their
+      inquisition even into the sanctuary of the marriage bed,* and the
+      inviolable recesses of the heart."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Confession is a very ancient invention of the priests, who
+     did not fail to avail themselves of that means of governing.
+     It was practised in the Egyptian, Greek, Phrygian, Persian
+     mysteries, etc. Plutarch has transmitted us the remarkable
+     answer of a Spartan whom a priest wanted to confess.  "Is it
+     to you or to God I am to confess?"  "To God," answered the
+     priest: "In that case," replied the Spartan, "man, begone!"
+     (Remarkable Savings of the Lacedemonians.)  The first
+     Christians confessed their faults publicly, like the
+     Essenians.  Afterwards, priests began to be established,
+     with power of absolution from the sin of idolatry.  In the
+     time of Theodosius, a woman having publicly confessed an
+     intrigue with a deacon, bishop Necterius, and his successor
+     Chrysostom, granted communion without confession.  It was
+     not until the seventh century that the abbots of convents
+     exacted from monks and nuns confession twice a year; and it
+     was at a still later period that bishops of Rome generalized
+     it.
+
+     The Mussulmen, who suppose women to have no souls, are
+     shocked at the idea of confession; and say; How can an
+     honest man think of listening to the recital of the actions
+     or the secret thoughts of a woman?  May we not also ask, on
+     the other hand, how can an honest woman consent to reveal
+     them?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thus by mutual reproaches the doctors of the different sects began to
+      reveal all the crimes of their ministry&mdash;all the vices of their
+      craft; and it was found that among all nations the spirit of the
+      priesthood, their system of conduct, their actions their morals, were
+      absolutely the same:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they had everywhere formed secret associations and corporations at
+      enmity with the rest of society:*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * That we may understand the general feelings of priests
+     respecting the rest of mankind, whom they always call by the
+     name of the people, let us hear one of the doctors of the
+     church.  "The people," says Bishop Synnesius, in Calvit.
+     page 315, "are desirous of being deceived, we cannot act
+     otherwise respecting them.  The case was similar with the
+     ancient priests of Egypt, and for this reason they shut
+     themselves up in their temples, and there composed their
+     mysteries, out of the reach of the eye of the people."  And
+     forgetting what he has before just said, he adds: "for had
+     the people been in the secret they might have been offended
+     at the deception played upon them.  In the mean time how is
+     it possible to conduct one's self otherwise with the people
+     so long as they are people?  For my own part, to myself I
+     shall always be a philosopher, but in dealing with the mass
+     of mankind, I shall be a priest."
+
+     "A little jargon," says Geogory Nazianzen to St. Jerome
+     (Hieron. ad. Nep.) "is all that is necessary to impose on
+     the people.  The less they comprehend, the more they admire.
+     Our forefathers and doctors of the church have often said,
+     not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity
+     dictated to them."
+
+     "We endeavor," says Sanchoniaton, "to excite admiration by
+     means of the marvellous." (Proep. Evang. lib. 3.)
+
+     Such was the conduct of all the priests of antiquity, and is
+     still that of the Bramins and Lamas who are the exact
+     counterpart of the Egyptian priests.  Such was the practice
+     of the Jesuits, who marched with hasty strides in the same
+     career.  It is useless to point out the whole depravity of
+     such a doctrine.  In general every association which has
+     mystery for its basis, or an oath of secrecy, is a league of
+     robbers against society, a league divided in its very bosom
+     into knaves and dupes, or in other words agents and
+     instruments.  It is thus we ought to judge of those modern
+     clubs, which, under the name of Illuminatists, Martinists,
+     Cagliostronists, and Mesmerites, infest Europe.  These
+     societies are the follies and deceptions of the ancient
+     Cabalists, Magicians, Orphies, etc., "who," says Plutarch,
+     "led into errors of considerable magnitude, not only
+     individuals, but kings and nations."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That they had everywhere attributed to themselves prerogatives and
+      immunities, by means of which they lived exempt from the burdens of other
+      classes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they everywhere avoided the toils of the laborer, the dangers of the
+      soldier, and the disappointments of the merchant:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they lived everywhere in celibacy, to shun even the cares of a
+      family:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, under the cloak of poverty, they found everywhere the secret of
+      procuring wealth and all sorts of enjoyments:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That under the name of mendicity they raised taxes to a greater amount
+      than princes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That in the form of gifts and offerings they had established fixed and
+      certain revenues exempt from charges:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That under pretence of retirement and devotion they lived in idleness and
+      licentiousness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they had made a virtue of alms-giving, to live quietly on the labors
+      of others:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they had invented the ceremonies of worship, as a means of attracting
+      the reverence of the people, while they were playing the parts of gods, of
+      whom they styled themselves the interpreters and mediators, to assume all
+      their powers; that, with this design, they had (according to the degree of
+      ignorance or information of their people) assumed by turns the character
+      of astrologers, drawers of horoscopes, fortune-tellers, magicians,*
+      necromancers, quacks, physicians, courtiers, confessors of princes, always
+      aiming at the great object to govern for their own advantage:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * What is a magician, in the sense in which people
+     understand the word?  A man who by words and gestures
+     pretends to act on supernatural beings, and compel them to
+     descend at his call and obey his orders.  Such was the
+     conduct of the ancient priests, and such is still that of
+     all priests in idolatrous nations; for which reason we have
+     given them the denomination of Magicians.
+
+     And when a Christian priest pretends to make God descend
+     from heaven, to fix him to a morsel of leaven, and render,
+     by means of this talisman, souls pure and in a state of
+     grace, what is this but a trick of magic?  And where is the
+     difference between a Chaman of Tartary who invokes the
+     Genii, or an Indian Bramin, who makes Vichenou descend in a
+     vessel of water to drive away evil spirits? Yes, the
+     identity of the spirit of priests in every age and country
+     is fully established!  Every where it is the assumption of
+     an exclusive privilege, the pretended faculty of moving at
+     will the powers of nature; and this assumption is so direct
+     a violation of the right of equality, that whenever the
+     people shall regain their importance, they will forever
+     abolish this sacrilegious kind of nobility, which has been
+     the type and parent stock of the other species of nobility.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That sometimes they had exalted the power of kings and consecrated their
+      persons, to monopolize their favors, or participate their sway:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That sometimes they had preached up the murder of tyrants (reserving it to
+      themselves to define tyranny), to avenge themselves of their contempt or
+      their disobedience:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that they always stigmatised with impiety whatever crossed their
+      interests; that they hindered all public instruction, to exercise the
+      monopoly of science; that finally, at all times and in all places, they
+      had found the secret of living in peace in the midst of the anarchy they
+      created, in safety under the despotism that they favored, in idleness
+      amidst the industry they preached, and in abundance while surrounded with
+      scarcity; and all this by carrying on the singular trade of selling words
+      and gestures to credulous people, who purchase them as commodities of the
+      greatest value.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A curious work would be the comparative history of the
+     agnuses of the pope and the pastils of the grand Lama.  It
+     would be worth while to extend this idea to religions
+     ceremonies in general, and to confront column by column, the
+     analogous or contrasting points of faith and superstitious
+     practices in all nations.  There is one more species of
+     superstition which it would be equally salutary to cure,
+     blind veneration for the great; and for this purpose it
+     would be alone sufficient to write a minute detail of the
+     private life of kings and princes.  No work could be so
+     philosophical as this; and accordingly we have seen what a
+     general outcry was excited among kings and the panders of
+     kings, when the Anecdotes of the Court of Berlin first
+     appeared.  What would be the alarm were the public put in
+     possession of the sequel of this work?  Were the people
+     fairly acquainted with all the absurdities of this species
+     of idol, they would no longer be exposed to covet their
+     specious pleasures of which the plausible and hollow
+     appearance disturbs their peace, and hinders them from
+     enjoying the much more solid happiness of their own
+     condition.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then the different nations, in a transport of fury, were going to tear in
+      pieces the men who had thus abused them; but the legislator, arresting
+      this movement of violence, addressed the chiefs and doctors:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What!" said he, "instructors of nations, is it thus that you have
+      deceived them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the terrified priests replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O legislator! we are men. The people are so superstitious! they have
+      themselves encouraged these errors."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Consider in this view the Brabanters.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And the kings said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O legislator! the people are so servile and so ignorant! they prostrated
+      themselves before the yoke, which we scarcely dared to show them."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The inhabitants of Vienna, for example, who harnessed
+     themselves like cattle and drew the chariot of Leopold.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then the legislator, turning to the people&mdash;"People!" said he,
+      "remember what you have just heard; they are two indelible truths. Yes,
+      you yourselves cause the evils of which you complain; yourselves encourage
+      the tyrants, by a base adulation of their power, by an imprudent
+      admiration of their false beneficence, by servility in obedience, by
+      licentiousness in liberty, and by a credulous reception of every
+      imposition. On whom shall you wreak vengeance for the faults committed by
+      your own ignorance and cupidity?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people, struck with confusion, remained in mournful silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF CONTRADICTIONS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The legislator then resumed his discourse: "O nations!" said he, "we have
+      heard the discussion of your opinions. The different sentiments which
+      divide you have given rise to many reflections, and furnished several
+      questions which we shall propose to you to solve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "First, considering the diversity and opposition of the creeds to which
+      you are attached, we ask on what motives you found your persuasion? Is it
+      from a deliberate choice that you follow the standard of one prophet
+      rather than another? Before adopting this doctrine, rather than that, did
+      you first compare? did you carefully examine them? Or have you received
+      them only from the chance of birth, from the empire of education and
+      habit? Are you not born Christians on the borders of the Tiber, Mussulmans
+      on those of the Euphrates, Idolaters on the Indus, just as you are born
+      fair in cold climates, and sable under the scorching sun of Africa? And if
+      your opinions are the effect of your fortuitous position on the earth, of
+      consanguinity, of imitation, how is it that such a hazard should be a
+      ground of conviction, an argument of truth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Secondly, when we reflect on the mutual proscriptions and arbitrary
+      intolerance of your pretensions, we are frightened at the consequences
+      that flow from your own principles. Nations! who reciprocally devote each
+      other to the bolts of heavenly wrath, suppose that the universal Being,
+      whom you revere, should this moment descend from heaven on this multitude;
+      and, clothed with all his power, should sit on this throne to judge you;
+      suppose that he should say to you: Mortals! it is your own justice that I
+      am going to exercise upon you. Yes, of all the religious systems that
+      divide you, one alone shall this day be preferred; all the others, all
+      this multitude of standards, of nations, of prophets, shall be condemned
+      to eternal destruction. This is not enough: among the particular sects of
+      the chosen system, one only can be favored; all the others must be
+      condemned: neither is this enough;&mdash;from this little remnant of a
+      group I must exclude all those who have not fulfilled the conditions
+      enjoined by its precepts. O men! to what a small number of elect have you
+      limited your race! to what a penury of beneficence do you reduce the
+      immensity of my goodness! to what a solitude of beholders do you condemn
+      my greatness and my glory!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But," said the legislator rising, "no matter you have willed it so.
+      Nations! here is an urn in which all your names are placed: one only is a
+      prize: approach, and draw this tremendous lottery!" And the nations,
+      seized with terror cried: "No, no; we are all brothers, all equal; we
+      cannot condemn each other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then," said the legislator, resuming his seat: "O men! who dispute on so
+      many subjects, lend an attentive ear to one problem which you exhibit, and
+      which you ought to decide yourselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people, giving great attention, he lifted an arm towards heaven,
+      and, pointing to the sun, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nations, does that sun, which enlightens you, appear square or
+      triangular?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," answered they with one voice, "it is round."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, taking the golden balance that was on the altar:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This gold," said the legislator, "that you handle every day, is it
+      heavier than the same volume of copper?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," answered all the people, "gold is heavier than Copper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, taking the sword:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this iron," said the legislator, "softer than lead?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is sugar sweet, and gall bitter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you love pleasure and hate pain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thus, then, you are agreed in these points, and many others of the same
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, tell us, is there a cavern in the centre of the earth, or
+      inhabitants in the moon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This question caused a universal murmur. Every one answered differently&mdash;some
+      yes, others no; one said it was probable, another said it was an idle and
+      ridiculous question; some, that it was worth knowing. And the discord was
+      universal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some time the legislator, having obtained silence, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Explain to us, O Nations! this problem: we have put to you several
+      questions which you have answered with one voice, without distinction of
+      race or of sect: white men, black men, followers of Mahomet and of Moses,
+      worshippers of Boudha and of Jesus, all have returned the same answer. We
+      then proposed another question, and you have all disagreed! Why this
+      unanimity in one case, and this discordance in the other?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the group of simple men and savages answered and said: "The reason of
+      this is plain. In the first case we see and feel the objects, and we speak
+      from sensation; in the second, they are beyond the reach of our senses&mdash;we
+      speak of them only from conjecture."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have resolved the problem," said the legislator; "and your own
+      consent has established this first truth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That whenever objects can be examined and judged of by your senses, you
+      are agreed in opinion; and that you only differ when the objects are
+      absent and beyond your reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From this first truth flows another equally clear and worthy of notice.
+      Since you agree on things which you know with certainty, it follows that
+      you disagree only on those which you know not with certainty, and about
+      which you are not sure; that is to say, you dispute, you quarrel, you
+      fight, for that which is uncertain, that of which you doubt. O men! is
+      this wisdom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it not, then, demonstrated that truth is not the object of your
+      contests? that it is not her cause which you defend, but that of your
+      affections, and your prejudices? that it is not the object, as it really
+      is in itself, that you would verify, but the object as you would have it;
+      that is to say, it is not the evidence of the thing that you would
+      enforce, but your own personal opinion, your particular manner of seeing
+      and judging? It is a power that you wish to exercise, an interest that you
+      wish to satisfy, a prerogative that you arrogate to yourself; it is a
+      contest of vanity. Now, as each of you, on comparing himself to every
+      other, finds himself his equal and his fellow, he resists by a feeling of
+      the same right. And your disputes, your combats, your intolerance, are the
+      effect of this right which you deny each other, and of the intimate
+      conviction of your equality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, the only means of establishing harmony is to return to nature, and
+      to take for a guide and regulator the order of things which she has
+      founded; and then your accord will prove this other truth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That real beings have in themselves an identical, constant and uniform
+      mode of existence; and that there is in your organs a like mode of being
+      affected by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But at the same time, by reason of the mobility of these organs as
+      subject to your will, you may conceive different affections, and find
+      yourselves in different relations with the same objects; so that you are
+      to them like a mirror, capable of reflecting them truly as they are, or of
+      distorting and disfiguring them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hence it follows, that whenever you perceive objects as they are, you
+      agree among yourselves, and with the objects; and this similitude between
+      your sensations and their manner of existence, is what constitutes their
+      truth with respect to you; and, on the contrary, whenever you differ in
+      opinion, your disagreement is a proof that you do not represent them such
+      as they are,&mdash;that you change them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hence, also, it follows, that the causes of your disagreement exist not
+      in the objects themselves, but in your minds, in your manner of perceiving
+      or judging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To establish, therefore, a uniformity of opinion, it is necessary first
+      to establish the certainty, completely verified, that the portraits which
+      the mind forms are perfectly like the originals; that it reflects the
+      objects correctly as they exist. Now, this result cannot be obtained but
+      in those cases where the objects can be brought to the test, and submitted
+      to the examination of the senses. Everything which cannot be brought to
+      this trial is, for that reason alone, impossible to be determined; there
+      exists no rule, no term of comparison, no means of certainty, respecting
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From this we conclude, that, to live in harmony and peace, we must agree
+      never to decide on such subjects, and to attach to them no importance; in
+      a word, we must trace a line of distinction between those that are capable
+      of verification, and those that are not; and separate by an inviolable
+      barrier the world of fantastical beings from the world of realities; that
+      is to say, all civil effect must be taken away from theological and
+      religious opinions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This, O ye people of the earth! is the object proposed by a great nation
+      freed from her fetters and her prejudices; this is the work which, under
+      her eye and by her orders, we had undertaken, when your kings and your
+      priests came to interrupt it. O kings and priests! you may suspend, yet
+      for a while, the solemn publication of the laws of nature; but it is no
+      longer in your power to annihilate or to subvert them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A general shout then arose from every part of the assembly; and the
+      nations universally, and with one voice, testified their assent to the
+      proposals of the delegates: "Resume," said they, "your holy and sublime
+      labors, and bring them to perfection. Investigate the laws which nature,
+      for our guidance, has implanted in our breasts, and collect from them an
+      authentic and immutable code; nor let this code be any longer for one
+      family only, but for us all without exception. Be the legislators of the
+      whole human race, as you are the interpreters of nature herself. Show us
+      the line of partition between the world of chimeras and that of realities;
+      and teach us, after so many religions of error and delusion, the religion
+      of evidence and truth!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the delegates, having resumed their enquiries into the physical and
+      constituent attributes of man, and examined the motives and affections
+      which govern him in his individual and social state, unfolded in these
+      words the laws on which nature herself has founded his happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <a name="linknature" id="linknature"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE LAW OF NATURE.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the constant and regular order of events, by which God governs
+      the universe; an order which his wisdom presents to the senses and reason
+      of men, as an equal and common rule for their actions, to guide them,
+      without distinction of country or sect, towards perfection and happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Give a clear definition of the word law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The word law, taken literary, signifies lecture,* because originally,
+      ordinances and regulations were the lectures, preferably to all others,
+      made to the people, in order that they might observe them, and not incur
+      the penalties attached to their infraction: whence follows the original
+      custom explaining the true idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The definition of law is, "An order or prohibition to act with the express
+      clause of a penalty attached to the infraction, or of a recompense
+      attached to the observance of that order."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * From the Latin word lex, lectio.  Alcoran likewise
+     signifies lecture and is only a literal translation of the
+     word law.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Q. Do such orders exist in nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What does the word nature signify?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The word nature bears three different significations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. It signifies the universe, the material world: in this first sense we
+      say the beauties of nature, the riches of nature, that is to say, the
+      objects in the heavens and on the earth exposed to our sight;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. It signifies the power that animates, that moves the universe,
+      considering it as a distinct being, such as the soul is to the body; in
+      this second sense we say, "The intentions of nature, the incomprehensible
+      secrets of nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. It signifies the partial operations of that power on each being, or on
+      each class of beings; and in this third sense we say, "The nature of man
+      is an enigma; every being acts according to its nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherefore, as the actions of each being, or of each species of beings, are
+      subjected to constant and general rules, which cannot be infringed without
+      interrupting and troubling the general or particular order, those rules of
+      action and of motion are called natural laws, or laws of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Give me examples of those laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is a law of nature, that the sun illuminates successively the
+      surface of the terrestrial globe;&mdash;that its presence causes both
+      light and heat;&mdash;that heat acting upon water, produces vapors;&mdash;that
+      those vapors rising in clouds into the regions of the air, dissolve into
+      rain or snow, and renew incessantly the waters of fountains and rivers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a law of nature, that water flows downwards; that it endeavors to
+      find its level; that it is heavier than air; that all bodies tend towards
+      the earth; that flame ascends towards the heavens;&mdash;that it
+      disorganizes vegetables and animals; that air is essential to the life of
+      certain animals; that, in certain circumstances, water suffocates and
+      kills them; that certain juices of plants, certain minerals attack their
+      organs, and destroy their life, and so on in a multitude of other
+      instances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherefore, as all those and similar facts are immutable, constant, and
+      regular, so many real orders result from them for man to conform himself
+      to, with the express clause of punishment attending the infraction of
+      them, or of welfare attending their observance. So that if man pretends to
+      see clear in darkness, if he goes in contradiction to the course of the
+      seasons, or the action of the elements; if he pretends to remain under
+      water without being drowned, to touch fire without burning himself, to
+      deprive himself of air without being suffocated, to swallow poison without
+      destroying himself, he receives from each of those infractions of the laws
+      of nature a corporeal punishment proportionate to his fault; but if on the
+      contrary, he observes and practises each of those laws according to the
+      regular and exact relations they have to him he preserves his existence,
+      and renders it as happy as it can be: and as the only and common end of
+      all those laws, considered relatively to mankind, is to preserve, and
+      render them happy, it has been agreed upon to reduce the idea to one
+      simple expression, and to call them collectively the law of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CHARACTERS OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What are the characters of the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. There can be assigned ten principal ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the first?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be inherent to the existence of things, and, consequently, primitive
+      and anterior to every other law: so that all those which man has received,
+      are only imitations of it, and their perfection is ascertained by the
+      resemblance they bear to this primordial model.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the second?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be derived immediately from God, and presented by him to each man,
+      whereas all other laws are presented to us by men, who may be either
+      deceived or deceivers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the third?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be common to all times, and to all countries, that is to say, one
+      and universal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is no other law universal?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for no other is agreeable or applicable to all the people of the
+      earth; they are all local and accidental, originating from circumstances
+      of places and of persons; so that if such a man had not existed, or such
+      an event happened, such a law would never have been enacted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the fourth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be uniform and invariable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is no other law uniform and invariable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for what is good and virtue according to one, is evil and vice
+      according to another; and what one and the same law approves of at one
+      time, it often condemns at another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the fifth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be evident and palpable, because it consists entirely of facts
+      incessantly present to the senses, and to demonstration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are not other laws evident?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for they are founded on past and doubtful facts, on equivocal and
+      suspicious testimonies, and on proofs inaccessible to the senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the sixth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be reasonable, because its precepts and entire doctrine are
+      conformable to reason, and to the human understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is no other law reasonable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for all are in contradiction to the reason and the understanding of
+      men, and tyrannically impose on him a blind and impracticable belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the seventh character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be just, because in that law, the penalties are proportionate to the
+      infractions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are not other laws just?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for they often exceed bounds, either in rewarding deserts, or in
+      punishing delinquencies, and consider as meritorious or criminal, null or
+      indifferent actions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the eighth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature, all men being
+      brothers and equal in rights, it recommends to them only peace and
+      toleration, even for errors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are not other laws pacific?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for all preach dissension, discord, and war, and divide mankind by
+      exclusive pretensions of truth and domination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the ninth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be equally beneficent to all men, in teaching them the true means of
+      becoming better and happier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are not other laws beneficent likewise?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for none of them teach the real means of attaining happiness; all
+      are confined to pernicious or futile practices; and this is evident from
+      facts, since after so many laws, so many religions, so many legislators
+      and prophets, men are still as unhappy and ignorant, as they were six
+      thousand years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the last character of the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. That it is alone sufficient to render men happier and better, because
+      it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws, either civil or
+      religious, that is to say, it constitutes essentially the moral part of
+      them; so that if other laws were divested of it, they would be reduced to
+      chimerical and imaginary opinions devoid of any practical utility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Recapitulate all those characters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. We have said that the law of nature is,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     1.  Primitive;     6.  Reasonable;
+     2.  Immediate;     7.  Just;
+     3.  Universal;     8.  Pacific;
+     4.  Invariable;    9.  Beneficent: and
+     5.  Evident;      10.  Alone sufficient.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And such is the power of all these attributes of perfection and truth,
+      that when in their disputes the theologians can agree upon no article of
+      belief, they recur to the law of nature, the neglect of which, say they,
+      forced God to send from time to time prophets to proclaim new laws; as if
+      God enacted laws for particular circumstances, as men do; especially when
+      the first subsists in such force, that we may assert it to have been at
+      all times and in all countries the rule of conscience for every man of
+      sense or understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. If, as you say, it emanates immediately from God, does it teach his
+      existence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, most positively: for, to any man whatever, who observes with
+      reflection the astonishing spectacle of the universe, the more he
+      meditates on the properties and attributes of each being, on the admirable
+      order and harmony of their motions, the more it is demonstrated that there
+      exists a supreme agent, a universal and identic mover, designated by the
+      appellation of God; and so true it is that the law of nature suffices to
+      elevate him to the knowledge of God, that all which men have pretended to
+      know by supernatural means, has constantly turned out ridiculous and
+      absurd, and that they have ever been obliged to recur to the immutable
+      conceptions of natural reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Then it is not true that the followers of the law of nature are
+      atheists?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; it is not true; on the contrary, they entertain stronger and nobler
+      ideas of the Divinity than most other men; for they do not sully him with
+      the foul ingredients of all the weaknesses and passions entailed on
+      humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What worship do they pay to him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. A worship wholly of action; the practice and observance of all the
+      rules which the supreme wisdom has imposed on the motion of each being;
+      eternal and unalterable rules, by which it maintains the order and harmony
+      of the universe, and which, in their relations to man, constitute the law
+      of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Was the law of nature known before this period:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It has been at all times spoken of: most legislators pretend to adopt
+      it as the basis of their laws; but they only quote some of its precepts,
+      and have only vague ideas of its totality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because, though simple in its basis, it forms in its developements and
+      consequences, a complicated whole which requires an extensive knowledge of
+      facts, joined to all the sagacity of reasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does not instinct alone teach the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for by instinct is meant nothing more than that blind sentiment by
+      which we are actuated indiscriminately towards everything that flatters
+      the senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why, then, is it said that the law of nature is engraved in the hearts
+      of all men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is said for two reasons: first, because it has been remarked, that
+      there are acts and sentiments common to all men, and this proceeds from
+      their common organization; secondly, because the first philosophers
+      believed that men were born with ideas already formed, which is now
+      demonstrated to be erroneous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Philosophers, then, are fallible?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. First, because they are men; secondly, because the ignorant call all
+      those who reason, right or wrong, philosophers; thirdly, because those who
+      reason on many subjects, and who are the first to reason on them, are
+      liable to be deceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. If the law of nature be not written, must it not become arbitrary and
+      ideal?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: because it consists entirely in facts, the demonstration of which
+      can be incessantly renewed to the senses, and constitutes a science as
+      accurate and precise as geometry and mathematics; and it is because the
+      law of nature forms an exact science, that men, born ignorant and living
+      inattentive and heedless, have had hitherto only a superficial knowledge
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF NATURE RELATING TO MAN.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Explain the principles of the law of nature with relation to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. They are simple; all of them are comprised in one fundamental and
+      single precept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is that precept?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is self-preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is not happiness also a precept of the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes: but as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only from the
+      development of man's faculties and his social system, it is not the
+      immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some measure, a
+      superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental object of
+      preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does nature order man to preserve himself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By two powerful and involuntary sensations, which it has attached, as
+      two guides, two guardian Geniuses to all his actions: the one a sensation
+      of pain, by which it admonishes him of, and deters him from, everything
+      that tends to destroy him; the other, a sensation of pleasure, by which it
+      attracts and carries him towards everything that tends to his preservation
+      and the development of his existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Pleasure, then, is not an evil, a sin, as casuists pretend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No, only inasmuch as it tends to destroy life and health which, by the
+      avowal of those same casuists, we derive from God himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is pleasure the principal object of our existence, as some philosophers
+      have asserted?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; not more than pain; pleasure is an incitement to live as pain is a
+      repulsion from death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How do you prove this assertion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By two palpable facts: One, that pleasure, when taken immoderately,
+      leads to destruction; for instance, a man who abuses the pleasure of
+      eating or drinking, attacks his health, and injures his life. The other,
+      that pain sometimes leads to self-preservation; for instance, a man who
+      permits a mortified member to be cut off, suffers pain in order not to
+      perish totally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But does not even this prove that our sensations can deceive us
+      respecting the end of our preservation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; they can momentarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How do our sensations deceive us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. In two ways: by ignorance, and by passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. When do they deceive us by ignorance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. When we act without knowing the action and effect of objects on our
+      senses: for example, when a man touches nettles without knowing their
+      stinging quality, or when he swallows opium without knowing its
+      soporiferous effects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. When do they deceive us by passion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. When, conscious of the pernicious action of objects, we abandon
+      ourselves, nevertheless, to the impetuosity of our desires and appetites:
+      for example, when a man who knows that wine intoxicates, does nevertheless
+      drink it to excess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the result?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. That the ignorance in which we are born, and the unbridled appetites to
+      which we abandon ourselves, are contrary to our preservation; that,
+      therefore, the instruction of our minds and the moderation of our passions
+      are two obligations, two laws, which spring directly from the first law of
+      preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But being born ignorant, is not ignorance a law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No more than to remain in the naked and feeble state of infancy. Far
+      from being a law of nature, ignorance is an obstacle to the practice of
+      all its laws. It is the real original sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why, then, have there been moralists who have looked upon it as a
+      virtue and perfection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because, from a strange or perverted disposition, they confounded the
+      abuse of knowledge with knowledge itself; as if, because men abuse the
+      power of speech, their tongues should be cut out; as if perfection and
+      virtue consisted in the nullity, and not in the proper development of our
+      faculties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Instruction, then, is indispensable to man's existence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, so indispensable, that without it he is every instant assailed and
+      wounded by all that surrounds him; for if he does not know the effects of
+      fire, he burns himself; those of water he drowns himself; those of opium,
+      he poisons himself; if, in the savage state, he does not know the wiles of
+      animals, and the art of seizing game, he perishes through hunger; if in
+      the social state, he does not know the course of the seasons, he can
+      neither cultivate the ground, nor procure nourishment; and so on, of all
+      his actions, respecting all his wants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But can man individually acquire this knowledge necessary to his
+      existence, and to the development of his faculties?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; not without the assistance of his fellow men, and by living in
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But is not society to man a state against nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: it is on the contrary a necessity, a law that nature imposed on him
+      by the very act of his organization; for, first, nature has so constituted
+      man, that he cannot see his species of another sex without feeling
+      emotions and an attraction which induce him to live in a family, which is
+      already a state of society; secondly, by endowing him with sensibility,
+      she organized him so that the sensations of others reflect within him, and
+      excite reciprocal sentiments of pleasure and of grief, which are
+      attractions, and indissoluble ties of society; thirdly, and finally, the
+      state of society, founded on the wants of man, is only a further means of
+      fulfilling the law of preservation: and to pretend that this state is out
+      of nature, because it is more perfect, is the same as to say, that a
+      bitter and wild fruit of the forest, is no longer the production of
+      nature, when rendered sweet and delicious by cultivation in our gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why, then, have philosophers called the savage state the state of
+      perfection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because, as I have told you, the vulgar have often given the name of
+      philosophers to whimsical geniuses, who, from moroseness, from wounded
+      vanity, or from a disgust to the vices of society, have conceived
+      chimerical ideas of the savage state, in contradiction with their own
+      system of a perfect man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the true meaning of the word philosopher?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The word philosopher signifies a lover of wisdom; and as wisdom
+      consists in the practice of the laws of nature, the true philosopher is he
+      who knows those laws, and conforms the whole tenor of his conduct to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is man in the savage state?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. A brutal, ignorant animal, a wicked and ferocious beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is he happy in that state?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for he only feels momentary sensations, which are habitually of
+      violent wants which he cannot satisfy, since he is ignorant by nature, and
+      weak by being isolated from his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is he free?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; he is the most abject slave that exists; for his life depends on
+      everything that surrounds him: he is not free to eat when hungry, to rest
+      when tired, to warm himself when cold; he is every instant in danger of
+      perishing; wherefore nature offers but fortuitous examples of such beings;
+      and we see that all the efforts of the human species, since its origin,
+      sorely tends to emerge from that violent state by the pressing necessity
+      of self-preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But does not this necessity of preservation engender in individuals
+      egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary to the
+      social state?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our neighbor, it is
+      no longer self-love, but the hatred of others. Self-love, taken in its
+      true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest
+      support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in
+      return they should injure us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus mans preservation, and the unfolding of his faculties, directed
+      towards this end, teach the true law of nature in the production of the
+      human being; and it is from this essential principle that are derived, are
+      referred, and in its scale are weighed, all ideas of good and evil, of
+      vice and virtue, of just and unjust, of truth or error, of lawful or
+      forbidden, on which is founded the morality of individual, or of social
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      BASIS OF MORALITY; OF GOOD, OF EVIL, OF SIN, OF CRIME, OF VICE AND OF
+      VIRTUE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is good, according to the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is everything that tends to preserve and perfect man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is evil?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. That which tends to man's destruction or deterioration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is meant by physical good and evil, and by moral good and evil?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the word physical is understood, whatever acts immediately on the
+      body. Health is a physical good; and sickness a physical evil. By moral,
+      is meant what acts by consequences more or less remote. Calumny is a moral
+      evil; a fair reputation is a moral good, because both one and the other
+      occasion towards us, on the part of other men, dispositions and
+      habitudes,* which are useful or hurtful to our preservation, and which
+      attack or favor our means of existence.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is from this word habitudes, (reiterated actions,) in
+     Latin mores, that the word moral, and all its family, are
+     derived.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Q. Everything that tends to preserve, or to produce is therefore a good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; and it is for that reason that certain legislators have classed
+      among the works agreeable to the divinity, the cultivation of a field and
+      the fecundity of a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Whatever tends to cause death is, therefore, an evil?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; and it is for that reason some legislators have extended the idea
+      of evil and of sin even to the killing of animals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other evil can
+      be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is a sin in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for the
+      preservation and perfection of man and of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Can intention be a merit or a crime?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a commencement of
+      sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is virtue according to the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is meant by the word individual?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It means a man considered separately from every other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is vice according to the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and abstracted from
+      the senses?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate, and that
+      end is always to destroy or preserve the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they attack or
+      which they favor; and according to the number of persons in whom those
+      faculties are favored or injured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Give me some examples?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of saving
+      his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men, than that of
+      saving only the life of one, and an action useful to the whole human race
+      is more virtuous than an action that is only useful to one single nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue,
+      and forbid that of evil and vice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue for
+      the preservation of our body, and by the losses which result to our
+      existence from the practice of evil and vice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Its precepts are then in action?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect and in
+      its future consequences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How do you divide the virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. We divide them in three classes, first, individual virtues, as relative
+      to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relative to a family;
+      thirdly, social virtues, as relative to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF INDIVIDUAL VIRTUES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which are the individual virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. There are five principal ones, to wit: first, science, which comprises
+      prudence and wisdom; secondly, temperance, comprising sobriety and
+      chastity; thirdly, courage, or strength of body and mind; fourthly,
+      activity, that is to say, love of labor and employment of time; fifthly,
+      and finally, cleanliness, or purity of body, as well in dress as in
+      habitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe science?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because the man acquainted with the causes and effects of things
+      attends in a careful and sure manner to his preservation, and to the
+      development of his faculties. Science is to him the eye and the light,
+      which enable him to discern clearly and accurately all the objects with
+      which he is conversant, and hence by an enlightened man is meant a learned
+      and well-informed man. With science and instruction a man never wants for
+      resources and means of subsistence; and upon this principle a philosopher,
+      who had been shipwrecked, said to his companions, that were inconsolable
+      for the loss of their wealth: "For my part, I carry all my wealth within
+      me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the vice contrary to science?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature forbid ignorance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the grievous detriments resulting from it to our existence; for the
+      ignorant man who knows neither causes nor effects, commits every instant
+      errors most pernicious to himself and to others; he resembles a blind man
+      groping his way at random, and who, at every step, jostles or is jostled
+      by every one he meets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What difference is there between an ignorant and a silly man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The same difference as between him who frankly avows his blindness and
+      the blind man who pretends to sight; silliness is the reality of
+      ignorance, to which is superadded the vanity of knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are ignorance and silliness common?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, very common; they are the usual and general distempers of mankind:
+      more than three thousand years ago the wisest of men said: "The number of
+      fools is infinite;" and the world has not changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the reason of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because much labor and time are necessary to acquire instruction, and
+      because men, born ignorant and indolent, find it more convenient to remain
+      blind, and pretend to see clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What difference is there between a learned and a wise man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The learned knows, and the wise man practices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is prudence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the anticipated perception, the foresight of the effects and
+      consequences of every action; by means of which foresight, man avoids the
+      dangers which threaten him, while he seizes on and creates opportunities
+      favorable to him: he thereby provides for his present and future safety in
+      a certain and secure manner, whereas the imprudent man, who calculates
+      neither his steps nor his conduct, nor efforts, nor resistance, falls
+      every instant into difficulties and dangers, which sooner or later impair
+      his faculties and destroy his existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. When the Gospel says, "Happy are the poor of spirit," does it mean the
+      ignorant and imprudent?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for, at the same time that it recommends the simplicity of doves,
+      it adds the prudent cunning of serpents. By simplicity of mind is meant
+      uprightness, and the precept of the Gospel is that of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON TEMPERANCE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is temperance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is a regular use of our faculties, which makes us never exceed in
+      our sensations the end of nature to preserve us; it is the moderation of
+      the passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the vice contrary to temperance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The disorder of the passions, the avidity of all kind of enjoyments, in
+      a word, cupidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which are the principal branches of temperance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Sobriety, and continence or chastity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe sobriety?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By its powerful influence over our health. The sober man digests with
+      comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are
+      clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his
+      business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity; he does
+      not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and gladness, the
+      wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured him. Thus, from one
+      virtue alone, generous nature derives innumerable recompenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does it prohibit gluttony?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the numerous evils that are attached to it. The glutton, oppressed
+      with aliments, digests with anxiety; his head, troubled by the fumes of
+      indigestion, is incapable of conceiving clear and distinct ideas; he
+      abandons himself with violence to the disorderly impulse of lust and
+      anger, which impair his health; his body becomes bloated, heavy, and unfit
+      for labor; he endures painful and expensive distempers; he seldom lives to
+      be old; and his age is replete with infirmities and sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Should abstinence and fasting be considered as virtuous actions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, when one has eaten too much; for then abstinence and fasting are
+      simple and efficacious remedies; but when the body is in want of aliment,
+      to refuse it any, and let it suffer from hunger or thirst, is delirium and
+      a real sin against the law of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is drunkenness considered in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. As a most vile and pernicious vice. The drunkard, deprived of the sense
+      and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the divinity: he
+      debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable even to guide his
+      steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts and even
+      risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him to the
+      ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes in his
+      drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous bargains, and injures his fortune; he
+      makes use of opprobrious language, which creates him enemies and
+      repentance; he fills his house with trouble and sorrow, and ends by a
+      premature death or by a cacochymical old age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature interdict absolutely the use of wine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; it only forbids the abuse; but as the transition from the use to
+      the abuse is easy and prompt among the generality of men, perhaps the
+      legislators, who have proscribed the use of wine, have rendered a service
+      to humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature forbid the use of certain kinds of meat, or of
+      certain vegetables, on particular days, during certain seasons?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; it absolutely forbids only whatever is injurious to health; its
+      precepts, in this respect, vary according to persons, and even constitute
+      a very delicate and important science for the quality, the quantity, and
+      the combination of aliments have the greatest influence, not only over the
+      momentary affections of the soul, but even over its habitual disposition.
+      A man is not the same when fasting as after a meal, even if he were sober.
+      A glass of spirituous liquor, or a dish of coffee, gives degrees of
+      vivacity, of mobility, of disposition to anger, sadness, or gaiety; such a
+      meat, because it lies heavy on the stomach, engenders moroseness and
+      melancholy; such another, because it facilitates digestion, creates
+      sprightliness, and an inclination to oblige and to love. The use of
+      vegetables, because they have little nourishment, enfeebles the body, and
+      gives a disposition to repose, indolence, and ease; the use of meat,
+      because it is full of nourishment, and of spirituous liquors, because they
+      stimulate the nerves, creates vivacity, uneasiness, and audacity. Now from
+      those habitudes of aliment result habits of constitution and of the
+      organs, which form afterwards different kinds of temperaments, each of
+      which is distinguished by a peculiar characteristic. And it is for this
+      reason that, in hot countries especially, legislators have made laws
+      respecting regimen or food. The ancients were taught by long experience
+      that the dietetic science constituted a considerable part of morality;
+      among the Egyptians, the ancient Persians, and even among the Greeks, at
+      the Areopagus, important affairs were examined fasting; and it has been
+      remarked that, among those people, where public affairs were discussed
+      during the heat of meals, and the fumes of digestion, deliberations were
+      hasty and violent, and the results of them frequently unreasonable, and
+      productive of turbulence and confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON CONTINENCE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature prescribe continence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes: because a moderate use of the most lively of pleasures is not only
+      useful, but indispensable, to the support of strength and health: and
+      because a simple calculation proves that, for some minutes of privation,
+      you increase the number of your days, both in vigor of body and of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does it forbid libertinism?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the numerous evils which result from it to the physical and the
+      moral existence. He who carries it to an excess enervates and pines away;
+      he can no longer attend to study or labor; he contracts idle and expensive
+      habits, which destroy his means of existence, his public consideration,
+      and his credit; his intrigues occasion continual embarrassment, cares,
+      quarrels and lawsuits, without mentioning the grievous deep-rooted
+      distempers, and the loss of his strength by an inward and slow poison; the
+      stupid dullness of his mind, by the exhaustion of the nervous system; and,
+      in fine, a premature and infirm old age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature look on that absolute chastity so recommended in
+      monastical institutions, as a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for that chastity is of no use either to the society that
+      witnesses, or the individual who practises it; it is even prejudicial to
+      both. First, it injures society by depriving it of population, which is
+      one of its principal sources of wealth and power; and as bachelors confine
+      all their views and affections to the term of their lives, they have in
+      general an egotism unfavorable to the interests of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the second place, it injures the individuals who practise it, because
+      it deprives them of a number of affections and relations which are the
+      springs of most domestic and social virtues; and besides, it often
+      happens, from circumstances of age, regimen, or temperament, that absolute
+      continence injures the constitution and causes severe diseases, because it
+      is contrary to the physical laws on which nature has founded the system of
+      the reproduction of beings; and they who recommend so strongly chastity,
+      even supposing them to be sincere, are in contradiction with their own
+      doctrine, which consecrates the law of nature by the well known
+      commandment: increase and multiply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is chastity considered a greater virtue in women than in men?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because a want of chastity in women is attended with inconveniences
+      much more serious and dangerous for them and for society; for, without
+      taking into account the pains and diseases they have in common with men,
+      they are further exposed to all the disadvantages and perils that precede,
+      attend, and follow child-birth. When pregnant contrary to law, they become
+      an object of public scandal and contempt, and spend the remainder of their
+      lives in bitterness and misery. Moreover, all the expense of maintaining
+      and educating their fatherless children falls on them: which expense
+      impoverishes them, and is every way prejudicial to their physical and
+      moral existence. In this situation, deprived of the freshness and health
+      that constitute their charm, carrying with them an extraneous and
+      expensive burden, they are less prized by men, they find no solid
+      establishment, they fall into poverty, misery, and wretchedness, and thus
+      drag on in sorrow their unhappy existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature extend so far as the scruples of desires and
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; because, in the physical laws of the human body, thoughts and
+      desires inflame the senses, and soon provoke to action: now, by another
+      law of nature in the organization of our body, those actions become
+      mechanical wants which recur at certain periods of days or of weeks, so
+      that, at such a time, the want is renewed of such an action and such a
+      secretion; if this action and this secretion be injurious to health, the
+      habitude of them becomes destructive of life itself. Thus thoughts and
+      desires have a true and natural importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Should modesty be considered as a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; because modesty, inasmuch as it is a shame of certain actions,
+      maintains the soul and body in all those habits useful to good order, and
+      to self-preservation. The modest woman is esteemed, courted, and
+      established, with advantages of fortune which ensure her existence, and
+      render it agreeable to her, while the immodest and prostitute are
+      despised, repulsed, and abandoned to misery and infamy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON COURAGE AND ACTIVITY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are courage and strength of body and mind virtues in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and most important virtues; for they are the efficacious and
+      indispensable means of attending to our preservation and welfare. The
+      courageous and strong man repulses oppression, defends his life, his
+      liberty, and his property; by his labor he procures himself an abundant
+      subsistence, which he enjoys in tranquillity and peace of mind. If he
+      falls into misfortunes, from which his prudence could not protect him, he
+      supports them with fortitude and resignation; and it is for this reason
+      that the ancient moralists have reckoned strength and courage among the
+      four principal virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Should weakness and cowardice be considered as vices?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, since it is certain that they produce innumerable calamities. The
+      weak or cowardly man lives in perpetual cares and agonies; he undermines
+      his health by the dread, oftentimes ill founded, of attacks and dangers:
+      and this dread which is an evil, is not a remedy; it renders him, on the
+      contrary, the slave of him who wishes to oppress him; and by the servitude
+      and debasement of all his faculties, it degrades and diminishes his means
+      of existence, so far as the seeing his life depend on the will and caprice
+      of another man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But, after what you have said on the influence of aliments, are not
+      courage and force, as well as many other virtues, in a great measure the
+      effect of our physical constitution and temperament?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, it is true; and so far, that those qualities are transmitted by
+      generation and blood, with the elements on which they depend: the most
+      reiterated and constant facts prove that in the breed of animals of every
+      kind, we see certain physical and moral qualities, attached to the
+      individuals of those species, increase or decay according to the
+      combinations and mixtures they make with other breeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But, then, as our will is not sufficient to procure us those qualities,
+      is it a crime to be destitute of them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No, it is not a crime, but a misfortune; it is what the ancients call
+      an unlucky fatality; but even then we have it yet in our power to acquire
+      them; for, as soon as we know on what physical elements such or such a
+      quality is founded, we can promote its growth, and hasten its
+      developments, by a skillful management of those elements; and in this
+      consists the science of education, which, according as it is directed,
+      meliorates or degrades individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch as
+      totally to change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it is of
+      the greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature by which
+      those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily effected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of
+      nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because the man who works and employs his time usefully, derives from
+      it a thousand precious advantages to his existence. If he is born poor,
+      his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and still more so, if he is
+      sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon acquires a competency, and
+      enjoys the sweets of life; his very labor gives him virtues; for, while he
+      occupies his body and mind, he is not affected with unruly desires, time
+      does not lie heavy on him, he contracts mild habits, he augments his
+      strength and health, and attains a peaceful and happy old age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the
+      others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even the
+      science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which
+      accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured with
+      disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the desires
+      of his senses, which, becoming every day more inordinate, render him
+      intemperate, gluttonous, lascivious, enervated, cowardly, vile, and
+      contemptible. By the certain effect of all those vices, he ruins his
+      fortune, consumes his health, and terminates his life in all the agonies
+      of sickness and of poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. From what you say, one would think that poverty was a vice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No, it is not a vice; but it is still less a virtue, for it is by far
+      more ready to injure than to be useful; it is even commonly the result, or
+      the beginning of vice, for the effect of all individual vices is to lead
+      to indigence, and to the privation of the necessaries of life; and when a
+      man is in want of necessaries, he is tempted to procure them by vicious
+      means, that is to say, by means injurious to society. All the individual
+      virtues tend, on the contrary, to procure to a man an abundant
+      subsistence; and when he has more than he can consume, it is much easier
+      for him to give to others, and to practice the actions useful to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Do you look upon opulence as a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; but still less as a vice: it is the use alone of wealth that can be
+      called virtuous or vicious, according as it is serviceable or prejudicial
+      to man and to society. Wealth is an instrument, the use and employment
+      alone of which determine its virtue or vice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON CLEANLINESS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is cleanliness included among the virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because it is, in reality, one of the most important among them, on
+      account of its powerful influence over the health and preservation of the
+      body. Cleanliness, as well in dress as in residence, obviates the
+      pernicious effects of the humidity, baneful odors, and contagious
+      exhalations, proceeding from all things abandoned to putrefaction.
+      Cleanliness, maintains free transpiration; it renews the air, refreshes
+      the blood, and disposes even the mind to cheerfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this it appears that persons attentive to the cleanliness of their
+      bodies and habitations are, in general, more healthy, and less subject to
+      disease, than those who live in filth and nastiness; and it is further
+      remarked, that cleanliness carries with it, throughout all the branches of
+      domestic administration, habits of order and arrangement, which are the
+      chief means and first elements of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Uncleanliness or filthiness is, then, a real vice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, as real a one as drunkenness, or as idleness, from which in a
+      great measure it is derived. Uncleanliness is the second, and often the
+      first, cause of many inconveniences, and even of grievous disorders; it is
+      a fact in medicine, that it brings on the itch, the scurf, tetters,
+      leprosies, as much as the use of tainted or sour aliments; that it favors
+      the contagious influence of the plague and malignant fevers, that it even
+      produces them in hospitals and prisons; that it occasions rheumatisms, by
+      incrusting the skin with dirt, and thereby preventing transpiration;
+      without reckoning the shameful inconvenience of being devoured by vermin&mdash;the
+      foul appendage of misery and depravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most ancient legislators, therefore, considered cleanliness, which they
+      called purity, as one of the essential dogmas of their religions. It was
+      for this reason that they expelled from society, and even punished
+      corporeally those who were infected with distempers produced by
+      uncleanliness; that they instituted and consecrated ceremonies of
+      ablutions baths, baptisms, and of purifications, even by fire and the
+      aromatic fumes of incense, myrrh, benjamin, etc., so that the entire
+      system of pollutions, all those rites of clean and unclean things,
+      degenerated since into abuses and prejudices, were only founded originally
+      on the judicious observation, which wise and learned men had made, of the
+      extreme influence that cleanliness in dress and abode exercises over the
+      health of the body, and by an immediate consequence over that of the mind
+      and moral faculties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus all the individual virtues have for their object, more or less
+      direct, more or less near, the preservation of the man who practises them
+      and by the preservation of each man, they lead to that of families and
+      society, which are composed of the united sum of individuals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON DOMESTIC VIRTUES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What do you mean be domestic virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. I mean the practice of actions useful to a family, supposed to live in
+      the same house.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Domestic is derived from the Latin word domus, a house.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Q. What are those virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. They are economy, paternal love, filial love, conjugal love, fraternal
+      love, and the accomplishment of the duties of master and servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is economy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is, according to the most extensive meaning of the word, the proper
+      administration of every thing that concerns the existence of the family or
+      house; and as subsistence holds the first rank, the word economy in
+      confined to the employment of money for the wants of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is economy a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because a man who makes no useless expenses acquires a superabundancy,
+      which is true wealth, and by means of which he procures for himself and
+      his family everything that is really convenient and useful; without
+      mentioning his securing thereby resources against accidental and
+      unforeseen losses, so that he and his family enjoy an agreeable and
+      undisturbed competency, which is the basis of human felicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Dissipation and prodigality, therefore, are vices?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, for by them man, in the end, is deprived of the necessaries of
+      life; he falls into poverty and wretchedness; and his very friends,
+      fearing to be obliged to restore to him what he has spent with or for
+      them, avoid him as a debtor does his creditor, and he remains abandoned by
+      the whole world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is paternal love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the assiduous care taken by parents to make their children
+      contract the habit of every action useful to themselves and to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is paternal tenderness a virtue in parents?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because parents, who rear their children in those habits, procure for
+      themselves, during the course of their lives, enjoyments and helps that
+      give a sensible satisfaction at every instant, and which assure to them,
+      when advanced in years, supports and consolations against the wants and
+      calamities of all kinds with which old age is beset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is paternal love a common virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; notwithstanding the ostentation made of it by parents, it is a rare
+      virtue. They do not love their children, they caress and spoil them. In
+      them they love only the agents of their will, the instruments of their
+      power, the trophies of their vanity, the pastime of their idleness. It is
+      not so much the welfare of their children that they propose to themselves,
+      as their submission and obedience; and if among children so many are seen
+      ungrateful for benefits received, it is because there are among parents as
+      many despotic and ignorant benefactors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why do you say that conjugal love is a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because the concord and union resulting from the love of the married,
+      establish in the heart of the family a multitude of habits useful to its
+      prosperity and preservation. The united pair are attached to, and seldom
+      quit their home; they superintend each particular direction of it; they
+      attend to the education of their children; they maintain the respect and
+      fidelity of domestics; they prevent all disorder and dissipation; and from
+      the whole of their good conduct, they live in ease and consideration;
+      while married persons who do not love one another, fill their house with
+      quarrels and troubles, create dissension between their children and the
+      servants, leaving both indiscriminately to all kinds of vicious habits;
+      every one in turn spoils, robs, and plunders the house; the revenues are
+      absorbed without profit; debts accumulate; the married pair avoid each
+      other, or contend in lawsuits; and the whole family falls into disorder,
+      ruin, disgrace and want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is adultery an offence in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; for it is attended with a number of habits injurious to the
+      married and to their families. The wife or husband, whose affections are
+      estranged, neglect their house, avoid it, and deprive it, as much as they
+      can, of its revenues or income, to expend them with the object of their
+      affections; hence arise quarrels, scandal, lawsuits, the neglect of their
+      children and servants, and at last the plundering and ruin of the whole
+      family; without reckoning that the adulterous woman commits a most
+      grievous theft, in giving to her husband heirs of foreign blood, who
+      deprive his real children of their legitimate portion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is filial love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is, on the side of children, the practice of those actions useful to
+      themselves and to their parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe filial love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By three principal motives:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. By sentiment; for the affectionate care of parents inspires, from the
+      most tender age, mild habits of attachment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. By justice; for children owe to their parents a return and indemnity
+      for the cares, and even for the expenses, they have caused them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. By personal interest; for, if they use them ill, they give to their own
+      children examples of revolt and ingratitude, which authorize them, at a
+      future day, to behave to themselves in a similar manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are we to understand by filial love a passive and blind submission?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; but a reasonable submission, founded on the knowledge of the mutual
+      rights and duties of parents and children; rights and duties, without the
+      observance of which their mutual conduct is nothing but disorder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is fraternal love a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because the concord and union, which result from the love of brothers,
+      establish the strength, security, and conservation of the family: brothers
+      united defend themselves against all oppression, they aid one another in
+      their wants, they help one another in their misfortunes, and thus secure
+      their common existence; while brothers disunited, abandoned each to his
+      own personal strength, fall into all the inconveniences attendant on an
+      insulated state and individual weakness. This is what a certain Scythian
+      king ingeniously expressed when, on his death-bed, calling his children to
+      him, he ordered them to break a bundle of arrows. The young men, though
+      strong, being unable to effect it, he took them in his turn, and untieing
+      them, broke each of the arrows separately with his fingers. "Behold," said
+      he, "the effects of union; united together, you will be invincible; taken
+      separately, you will be broken like reeds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What are the reciprocal duties of masters and of servants?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. They consist in the practice of the actions which are respectively and
+      justly useful to them; and here begin the relations of society; for the
+      rule and measure of those respective actions is the equilibrium or
+      equality between the service and the recompense, between what the one
+      returns and the other gives; which is the fundamental basis of all
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus all the domestic and individual virtues refer, more or less
+      mediately, but always with certitude, to the physical object of the
+      amelioration and preservation of man, and are thereby precepts resulting
+      from the fundamental law of nature in his formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SOCIAL VIRTUES; JUSTICE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is every reunion of men living together under the clauses of an
+      expressed or tacit contract, which has for its end their common
+      preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are the social virtues numerous?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; they are in as great number as the kinds of actions useful to
+      society; but all may be reduced to one principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is that fundamental principle?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is justice, which alone comprises all the virtues of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why do you say that justice is the fundamental and almost only virtue
+      of society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because it alone embraces the practice of all the actions useful to it;
+      and because all the other virtues, under the denominations of charity,
+      humanity, probity, love of one's country, sincerity, generosity,
+      simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only varied forms and diversified
+      applications of the axiom, "Do not to another what you do not wish to be
+      done to yourself," which is the definition of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe justice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By three physical attributes, inherent in the organization of man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What are those attributes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. They are equality, liberty, and property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is equality a physical attribute of man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because all men, having equally eyes, hands, mouths, ears, and the
+      necessity of making use of them, in order to live, have, by this reason
+      alone, an equal right to life, and to the use of the aliments which
+      maintain it; they are all equal before God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Do you suppose that all men hear equally, see equally, feel equally,
+      have equal wants, and equal passions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is evident, and daily demonstrated, that one is short, and
+      another long-sighted; that one eats much, another little; that one has
+      mild, another violent passions; in a word, that one is weak in body and
+      mind, while another is strong in both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. They are, therefore, really unequal?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, in the development of their means, but not in the nature and
+      essence of those means. They are made of the same stuff, but not in the
+      same dimensions; nor are the weight and value equal. Our language
+      possesses no one word capable of expressing the identity of nature, and
+      the diversity of its form and employment. It is a proportional equality;
+      and it is for this reason I have said, equal before God, and in the order
+      of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is liberty a physical attribute of man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because all men having senses sufficient for their preservation&mdash;no
+      one wanting the eye of another to see, his ear to hear, his mouth to eat,
+      his feet to walk&mdash;they are all, by this very reason, constituted
+      naturally independent and free; no man is necessarily subjected to
+      another, nor has he a right to dominate over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But if a man is born strong, has he a natural right to master the weak
+      man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is neither a necessity for him, nor a convention between
+      them; it is an abusive extension of his strength; and here an abuse is
+      made of the word right, which in its true meaning implies, justice or
+      reciprocal faculty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is property a physical attribute of man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Inasmuch as all men being constituted equal or similar to one another,
+      and consequently independent and free, each is the absolute master, the
+      full proprietor of his body and of the produce of his labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is justice derived from these three attributes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. In this, that men being equal and free, owing nothing to each other,
+      have no right to require anything from one another only inasmuch as they
+      return an equal value for it; or inasmuch as the balance of what is given
+      is in equilibrium with what is returned: and it is this equality, this
+      equilibrium which is called justice, equity;* that is to say that equality
+      and justice are but one and the same word, the same law of nature, of
+      which the social virtues are only applications and derivatives.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Aequitas, aequilibrium, aequalitas, are all of the same
+     family.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL VIRTUES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Explain how the social virtues are derived from the law of nature. How
+      is charity or the love of one's neighbor a precept and application of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By reason of equality and reciprocity; for when we injure another, we
+      give him a right to injure us in return; thus, by attacking the existence
+      of our neighbor, we endanger our own, from the effect of reciprocity; on
+      the other hand, by doing good to others, we have room and right to expect
+      an equivalent exchange; and such is the character of all social virtues,
+      that they are useful to the man who practises them, by the right of
+      reciprocity which they give him over those who are benefited by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Charity is then nothing but justice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: it is only justice; with this slight difference, that strict
+      justice confines itself to saying, "Do not to another the harm you would
+      not wish he should do to you;" and that charity, or the love of one's
+      neighbor, extends so far as to say, "Do to another the good which you
+      would wish to receive from him." Thus when the gospel said, that this
+      precept contained the whole of the law and the prophets, it announced
+      nothing more than the precept of the law of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it enjoin forgiveness of injuries?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, when that forgiveness implies self-preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it prescribe to us, after having received a blow on one cheek, to
+      hold out the other?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is, in the first place, contrary to the precept of loving
+      our neighbor as ourselves, since thereby we should love, more than
+      ourselves, him who makes an attack on our preservation. Secondly, such a
+      precept in its literal sense, encourages the wicked to oppression and
+      injustice. The law of nature has been more wise in prescribing a
+      calculated proportion of courage and moderation, which induces us to
+      forget a first or unpremediated injury, but which punishes every act
+      tending to oppression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature prescribe to do good to others beyond the bounds
+      of reason and measure?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is a sure way of leading them to ingratitude. Such is the
+      force of sentiment and justice implanted in the heart of man, that he is
+      not even grateful for benefits conferred without discretion. There is only
+      one measure with them, and that is to be just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is alms-giving a virtuous action?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, when it is practised according to the rule first mentioned;
+      without which it degenerates into imprudence and vice, inasmuch as it
+      encourages laziness, which is hurtful to the beggar and to society; no one
+      has a right to partake of the property and fruits of another's labor,
+      without rendering an equivalent of his own industry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature consider as virtues faith and hope, which are
+      often joined with charity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for they are ideas without reality; and if any effects result from
+      them, they turn rather to the profit of those who have not those ideas,
+      than of those who have them; so that faith and hope may be called the
+      virtues of dupes for the benefit of knaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature prescribe probity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, for probity is nothing more than respect for one's own rights in
+      those of another; a respect founded on a prudent and well combined
+      calculation of our interests compared to those of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But does not this calculation, which embraces the complicated interests
+      and rights of the social state, require an enlightened understanding and
+      knowledge, which make it a difficult science?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and a science so much the more delicate as the honest man
+      pronounces in his own cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Probity, then, shows an extension and justice in the mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, for an honest man almost always neglects a present interest, in
+      order not to destroy a future one; whereas the knave does the contrary,
+      and loses a great future interest for a present smaller one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Improbity, therefore, is a sign of false judgment and a narrow mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and rogues may be defined ignorant and silly calculators; for they
+      do not understand their true interest, and they pretend to cunning:
+      nevertheless, their cunning only ends in making known what they are&mdash;in
+      losing all confidence and esteem, and the good services resulting from
+      them for their physical and social existence. They neither live in peace
+      with others, nor with themselves; and incessantly menaced by their
+      conscience and their enemies, they enjoy no other real happiness but that
+      of not being hanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature forbid robbery?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, for the man who robs another gives him a right to rob him; from
+      that moment there is no security in his property, nor in his means of
+      preservation: thus in injuring others, he, by a counterblow, injures
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it interdict even an inclination to rob?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; for that inclination leads naturally to action, and it is for this
+      reason that envy is considered a sin?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does it forbid murder?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the most powerful motives of self-preservation; for, first, the man
+      who attacks exposes himself to the risk of being killed, by the right of
+      defence; secondly, if he kills, he gives to the relations and friends of
+      the deceased, and to society at large, an equal right of killing him; so
+      that his life is no longer in safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How can we, by the law of nature, repair the evil we have done?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By rendering a proportionate good to those whom we have injured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it allow us to repair it by prayers, vows, offerings to God,
+      fasting and mortifications?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for all those things are foreign to the action we wish to repair:
+      they neither restore the ox to him from whom it has been stolen, honor to
+      him whom we have deprived of it, nor life to him from whom it has been
+      taken away; consequently they miss the end of justice; they are only
+      perverse contracts by which a man sells to another goods which do not
+      belong to him; they are a real depravation of morality, inasmuch as they
+      embolden to commit crimes through the hope of expiating them; wherefore,
+      they have been the real cause of all the evils by which the people among whom
+      those expiatory practices were used, have been continually tormented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature order sincerity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; for lying, perfidy, and perjury create distrust, quarrels, hatred,
+      revenge, and a crowd of evils among men, which tend to their common
+      destruction; while sincerity and fidelity establish confidence, concord,
+      and peace, besides the infinite good resulting from such a state of things
+      to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it prescribe mildness and modesty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; for harshness and obduracy, by alienating from us the hearts of
+      other men, give them an inclination to hurt us; ostentation and vanity, by
+      wounding their self-love and jealousy, occasion us to miss the end of a
+      real utility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it prescribe humility as a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is a propensity in the human heart to despise secretly
+      everything that presents to it the idea of weakness; and self-debasement
+      encourages pride and oppression in others; the balance must be kept in
+      equipoise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. You have reckoned simplicity of manners among the social virtues; what
+      do you understand by that word?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. I mean the restricting our wants and desires to what is truly useful to
+      the existence of the citizen and his family; that is to say, the man of
+      simple manners has but few wants, and lives content with a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is this virtue prescribed to us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the numerous advantages which the practice of it procures to the
+      individual and to society; for the man whose wants are few, is free at
+      once from a crowd of cares, perplexities, and labors; he avoids many
+      quarrels and contests arising from avidity and a desire of gain; he spares
+      himself the anxiety of ambition, the inquietudes of possession, and the
+      uneasiness of losses; finding superfluity everywhere, he is the real rich
+      man; always content with what he has, he is happy at little expense; and
+      other men, not fearing any competition from him, leave him in quiet, and
+      are disposed to render him the services he should stand in need of. And if
+      this virtue of simplicity extends to a whole people, they insure to
+      themselves abundance; rich in everything they do not consume, they acquire
+      immense means of exchange and commerce; they work, fabricate, and sell at
+      a lower price than others, and attain to all kinds of prosperity, both at
+      home and abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the vice contrary to this virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is cupidity and luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is luxury a vice in the individual and in society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and to that degree, that it may be said to include all the others;
+      for the man who stands in need of many things, imposes thereby on himself
+      all the anxiety, and submits to all the means just or unjust of acquiring
+      them. Does he possess an enjoyment, he covets another; and in the bosom of
+      superfluity, he is never rich; a commodious dwelling is not sufficient for
+      him, he must have a beautiful hotel; not content with a plenteous table,
+      he must have rare and costly viands: he must have splendid furniture,
+      expensive clothes, a train of attendants, horses, carriages, women,
+      theatrical representations and games. Now, to supply so many expenses,
+      much money must be had; and he looks on every method of procuring it as
+      good and even necessary; at first he borrows, afterwards he steals, robs,
+      plunders, turns bankrupt, is at war with every one, ruins and is ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should a nation be involved in luxury, it occasions on a larger scale the
+      same devastations; by reason that it consumes its entire produce, it finds
+      itself poor even with abundance; it has nothing to sell to foreigners; its
+      manufactures are carried on at a great expense, and are sold too dear; it
+      becomes tributary for everything it imports; it attacks externally its
+      consideration, power, strength, and means of defence and preservation,
+      while internally it undermines and falls into the dissolution of its
+      members. All its citizens being covetous of enjoyments, are engaged in a
+      perpetual struggle to obtain them; all injure or are near injuring
+      themselves; and hence arise those habits and actions of usurpation, which
+      constitute what is denominated moral corruption, intestine war between
+      citizen and citizen. From luxury arises avidity, from avidity, invasion by
+      violence and perfidy; from luxury arises the iniquity of the judge, the
+      venality of the witness, the improbity of the husband, the prostitution of
+      the wife, the obduracy of parents, the ingratitude of children, the
+      avarice of the master, the dishonesty of the servant, the dilapidation of
+      the administrator, the perversity of the legislator, lying, perfidy,
+      perjury, assassination, and all the disorders of the social state; so that
+      it was with a profound sense of truth, that ancient moralists have laid
+      the basis of the social virtues on simplicity of manners, restriction of
+      wants, and contentment with a little; and a sure way of knowing the extent
+      of a man's virtues and vices is, to find out if his expenses are
+      proportionate to his fortune, and calculate, from his want of money, his
+      probity, his integrity in fulfilling his engagements, his devotion to the
+      public weal, and his sincere or pretended love of his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What do you mean by the word country?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. I mean the community of citizens who, united by fraternal sentiments,
+      and reciprocal wants, make of their respective strength one common force,
+      the reaction of which on each of them assumes the noble and beneficent
+      character of paternity. In society, citizens form a bank of interest; in
+      our country we form a family of endearing attachments; it is charity, the
+      love of one's neighbor extended to a whole nation. Now as charity cannot
+      be separated from justice, no member of the family can pretend to the
+      enjoyment of its advantages, except in proportion to his labor; if he
+      consumes more than it produces, he necessarily encroaches on his
+      fellow-citizens; and it is only by consuming less than what he produces or
+      possesses, that he can acquire the means of making sacrifices and being
+      generous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What do you conclude from all this?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. I conclude from it that all the social virtues are only the habitude of
+      actions useful to society and to the individual who practices them; That
+      they refer to the physical object of man's preservation; That nature
+      having implanted in us the want of that preservation, has made a law to us
+      of all its consequences, and a crime of everything that deviates from it;
+      That we carry in us the seed of every virtue, and of every perfection;
+      That it only requires to be developed; That we are only happy inasmuch as
+      we observe the rules established by nature for the end of our
+      preservation; And that all wisdom, all perfection, all law, all virtue,
+      all philosophy, consist in the practice of these axioms founded on our own
+      organization:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself; Live for thy fellow
+      citizens, that they may live for thee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY.*
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In 1797, Dr. Priestly published a pamphlet, entitled,
+     "Observation on the increase of infidelity, with
+     animadversions upon the writings of several modern
+     unbelievers, and especially the Ruins of Mr. Volney." The
+     motto to this tract was:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Minds of little penetration rest naturally on the surface of things. They
+      do not like to pierce deep into them, for fear of labor and trouble;
+      sometimes still more for fear of truth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Letter is an answer from Volney, taken from the Anti-Jacobin Review
+      of March and April, 1799.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIR.&mdash;I received in due time your pamphlet on the increase of
+      infidelity, together with the note without date which accompanied it.* My
+      answer has been delayed by the incidents of business, and even by ill
+      health, which you will surely excuse: this delay has, besides, no
+      inconvenience in it. The question between us is not of a very urgent
+      nature: the world would not go on less well with or without my answer as
+      with or without your book. I might, indeed, have dispensed with returning
+      you any answer at all; and I should have been warranted in so doing, by
+      the manner in which you have stated the debate, and by the opinion pretty
+      generally received that, on certain occasions, and with certain persons,
+      the most noble reply is silence. You seem to have been aware of this
+      yourself, considering the extreme precautions you have taken to deprive me
+      of this resource; but as according to our French customs, any answer is an
+      act of civility, I am not willing to concede the advantage of politeness&mdash;besides,
+      although silence is sometimes very significant, its eloquence is not
+      understood by every one, and the public which has not leisure to analyze
+      disputes (often of little interest) has a reasonable right to require at
+      least some preliminary explanations; reserving to itself, should the
+      discussion degenerate into the recriminative clamors of an irritated
+      self-love, to allow the right of silence to him in whom it becomes the
+      virtue of moderation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Dr. Priestly sent his pamphlet to Volney, desiring his
+     answer to the strictures on his opinions in his Ruins of
+     Empires.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I have read, therefore, your animadversions on my Ruins, which you are
+      pleased to class among the writings of modern unbelievers, and since you
+      absolutely insist on my expressing my opinion before the public, I shall
+      now fulfill this rather disagreeable task with all possible brevity, for
+      the sake of economizing the time of our readers. In the first place, sir,
+      it appears evidently, from your pamphlet, that your design is less to
+      attack my book than my personal and moral character; and in order that the
+      public may pronounce with accuracy on this point, I submit several
+      passages fitted to throw light on the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You say, in the preface of your discourses, p. 12, "There are, however,
+      unbelievers more ignorant than Mr. Paine, Mr. Volney, Lequino, and others
+      in France say," &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also in the preface of your present observations, p. 20. "I can truly say
+      that in the writings of Hume, Mr. Gibbon, Voltaire, Mr. Volney&mdash;there
+      is nothing of solid argument: all abound in gross mistakes and
+      misrepresentations." Idem, p. 38&mdash;"Whereas had he (Mr. Volney) given
+      attention to the history of the times in which Christianity was
+      promulgated . . . he could have no more doubt . . . &amp;c., it is as much
+      in vain to argue with such a person as this, as with a Chinese or even a
+      Hottentot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Idem, p. 119&mdash;"Mr. Volney, if we may judge from his numerous
+      quotations of ancient writers in all the learned languages, oriental as
+      well as occidental, must be acquainted with all; for he makes no mention
+      of any translation, and yet if we judge from this specimen of his
+      knowledge of them, he cannot have the smallest tincture of that of the
+      Hebrew or even of the Greek."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, at last, after having published and posted me in your very title
+      page, as an unbeliever and an infidel; after having pointed me out in your
+      motto as one of those superficial spirits who know not how to find out,
+      and are unwilling to encounter, truth; you add, p. 124, immediately after
+      an article in which you speak of me under all these denominations&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The progress of infidelity, in the present age, is attended with a
+      circumstance which did not so frequently accompany it in any former
+      period, at least, in England, which is, that unbelievers in revelation
+      generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God so
+      as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a
+      Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of no
+      sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and
+      misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the
+      main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can you
+      hold any converse with a man of such bad connexions? In the second place,
+      your invitation, or rather, your summons to me, to point out the mistakes
+      which I think you have made with respect to my opinions, suggest to me
+      several observations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First. You suppose that the public attaches a high importance to your
+      mistakes and to my opinions: but I cannot act upon a supposition. Am I not
+      an unbeliever?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Secondly. You say, p. 18, that the public will expect it from me: Where
+      are the powers by which you make the public speak and act? Is this also a
+      revelation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirdly. You require me to point out your mistakes. I do not know that I
+      am under any such obligation: I have not reproached you with them; it is
+      not, indeed, very correct to ascribe to me, by selection or
+      indiscriminately, as you have done, all the opinions scattered through my
+      book, since, having introduced many different persons, I was under the
+      necessity of making them deliver different sentiments, according to their
+      different characters. The part which belongs to me is that of a traveler,
+      resting upon the ruins and meditating on the causes of the misfortunes of
+      the human race. To be consistent with yourself you ought to have assigned
+      to me that of the Hottentot or Samoyde savage, who argues with the
+      Doctors, chap. xxiii, and I should have accepted it; you have preferred
+      that of the erudite historian, chap. xxii, nor do I look upon this as a
+      mistake; I discover on the contrary, an insidious design to engage me in a
+      duel of self-love before the public, wherein you would excite the
+      exclusive interest of the spectators by supporting the cause which they
+      approve; while the task which you would impose on me, would only, in the
+      event of success, be attended with sentiments of disapprobation. Such is
+      your artful purpose, that, in attacking me as doubting the existence of
+      Jesus, you might secure to yourself, by surprise, the favor of every
+      Christian sect, although your own incredulity in his divine nature is not
+      less subversive of Christianity than the profane opinion, which does not
+      find in history the proof required by the English law to establish a fact:
+      to say nothing of the extraordinary kind of pride assumed in the silent,
+      but palpable, comparison of yourself to Paul and to Christ, by likening
+      your labors to theirs as tending to the same object, p. 10, preface.
+      Nevertheless, as the first impression of an attack always confers an
+      advantage, you have some ground for expecting you may obtain the apostolic
+      crown; unfortunately for your purpose I entertain no disposition to that
+      of martrydom: and however glorious it might be to me to fall under the arm
+      of him who has overcome Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire and even Frederick II., I
+      find myself under the necessity of declining your theological challenge,
+      for a number of substantial reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Because, to religious quarrels there is no end, since the prejudices of
+      infancy and education almost unavoidably exclude impartial reasoning, and
+      besides, the vanity of the champions becomes committed by the very
+      publicity of the contest, never to give up a first assertion, whence
+      result a spirit of sectarism and faction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Because no one has a right to ask of me an account of my religious
+      opinions. Every inquisition of this kind is a pretension to sovereignty, a
+      first step towards persecution; and the tolerant spirit of this country,
+      which you invoke, has much less in view to engage men to speak, than to
+      invite them to be silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. Because, supposing I do hold the opinions you attribute to me, I wish
+      not to engage my vanity so as never to retract, nor to deprive myself of
+      the resource of a conversion on some future day after more ample
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. And because, reverend sir, if, in the support of your own thesis, you
+      should happen to be discomfited before the Christian audience, it would be
+      a dreadful scandal; and I will not be a cause for scandal, even for the
+      sake of good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. Because in this metaphysical contest our arms are too unequal; you
+      speaking in your mother tongue, which I scarcely lisp, might bring forth
+      huge volumes, while I could hardly oppose pages; and the public, who would
+      read neither production, might take the weight of the books for that of
+      reasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. And because, being endowed with the gift of faith in a pretty
+      sufficient quantity, you might swallow in a quarter of an hour more
+      articles than my logic would digest in a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. Because again, if you were to oblige me to attend your sermons, as you
+      have compelled me to read your pamphlet, the congregation would never
+      believe that a man powdered and adorned like any worldling, could be in
+      the right against a man dressed out in a large hat, with straight hair,*
+      and a mortified countenance, although the gospel, speaking of the
+      pharisees of other times, who were unpowdered, says that when one fasts he
+      must anoint his head and wash his face.**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Dr. Priestly has discarded his wig since he went to
+     America, and wears his own hair.  Editor A. J. Reveiw.
+
+     ** St. Matthew, Chapter VI. verses 16 and 17.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      8. Because, finally, a dispute to one having nothing else to do would be a
+      gratification, while to me, who can employ my time better, it would be an
+      absolute loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall not then, reverend sir, make you my confessor in matters of
+      religion, but I will disclose to you my opinion, as a man of letters, on
+      the composition of your book. Having in former days, read many works of
+      theology, I was curious to learn whether by any chemical process you had
+      discovered real beings in that world of invisibles. Unfortunately, I am
+      obliged to declare to the public, which, according to your expression, p.
+      19, "hopes to be instructed, to be led into truth, and not into error by
+      me," that I have not found in your book a single new argument, but the
+      mere repetition of what is told over and over in thousands of volumes, the
+      whole fruit of which has been to procure for their authors a cursory
+      mention in the dictionary of heresies. You everywhere lay down that as
+      proved which remains to be proved; with this peculiarity, that, as Gibbon
+      says, firing away your double battery against those who believe too much,
+      and those who believe too little, you hold out your own peculiar
+      sensations, as to the precise criterion of truth; so that we must all be
+      just of your size in order to pass the gate of that New Jerusalem which
+      you are building. After this, your reputation as a divine might have
+      become problematical with me; but recollecting the principle of the
+      association of ideas so well developed by Locke, whom you hold in
+      estimation, and whom, for that reason I am happy to cite to you, although
+      to him I owe that pernicious use of my understanding which makes me
+      disbelieve what I do not comprehend&mdash;I perceive why the public having
+      originally attached the idea of talents to the name of Mr. Priestly,
+      doctor in chemistry, continued by habit to associate it with the name of
+      Mr. Priestly, doctor in divinity; which, however, is not the same thing:
+      an association of ideas the more vicious as it is liable to be moved
+      inversely.* Happily you have yourself raised a bar of separation between
+      your admirers, by advising us in the first page of your preface, that your
+      present book is especially destined for believers. To cooperate, however,
+      with you, sir, in this judicious design, I must observe that it is
+      necessary to retrench two passages, seeing they afford the greatest
+      support to the arguments of unbelievers.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Mr. Blair, doctor of divinity, and Mr. Black, doctor in
+     chemistry, met at the coffee house in Edinburg: a new
+     theological pamphlet written by doctor Priestly was thrown
+     upon the table, "Really," said Dr. Blair, "this man had
+     better confine himself to chemistry, for he is absolutely
+     ignorant in theology:"&mdash;"I beg your pardon," answered Dr.
+     Black, "he is in the right, he is a minister of the gospel,
+     he ought to adhere to his profession, for in truth he knows
+     nothing of chemistry."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      You say, p. 15, "What is manifestly contrary to natural reason cannot be
+      received by it;"&mdash;and p. 62, "With respect to intellect, men and
+      brute animals are born in the same state, having the same external senses,
+      which are the only inlets to all ideas, and consequently the source of all
+      the knowledge and of all the mental habits they ever acquire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now if you admit, with Locke, and with us infidels, that every one has the
+      right of rejecting whatever is contrary to his natural reason, and that
+      all our ideas and all our knowledge are acquired only by the inlets of our
+      external senses; What becomes of the system of revelation, and of that
+      order of things in times past, which is so contradictory to that of the
+      time present? unless we consider it as a dream of the human brain during
+      the state of superstitious ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these two single phrases, I could overturn the whole edifice of your
+      faith. Dread not, however, sir, in me such overflowing zeal. For the same
+      reason that I have not the frenzy of martyrdom, I have not that of making
+      proselytes. It becomes those ardent, or rather acrimonious tempers, who
+      mistake the violence of their sentiments for the enthusiasm of truth; the
+      ambition of noise and rumor, for the love of glory; and for the love of
+      their neighbor, the detestation of his opinions, and the secret desire of
+      dominion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for me, who have not received from nature the turbulent qualities of an
+      apostle, and never sustained in Europe the character of a dissenter, I am
+      come to America neither to agitate the conscience of men, nor to form a
+      sect, nor to establish a colony, in which, under the pretext of religion,
+      I might erect a little empire to myself. I have never been seen
+      evangelizing my ideas, either in temples or in public meetings. I have
+      never likewise practiced that quackery of beneficence, by which a certain
+      divine, imposing a tax upon the generosity of the public, procures for
+      himself the honors of a more numerous audience, and the merit of
+      distributing at his pleasure a bounty which costs him nothing, and for
+      which he receives grateful thanks dexterously stolen from the original
+      donors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Either in the capacity of a stranger, or in that of a citizen, a sincere
+      friend to peace, I carry into society neither the spirit of dissension,
+      nor the desire of commotion; and because I respect in every one what I
+      wish him to respect in me, the name of liberty is in my mind nothing else
+      but the synonyma of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a man, whether from moderation or indolence, a spectator of the world
+      rather than an actor in it, I am every day less tempted to take on me the
+      management of the minds or bodies of men: it is sufficient for an
+      individual to govern his own passions and caprices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If by one of these caprices, I am induced to think it may be useful,
+      sometimes, to publish my reflections, I do it without obstinacy or
+      pretension to that implicit faith, the ridicule of which you desire to
+      impart to me, p. 123. My whole book of the Ruins which you treat so
+      ungratefully, since you thought it amusing, p. 122, evidently bears this
+      character. By means of the contrasted opinions I have scattered through
+      it, it breathes that spirit of doubt and uncertainty which appears to me
+      the best suited to the weakness of the human mind, and the most adapted to
+      its improvement, inasmuch as it always leaves a door open to new truths;
+      while the spirit of dogmatism and immovable belief, limiting our progress
+      to a first received opinion, binds us at hazard, and without resource, to
+      the yoke of error or falsehood, and occasions the most serious mischiefs
+      to society; since by combining with the passions, it engenders fanaticism,
+      which, sometimes misled and sometimes misleading, though always intolerant
+      and despotic, attacks whatever is not of its own nature; drawing upon
+      itself persecution when it is weak, and practising persecution when it is
+      powerful; establishing a religion of terror, which annihilates the
+      faculties, and vitiates the conscience: so that, whether under a political
+      or a religious aspect, the spirit of doubt is friendly to all ideas of
+      liberty, truth, or genius, while a spirit of confidence is connected with
+      the ideas of tyranny, servility, and ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, as is the fact, our own experience and that of others daily teaches us
+      that what at one time appeared true, afterwards appeared demonstrably
+      false, how can we connect with our judgments that blind and presumptuous
+      confidence which pursues those of others with so much hatred?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt it is reasonable, and even honest, to act according to our
+      present feelings and conviction: but if these feelings and their causes do
+      vary by the very nature of things, how dare we impose upon ourselves or
+      others an invariable conviction? How, above all, dare we require this
+      conviction in cases where there is really no sensation, as happens in
+      purely speculative questions, in which no palpable fact can be presented?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore, when opening the book of nature, (a more authentic one and more
+      easy to be read than leaves of paper blackened over with Greek or Hebrew,)
+      and when I reflected that the slightest change in the material world has
+      not been in times past, nor is at present effected by the difference of so
+      many religions and sects which have appeared and still exist on the globe,
+      and that the course of the seasons, the path of the sun, the return of
+      rain and drought, are the same for the inhabitants of each country,
+      whether Christians, Mussulmans, Idolaters, Catholics, Protestants, etc., I
+      am induced to believe that the universe is governed by laws of wisdom and
+      justice, very different from those which human ignorance and intolerance
+      would enact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as in living with men of very opposite religious persuasions, I have
+      had occasion to remark that their manners were, nevertheless, very
+      analogous; that is to say, among the different Christian sects, among the
+      Mahometans, and even among those people who were of no sect, I have found
+      men who practise all the virtues, public and private, and that too without
+      affectation; while others, who were incessantly declaiming of God and
+      religion, abandoned themselves to every vicious habit which their belief
+      condemned, I thereby became convinced that Ethics, the doctrines of
+      morality, are the only essential, as they are only demonstrable, part of
+      religion. And as, by your own avowal, the only end of religion is to
+      render men better, in order to add to their happiness, p. 62, I have
+      concluded that there are but two great systems of religion in the world,
+      that of good sense and beneficence, and that of malice and hypocrisy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In closing this letter, I find myself embarrassed by the nature of the
+      sentiment which I ought to express to you, for in declaring as you have
+      done, p. 123, that you do not care for the contempt of such as me*
+      (ignorant as you were of my opinion), you tell me plainly that you do not
+      care for their esteem. I leave, therefore, to your discernment and taste
+      to determine the sentiment most congenial to my situation and your desert.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "And what does it do for me here, except, perhaps, expose
+     me to the contempt of such men as Mr. Volney, which,
+     however, I feel myself pretty well able to bear?" p. 124.
+     This language is the more surprising, as Dr. Priestly never
+     received anything from me but civilities.  In the year 1791
+     I sent him a dissertation of mine on the Chronology of the
+     Ancients, in consequence of some charts which he had himself
+     published.  His only answer was to abuse me in a pamphlet in
+     1792.  After this first abuse, on meeting me here last
+     winter, he procured me an invitation to dine with his friend
+     Mr. Russell, at whose house he lodged; after having shown me
+     polite attention at that dinner, he abuses me in his new
+     pamphlet.  After this second abuse he meets me in Spruce
+     Street, and takes me by the hand as a friend, and speaks of
+     me in a large company under that denomination.  Now I ask
+     the public, what kind of a man is Dr. Priestly?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      C. F. VOLNEY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphia, March 10, 1797.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      P. S. I do not accompany this public letter with a private note to Dr.
+      Priestly, because communications of that nature carry an appearance of
+      bravado, which, even in exercising the right of a necessary defence,
+      appear to me imcompatible with decency and politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Compiled by the publisher from recognized authorities.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Zodiac is an imaginary girdle or belt in the celestial sphere, which
+      extends about eight degrees on each side of the Ecliptic. It is divided
+      into twelve portions, called the signs of the Zodiac, within which all the
+      planets make their revolutions. The Zodiac is so called from the animals
+      represented upon it, and is supposed to have originated in remote ages and
+      in latitudes where the camel and elephant were comparatively unknown. This
+      pictorial representation of the zodiac was probably the origin, as M.
+      Dupuis suggests, of the Arabian and Egyptian adoration of animals and
+      birds, and has led in the natural progress of events to the adoration of
+      images by both Christians and pagans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Signs of the Zodiac, (says Godfrey Higgins in The Anacalypsis) with
+      the exception of the Scorpion, which was exchanged by Dan for the Eagle,
+      were carried by the different tribes of the Israelites on their standards;
+      and Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio or the Eagle&mdash;the four signs
+      of Reuben, Judah, Ephriam, and Dan&mdash;were placed at the four corners,
+      (the four cardinal points), of their encampment, evidently in allusion to
+      the cardinal points of the sphere, the equinoxes and solstices, when the
+      equinox was in Taurus. (See Parkhurst's Lexicon.) These coincidences prove
+      that this religious system had its origin before the bull ceased to be an
+      equinoctial sign, and prove also, that the religion of Moses was
+      originally the same in its secret mysteries as that of the Heathen, or, if
+      my reader likes it better, that the Heathen secret mysteries were the same
+      as those of Moses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ecliptic, a great circle of the sphere, (shown on the preceding map by
+      two parallel lines), is supposed to be drawn through the middle of the
+      Zodiac, cutting the Equator at two points, (called the Equinoctial
+      points), at an angle with the equinoctial of 23 degrees 28 minutes, (the
+      sun's greatest declination), and is the path which the earth is supposed
+      to describe amidst the fixed stars in performing its annual circuit around
+      the sun. It is called the Ecliptic because the eclipses of the sun and
+      moon always occur under it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Signs are each the twelfth part of the Ecliptic or Zodiac, (30
+      degrees,) and are reckoned from the point of intersection of the ecliptic
+      and equator at the vernal equinox. They are named respectively Aries,
+      Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
+      Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces. These names are borrowed from the
+      constellations of the zodiac of the same denomination, which corresponded
+      when these divisions were originally made; but in consequence of the
+      precession, recession, or retrocession of the equinoxes, (about 50 1/10"
+      yearly, at the rate of about 72 years to a degree, displacing an entire
+      sign in about 2152 years, and making an entire revolution of the
+      equinoctial in about 25,868 years), the positions of these constellations
+      in the heavens no longer correspond with the divisions of the ecliptic of
+      the same name, but are in advance of them. Thus, the constellation Aries
+      is now in that part of the ecliptic called Taurus, and the stars of Taurus
+      are in Gemini, those of Gemini in Cancer, and so on throughout the
+      ecliptic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The relative positions of the signs and constellations in the zodiac and
+      ecliptic seem thus to have gradually changed with the revolving years; and
+      the worship of the three constellations, Taurus, Aries, and Pisces, with
+      which Christianity is so intimately connected, seems to have changed in a
+      corresponding degree. The worship of the bull of Egypt&mdash;the celestial
+      Taurus&mdash;has given place to that of the lamb of Palestine&mdash;the
+      celestial Aries; and under the astronomical emblem Pisces&mdash;the
+      twelfth sign of the zodiac&mdash;the dominant faith of to-day was
+      appropriately taught by the twelve apostolic fishermen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is from one of these chosen fishermen, St. Peter, that the Pope of Rome
+      claims to have derived his arbitrary power for binding and loosing on
+      earth those who are to be bound and loosed in heaven. (Matt. xvi, 19.) The
+      grave responsibility of wielding with justice and equity this tremendous
+      power over the future destiny of mankind, seems never to have disconcerted
+      any of the successors of St. Peter. They have all proved to be equally
+      arrogant and intolerant, zealous for both temporal and spiritual
+      domination, and merciless to those who have opposed their pretensions. The
+      present incumbent of the papal chair, who modestly claims the attribute of
+      infallibility, seems proud of his inherited title, The Great Fisherman!
+      and hopes in the progress of time, with the assistance of his monks,
+      bishops, and cardinals, to entangle all nations in his net of faith, and
+      to dictate with unquestioned authority the religious worship of the entire
+      human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the precession of the equinoxes still continues as of yore, and as the
+      masses still continue credulous and devout, they may in succeeding ages be
+      again called upon to worship the god Apis, when the sign of Taurus shall
+      again coincide in the zodiac and the ecliptic; and Aries, "the lamb of
+      God," may again be offered in the "fullness of time" as a sacrifice for
+      mankind, again be crucified, and again shed his redeeming blood to wash
+      away the sins of a believing world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Dupuis has satisfactorily shown in The History of all Religions that
+      the twelve labors of the god and saviour Hercules were astronomical
+      allegories&mdash;the history of the passage of the sun through the twelve
+      signs of the zodiac&mdash;and these labors are so similar to the
+      sufferings of Jesus, that the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst has been obliged, much
+      against his inclination, to acknowledge that they "were types of what the
+      real Saviour was to do and suffer." (Parkhurst, p.47.) An intimate
+      connection, if not identity, is thus shown between ancient and modern
+      belief&mdash;between the paganism of the past and the orthodoxy of the
+      present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ZODIACAL SIGNS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARIES, the Ram: (marked [symbol for ARIES])&mdash;A northern
+      constellation, usually named as the first sign in the zodiac, into which,
+      when the sun enters at the vernal equinox in March, the days and nights
+      are of equal length. Aries has been regarded by the devout during many
+      ages as the celestial representative, visible in the heavens, of "the Lamb
+      of God that taketh away the sins of the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TAURUS, the Bull:(marked thus, [symbol for TAURUS])&mdash;The second sign
+      in the zodiac, which by the Arabians is called Ataur. This constellation
+      was worshipped for ages by the idolatrous Egyptians as the heavenly
+      representative of their god Osiris; and derives its name, according to
+      Grecian fable, from the bull into which Jupiter transformed himself in
+      order to carry Europa over into Crete; but the constellation was probably
+      so named by the Egyptians to designate that period of the year, (April),
+      in which cows mostly bring forth their young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Rev. Mr. Maurice in his work on the antiquities of India, has shown
+      that the May-day festival and the May-pole of Great Britain with its
+      garlands, etc., are the remains of an ancient festival of Egypt and India,
+      and probably of Phoenicia, when these nations, in countries very distant,
+      and from times very remote, have all, with one consent, celebrated the
+      entrance of the sun into the sign of Taurus at the vernal equinox."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GEMINI, the Twins: (marked thus, [symbol for GEMINI])&mdash;A zodiacal
+      constellation, visible in May, containing the two bright stars Castor and
+      Pollux, the fabled sons of Leda and Jupiter, who during their lives had
+      cleared the Hellespont and neighboring seas of pirates, and were therefore
+      deemed the protectors of navigators and sailors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CANCER, the Crab: (marked thus, [symbol for CANCER])&mdash;Is the fourth
+      sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters on the 21st day of June, and is
+      thence called the summer solstice. According to Grecian fable, the crab
+      was transported to heaven at the request of Juno, after it had been slain
+      by Hercules during his battle with the serpent Python, but the evident
+      design of the name is to represent the apparent backward motion of the sun
+      in June, which is said to resemble the motions of a crab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LEO, the Lion: ([symbol for LEO]).&mdash;Is the fifth sign in the zodiac,
+      and contains one star of the first magnitude, called Regulus, or Cor
+      Leonis&mdash;the Lion's Heart. The fervid heat of July, when the sun has
+      attained its greatest power, is now symbolized in our almanacs by the
+      figure of an enraged lion; and the feasts or sacrifices formerly
+      celebrated among the ancients during this month, in honor of the sun,
+      (which they also represented under the form of a lion,) were called
+      Leonitica. The priests who performed the sacred rites were called Leones.
+      This feast was sometimes called Mithriaca, because Mithra was the name of
+      the sun among the Persians. The sacred writings abound with references to
+      the "king of beasts;" among the most interesting of which is the story of
+      the battle between the lion and Samson, the Jewish Herculus; while the
+      most wonderful example of animal evolution on record is found in the
+      sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where we are gravely informed that "the
+      lion shall eat straw like the bullock."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIRGO, Virgin Mother, Venus, Eve, Isis, &amp;c.&mdash;([symbol for
+      VIRGO]).&mdash;Is the sixth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about
+      the 21st of August. The myths and fables regarding the virgin which abound
+      among all nations and all religions, are both various and voluminous, and
+      we may add somewhat improbable. They all agree, however, in this, that the
+      female, shown on the preceding diagram, holding in her right hand a branch
+      of ripened fruit,&mdash;the apples of Paradise,&mdash;was intended to
+      represent the reproductive powers of nature,&mdash;the abundance,
+      satisfaction and contentment which mortals enjoy during the happy period
+      of harvest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LIBRA, the Balance.&mdash;The seventh sign of the zodiac, directly
+      opposite to Aries, from which it is distant 180 degrees. It is marked thus
+      [symbol for LIBRA], after the manner of a pair of scales; to denote,
+      probably, that when the sun arrives at this part of the ecliptic, the days
+      and nights are equal, as if weighed in a balance. Hence the period when
+      the sun enters Libra, (about September 21st,) is called the Autumnal
+      equinox. On the 25th of September was born John the Baptist, the
+      forerunner of his cousin Jesus, who came to his exaltation of glory on the
+      25th of March, the Vernal equinox. "The equinoxes and solstices," says
+      Higgins, "equally marked the births and deaths of John and Jesus." The one
+      preceded and prepared the way for the other, who receded. One advanced,
+      the other declined. Jesus ascended, John descended. Astrologically
+      speaking, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John iii, 30.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SCORPIO, the Scorpion.&mdash;The eighth sign of the zodiac, which the sun
+      enters on the 23d of October, is marked thus [symbol for SCORPIO]. Scorpio
+      is fabled to have killed the great hunter Orion, and for that exploit to
+      have been placed among the constellations. For this reason it is also said
+      that when Scorpio rises Orion sets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAGITTARIUS, the Archer: (marked thus, [symbol for SAGITTARIUS]) is the
+      ninth zodiacal sign, and corresponds with the month of November. This sign
+      is represented like a centaur and was fabled to be Crotus, the son of
+      Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAPRICORNUS, the Goat.([symbol for CAPRICORNUS])&mdash;The tenth sign of
+      the zodiac, which the sun enters the 21st of December, (the longest night
+      in the year,) called the winter solstice. This sign is drawn to represent
+      the horns of a goat, and is fabled to have been Pan, who in the war of the
+      giants was taken to heaven in the shape of a goat. Others claim that it
+      was the goat of Amalthaea, which fed Jupiter with her milk. Macrobius, who
+      calls Cancer and Capricorn the gates of the sun, makes the latter sign to
+      represent his motion, after the manner of a goat climbing the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AQUARIUS, the Water Bearer.&mdash;A constellation in the heavens so
+      called, because during its rising there is usually an abundance of rain.
+      It is the eleventh sign in the zodiac, reckoned from Aries, and is marked
+      thus, [symbol for AQUARIUS]. It rises in January and sets in February, and
+      is supposed by the poets to be Ganymede.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PISCES, the Fishes, [symbol for PISCES].&mdash;The twelfth sign of the
+      zodiac, rises in February and is represented by two fishes tied together
+      by the tails. These fishes are fabled by the Greeks to be those into which
+      Venus and Cupid were changed to escape from the giant Typhon. This fable
+      may not be true, but that wonderful miracles were once performed with two
+      small fishes is stated in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke,
+      where it is said that 5000 hungry mortals were cheaply, if not sumptuously
+      regaled with two small fishes and five loaves of bread; while a large
+      surplus of this piscatory diet, larger indeed than the original stock,
+      still remained intact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the vestibule or approaches to catholic churches is usually found a
+      vase filled with water, (called Piscina,) and this water is considered
+      holy. The Fish-days are observed as holy days, or fast days, in which Fish
+      may be eaten and meat is forbidden; and learned writers have asserted that
+      in the worship of Pisces may be found the true secret of the origin of the
+      rite of baptism. The Fish-god Oannes, is said to have come out of the
+      Erythraean Sea and taught the Babylonians all kinds of useful knowledge.
+      Ionnes or Jonas went headlong into the sea and into a fish, and has kindly
+      recorded for our instruction his remarkable adventures. The miraculous
+      draughts of fishes in the apostolic age still excite the emulation of
+      modern fishermen, who cannot even hope to rival the wonders that have been
+      recorded. St. Peter is said to have secured ready money from the mouth of
+      a fish that he caught with a hook and line in the sea of Galilee. (Matthew
+      xvii, 27.) His success was justly rewarded, and to him was delegated the
+      power of ruling the infant church. Pisces thus displaced Aries. The
+      fisherman succeeded the shepherd. The precession of the equinoxes produced
+      a new avatar; a new sign arose in the heavens; and a new saviour was born
+      to save mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CONSTELLATIONS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIRIUS, the Dog Star.&mdash;A bright star of the first magnitude in the
+      mouth of the constellation Canis Major. This is the brightest star that
+      appears in our firmament, and is supposed by some to be the nearest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LEPUS.&mdash;One of the southern constellations, placed near Orion,
+      according to Grecian fable, because it was one of the animals which he
+      hunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ERIDANUS.&mdash;A winding southern constellation, near the Cetus,
+      containing the bright star Achemar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CETUS, the Whale.&mdash;A southern constellation, and one of the
+      forty-eight old asterisms. It is fabled to have been the sea monster sent
+      by Neptune to devour Andromeda, which was killed by Perseus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CRATER, the Cup.&mdash;A southern constellation, near Hydra. This is
+      supposed by Hyainus to be the cup which Apollo gave to the Corvus, or
+      Raven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORVUS.&mdash;One of the old constellations in the southern hemisphere,
+      near Sagittarius. This bird is fabled to have been translated to heaven by
+      Apollo for discovering to him the infidelity of the nymph Coronis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARGO NAVIS, the Ship.&mdash;A constellation near to the Canis Major, and
+      the name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four companions to
+      Colchis in quest of the golden fleece, and was said to have been
+      translated into the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CANOPUS.&mdash;The name formerly given to a star in the second bend of
+      Eridanus. A bright star of the first magnitude in the rudder of the ship
+      Argo, which, according to Pliny, was visible at Alexandria in Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CENTAURUS.&mdash;One of the forty-eight old constellations in the southern
+      hemisphere, represented in the form of half man and half horse, who was
+      fabled by the Greeks to have been Chiron, the tutor of Achilles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AVA, or ALTAR.&mdash;One of the old constellations, and fabled to have
+      been that at which the giants entered into their conspiracy against the
+      gods; wherefore Jupiter, in commemoration of the event, transplanted the
+      altar into the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEGASUS.&mdash;One of the forty-eight old constellations of the northern
+      hemisphere, figured in the form of a flying horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DELPHINUS, or DOLPHIN.&mdash;A northern constellation, near Pegasus. The
+      Dolphin is fabled to have been translated to heaven by Neptune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AQUILA, the Eagle.&mdash;In the Arabic Altair, but in the Persian tables
+      the Flying Vulture. This is one of the old constellations, situated near
+      Delphinus in the northern hemisphere. According to Grecian fable, Aquila
+      represented Ganymede or Hebe, who was transported to heaven and made
+      cup-bearer to Jupiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAGITTA&mdash;the Dart or Arrow, called by the Arabians Schahan. One of
+      the old constellations in the northern hemisphere, near Aquila and
+      Delphinus. It is fabled to have been the arrow with which Hercules slew
+      the vulture that was devouring the liver of Prometheus who was, like
+      Jesus, crucified for loving mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CYGNUS, the Swan.&mdash;An old constellation in the milky-way, between
+      Equus and the Dragon. This is fabled to be the swan into which Jupiter
+      transformed himself in order to deceive the virtuous Leda, wife of
+      Tyndareus, king of Sparta. The Grecian matron, like the Jewish virgin,
+      thus became the mother of a God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LYRA.&mdash;A northern constellation between Hercules and Cygnus,
+      containing a white star of the first magnitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MILKY-WAY.&mdash;Galaxy, or Via Lactia.&mdash;A broad luminous path or
+      circle encompassing the heavens, which is easily discernible by its white
+      appearance, from which it derives its name. It is supposed to be the
+      blended light of innumerable fixed stars, which are not distinguishable
+      with ordinary telescopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HYDRA, the Serpent.&mdash;A southern constellation of great length, which
+      is drawn to represent a serpent. The Hydra is fabled to have been placed
+      in the heavens by Apollo, to frighten the Raven from drinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ORION, the hunter.&mdash;A constellation of the southern hemisphere with
+      respect to the ecliptic, but half southern and half northern with respect
+      to the equinoctial. It is placed near the feet of the bull, and is
+      composed of seventeen stars in the form of a sword, which has given
+      occasion to the poets to speak of Orion's sword. He was described by the
+      Greeks as a "mighty hunter," who for his exploits was placed in the
+      heavens by Jupiter, between the Canis and the Lepus. He is believed by
+      many to have been the "mighty hunter" spoken of in the bible, under the
+      name of Nimrod. (See Gen. x: 8, 9; 1 Chron. i: 10; Micha v: 6, Job ix, 9;
+      Amos v, 8.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PERSEUS.&mdash;This constellation is named from Perseus, the son of
+      Jupiter by Danae, who was translated into the heavens by the assistance of
+      Minerva, for having released Andromeda from her confinement on the rock to
+      which she was chained. He is represented in the preceding illustration
+      holding a drawn sword in his right hand and in his left the head of
+      Medusa, the Gorgon, whose terrifying appearance changed all who beheld her
+      into stone, and whom he had destroyed with the assistance of the wings he
+      had borrowed from Mercury, the helmet from Pluto, the sword from Vulcan,
+      and the shield from Minerva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JOSEPH'S STABLE; AURIGA, the Wagoner:&mdash;A northern constellation
+      between Perseus and Gemini, represented by the figure of an old man
+      supporting a goat. He is said to have been taken to heaven by Jupiter
+      after the invention of wagons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      URSA MAJOR, the Bear.&mdash;One of the prominent northern constellations,
+      situated near the north pole. It contains the stars called the Dipper.
+      Ursa Minor contains the pole-star, which is shown in the extremity of the
+      tail of the bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANDROMEDA.&mdash;A northern constellation, represented by a woman chained;
+      as, according to Grecian fable, Andromeda, the daughter of Cassiopia, was
+      bound to a rock by the Nereides, and afterwards released by Perseus.
+      Minerva changed her into a constellation after her death, and placed her
+      in the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DRACO OR DRAGON.&mdash;A northern constellation, supposed to represent the
+      Dragon that guarded the Hesperian fruit, and was killed by Hercules. It is
+      said that Juno took it up to heaven and placed it among the
+      constellations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BOOTIS, the Ox driver: so called because this constellation seems to
+      follow the Great Bear as the driver follows his oxen. Bootis is
+      represented as grasping in his right hand a sickle and in his left a club,
+      and is fabled to have been Icarius, who was transported to heaven because
+      he was a great cultivator of the vine; for when Bootes rises the works of
+      ploughing and cultivation go forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORONA BOREALIS. Northern Crown.&mdash;One of the old northern
+      constellations, between Hercules and Bootes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORONA AUSTRALIS&mdash;Southern Crown.&mdash;One of the old constellations
+      in the southern hemisphere, between Sagittarius and Scorpio. The Corona
+      were fabled to be Menippe and Metioche, two daughters of Orion, who
+      sacrificed themselves at the suggestion of an oracle, to protect Boeotia,
+      their native country, from the ravages of a pestilence: it being the
+      belief of idolatrous nations that an angry god could be propitiated by
+      human sacrifices, and that the death of the innocent might atone for the
+      sins of the guilty. The deities of Hades were astonished, it is said, at
+      the patriotism and devotion of these Grecian maidens, who had so
+      generously and uselessly sacrificed their lives. After their death two
+      stars were seen to issue from the altars that still smoked with their
+      blood, and these stars were placed in the heavens in the form of a crown
+      or coronet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CEPHEUS AND CASSIOPIA.&mdash;One of the old asterism in the northern
+      hemisphere, near the pole. According to Grecian fables, Cassiopia and her
+      husband Cepheus, king of Etheopia, were placed among the constellations to
+      witness the punishment inflicted on their daughter, Andromeda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRIANGULARIUM.&mdash;A name for both one of the old and new constellations
+      in the northern hemisphere, between Andromeda and Aries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SERPENTARIUS, called Ophiucus, is a constellation in the northern
+      hemisphere, between Scorpio and Hercules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HERCULES, one of the old northern constellations. In Grecian mythology it
+      was taught and believed that Hercules, the Theban, was born of a human
+      mother and an immortal father, like other so-called saviours of mankind.
+      His mother, the fair Alcmena, wife of Amphitryon, having found favor in
+      the eyes of the god Jupiter, soon fell an unwilling victim to his
+      celestial wiles. The life of the infant Hercules, born of this unnatural
+      union, was threatened by the jealous Juno, the same as the life of the
+      infant Jesus was threatened by the tyrant Herod. Like Jesus, Hercules
+      devoted his life to the benefit of the human race, and like Jesus he was
+      also worshipped after his death as a God in heaven. He is shown in the
+      astrological chart, enveloped in the skin of the lion he has slain, with
+      his club upraised, and his foot placed threateningly above the head of the
+      Dragon, as if about to fulfill the scriptural prophecy, that "the seed of
+      the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1397 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1397 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1397)
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Ruins, by C. F. Volney,
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Ruins, by C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ruins
+
+Author: C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #1397]
+Last Updated: January 25, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RUINS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE RUINS,
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      OR, MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES: <br /> AND <br /> THE LAW OF
+      NATURE, <br /> <br /> by C. F. VOLNEY,
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      COMTE ET PAIR DE FRANCE. COMMANDEUR DE LA LEGION D'HONNEUR, MEMBRE DE<br />
+      L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE, ET DE PLUSIEURS AUTRES SOCIETES SAVANTES. <br />
+      DEPUTY TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF 1789, AND AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN EGYPT
+      AND SYRIA," "NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY," ETC.<br /> <br /> <br /> TO
+      WHICH IS ADDED <br /> <br /> VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY, A BIOGRAPHICAL
+      NOTICE BY COUNT DARU, AND THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS BY THE
+      EDITOR.
+    </h4>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will employ myself on
+        the means of effecting good for him, and build my own happiness on the
+        promotion of his.&mdash;Volney.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <h4>
+      NEW YORK, TWENTIETH CENTURY PUB. CO., 4 WARREN ST. 1890.
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Having recently purchased a set of stereotyped plates of Volney's Ruins,
+      with a view of reprinting the same, I found, on examination, that they
+      were considerably worn by the many editions that had been printed from
+      them and that they greatly needed both repairs and corrections. A careful
+      estimate showed that the amount necessary for this purpose would go far
+      towards reproducing this standard work in modern type and in an improved
+      form. After due reflection this course was at length decided upon, and all
+      the more readily, as by discarding the old plates and resetting the entire
+      work, the publisher was enabled to greatly enhance its value, by inserting
+      the translator's preface as it appeared in the original edition, and also
+      to restore many notes and other valuable material which had been
+      carelessly omitted in the American reprint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the
+      fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may be
+      appropriately referred to, in this connection. It is there stated, in
+      describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes, her
+      opulent metropolis, that "There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while
+      others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race
+      of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair,
+      founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious
+      systems which still govern the universe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to prove
+      that this statement is substantially correct, and that we are in reality
+      indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid imagination of the
+      persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems now so
+      highly revered by the different branches of both the Semitic and Aryan
+      races. This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr. Volney's
+      writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of all
+      religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long concealed
+      beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the Egyptian
+      Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Dioderus, that "the
+      Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship, of
+      festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other
+      religious practice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That an imaginative and superstitious race of black men should have
+      invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system of
+      religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the intellects
+      of the leading representatives of modern theology,&mdash;that still clings
+      to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential influence the literature
+      and faith of the civilized and cultured nations of Europe and America, is
+      indeed a strange illustration of the mad caprice of destiny, of the
+      insignificant and apparently trivial causes that oft produce the most
+      grave and momentous results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The translation here given closely follows that published in Paris by
+      Levrault, Quai Malaquais, in 1802, which was under the direction and
+      careful supervision of the talented author; and whatever notes Count
+      Volney then thought necessary to insert in his work, are here carefully
+      reproduced without abridgment or modification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portrait, maps and illustrations are from a French edition of Volney's
+      complete works, published by Bossange Freres at No. 12 Rue de Seine,
+      Paris, in 1821,&mdash;one year after the death of Mr. Volney. It is a
+      presentation copy "on the part of Madame, the Countess de Volney, and of
+      the nephew of the author," and it may therefore be taken for granted that
+      Mr. Volney's portrait, as here given, is correct, and was satisfactory to
+      his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An explanation of the figures and diagrams shown on the map of the
+      Astrological Heaven of the Ancients has been added in the appendix by the
+      publisher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PETER ECKLER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      New York, January 3, 1890.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF THE ENGLISH EDITION PUBLISHED IN PARIS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      To offer the public a new translation of Volney's Ruins may require some
+      apology in the view of those who are acquainted with the work only in the
+      English version which already exists, and which has had a general
+      circulation. But those who are conversant with the book in the author's
+      own language, and have taken pains to compare it with that version, must
+      have been struck with the errors with which the English performance
+      abounds. They must have regretted the loss of many original beauties, some
+      of which go far in composing the essential merits of the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The energy and dignity of the author's manner, the unaffected elevation of
+      his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity of his diction, are
+      everywhere suited to his subject, which is solemn, novel, luminous,
+      affecting,&mdash;a subject perhaps the most universally interesting to the
+      human race that has ever been presented to their contemplation. It takes
+      the most liberal and comprehensive view of the social state of man,
+      develops the sources of his errors in the most perspicuous and convincing
+      manner, overturns his prejudices with the greatest delicacy and
+      moderation, sets the wrongs he has suffered, and the rights he ought to
+      cherish, in the clearest point of view, and lays before him the true
+      foundation of morals&mdash;his only means of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the work has already become a classical one, even in English, and as it
+      must become and continue to be so regarded in all languages in which it
+      shall be faithfully rendered, we wish it to suffer as little as possible
+      from a change of country;&mdash;that as much of the spirit of the original
+      be transfused and preserved as is consistent with the nature of
+      translation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How far we have succeeded in performing this service for the English
+      reader we must not pretend to determine. We believe, however, that we have
+      made an improved translation, and this without claiming any particular
+      merit on our part, since we have had advantages which our predecessor had
+      not. We have been aided by his labors; and, what is of still more
+      importance, our work has been done under the inspection of the author,
+      whose critical knowledge of both languages has given us a great facility
+      in avoiding such errors as might arise from hurry or mistake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paris, November 1, 1802.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE OF THE LONDON EDITION.*
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Published by T. Allman, 42 Holborn Hill, London, 1851.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The plan of this publication was formed nearly ten years ago; and
+      allusions to it may be seen in the preface to Travels in Syria and Egypt,
+      as well as at the end of that work, (published in 1787). The performance
+      was in some forwardness when the events of 1788 in France interrupted it.
+      Persuaded that a development of the theory of political truth could not
+      sufficiently acquit a citizen of his debt to society, the author wished to
+      add practice; and that particularly at a time when a single arm was of
+      consequence in the defence of the general cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same desire of public benefit which induced him to suspend his work,
+      has since engaged him to resume it, and though it may not possess the same
+      merit as if it had appeared under the circumstances that gave rise to it,
+      yet he imagines that at a time when new passions are bursting forth,&mdash;passions
+      that must communicate their activity to the religious opinions of men,&mdash;it
+      is of importance to disseminate such moral truths as are calculated to
+      operate as a curb and restraint. It is with this view he has endeavored to
+      give to these truths, hitherto treated as abstract, a form likely to gain
+      them a reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was found impossible not to shock the violent prejudices of some
+      readers; but the work, so far from being the fruit of a disorderly and
+      perturbed spirit, has been dictated by a sincere love of order and
+      humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After reading this performance it will be asked, how it was possible in
+      1784 to have had an idea of what did not take place till the year 1790?
+      The solution is simple. In the original plan the legislator was a
+      fictitious and hypothetical being: in the present, the author has
+      substituted an existing legislator; and the reality has only made the
+      subject additionally interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF2" id="link2H_PREF2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.*
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The copy from which this preface is reprinted was
+     published in Boston by Charles Gaylord, in 1833.  It was
+     given to the writer, when a mere lad, by a lady&mdash;almost a
+     stranger&mdash;who was traveling through the little hamlet on the
+     banks of the Hudson where he then resided.  This lady
+     assured me that the book was of great value, containing
+     noble and sublime truths; and the only condition she
+     attached to the gift was, that I should read it carefully
+     and endeavor to understand its meaning.  This I willingly
+     promised and faithfully performed; and all who have "climbed
+     the heights," and escaped from the thraldom of superstitious
+     faith, will concede the inestimable value of such a gift&mdash;
+     rich with the peace and consolation that the truth imparts.
+     &mdash;Pub.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If books were to be judged of by their volume, the following would have
+      but little value; if appraised by their contents, it will perhaps be
+      reckoned among the most instructive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In general, nothing is more important than a good elementary book; but,
+      also, nothing is more difficult to compose and even to read: and why?
+      Because, as every thing in it should be analysis and definition, all
+      should be expressed with truth and precision. If truth and precision are
+      wanting, the object has not been attained; if they exist, its very force
+      renders it abstract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first of these defects has been hitherto evident in all books of
+      morality. We find in them only a chaos of incoherent maxims, precepts
+      without causes, and actions without a motive. The pedants of the human
+      race have treated it like a little child: they have prescribed to it good
+      behavior by frightening it with spirits and hobgoblins. Now that the
+      growth of the human race is rapid, it is time to speak reason to it; it is
+      time to prove to men that the springs of their improvement are to be found
+      in their very organization, in the interest of their passions, and in all
+      that composes their existence. It is time to demonstrate that morality is
+      a physical and geometrical science, subject to the rules and calculations
+      of the other mathematical sciences: and such is the advantage of the
+      system expounded in this book, that the basis of morality being laid in it
+      on the very nature of things, it is both constant and immutable; whereas,
+      in all other theological systems, morality being built upon arbritary
+      opinions, not demonstrable and often absurd, it changes, decays, expires
+      with them, and leaves men in an absolute depravation. It is true that
+      because our system is founded on facts and not on reveries, it will with
+      much greater difficulty be extended and adopted: but it will derive
+      strength from this very struggle, and sooner or later the eternal religion
+      of Nature must overturn the transient religions of the human mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This book was published for the first time in 1793, under the title of The
+      French Citizen's Catechism. It was at first intended for a national work,
+      but as it may be equally well entitled the Catechism of men of sense and
+      honor, it is to be hoped that it will become a book common to all Europe.
+      It is possible that its brevity may prevent it from attaining the object
+      of a popular classical work, but the author will be satisfied if he has at
+      least the merit of pointing out the way to make a better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      VOLNEY'S RUINS;
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      OR MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The superior merits of this work are too well known to require
+      commendation; but as it is not generally known that there are in
+      circulation three English translations of it, varying materially in regard
+      to faithfulness and elegance of diction, the publisher of the present
+      edition inserts the following extracts for the information of purchasers
+      and readers:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PARIS TRANSLATION,
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      First published in this Country by Dixon and Sickels.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      INVOCATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hail, solitary ruins! holy sepulchres, and silent walls! you I invoke; to
+      you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret terror, the
+      vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious sentiments&mdash;sublime
+      contemplations. What useful lessons! what affecting and profound
+      reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult you. When the
+      whole earth, in chains and silence, bowed the neck before its tyrants, you
+      had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor, and confounding the
+      dust of the king with that of the meanest slave, had announced to man the
+      sacred dogma of Equality! Within your pale, in solitary adoration of
+      Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions of the dead; not such as
+      she is painted by the impassioned multitude, armed with fire and sword,
+      but under the august aspect of justice, poising in her hand the sacred
+      balance, wherein are weighed the actions of men at the gates of eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Tombs! what virtues are yours! you appal the tyrant's heart, and poison
+      with secret alarm his impious joys; he flies, with coward step, your
+      incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LONDON TRANSLATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      INVOCATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Solitary ruins, sacred tombs, ye mouldering and silent walls, all hail! To
+      you I address my invocation. While the vulgar shrink from your aspect with
+      secret terror, my heart finds in the contemplation a thousand delicious
+      sentiments, a thousand admirable recollections. Pregnant, I may truly call
+      you, with useful lessons, with pathetic and irresistible advice to the man
+      who knows how to consult you. A while ago the whole world bowed the neck
+      in silence before the tyrants that oppressed it; and yet in that hopeless
+      moment you already proclaimed the truths that tyrants hold in abhorrence:
+      mixing the dust of the proudest kings with that of the meanest slaves, you
+      called upon us to contemplate this example of Equality. From your caverns,
+      whither the musing and anxious love of Liberty led me, I saw escape its
+      venerable shade, and with unexpected felicity, direct its flight and
+      marshal my steps the way to renovated France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tombs! what virtues and potency do you exhibit! Tyrants tremble at your
+      aspect&mdash;you poison with secret alarm their impious pleasures&mdash;they
+      turn from you with impatience, and, coward like, endeavor to forget you
+      amid the sumptuousness of their palaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PHILADELPHIA TRANSLATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      INVOCATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hail, ye solitary ruins, ye sacred tombs, and silent walls! 'Tis your
+      auspicious aid that I invoke; 'tis to you my soul, wrapt in meditation,
+      pours forth its prayers! What though the profane and vulgar mind shrinks
+      with dismay from your august and awe-inspiring aspect; to me you unfold
+      the sublimest charms of contemplation and sentiment, and offer to my
+      senses the luxury of a thousand delicious and enchanting thoughts! How
+      sumptuous the feast to a being that has a taste to relish, and an
+      understanding to consult you! What rich and noble admonitions; what
+      exquisite and pathetic lessons do you read to a heart that is susceptible
+      of exalted feelings! When oppressed humanity bent in timid silence
+      throughout the globe beneath the galling yoke of slavery, it was you that
+      proclaimed aloud the birthright of those truths which tyrants tremble at
+      while they detect, and which, by sinking the loftiest head of the proudest
+      potentate, with all his boasted pageantry, to the level of mortality with
+      his meanest slave, confirmed and ratified by your unerring testimony the
+      sacred and immortal doctrine of Equality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Musing within the precincts of your inviting scenes of philosophic
+      solitude, whither the insatiate love of true-born Liberty had led me, I
+      beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character and habit of a
+      blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and instruments of murder, and
+      followed by a frantic and intoxicated multitude, but under the placid and
+      chaste aspect of Justice, holding with a pure and unsullied hand the
+      sacred scales in which the actions of mortals are weighed on the brink of
+      eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first translation was made and published in London soon after the
+      appearance of the work in French, and, by a late edition, is still adopted
+      without alteration. Mr. Volney, when in this country in 1797, expressed
+      his disapprobation of this translation, alleging that the translator must
+      have been overawed by the government or clergy from rendering his ideas
+      faithfully; and, accordingly, an English gentleman, then in Philadelphia,
+      volunteered to correct this edition. But by his endeavors to give the true
+      and full meaning of the author with great precision, he has so overloaded
+      his composition with an exuberance of words, as in a great measure to
+      dissipate the simple elegance and sublimity of the original. Mr. Volney,
+      when he became better acquainted with the English language, perceived this
+      defect; and with the aid of our countryman, Joel Barlow, made and
+      published in Paris a new, correct, and elegant translation, of which the
+      present edition is a faithful and correct copy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE OF THE LONDON EDITION.* </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PREF2"> PREFACE OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.* </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN EDITION. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> PARIS TRANSLATION, </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> LONDON TRANSLATION. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> PHILADELPHIA TRANSLATION. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> <big><b>LIFE OF VOLNEY.</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0002">
+        CHAPTER II. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0005">
+        CHAPTER V. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0008">
+        CHAPTER VIII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0011">
+        CHAPTER XI. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0014">
+        CHAPTER XIV. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0017">
+        CHAPTER XVII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0020">
+        CHAPTER XX. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0023">
+        CHAPTER XXIII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a href="#linknature"><b><big>THE LAW OF NATURE</big></b></a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER I. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0026">
+        CHAPTER II. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER III. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER IV. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0029">
+        CHAPTER V. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER VI. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER VII. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0032">
+        CHAPTER VIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER IX.
+        </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER X. </a><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XI. </a><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0036">
+        CHAPTER XII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> <big><b>VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY.</b></big>
+        </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      LIFE OF VOLNEY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By Count Daru.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Constantine Francis Chassebeuf De Volney was born in 1757 at Craon, in
+      that intermediate condition of life, which is of all the happiest, since
+      it is deprived only of fortune's too dangerous favors, and can aspire to
+      the social and intellectual advantages reserved for a laudable ambition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his earliest youth, he devoted himself to the search after truth,
+      without being disheartened by the serious studies which alone can initiate
+      us into her secrets. After having become acquainted with the ancient
+      languages, the natural sciences and history, and being admitted into the
+      society of the most eminent literary characters, he submitted, at the age
+      of twenty, to an illustrious academy, the solution of one of the most
+      difficult problems that the history of antiquity has left open for
+      discussion. This attempt received no encouragement from the learned men
+      who were appointed his judges; and the author's only appeal from their
+      sentence was to his courage and his efforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after, a small inheritance having fallen to his lot, the difficulty
+      was how to spend it (these are his own words.) He resolved to employ it in
+      acquiring, by a long voyage, a new fund of information, and determined to
+      visit Egypt and Syria. But these countries could not be explored to
+      advantage without a knowledge of the language. Our young traveller was not
+      to be discouraged by this difficulty. Instead of learning Arabic in
+      Europe, he withdrew to a convent of Copts, until he had made himself
+      master of an idiom that is spoken by so many nations of the East. This
+      resolution showed one of those undaunted spirits that remain unshaken amid
+      the trials of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although, like other travellers, he might have amused us with an account
+      of his hardships and the perils surmounted by his courage, he overcame the
+      temptation of interrupting his narrative by personal adventures. He
+      disdained the beaten track. He does not tell us the road he took, the
+      accidents he met with, or the impressions he received. He carefully avoids
+      appearing upon the stage; he is an inhabitant of the country, who has long
+      and well observed it, and who describes its physical, political, and moral
+      state. The allusion would be entire if an old Arab could be supposed to
+      possess all the erudition, all the European philosophy, which are found
+      united and in their maturity in a traveller of twenty-five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though a master in all those artifices by which a narration is
+      rendered interesting, the young man is not to be discerned in the pomp of
+      labored descriptions. Although possessed of a lively and brilliant
+      imagination, he is never found unwarily explaining by conjectural systems
+      the physical or moral phenomena he describes. In his observations he
+      unites prudence with science. With these two guides he judges with
+      circumspection, and sometimes confesses himself unable to account for the
+      effects he has made known to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus his account has all the qualities that persuade&mdash;accuracy and
+      candor. And when, ten years later, a vast military enterprise transported
+      forty thousand travellers to the classic ground, which he had trod
+      unattended, unarmed and unprotected, they all recognized a sure guide and
+      an enlightened observer in the writer who had, as it seemed, only preceded
+      them to remove or point out a part of the difficulties of the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unanimous testimony of all parties proved the accuracy of his account
+      and the justness of his observations; and his Travels in Egypt and Syria
+      were, by universal suffrage, recommended to the gratitude and the
+      confidence of the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the work had undergone this trial it had obtained in the learned
+      world such a rapid and general success, that it found its way into Russia.
+      The empress, then (in 1787) upon the throne, sent the author a medal,
+      which he received with respect, as a mark of esteem for his talents, and
+      with gratitude, as a proof of the approbation given to his principles. But
+      when the empress declared against France, Volney sent back the honorable
+      present, saying: "If I obtained it from her esteem, I can only preserve
+      her esteem by returning it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The revolution of 1789, which had drawn upon France the menaces of
+      Catharine, had opened to Volney a political career. As deputy in the
+      assembly of the states-general, the first words he uttered there were in
+      favor of the publicity of their deliberations. He also supported the
+      organization of the national guards, and that of the communes and
+      departments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the period when the question of the sale of the domain lands was
+      agitated (in 1790), he published an essay in which he lays down the
+      following principles: "The force of a State is in proportion to its
+      population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in proportion
+      to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest, that is to
+      the spirit of property. Whence it follows, that the nearer the cultivator
+      approaches the passive condition of a mercenary, the less industry and
+      activity are to be expected from him; and, on the other hand, the nearer
+      he is to the condition of a free and entire proprietor, the more extension
+      he gives to his own forces, to the produce of his lands, and the general
+      prosperity of the State."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The author draws this conclusion, that a State is so much the more
+      powerful as it includes a greater number of proprietors,&mdash;that is, a
+      greater division of property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conducted into Corsica by that spirit of observation which belongs only to
+      men whose information is varied and extensive, he perceived at the first
+      glance all that could be done for the improvement of agriculture in that
+      country: but he knew that, for a people firmly attached to ancient
+      customs, there can exist no other demonstration or means of persuasion
+      than example. He purchased a considerable estate, and made experiments on
+      those kinds of tillage that he hoped to naturalize in that climate. The
+      sugar-cane, cotton, indigo and coffee soon demonstrated the success of his
+      efforts. This success drew upon him the notice of the government. He was
+      appointed director of agriculture and commerce in that island, where,
+      through ignorance, all new methods are introduced with such difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible to calculate all the good that might have resulted from
+      this peaceable magistracy; and we know that neither instruction, zeal, nor
+      a persevering courage was wanting to him who had undertaken it. Of this he
+      had given convincing proofs. It was in obedience to another sentiment, no
+      less respectable, that he voluntarily interrupted the course of his
+      labors. When his fellow citizens of Angers appointed him their deputy in
+      the constituent assembly, he resigned the employment he held under
+      government, upon the principle that no man can represent the nation and be
+      dependent for a salary upon those by whom it is administered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through respect for the independence of his legislative functions, he had
+      ceased to occupy the place he possessed in Corsica before his election,
+      but he had not ceased to be a benefactor of that country. He returned
+      thither after the session of the constituent assembly. Invited into that
+      island by the principal inhabitants, who were anxious to put into practice
+      his lessons, he spent there a part of the years 1792 and 1793.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his return he published a work entitled: An Account of the Present
+      State of Corsica. This was an act of courage; for it was not a physical
+      description, but a political review of the condition of a population
+      divided into several factions and distracted by violent animosities.
+      Volney unreservedly revealed the abuses, solicited the interest of France
+      in favor of the Corsicans, without flattering them, and boldly denounced
+      their defects and vices; so that the philosopher obtained the only
+      recompense he could expect from his sincerity&mdash;he was accused by the
+      Corsicans of heresy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To prove that he had not merited this reproach, he published soon after a
+      short treatise entitled: The Law of Nature, or Physical Principles of
+      Morality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was soon exposed to a much more dangerous charge, and this, it must be
+      confessed, he did merit. This philosopher, this worthy citizen, who in our
+      first National assembly had seconded with his wishes and his talents the
+      establishment of an order of things which he considered favorable to the
+      happiness of his country, was accused of not being sincerely attached to
+      that liberty for which he had contended; that is to say, of being averse
+      to anarchy. An imprisonment of ten months, which only ended after the 9th
+      of Thermidor, was a new trial reserved for his courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment at which he recovered his liberty, was when the horror inspired
+      by criminal excesses had recalled men to those noble sentiments which
+      fortunately are one of the first necessaries of civilized life. They
+      sought for consolations in study and literature after so many misfortunes,
+      and organized a plan of public instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in the first place necessary to insure the aptitude of those to
+      whom education should be confided; but as the systems were various, the
+      best methods and a unity of doctrine were to be determined. It was not
+      enough to interrogate the masters, they were to be formed, new ones were
+      to be created, and for that purpose a school was opened in 1794, wherein
+      the celebrity of the professors promised new instruction even to the best
+      informed. This was not, as was objected, beginning the edifice at the
+      roof, but creating architects, who were to superintend all the arts
+      requisite for constructing the building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The more difficult their functions were, the greater care was to be taken
+      in the choice of the professors; but France, though then accused of being
+      plunged in barbarism, possessed men of transcendent talents, already
+      enjoying the esteem of all Europe, and we may be bold to say, that by
+      their labors, our literary glory had likewise extended its conquests.
+      Their names were proclaimed by the public voice, and Volney's was
+      associated with those of the men most illustrious in science and in
+      literature.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Lagrange, Laplace, Berthollet, Garat, Bernardin de Saint-
+     Pierre, Daubenton, Hauy, Volney, Sicard, Monge, Thouin, La
+     Harpe, Buache Mentelle.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This institution, however, did not answer the expectations that had been
+      formed of it, because the two thousand students that assembled from all
+      parts of France were not equally prepared to receive these transcendent
+      lessons, and because it had not been sufficiently ascertained how far the
+      theory of education should be kept distinct from education itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Volney's Lectures on History, which were attended by an immense concourse
+      of auditors, became one of his chief claims to literary glory. When forced
+      to interrupt them, by the suppression of the Normal school, he might have
+      reasonably expected to enjoy in his retirement that consideration which
+      his recent functions had added to his name. But, disgusted with the scenes
+      he had witnessed in his native land, he felt that passion revive within
+      him which, in his youth, had led him to visit Africa and Asia. America,
+      civilized within a century, and free only within a few years, fixed his
+      attention. There every thing was new,&mdash;the inhabitants, the
+      constitution, the earth itself. These were objects worthy of his
+      observation. When embarking for this voyage, however, he felt emotions
+      very different from those which formerly accompanied him into Turkey. Then
+      in the prime of life, he joyfully bid adieu to a land where peace and
+      plenty reigned, to travel amongst barbarians; now, mature in years, but
+      dismayed at the spectacle and experience of injustice and persecution, it
+      was with diffidence, as we learn from himself, that he went to implore
+      from a free people an asylum for a sincere friend of that liberty that had
+      been so profaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our traveller had gone to seek for repose beyond the seas. He there found
+      himself exposed to aggression from a celebrated philosopher, Dr.
+      Priestley. Although the subject of this discussion was confined to the
+      investigation of some speculative opinions, published by the French writer
+      in his work entitled The Ruins, the naturalist in this attack employed a
+      degree of violence which added nothing to the force of his arguments, and
+      an acrimony of expression not to be expected from a philosopher. M.
+      Volney, though accused of Hottentotism and ignorance, preserved in his
+      defence, all the advantages that the scurrility of his adversary gave over
+      him. He replied in English, and Priestley's countrymen could only
+      recognize the Frenchman in the refinement and politeness of his answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst M. Volney was travelling in America, there had been formed in
+      France a literary body which, under the name of Institute, had attained in
+      a very few years a distinguished rank amongst the learned societies of
+      Europe. The name of the illustrious traveller was inscribed in it at its
+      formation, and he acquired new rights to the academical honors conferred
+      on him during his absence, by the publication of his observations On the
+      Climate and Soil of the United States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These rights were further augmented by the historical and physiological
+      labors of the Academician. An examination and justification of The
+      Chronology of Herodotus, with numerous and profound researches on The
+      History of the most Ancient Nations, occupied for a long time him who had
+      observed their monuments and traces in the countries they inhabited. The
+      trial he had made of the utility of the Oriental languages inspired him
+      with an ardent desire to propagate the knowledge of them; and to be
+      propagated, he felt how necessary it was to render it less difficult. In
+      this view he conceived the project of applying to the study of the idioms
+      of Asia, a part of the grammatical notions we possess concerning the
+      languages of Europe. It only appertains to those conversant with their
+      relations of dissimilitude or conformity to appreciate the possibility of
+      realizing this system. The author has, however, already received the most
+      flattering encouragement and the most unequivocal appreciation, by the
+      inscription of his name amongst the members of the learned and illustrious
+      society founded by English commerce in the Indian peninsula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Volney developed his system in three works,* which prove that this idea
+      of uniting nations separated by immense distances and such various idioms,
+      had never ceased to occupy him for twenty-five years. Lest those essays,
+      of the utility of which he was persuaded, should be interrupted by his
+      death, with the clay-cold hand that corrected his last work, he drew up a
+      will which institutes a premium for the prosecution of his labors. Thus he
+      prolonged, beyond the term of a life entirely devoted to letters, the
+      glorious services he had rendered to them.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * On the Simplification of Oriental Languages, 1795. The
+     European Alphabet Applied to the Languages of Asia, 1819.
+     Hebrew Simplified, 1820.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is not the place, nor does it belong to me to appreciate the merit of
+      the writings which render Volney's name illustrious. His name had been
+      inscribed in the list of the Senate, and afterwards of the House of Peers.
+      The philosopher who had travelled in the four quarters of the world, and
+      observed their social state, had other titles to his admission into this
+      body, than his literary glory. His public life, his conduct in the
+      constituent assembly, his independent principles, the nobleness of his
+      sentiments, the wisdom and fixity of his opinions, had gained him the
+      esteem of those who can be depended upon, and with whom it is so agreeable
+      to discuss political interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although no man had a better right to have an opinion, no one was more
+      tolerant for the opinions of others. In State assemblies as well as in
+      Academical meetings, the man whose counsels were so wise, voted according
+      to his conscience, which nothing could bias; but the philosopher forgot
+      his superiority to hear, to oppose with moderation, and sometimes to
+      doubt. The extent and variety of his information, the force of his reason,
+      the austerity of his manners, and the noble simplicity of his character,
+      had procured him illustrious friends in both hemispheres; and now that
+      this erudition is extinct in the tomb,* we may be allowed at least to
+      predict that he was one of the very few whose memory shall never die.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * He died in Paris on the 20th of April, 1820.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A list of the Works Published by Count Volney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRAVELS IN EGYPT AND SYRIA during the years 1783, 1784, and 1785: 2 vols.
+      8vo.&mdash;1787.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHRONOLOGY OF THE TWELVE CENTURIES that preceded the entrance of Xerxes
+      into Greece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TURKISH WAR, in 1788.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE RUINS, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires&mdash;1791.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT STATE OF CORSICA&mdash;1793.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE LAW OF NATURE, or Physical Principles of Morality&mdash;1793.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ON THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES&mdash;1795. A LETTER TO DR.
+      PRIESTLEY&mdash;1797.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LECTURES ON HISTORY, delivered at the Normal School in the year 3&mdash;1800.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ON THE CLIMATE AND SOIL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, to which is added
+      an account of Florida, of the French colony of Scioto, of some Canadian
+      Colonies, and of the Savages&mdash;1803.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPORT MADE TO THE CELTIC ACADEMY ON THE RUSSIAN WORK OF PROFESSOR PALLAS,
+      entitled "A Comparative Vocabulary of all the Languages in the World."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CHRONOLOGY OF HERODOTUS conformable with his Text&mdash;1808 and 1809.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY, 3 vols. 8vo.&mdash;1814
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE EUROPEAN ALPHABET Applied to the Languages of Asia&mdash;1819.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A HISTORY OF SAMUEL&mdash;1819. HEBREW SIMPLIFIED&mdash;1820. INVOCATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hail solitary ruins, holy sepulchres and silent walls! you I invoke; to
+      you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret terror, the
+      vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious sentiments&mdash;sublime
+      contemplations. What useful lessons, what affecting and profound
+      reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult you! When the
+      whole earth, in chains and silence bowed the neck before its tyrants, you
+      had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor; and confounding the
+      dust of the king with that of the meanest slave, had announced to man the
+      sacred dogma of Equality. Within your pale, in solitary adoration of
+      Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions of the dead; not such as
+      she is painted by the impassioned multitude, armed with fire and sword,
+      but under the august aspect of Justice, poising in her hand the sacred
+      balance wherein are weighed the actions of men at the gates of eternity!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Tombs! what virtues are yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and poison
+      with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward step, your
+      incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.* You punish
+      the powerful oppressor; you wrest from avarice and extortion their
+      ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the feeble whom they have despoiled; you
+      compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of the rich; you
+      console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from distress; and
+      you give to the soul that just equipoise of strength and sensibility which
+      constitutes wisdom&mdash;the true science of life. Aware that all must
+      return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the burdens of
+      grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires within the limits
+      of justice; yet, knowing that he must run his destined course of life, he
+      fills with employment all its hours, and enjoys the comforts that fortune
+      has allotted him. You thus impose on the impetuous sallies of cupidity a
+      salutary rein! you calm the feverish ardor of enjoyments which disturb the
+      senses; you free the soul from the fatiguing conflict of the passions;
+      elevate it above the paltry interests which torment the crowd; and
+      surveying, from your commanding position, the expanse of ages and nations,
+      the mind is only accessible to the great affections&mdash;to the solid
+      ideas of virtue and of glory.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The cathedral of St. Denis is the tomb of the kings of
+     France; and it was because the towers of that edifice are
+     seen from the Castle of St. Germain, that Louis XIV. quitted
+     that admirable residence, and established a new one in the
+     savage forests of Versailles.
+
+     (This note, like many others, has been omitted from the
+     American editions.  It seems pertinent to the subject, and
+     is explanatory of the text.&mdash;Pub.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ah! when the dream of life is over, what will then avail all its
+      agitations, if not one trace of utility remains behind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Ruins! to your school I will return! I will seek again the calm of your
+      solitudes; and there, far from the afflicting spectacle of the passions, I
+      will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will employ myself on the
+      means of effecting good for him, and build my own happiness on the
+      promotion of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE RUINS OF EMPIRES. <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE JOURNEY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the eleventh year of the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid, son of Ahmid, emperor
+      of the Turks; when the Nogais-Tartars were driven from the Crimea, and a
+      Mussulman prince of the blood of Gengis-Kahn became the vassal and guard
+      of a Christian woman and queen,* I was travelling in the Ottoman
+      dominions, and through those provinces which were anciently the kingdoms
+      of Egypt and Syria.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the eleventh year of Abd-ul-Hamid, that is 1784 of the
+     Christian era, and 1198 of the Hegira.  The emigration of
+     the Tartars took place in March, immediately on the
+     manifesto of the empress, declaring the Crimea to be
+     incorporated with Russia.  The Mussulman prince of the blood
+     of Gengis-khan was Chahin-Guerai. Gengis-Khan was borne and
+     served by the kings whom he conquered: Chahin, on the
+     contrary, after selling his country for a pension of eighty
+     thousand roubles, accepted the commission of captain of
+     guards to Catherine II.  He afterwards returned home, and
+     according to custom was strangled by the Turks.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      My whole attention bent on whatever concerns the happiness of man in a
+      social state, I visited cities, and studied the manners of their
+      inhabitants; entered palaces, and observed the conduct of those who
+      govern; wandered over fields, and examined the condition of those who
+      cultivated them: and nowhere perceiving aught but robbery and devastation,
+      tyranny and wretchedness, my heart was oppressed with sorrow and
+      indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw daily on my road fields abandoned, villages deserted, and cities in
+      ruin. Often I met with ancient monuments, wrecks of temples, palaces and
+      fortresses, columns, aqueducts and tombs. This spectacle led me to
+      meditate on times past, and filled my mind with contemplations the most
+      serious and profound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrived at the city of Hems, on the border of the Orontes, and being in
+      the neighborhood of Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to visit its
+      celebrated ruins. After three days journeying through arid deserts, having
+      traversed the Valley of Caves and Sepulchres, on issuing into the plain, I
+      was suddenly struck with a scene of the most stupendous ruins&mdash;a
+      countless multitude of superb columns, stretching in avenues beyond the
+      reach of sight. Among them were magnificent edifices, some entire, others
+      in ruins; the earth every where strewed with fragments of cornices,
+      capitals, shafts, entablatures, pilasters, all of white marble, and of the
+      most exquisite workmanship. After a walk of three-quarters of an hour
+      along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of a vast edifice, formerly a
+      temple dedicated to the Sun; and accepting the hospitality of some poor
+      Arabian peasants, who had built their hovels on the area of the temple, I
+      determined to devote some days to contemplate at leisure the beauty of
+      these stupendous ruins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daily I visited the monuments which covered the plain; and one evening,
+      absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the Valley of Sepulchres. I
+      ascended the heights which surround it from whence the eye commands the
+      whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun had sunk
+      below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind the
+      distant mountains of Syria; the full-orbed moon was rising in the east, on
+      a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was clear, the
+      air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the horrors of
+      approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered the sultry
+      emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given their camels to
+      repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and uniform plain;
+      profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only of the jackal,*
+      and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard at distant
+      intervals. Darkness now increased, and through the dusk could only be
+      discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls. The solitude of the
+      place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene, impressed
+      on my mind a religious pensiveness. The aspect of a great city deserted,
+      the memory of times past, compared with its present state, all elevated my
+      mind to high contemplations. I sat on the shaft of a column, my elbow
+      reposing on my knee, and head reclining on my hand, my eyes fixed,
+      sometimes on the desert, sometimes on the ruins, and fell into a profound
+      reverie.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * An animal resembling a dog and a fox.  It preys on other
+     small animals, and upon the bodies of the dead on the field
+     of battle. It is the Canis aureus of Linnaeus.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE REVERIE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Here, said I, once flourished an opulent city; here was the seat of a
+      powerful empire. Yes! these places now so wild and desolate, were once
+      animated by a living multitude; a busy crowd thronged in these streets,
+      now so solitary. Within these walls, where now reigns the silence of
+      death, the noise of the arts, and the shouts of joy and festivity
+      incessantly resounded; these piles of marble were regular palaces; these
+      fallen columns adorned the majesty of temples; these ruined galleries
+      surrounded public places. Here assembled a numerous people for the sacred
+      duties of their religion, and the anxious cares of their subsistence; here
+      industry, parent of enjoyments, collected the riches of all climes, and
+      the purple of Tyre was exchanged for the precious thread of Serica;* the
+      soft tissues of Cassimere for the sumptuous tapestry of Lydia; the amber
+      of the Baltic for the pearls and perfumes of Arabia; the gold of Ophir for
+      the tin of Thule.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The precious thread of Serica.&mdash;That is, the silk
+     originally derived from the mountainous country where the
+     great wall terminates, and which appears to have been the
+     cradle of the Chinese empire.  The tissues of Cassimere.&mdash;
+     The shawls which Ezekiel seems to have described under the
+     appellation of Choud-choud.  The gold of Ophir.&mdash;This
+     country, which was one of the twelve Arab cantons, and which
+     has so much and so unsuccessfully been sought for by the
+     antiquarians, has left, however, some trace of itself in
+     Ofor, in the province of Oman, upon the Persian Gulf,
+     neighboring on one side to the Sabeans, who are celebrated
+     by Strabo for their abundance of gold, and on the other to
+     Aula or Hevila, where the pearl fishery was carried on.  See
+     the 27th chapter of Ezekiel, which gives a very curious and
+     extensive picture of the commerce of Asia at that period.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And now behold what remains of this powerful city: a miserable skeleton!
+      What of its vast domination: a doubtful and obscure remembrance! To the
+      noisy concourse which thronged under these porticoes, succeeds the
+      solitude of death. The silence of the grave is substituted for the busy
+      hum of public places; the affluence of a commercial city is changed into
+      wretched poverty; the palaces of kings have become a den of wild beasts;
+      flocks repose in the area of temples, and savage reptiles inhabit the
+      sanctuary of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed? how have
+      so many labors been annihilated? Do thus perish then the works of men&mdash;thus
+      vanish empires and nations?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the history of former times revived in my mind; I remembered those
+      ancient ages when many illustrious nations inhabited these countries; I
+      figured to myself the Assyrian on the banks of the Tygris, the Chaldean on
+      the banks of the Euphrates, the Persian reigning from the Indus to the
+      Mediterranean. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of
+      Jerusalem and Samaria, the warlike states of the Philistines, and the
+      commercial republics of Phoenicia. This Syria, said I, now so depopulated,
+      then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns,
+      villages, and hamlets.* In all parts were seen cultivated fields,
+      frequented roads, and crowded habitations. Ah! whither have flown those
+      ages of life and abundance?&mdash;whither vanished those brilliant
+      creations of human industry? Where are those ramparts of Nineveh, those
+      walls of Babylon, those palaces of Persepolis, those temples of Balbec and
+      of Jerusalem? Where are those fleets of Tyre, those dock-yards of Arad,
+      those work-shops of Sidon, and that multitude of sailors, of pilots, of
+      merchants, and of soldiers? Where those husbandmen, harvests, flocks, and
+      all the creation of living beings in which the face of the earth rejoiced?
+      Alas! I have passed over this desolate land! I have visited the palaces,
+      once the scene of so much splendor, and I beheld nothing but solitude and
+      desolation. I sought the ancient inhabitants and their works, and found
+      nothing but a trace, like the foot-prints of a traveller over the sand.
+      The temples are fallen, the palaces overthrown, the ports filled up, the
+      cities destroyed; and the earth, stripped of inhabitants, has become a
+      place of sepulchres. Great God! whence proceed such fatal revolutions?
+      What causes have so changed the fortunes of these countries? Wherefore are
+      so many cities destroyed? Why has not this ancient population been
+      reproduced and perpetuated?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * According to Josephus and Strabo, there were in Syria
+     twelve millions of souls, and the traces that remain of
+     culture and habitation confirm the calculation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thus absorbed in meditation, a crowd of new reflections continually poured
+      in upon my mind. Every thing, continued I, bewilders my judgment, and
+      fills my heart with trouble and uncertainty. When these countries enjoyed
+      what constitutes the glory and happiness of man, they were inhabited by
+      infidel nations: It was the Phoenician, offering human sacrifices to
+      Moloch, who gathered into his stores the riches of all climates; it was
+      the Chaldean, prostrate before his serpent-god,* who subjugated opulent
+      cities, laid waste the palaces of kings, and despoiled the temples of the
+      gods; it was the Persian, worshipper of fire, who received the tribute of
+      a hundred nations; they were the inhabitants of this very city, adorers of
+      the sun and stars, who erected so many monuments of prosperity and luxury.
+      Numerous herds, fertile fields, abundant harvests&mdash;whatsoever should
+      be the reward of piety&mdash;was in the hands of these idolaters. And now,
+      when a people of saints and believers occupy these fields, all is become
+      sterility and solitude. The earth, under these holy hands, produces only
+      thorns and briers. Man soweth in anguish, and reapeth tears and cares.
+      War, famine, pestilence, assail him by turns. And yet, are not these the
+      children of the prophets? The Mussulman, Christian, Jew, are they not the
+      elect children of God, loaded with favors and miracles? Why, then, do
+      these privileged races no longer enjoy the same advantages? Why are these
+      fields, sanctified by the blood of martyrs, deprived of their ancient
+      fertility? Why have those blessings been banished hence, and transferred
+      for so many ages to other nations and different climes?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The dragon Bell.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, revolving in my mind the vicissitudes which have
+      transmitted the sceptre of the world to people so different in religion
+      and manners from those in ancient Asia to the most recent of Europe, this
+      name of a natal land revived in me the sentiment of my country; and
+      turning my eyes towards France, I began to reflect on the situation in
+      which I had left her.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the year 1782, at the close of the American war.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I recalled her fields so richly cultivated, her roads so admirably
+      constructed, her cities inhabited by a countless people, her fleets spread
+      over every sea, her ports filled with the produce of both the Indies: and
+      then comparing the activity of her commerce, the extent of her navigation,
+      the magnificence of her buildings, the arts and industry of her
+      inhabitants, with what Egypt and Syria had once possessed, I was gratified
+      to find in modern Europe the departed splendor of Asia; but the charm of
+      my reverie was soon dissolved by a last term of comparison. Reflecting
+      that such had once been the activity of the places I was then
+      contemplating, who knows, said I, but such may one day be the abandonment
+      of our countries? Who knows if on the banks of the Seine, the Thames, the
+      Zuyder-Zee, where now, in the tumult of so many enjoyments, the heart and
+      the eye suffice not for the multitude of sensations,&mdash;who knows if
+      some traveller, like myself, shall not one day sit on their silent ruins,
+      and weep in solitude over the ashes of their inhabitants, and the memory
+      of their former greatness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words, my eyes filled with tears: and covering my head with the
+      fold of my mantle, I sank into gloomy meditations on all human affairs.
+      Ah! hapless man, said I in my grief, a blind fatality sports with thy
+      destiny!* A fatal necessity rules with the hand of chance the lot of
+      mortals! But no: it is the justice of heaven fulfilling its decrees!&mdash;a
+      God of mystery exercising his incomprehensible judgments! Doubtless he has
+      pronounced a secret anathema against this land: blasting with maledictions
+      the present, for the sins of past generations. Oh! who shall dare to
+      fathom the depths of the Omnipotent?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Fatality is the universal and rooted prejudice of the
+     East.  "It was written," is there the answer to every thing.
+     Hence result an unconcern and apathy, the most powerful
+     impediments to instruction and civilization.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And sunk in profound melancholy, I remained motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE APPARITION.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      While thus absorbed, a sound struck my ear, like the agitation of a
+      flowing robe, or that of slow footsteps on dry and rustling grass.
+      Startled, I opened my mantle, and looking about with fear and trembling,
+      suddenly, on my left, by the glimmering light of the moon, through the
+      columns and ruins of a neighboring temple, I thought I saw an apparition,
+      pale, clothed in large and flowing robes, such as spectres are painted
+      rising from their tombs. I shuddered: and while agitated and hesitating
+      whether to fly or to advance toward the object, a distinct voice, in
+      solemn tones, pronounced these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How long will man importune heaven with unjust complaint? How long, with
+      vain clamors, will he accuse Fate as the author of his calamities? Will he
+      forever shut his eyes to the light, and his heart to the admonitions of
+      truth and reason? The light of truth meets him everywhere; yet he sees it
+      not! The voice of reason strikes his ear; and he hears it not! Unjust man!
+      if for a moment thou canst suspend the delusion which fascinates thy
+      senses, if thy heart can comprehend the language of reason, interrogate
+      these ruins! Read the lessons which they present to thee! And you,
+      evidences of twenty centuries, holy temples! venerable tombs! walls once
+      so glorious, appear in the cause of nature herself! Approach the tribunal
+      of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust accusations! Come and
+      confound the declamations of a false wisdom or hypocritical piety, and
+      avenge the heavens and the earth of man who calumniates them both!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law, sports
+      with the destiny of mortals? What is that unjust necessity, which
+      confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of folly? In what
+      consist the anathemas of heaven over this land? Where is that divine
+      malediction which perpetuates the abandonment of these fields? Say,
+      monuments of past ages! have the heavens changed their laws and the earth
+      its motion? Are the fires of the sun extinct in the regions of space? Do
+      the seas no longer emit their vapors? Are the rains and the dews suspended
+      in the air? Do the mountains withhold their springs? Are the streams dried
+      up? And do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed? Answer, generation of
+      falsehood and iniquity, hath God deranged the primitive and settled order
+      of things which he himself assigned to nature? Hath heaven denied to
+      earth, and earth to its inhabitants, the blessings they formerly
+      dispensed? If nothing hath changed in the creation, if the same means now
+      exist which before existed, why then are not the present what former
+      generations were? Ah! it is falsely that you accuse fate and heaven! it is
+      unjustly that you accuse God as the cause of your evils! Say, perverse and
+      hypocritical race! if these places are desolate, if these powerful cities
+      are reduced to solitude, is it God who has caused their ruin? Is it his
+      hand which has overthrown these walls, destroyed these temples, mutilated
+      these columns, or is it the hand of man? Is it the arm of God which has
+      carried the sword into your cities, and fire into your fields, which has
+      slaughtered the people, burned the harvests, rooted up trees, and ravaged
+      the pastures, or is it the hand of man? And when, after the destruction of
+      crops, famine has ensued, is it the vengeance of God which has produced
+      it, or the mad fury of mortals? When, sinking under famine, the people
+      have fed on impure aliments, if pestilence ensues, is it the wrath of God
+      which sends it, or the folly of man? When war, famine and pestilence, have
+      swept away the inhabitants, if the earth remains a desert, is it God who
+      has depopulated it? Is it his rapacity which robs the husbandman, ravages
+      the fruitful fields, and wastes the earth, or is it the rapacity of those
+      who govern? Is it his pride which excites murderous wars, or the pride of
+      kings and their ministers? Is it the venality of his decisions which
+      overthrows the fortunes of families, or the corruption of the organs of
+      the law? Are they his passions which, under a thousand forms, torment
+      individuals and nations, or are they the passions of man? And if, in the
+      anguish of their miseries, they see not the remedies, is it the ignorance
+      of God which is to blame, or their ignorance? Cease then, mortals, to
+      accuse the decrees of Fate, or the judgments of the Divinity! If God is
+      good, will he be the author of your misery? If he is just, will he be the
+      accomplice of your crimes? No, the caprice of which man complains is not
+      the caprice of fate; the darkness that misleads his reason is not the
+      darkness of God; the source of his calamities is not in the distant
+      heavens, it is beside him on the earth; it is not concealed in the bosom
+      of the divinity; it dwells within himself, he bears it in his own heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thou murmurest and sayest: What! have an infidel people then enjoyed the
+      blessings of heaven and earth? Are the holy people of God less fortunate
+      than the races of impiety? Deluded man! where then is the contradiction
+      which offends thee? Where is the inconsistency which thou imputest to the
+      justice of heaven? Take into thine own hands the balance of rewards and
+      punishments, of causes and effects. Say: when these infidels observed the
+      laws of the heavens and the earth, when they regulated well-planned labors
+      by the order of the seasons and the course of the stars, should the
+      Almighty have disturbed the equilibrium of the universe to defeat their
+      prudence? When their hands cultivated these fields with toil and care,
+      should he have diverted the course of the rains, suspended the refreshing
+      dews, and planted crops of thorns? When, to render these arid fields
+      productive, their industry constructed aqueducts, dug canals, and led the
+      distant waters across the desert, should he have dried up their sources in
+      the mountains? Should he have blasted the harvests which art had
+      nourished, wasted the plains which peace had peopled, overthrown cities
+      which labor had created, or disturbed the order established by the wisdom
+      of man? And what is that infidelity which founded empires by its prudence,
+      defended them by its valor, and strengthened them by its justice&mdash;which
+      built powerful cities, formed capacious ports, drained pestilential
+      marshes, covered the ocean with ships, the earth with inhabitants; and,
+      like the creative spirit, spread life and motion throughout the world? If
+      such be infidelity, what then is the true faith? Doth sanctity consist in
+      destruction? The God who peoples the air with birds, the earth with
+      animals, the waters with fishes&mdash;the God who animates all nature&mdash;is
+      he then a God of ruins and tombs? Demands he devastation for homage, and
+      conflagration for sacrifice? Requires he groans for hymns, murderers for
+      votaries, a ravaged and desolate earth for his temple? Behold then, holy
+      and believing people, what are your works! behold the fruits of your
+      piety! You have massacred the people, burned their cities, destroyed
+      cultivation, reduced the earth to a solitude; and you ask the reward of
+      your works! Miracles then must be performed! The people whom you
+      extirpated must be recalled to life, the walls rebuilt which you have
+      overthrown, the harvests reproduced which you have destroyed, the waters
+      regathered which you have dispersed; the laws, in fine, of heaven and
+      earth reversed; those laws, established by God himself, in demonstration
+      of his magnificence and wisdom; those eternal laws, anterior to all codes,
+      to all the prophets those immutable laws, which neither the passions nor
+      the ignorance of man can pervert. But that passion which mistaketh, that
+      ignorance which observeth neither causes nor effects, hath said in its
+      folly: "All things flow from chance; a blind fatality poureth out good and
+      evil upon the earth; success is not to the prudent, nor felicity to the
+      wise;" or, assuming the language of hypocrisy, she hath said, "all things
+      are from God; he taketh pleasure in deceiving wisdom and confounding
+      reason." And Ignorance, applauding herself in her malice, hath said, "thus
+      will I place myself on a par with that science which confounds me&mdash;thus
+      will I excel that prudence which fatigues and torments me." And Avarice
+      hath added: "I will oppress the weak, and devour the fruits of his labors;
+      and I will say, it is fate which hath so ordained." But I! I swear by the
+      laws of heaven and earth, and by the law which is written in the heart of
+      man, that the hypocrite shall be deceived in his cunning&mdash;the
+      oppressor in his rapacity! The sun shall change his course, before folly
+      shall prevail over wisdom and knowledge, or ignorance surpass prudence, in
+      the noble and sublime art of procuring to man his true enjoyments, and of
+      building his happiness on an enduring foundation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE EXPOSITION
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the Phantom. Confused with this discourse, and my heart
+      agitated with different reflections, I remained long in silence. At
+      length, taking courage, I thus addressed him: Oh, Genius of tombs and
+      ruins! Thy presence, thy severity, hath disordered my senses; but the
+      justice of thy discourse restoreth confidence to my soul. Pardon my
+      ignorance. Alas, if man is blind, shall his misfortune be also his crime?
+      I may have mistaken the voice of reason; but never, knowingly, have I
+      rejected its authority. Ah! if thou readest my heart, thou knowest with
+      what enthusiasm it seeketh truth. Is it not in its pursuit that thou seest
+      me in this sequestered spot? Alas! I have wandered over the earth, I have
+      visited cities and countries; and seeing everywhere misery and desolation,
+      a sense of the evils which afflict my fellow men hath deeply oppressed my
+      soul. I have said, with a sigh: is man then born but for sorrow and
+      anguish? And I have meditated upon human misery that I might discover a
+      remedy. I have said, I will separate myself from the corruption of
+      society; I will retire far from palaces where the mind is depraved by
+      satiety and from the hovel where it is debased by misery. I will go into
+      the desert and dwell among ruins; I will interrogate ancient monuments on
+      the wisdom of past ages; I will invoke from the bosom of the tombs the
+      spirit which once in Asia gave splendor to states, and glory to nations; I
+      will ask of the ashes of legislators, by what secret causes do empires
+      rise and fall; from what sources spring the Prosperity and misfortunes of
+      nations, on what principles can the Peace of Society, and the happiness of
+      man be established?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ceased, and with submissive look awaited the answer of the Genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peace and happiness, said he, attend those who practice justice! Since thy
+      heart, O mortal, with sincerity seeketh truth; since thine eyes can still
+      recognize her through the mist of prejudice, thy prayer shall not be in
+      vain. I will unfold to thy view that truth thou invokest; I will teach thy
+      reason that knowledge thou seekest; I will reveal to thee the science of
+      ages and the wisdom of the tombs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then approaching and laying his hand on my head, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rise, mortal, and extricate thy senses from the dust in which thou movest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a celestial flame seemed to dissolve the bands which held us to
+      the earth; and, like a light vapor, borne on the wings of the Genius, I
+      felt myself wafted to the regions above. Thence, from the aerial heights,
+      looking down upon the earth, I perceived a scene altogether new. Under my
+      feet, floating in the void, a globe like that of the moon, but smaller and
+      less luminous, presented to me one of its phases; and that phase* had the
+      aspect of a disk varigated with large spots, some white and nebulous,
+      others brown, green or gray, and while I strained my sight to distinguish
+      what they were, the Genius exclaimed:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See Plate representing half the terrestrial globe,
+     opposite page 10.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Disciple of Truth, knowest thou that object?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, answered I, if I did not see the moon in another quarter of the
+      heavens, I should have supposed that to be her globe. It has the
+      appearance of that planet seen through the telescope during the
+      obscuration of an eclipse. These varigated spots might be mistaken for
+      seas and continents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are seas and continents, said he, and those of the very hemisphere
+      which you inhabit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What! said I, is that the earth&mdash;the habitation of man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, replied he, that brown space which occupies irregularly a great
+      portion of the disk, and envelops it almost on every side, is what you
+      call the great ocean, which advancing from the south pole towards the
+      equator, forms first the great gulf of India and Africa, then extends
+      eastward across the Malay islands to the confines of Tartary, while
+      towards the west it encircles the continents of Africa and of Europe, even
+      to the north of Asia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That square peninsula under our feet is the arid country of the Arabs; the
+      great continent on its left, almost as naked in its interior, with a
+      little verdure only towards its borders, is the parched soil inhabited by
+      black-men.* To the north, beyond a long, narrow and irregular sea,** are
+      the countries of Europe, rich in meadows and cultivated fields. On its
+      right, from the Caspian Sea, extend the snowy and naked plains of Tartary.
+      Returning in this direction that white space is the vast and barren desert
+      of Cobi, which separates China from the rest of the world. You see that
+      empire in the furrowed plain which obliquely rounds itself off from our
+      sight. On yonder coasts, those ragged tongues of land and scattered points
+      are the peninsulas and islands of the Malays, the wretched possessors of
+      the spices and perfumes. That triangle which advances so far into the sea,
+      is the too famous peninsula of India.*** You see the winding course of the
+      Ganges, the rough mountains of Thibet, the lovely valley of Cachemere, the
+      briny deserts of Persia, the banks of the Euphrates and Tygris, the deep
+      bed of the Jordan and the canals of the solitary Nile.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Africa.
+
+     ** The Mediterranean.
+
+     *** Of what real good has been the commerce of India to the
+     mass of the people?  On the contrary, how great the evil
+     occasioned by the superstition of this country having been
+     added the general superstition!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, said I, interrupting him, the sight of a mortal reaches not to
+      objects at such a distance. He touched my eyes, and immediately they
+      became piercing as those of an eagle; nevertheless the rivers still
+      appeared like waving lines, the mountains winding furrows, and the cities
+      little compartments like the squares of a chess-board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Genius proceeded to enumerate and point out the objects to me:
+      Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow valley watered
+      by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient
+      kingdom of Ethiopia.* Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of Thebes with
+      her hundred palaces,** the parent of cities, and monument of the caprice
+      of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others were
+      yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now
+      rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on
+      the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which
+      still govern the universe. Lower down, those dusky points are the pyramids
+      whose masses have astonished you. Beyond that, the coast, hemmed in
+      between the sea and a narrow ridge of mountains, was the habitation of the
+      Phoenicians. These were the famous cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon,
+      of Gaza, and of Berytus. That thread of water with no outlet, is the river
+      Jordan; and those naked rocks were once the theatre of events that have
+      resounded throughout the world. Behold that desert of Horeb, and that
+      Mount Sinai; where, by means beyond vulgar reach, a genius, profound and
+      bold, established institutions which have weighed on the whole human race.
+      On that dry shore which borders it, you perceive no longer any trace of
+      splendor; yet there was an emporium of riches. There were those famous
+      Ports of Idumea, whence the fleets of Phoenicia and Judea, coasting the
+      Arabian peninsula, went into the Persian gulf, to seek there the pearls of
+      Hevila, the gold of Saba and of Ophir. Yes, there on that coast of Oman
+      and of Barhain was the seat of that commerce of luxuries, which, by its
+      movements and revolutions, fixed the destinies of ancient nations.***
+      Thither came the spices and precious stones of Ceylon, the shawls of
+      Cassimere, the diamonds of Golconda, the amber of Maldivia, the musk of
+      Thibet, the aloes of Cochin, the apes and peacocks of the continent of
+      India, the incense of Hadramaut, the myrrh, the silver, the gold dust and
+      ivory of Africa; thence passing, sometimes by the Red Sea on the vessels
+      of Egypt and Syria, these luxuries nourished successively the wealth of
+      Thebes, of Sidon, of Memphis and of Jerusalem; sometimes, ascending the
+      Tygris and Euphrates, they awakened the activity of the Assyrians, Medes,
+      Chaldeans, and Persians; and that wealth, according to the use or abuse of
+      it, raised or reversed by turns their domination. Hence sprung the
+      magnificence of Persepolis, whose columns you still perceive; of Ecbatana,
+      whose sevenfold wall is destroyed; of Babylon,**** now leveled with the
+      earth; of Nineveh, of which scarce the name remains; of Thapsacus, of
+      Anatho, of Gerra, and of desolated Palmyra. O names for ever glorious!
+      fields of renown! countries of never-dying memory! what sublime lessons
+      doth your aspect offer! what profound truths are written on the surface of
+      your soil! remembrances of times past, return into my mind! places,
+      witnesses of the life of man in so many different ages, retrace for me the
+      revolutions of his fortune! say, what were their springs and secret
+      causes! say, from what sources he derived success and disgrace! unveil to
+      himself the causes of his evils! correct him by the spectacle of his
+      errors! teach him the wisdom which belongeth to him, and let the
+      experience of past ages become a means of instruction, and a germ of
+      happiness to present and future generations.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the new Encyclopedia 3rd vol. Antiquities is published
+     a memoir, respecting the chronology of the twelve ages
+     anterior to the passing of Xerxes into Greece, in which I
+     conceive myself to have proved that upper Egypt formerly
+     composed a distinct kingdom known to the Hebrews by the name
+     of Kous and to which the appellation of Ethiopia was
+     specially given.  This kingdom preserved its independence to
+     the time of Psammeticus; at which period, being united to
+     the Lower Egypt, it lost its name of Ethiopia, which
+     thenceforth was bestowed upon the nations of Nubia and upon
+     the different tribes of blacks, including Thebes, their
+     metropolis.
+
+     ** The idea of a city with a hundred gates, in the common
+     acceptation of the word, is so absurd, that I am astonished
+     the equivoque has not before been felt.
+
+     It has ever been the custom of the East to call palaces and
+     houses of the great by the name of gates, because the
+     principal luxury of these buildings consists in the singular
+     gate leading from the street into the court, at the farthest
+     extremity of which the palace is situated.  It is under the
+     vestibule of this gate that conversation is held with
+     passengers, and a sort of audience and hospitality given.
+     All this was doubtless known to Homer; but poets make no
+     commentaries, and readers love the marvellous.
+
+     This city of Thebes, now Lougsor, reduced to the condition
+     of a miserable village, has left astonishing monuments of
+     its magnificence.  Particulars of this may be seen in the
+     plates of Norden, in Pocock, and in the recent travels of
+     Bruce.  These monuments give credibility to all that Homer
+     has related of its splendor, and lead us to infer its
+     political power and external commerce.
+
+     Its geographical position was favorable to this twofold
+     object. For, on one side, the valley of the Nile, singularly
+     fertile, must have early occasioned a numerous population;
+     and, on the other, the Red Sea, giving communication with
+     Arabia and India, and the Nile with Abyssinia and the
+     Mediterranean, Thebes was thus naturally allied to the
+     richest countries on the globe; an alliance that procured it
+     an activity so much the greater, as Lower Egypt, at first a
+     swamp, was nearly, if not totally, uninhabited.  But when at
+     length this country had been drained by the canals and dikes
+     which Sesostris constructed, population was introduced
+     there, and wars arose which proved fatal to the power of
+     Thebes.  Commerce then took another route, and descended to
+     the point of the Red Sea, to the canals of Sesostris (see
+     Strabo), and wealth and activity were transferred to
+     Memphis.  This is manifestly what Diodorus means when he
+     tells us (lib. i. sect. 2), that as soon as Memphis was
+     established and made a wholesome and delicious abode, kings
+     abandoned Thebes to fix themselves there.  Thus Thebes
+     continued to decline, and Memphis to flourish, till the time
+     of Alexander, who, building Alexandria on the border of the
+     sea, caused Memphis to fall in its turn; so that prosperity
+     and power seem to have descended historically step by step
+     along the Nile; whence it results, both physically and
+     historically, that the existence of Thebes was prior to that
+     of the other cities.  The testimony of writers is very
+     positive in this respect.  "The Thebans," says Diodorus,
+     "consider themselves as the most ancient people of the
+     earth, and assert, that with them originated philosophy and
+     the science of the stars.  Their situation, it is true, is
+     infinitely favorable to astronomical observation, and they
+     have a more accurate division of time into mouths and years
+     than other nations" etc.
+
+     What Diodorus says of the Thebans, every author, and himself
+     elsewhere, repeat of the Ethiopians, which tends more firmly
+     to establish the identity of this place of which I have
+     spoken.  "The Ethiopians conceive themselves," says he, lib.
+     iii., "to be of greater antiquity than any other nation: and
+     it is probable that, born under the sun's path, its warmth
+     may have ripened them earlier than other men.  They suppose
+     themselves also to be the inventors of divine worship, of
+     festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and every
+     other religious practice.  They affirm that the Egyptians
+     are one of their colonies, and that the Delta, which was
+     formerly sea, became land by the conglomeration of the earth
+     of the higher country which was washed down by the Nile.
+     They have, like the Egyptians, two species of letters,
+     hieroglyphics, and the alphabet; but among the Egyptians the
+     first was known only to the priests, and by them transmitted
+     from father to son, whereas both species were common among
+     the Ethiopians."
+
+     "The Ethiopians," says Lucian, page 985, "were the first who
+     invented the science of the stars, and gave names to the
+     planets, not at random and without meaning, but descriptive
+     of the qualities which they conceived them to possess; and
+     it was from them that this art passed, still in an imperfect
+     state, to the Egyptians."
+
+     It would be easy to multiply citations upon this subject;
+     from all which it follows, that we have the strongest
+     reasons to believe that the country neighboring to the
+     tropic was the cradle of the sciences, and of consequence
+     that the first learned nation was a nation of Blacks; for it
+     is incontrovertible, that, by the term Ethiopians, the
+     ancients meant to represent a people of black complexion,
+     thick lips, and woolly hair.  I am therefore inclined to
+     believe, that the inhabitants of Lower Egypt were originally
+     a foreign colony imported from Syria and Arabia, a medley of
+     different tribes of savages, originally shepherds and
+     fishermen, who, by degrees formed themselves into a nation,
+     and who, by nature and descent, were enemies of the Thebans,
+     by whom they were no doubt despised and treated as
+     barbarians.
+
+     I have suggested the same ideas in my Travels into Syria,
+     founded upon the black complexion of the Sphinx.  I have
+     since ascertained that the antique images of Thebias have
+     the same characteristic; and Mr. Bruce has offered a
+     multitude of analogous facts; but this traveller, of whom I
+     heard some mention at Cairo, has so interwoven these facts
+     with certain systematic opinions, that we should have
+     recourse to his narratives with caution.
+
+     It is singular that Africa, situated so near us, should be
+     the least known country on the earth.  The English are at
+     this moment making explorations, the success of which ought
+     to excite our emulation.
+
+     *** Ailah (Eloth), and Atsiom-Gaber (Hesien-Geber.)  The
+     name of the first of these towns still subsists in its
+     ruins, at the point of the gulf of the Red Sea, and in the
+     route which the pilgrims take to Mecca.  Hesion has at
+     present no trace, any more than Quolzoum and Faran: it was,
+     however, the harbor for the fleets of Solomon.  The vessels
+     of this prince conducted by the Tyrians, sailed along the
+     coast of Arabia to Ophir, in the Persian Gulf, thus opening
+     a communication with the merchants of India and Ceylon.
+     That this navigation was entirely of Tyrian invention,
+     appears both from the pilots and shipbuilders employed by
+     the Jews, and the names that were given to the trading
+     islands, viz. Tyrus and Aradus, now Barhain.  The voyage was
+     performed in two different modes, either in canoes of osier
+     and rushes, covered on the outside with skins done over with
+     pitch: (these vessels were unable to quit the Red Sea, or so
+     much as to leave the shore.)  The second mode of carrying on
+     the trade was by means of vessels with decks of the size of
+     our river boats, which were able to pass the strait and to
+     weather the dangers of time ocean; but for this purpose it
+     was necessary to bring the wood from Mount Libanus and
+     Cilicia, where it is very fine and in great abundance.  This
+     wood was first conveyed in floats from Tarsus to Phoenicia,
+     for which reason the vessels were called ships of Tarsus;
+     from whence it has been ridiculously inferred, that they
+     went round the promontory of Africa as far as Tortosa in
+     Spain.  From Phoenicia it was transported on the backs of
+     camels to the Red Sea, which practice still continues,
+     because the shores of this sea are absolutely unprovided
+     with wood even for fuel.  These vessels spent a complete
+     year in their voyage, that is, sailed one year, sojourned
+     another, and did not return till the third.  This
+     tediousness was owing first to their cruising from port to
+     port, as they do at present; secondly, to their being
+     detained by the Monsoon currents; and thirdly, because,
+     according to the calculations of Pliny and Strabo, it was
+     the ordinary practice among the ancients to spend three
+     years in a voyage of twelve hundred leagues.  Such a
+     commerce must have been very expensive, particularly as they
+     were obliged to carry with them their provisions, and even
+     fresh water.  For this reason Solomon made himself master of
+     Palmyra, which was at that time inhabited, and was already
+     the magazine and high road of merchants by the way of the
+     Euphrates.  This conquest brought Solomon much nearer to the
+     country of gold and pearls.  This alternative of a route
+     either by the Red Sea or by the river Euphrates was to the
+     ancients, what in later times has been the alternative in a
+     voyage to the Indies, either by crossing the isthmus of Suez
+     or doubling the cape of Good Hope.  It appears that till the
+     time of Moses, this trade was carried on across the desert
+     of Syria and Thebais; that afterwards it fell into the hands
+     of the Phoenicians, who fixed its site upon the Red Sea; and
+     that it was mutual jealousy that induced the kings of
+     Nineveh and Babylon to undertake the destruction of Tyre and
+     Jerusalem.  I insist the more upon these facts, because I
+     have never seen any thing reasonable upon the subject.
+
+     **** It appears that Babylon occupied on the eastern banks
+     of the Euphrates a space of ground six leagues in length.
+     Throughout this space bricks are found by means of which
+     daily additions are made to the town of Helle.  Upon many of
+     these are characters written with a nail similar to those of
+     Persepolis.  I am indebted for these facts to M. de
+     Beauchamp, grand vicar of Babylon, a traveller equally
+     distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and for his
+     veracity.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CONDITION OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Genius, after some moments of silence, resumed in these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have told thee already, O friend of truth! that man vainly ascribes his
+      misfortunes to obscure and imaginary agents; in vain he seeks as the
+      source of his evils mysterious and remote causes. In the general order of
+      the universe his condition is, doubtless, subject to inconveniences, and
+      his existence governed by superior powers; but those powers are neither
+      the decrees of a blind fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical and
+      fantastic beings. Like the world of which he forms a part, man is governed
+      by natural laws, regular in their course, uniform in their effects,
+      immutable in their essence; and those laws,&mdash;the common source of
+      good and evil,&mdash;are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden
+      in codes of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings,
+      interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places, they are
+      present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his understanding, and
+      give to every action its reward or punishment. Let man then know these
+      laws! let him comprehend the nature of the elements which surround him,
+      and also his own nature, and he will know the regulators of his destiny;
+      he will know the causes of his evils and the remedies he should apply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the hidden power which animates the universe, formed the globe which
+      man inhabits, he implanted in the beings composing it, essential
+      properties which became the law of their individual motion, the bond of
+      their reciprocal relations, the cause of the harmony of the whole; he
+      thereby established a regular order of causes and effects, of principles
+      and consequences, which, under an appearance of chance, governs the
+      universe, and maintains the equilibrium of the world. Thus, he gave to
+      fire, motion and activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to
+      matter; he made air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood
+      less cohesive than steel; he decreed flame to ascend, stones to fall,
+      plants to vegetate; to man, who was to be exposed to the action of so many
+      different beings, and still to preserve his frail life, he gave the
+      faculty of sensation. By this faculty all action hurtful to his existence
+      gives him a feeling of pain and evil, and all which is salutary, of
+      pleasure and happiness. By these sensations, man, sometimes averted from
+      that which wounds his senses, sometimes allured towards that which soothes
+      them, has been obliged to cherish and preserve his own life; thus,
+      self-love, the desire of happiness, aversion to pain, become the essential
+      and primary laws imposed on man by nature herself&mdash;the laws which the
+      directing power, whatever it be, has established for his government&mdash;and
+      which laws, like those of motion in the physical world, are the simple and
+      fruitful principle of whatever happens in the moral world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such, then, is the condition of man: on one side, exposed to the action of
+      the elements which surround him, he is subject to many inevitable evils;
+      and if, in this decree, nature has been severe, on the other hand, just
+      and even indulgent she has not only tempered the evils with equivalent
+      good, she has also enabled him to increase the good and alleviate the
+      evil. She seems to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Feeble work of my hands, I owe thee nothing, and I give thee life; the
+      world wherein I placed thee was not made for thee, yet I give thee the use
+      of it; thou wilt find in it a mixture of good and evil; it is for thee to
+      distinguish them; for thee to guide thy footsteps in a path containing
+      thorns as well as roses. Be the arbiter of thine own fate; I put thy
+      destiny into thine own hands!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, man is made the architect of his own destiny; he, himself, hath been
+      the cause of the successes or reverses of his own fortune; and if, on a
+      review of all the pains with which he has tormented his own life, he finds
+      reason to weep over his own weakness or imprudence yet, considering the
+      beginnings from which he sat out, and the height attained, he has,
+      perhaps, still reason to presume on his strength, and to pride himself on
+      his genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PRIMITIVE STATE OF MAN.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Formed naked in body and in mind, man at first found himself thrown, as it
+      were by chance, on a rough and savage land: an orphan, abandoned by the
+      unknown power which had produced him, he saw not by his side beings
+      descended from heaven to warn him of those wants which arise only from his
+      senses, nor to instruct him in those duties which spring only from his
+      wants. Like to other animals, without experience of the past, without
+      foresight of the future, he wandered in the bosom of the forest, guided
+      only and governed by the affections of his nature. By the pain of hunger,
+      he was led to seek food and provide for his subsistence; by the inclemency
+      of the air, he was urged to cover his body, and he made him clothes; by
+      the attraction of a powerful pleasure, he approached a being like himself,
+      and he perpetuated his kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the impressions which he received from every object, awakening his
+      faculties, developed by degrees his understanding, and began to instruct
+      his profound ignorance: his wants excited industry, dangers formed his
+      courage; he learned to distinguish useful from noxious plants, to combat
+      the elements, to seize his prey, to defend his life; and thus he
+      alleviated its miseries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus self-love, aversion to pain, the desire of happiness, were the simple
+      and powerful excitements which drew man from the savage and barbarous
+      condition in which nature had placed him. And now, when his life is
+      replete with enjoyments, when he may count each day by the comforts it
+      brings, he may applaud himself and say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is I who have produced the comforts which surround me; it is I who am
+      the author of my own happiness; a safe dwelling, convenient clothing,
+      abundant and wholesome nourishment, smiling fields, fertile hills,
+      populous empires, all is my work; without me this earth, given up to
+      disorder, would have been but a filthy fen, a wild wood, a dreary desert."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, creative man, receive my homage! Thou hast measured the span of the
+      heavens, calculated the volume of the stars, arrested the lightning in its
+      clouds, subdued seas and storms, subjected all the elements. Ah! how are
+      so many sublime energies allied to so many errors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      PRINCIPLES OF SOCIETY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Wandering in the woods and on the banks of rivers in pursuit of game and
+      fish, the first men, beset with dangers, assailed by enemies, tormented by
+      hunger, by reptiles, by ravenous beasts, felt their own individual
+      weakness; and, urged by a common need of safety, and a reciprocal
+      sentiment of like evils, they united their resources and their strength;
+      and when one incurred a danger, many aided and succored him; when one
+      wanted subsistence, another shared his food with him. Thus men associated
+      to secure their existence, to augment their powers, to protect their
+      enjoyments; and self-love thus became the principle of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instructed afterwards by the experience of various and repeated accidents,
+      by the fatigues of a wandering life, by the distress of frequent scarcity,
+      men reasoned with themselves and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why consume our days in seeking scattered fruits from a parsimonious
+      soil? why exhaust ourselves in pursuing prey which eludes us in the woods
+      or waters? why not collect under our hands the animals that nourish us?
+      why not apply our cares in multiplying and preserving them? We will feed
+      on their increase, be clothed in their skins, and live exempt from the
+      fatigues of the day and solicitude for the morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And men, aiding one another, seized the nimble goat, the timid sheep; they
+      tamed the patient camel, the fierce bull, the impetuous horse; and,
+      applauding their own industry, they sat down in the joy of their souls,
+      and began to taste repose and comfort: and self-love, the principle of all
+      reasoning, became the incitement to every art, and every enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, therefore, men could pass long days in leisure, and in communication
+      of their thoughts, they began to contemplate the earth, the heavens, and
+      their own existence as objects of curiosity and reflection; they remarked
+      the course of the seasons, the action of the elements, the properties of
+      fruits and plants; and applied their thoughts to the multiplication of
+      their enjoyments. And in some countries, having observed that certain
+      seeds contained a wholesome nourishment in a small volume, convenient for
+      transportation and preservation, they imitated the process of nature; they
+      confided to the earth rice, barley, and corn, which multiplied to the full
+      measure of their hope; and having found the means of obtaining within a
+      small compass and without removal, plentiful subsistence and durable
+      stores, they established themselves in fixed habitations; they built
+      houses, villages, and towns; formed societies and nations; and self-love
+      produced all the developments of genius and of power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus by the aid of his own faculties, man has raised himself to the
+      astonishing height of his present fortune. Too happy if, observing
+      scrupulously the law of his being, he had faithfully fulfilled its only
+      and true object! But, by a fatal imprudence, sometimes mistaking,
+      sometimes transgressing its limits, he has launched forth into a labyrinth
+      of errors and misfortunes; and self-love, sometimes unruly, sometimes
+      blind, became a principle fruitful in calamities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SOURCES OF THE EVILS OF SOCIETY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In truth, scarcely were the faculties of men developed, when, inveigled by
+      objects which gratify the senses, they gave themselves up to unbridled
+      desires. The sweet sensations which nature had attached to their real
+      wants, to endear to them their existence, no longer satisfied them. Not
+      content with the abundance offered by the earth or produced by industry,
+      they wished to accumulate enjoyments and coveted those possessed by their
+      fellow men. The strong man rose up against the feeble, to take from him
+      the fruit of his labor; the feeble invoked another feeble one to repel the
+      violence. Two strong ones then said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why fatigue ourselves to produce enjoyments which we may find in the
+      hands of the weak? Let us join and despoil them; they shall labor for us,
+      and we will enjoy without labor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the strong associating for oppression and the weak for resistance, men
+      mutually afflicted each other; and a general and fatal discord spread over
+      the earth, in which the passions, assuming a thousand new forms, have
+      generated a continued chain of misfortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the same self-love which, moderate and prudent, was a principle of
+      happiness and perfection, becoming blind and disordered, was transformed
+      into a corrupting poison; and cupidity, offspring and companion of
+      ignorance, became the cause of all the evils that have desolated the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, ignorance and cupidity! these are the twin sources of all the
+      torments of man! Biased by these into false ideas of happiness, he has
+      mistaken or broken the laws of nature in his own relation with external
+      objects; and injuring his own existence, has violated individual morality;
+      shutting through these his heart to compassion, and his mind to justice,
+      he has injured and afflicted his equal, and violated social morality. From
+      ignorance and cupidity, man has armed against man, family against family,
+      tribe against tribe; and the earth is become a theatre of blood, of
+      discord, and of rapine. By ignorance and cupidity, a secret war,
+      fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from
+      citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and
+      oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation,
+      sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its own
+      bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism. Sometimes,
+      hypocritical and cunning, they have called from heaven a lying power, and
+      a sacrilegious yoke; and credulous cupidity has founded religious
+      despotism. By these have been perverted the ideas of good and evil, just
+      and unjust, vice and virtue; and nations have wandered in a labyrinth of
+      errors and calamities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cupidity of man and his ignorance,&mdash;these are the evil genii
+      which have wasted the earth! These are the decrees of fate which have
+      overthrown empires! These are the celestial anathemas which have smitten
+      these walls once so glorious, and converted the splendor of a populous
+      city into a solitude of mourning and of ruins! But as in the bosom of man
+      have sprung all the evils which have afflicted his life, there he also is
+      to seek and to find their remedies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT AND LAWS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In fact, it soon happened that men, fatigued with the evils they
+      reciprocally inflicted, began to sigh for peace; and reflecting on their
+      misfortunes and the causes of them, they said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are mutually injuring each other by our passions; and, aiming to grasp
+      every thing, we hold nothing. What one seizes to-day, another takes
+      to-morrow, and our cupidity reacts upon ourselves. Let us establish
+      judges, who shall arbitrate our rights, and settle our differences! When
+      the strong shall rise against the weak, the judge shall restrain him, and
+      dispose of our force to suppress violence; and the life and property of
+      each shall be under the guarantee and protection of all; and all shall
+      enjoy the good things of nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conventions were thus formed in society, sometimes express, sometimes
+      tacit, which became the rule for the action of individuals, the measure of
+      their rights, the law of their reciprocal relations; and persons were
+      appointed to superintend their observance, to whom the people confided the
+      balance to weigh rights, and the sword to punish transgressions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was established among individuals a happy equilibrium of force and
+      action, which constituted the common security. The name of equity and of
+      justice was recognized and revered over the earth; every one, assured of
+      enjoying in peace, the fruits of his toil, pursued with energy the objects
+      of his attention; and industry, excited and maintained by the reality or
+      the hope of enjoyment, developed, all the riches of art and of nature. The
+      fields were covered with harvests, the valleys with flocks, the hills with
+      fruits, the sea with vessels, and man became happy and powerful on the
+      earth. Thus did his own wisdom repair the disorder which his imprudence
+      had occasioned; and that wisdom was only the effect of his own
+      organization. He respected the enjoyments of others in order to secure his
+      own; and cupidity found its corrective in the enlightened love of self.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the love of self, the moving principle of every individual, becomes
+      the necessary foundation of every association; and on the observance of
+      that law of our nature has depended the fate of nations. Have the
+      factitious and conventional laws tended to that object and accomplished
+      that aim? Every one, urged by a powerful instinct, has displayed all the
+      faculties of his being; and the sum of individual felicities has
+      constituted the general felicity. Have these laws, on the contrary,
+      restrained the effort of man toward his own happiness? His heart, deprived
+      of its exciting principle, has languished in inactivity, and from the
+      oppression of individuals has resulted the weakness of the state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As self-love, impetuous and improvident, is ever urging man against his
+      equal, and consequently tends to dissolve society, the art of legislation
+      and the merit of administrators consists in attempering the conflict of
+      individual cupidities, in maintaining an equilibrium of powers, and
+      securing to every one his happiness, in order that, in the shock of
+      society against society, all the members may have a common interest in the
+      preservation and defence of the public welfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The internal splendor and prosperity of empires then, have had for their
+      efficient cause the equity of their laws and government; and their
+      respective external powers have been in proportion to the number of
+      persons interested, and their degree of interest in the public welfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, the multiplication of men, by complicating their
+      relations, having rendered the precise limitation of their rights
+      difficult, the perpetual play of the passions having produced incidents
+      not foreseen&mdash;their conventions having been vicious, inadequate, or
+      nugatory&mdash;in fine, the authors of the laws having sometimes mistaken,
+      sometimes disguised their objects; and their ministers, instead of
+      restraining the cupidity of others, having given themselves up to their
+      own; all these causes have introduced disorder and trouble into societies;
+      and the viciousness of laws and the injustice of governments, flowing from
+      cupidity and ignorance, have become the causes of the misfortunes of
+      nations, and the subversion of states.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GENERAL CAUSES OF THE PROSPERITY OF ANCIENT STATES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Such, O man who seekest wisdom, such have been the causes of revolution in
+      the ancient states of which thou contemplatest the ruins! To whatever spot
+      I direct my view, to whatever period my thoughts recur, the same
+      principles of growth or destruction, of rise or fall, present themselves
+      to my mind. Wherever a people is powerful, or an empire prosperous, there
+      the conventional laws are conformable with the laws of nature&mdash;the
+      government there procures for its citizens a free use of their faculties,
+      equal security for their persons and property. If, on the contrary, an
+      empire goes to ruin, or dissolves, it is because its laws have been
+      vicious, or imperfect, or trodden under foot by a corrupt government. If
+      the laws and government, at first wise and just, become afterwards
+      depraved, it is because the alternation of good and evil is inherent to
+      the heart of man, to a change in his propensities, to his progress in
+      knowledge, to a combination of circumstances and events; as is proved by
+      the history of the species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the infancy of nations, when men yet lived in the forest, subject to
+      the same wants, endowed with the same faculties, all were nearly equal in
+      strength; and that equality was a circumstance highly advantageous in the
+      composition of society: as every individual, thus feeling himself
+      sufficiently independent of every other, no one was the slave, none
+      thought of being the master of another. Man, then a novice, knew neither
+      servitude nor tyranny; furnished with resources sufficient for his
+      existence, he thought not of borrowing from others; owning nothing,
+      requiring nothing, he judged the rights of others by his own, and formed
+      ideas of justice sufficiently exact. Ignorant, moreover, in the art of
+      enjoyments, unable to produce more than his necessaries, possessing
+      nothing superfluous, cupidity remained dormant; or if excited, man,
+      attacked in his real wants, resisted it with energy, and the foresight of
+      such resistance ensured a happy balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus original equality, in default of compact, maintained freedom of
+      person, security of property, good manners, and order. Every one labored
+      by himself and for himself; and the mind of man, being occupied, wandered
+      not to culpable desires. He had few enjoyments, but his wants were
+      satisfied; and as indulgent nature had made them less than his resources,
+      the labor of his hands soon produced abundance&mdash;abundance,
+      population; the arts unfolded, culture extended, and the earth, covered
+      with numerous inhabitants, was divided into different dominions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The relations of man becoming complicated, the internal order of societies
+      became more difficult to maintain. Time and industry having generated
+      riches, cupidity became more active; and because equality, practicable
+      among individuals, could not subsist among families, the natural
+      equilibrium was broken; it became necessary to supply it by a factitious
+      equilibrium; to set up chiefs, to establish laws; and in the primitive
+      inexperience, it necessarily happened that these laws, occasioned by
+      cupidity, assumed its character. But different circumstances concurred to
+      correct the disorder, and oblige governments to be just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      States, in fact, being weak at first, and having foreign enemies to fear,
+      the chiefs found it their interest not to oppress their subjects; for, by
+      lessening the confidence of the citizens in their government, they would
+      diminish their means of resistance&mdash;they would facilitate foreign
+      invasion, and by exercising arbitrary power, have endangered their very
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the interior, the firmness of the people repelled tyranny; men had
+      contracted too long habits of independence; they had too few wants, and
+      too much consciousness of their own strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      States being of a moderate size, it was difficult to divide their citizens
+      so as to make use of some for the oppression of others. Their
+      communications were too easy, their interest too clear and simple:
+      besides, every one being a proprietor and cultivator, no one needed to
+      sell himself, and the despot could find no mercenaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, then, dissensions arose, they were between family and family, faction
+      and faction, and they interested a great number. The troubles, indeed,
+      were warmer; but fears from abroad pacified discord at home. If the
+      oppression of a party prevailed, the earth being still unoccupied, and
+      man, still in a state of simplicity, finding every where the same
+      advantages, the oppressed party emigrated, and carried elsewhere their
+      independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ancient states then enjoyed within themselves numerous means of
+      prosperity and power. Every one finding his own well-being in the
+      constitution of his country, took a lively interest in its preservation.
+      If a stranger attacked it, having to defend his own field, his own house,
+      he carried into combat all the passions of a personal quarrel; and,
+      devoted to his own interests, he was devoted to his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As every action useful to the public attracted its esteem and gratitude,
+      every one became eager to be useful; and self-love multiplied talents and
+      civic virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every citizen contributing equally by his talents and person, armies and
+      funds were inexhaustible, and nations displayed formidable masses of
+      power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The earth being free, and its possession secure and easy, every one was a
+      proprietor; and the division of property preserved morals, and rendered
+      luxury impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one cultivating for himself, culture was more active, produce more
+      abundant; and individual riches became public wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The abundance of produce rendering subsistence easy, population was rapid
+      and numerous, and states attained quickly the term of their plenitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Productions increasing beyond consumption, the necessity of commerce
+      arose; and exchanges took place between people and people; which augmented
+      their activity and reciprocal advantages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fine, certain countries, at certain times, uniting the advantages of
+      good government with a position on the route of the most active
+      circulation, they became emporiums of flourishing commerce and seats of
+      powerful domination. And on the shores of the Nile and Mediterranean, of
+      the Tygris and Euphrates, the accumulated riches of India and of Europe
+      raised in successive splendor a hundred different cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people, growing rich, applied their superfluity to works of common and
+      public use; and this was in every state, the epoch of those works whose
+      grandeur astonishes the mind; of those wells of Tyre, of those dykes of
+      the Euphrates, of those subterranean conduits of Media,* of those
+      fortresses of the desert, of those aqueducts of Palmyra, of those temples,
+      of those porticoes. And such labors might be immense, without oppressing
+      the nations; because they were the effect of an equal and common
+      contribution of the force of individuals animated and free.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See respecting these monuments my Travels into Syria, vol.
+     ii. p. 214.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      From the town or village of Samouat the course of the Euphrates is
+      accompanied with a double bank, which descends as far as its junction with
+      the Tygris, and from thence to the sea, being a length of about a hundred
+      leagues, French measure. The height of these artificial banks is not
+      uniform, but increases as you advance from the sea; it may be estimated at
+      from twelve to fifteen feet. But for them, the inundation of the river
+      would bury the country around, which is flat, to an extent of twenty or
+      twenty-five leagues and even notwithstanding these banks, there has been
+      in modern times an overflow, which has covered the whole triangle formed
+      by the junction of this river to the Tygris, being a space of country of
+      one hundred and thirty square leagues. By the stagnation of these waters
+      an epidemical disease of the most fatal nature was occasioned. It follows
+      from hence, 1. That all the flat country bordering upon these rivers, was
+      originally a marsh; 2. That this marsh could not have been inhabited
+      previously to the construction of the banks in question; 3. That these
+      banks could not have been the work but of a population prior as to date;
+      and the elevation of Babylon, therefore, must have been posterior to that
+      of Nineveh, as I think I have chronologically demonstrated in the memoir
+      above cited. See Encyclopedia, vol. xiii, of Antiquities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The modern Aderbidjan, which was a part of Medea, the mountains of
+      Koulderstan, and those of Diarbekr, abound with subterranean canals, by
+      means of which the ancient inhabitants conveyed water to their parched
+      soil in order to fertilize it. It was regarded as a meritorious act and a
+      religious duty prescribed by Zoroaster, who, instead of preaching
+      celibacy, mortifications, and other pretended virtues of the monkish sort,
+      repeats continually in the passages that are preserved respecting him in
+      the Sad-der and the Zend-avesta:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That the action most pleasing to God is to plough and cultivate the
+      earth, to water it with running streams, to multiply vegetation and living
+      beings, to have numerous flocks, young and fruitful virgins, a multitude
+      of children," etc., etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the aqueducts of Palmyra it appears certain, that, besides those
+      which conducted water from the neighboring hills, there was one which
+      brought it even from the mountains of Syria. It is to be traced a long way
+      into the Desert where it escapes our search by going under ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus ancient states prospered, because their social institutions conformed
+      to the true laws of nature; and because men, enjoying liberty and security
+      for their persons and their property, might display all the extent of
+      their faculties,&mdash;all the energies of their self-love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GENERAL CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONS AND RUIN OF ANCIENT STATES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Cupidity had nevertheless excited among men a constant and universal
+      conflict, which incessantly prompting individuals and societies to
+      reciprocal invasions, occasioned successive revolutions, and returning
+      agitations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And first, in the savage and barbarous state of the first men, this
+      audacious and fierce cupidity produced rapine, violence, and murder, and
+      retarded for a long time the progress of civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When afterwards societies began to be formed, the effect of bad habits,
+      communicated to laws and governments, corrupted their institutions and
+      objects, and established arbitrary and factitious rights, which depraved
+      the ideas of justice, and the morality of the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus one man being stronger than another, their inequality&mdash;an
+      accident of nature&mdash;was taken for her law;* and the strong being able
+      to take the life of the weak, and yet sparing him, arrogated over his
+      person an abusive right of property; and the slavery of individuals
+      prepared the way for the slavery of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      *Almost all the ancient philosophers and politicians have laid it down as
+      a principle that men are born unequal, that nature his created some to be
+      free, and others to be slaves. Expressions of this kind are to be found in
+      Aristotle, and even in Plato, called the divine, doubtless in the same
+      sense as the mythological reveries which he promulgated. With all the
+      people of antiquity, the Gauls, the Romans, the Athenians, the right of
+      the strongest was the right of nations; and from the same principle are
+      derived all the political disorders and public national crimes that at
+      present exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because the head of a family could be absolute in his house, he made his
+      own affections and desires the rule of his conduct; he gave or resumed his
+      goods without equality, without justice; and paternal despotism laid the
+      foundation of despotism in government.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Upon this single expression it would be easy to write a
+     long and important chapter.  We might prove in it, beyond
+     contradiction, that all the abuses of national governments,
+     have sprung from those of domestic government, from that
+     government called patriarchal, which superficial minds have
+     extolled without having analyzed it. Numberless facts
+     demonstrate, that with every infant people, in every savage
+     and barbarous state, the father, the chief of the family, is
+     a despot, and a cruel and insolent despot.  The wife is his
+     slave, the children his servants.  This king sleeps or
+     smokes his pipe, while his wife and daughters perform all
+     the drudgery of the house, and even that of tillage and
+     cultivation, as far as occupations of this nature are
+     practised in such societies; and no sooner have the boys
+     acquired strength then they are allowed to beat the females
+     and make them serve and wait upon them as they do upon their
+     fathers.  Similar to this is the state of our own
+     uncivilized peasants.  In proportion as civilization
+     spreads, the manners become milder, and the condition of the
+     women improves, till, by a contrary excess, they arrive at
+     dominion, and then a nation becomes effeminate and corrupt.
+     It is remarkable that parental authority is great in
+     proportion as the government is despotic.  China, India, and
+     Turkey are striking examples of this. One would suppose that
+     tyrants gave themselves accomplices and interested subaltern
+     despots to maintain their authority.  In opposition to this
+     the Romans will be cited, but it remains to be proved that
+     the Romans were men truly free and their quick passage from
+     their republican despotism to their abject servility under
+     the emperors, gives room at least for considerable doubt as
+     to that freedom.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In societies formed on such foundations, when time and labor had developed
+      riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more artful, but not less
+      active. Under the mask of union and civil peace, it fomented in the bosom
+      of every state an intestine war, in which the citizens, divided into
+      contending corps of orders, classes, families, unremittingly struggled to
+      appropriate to themselves, under the name of supreme power, the ability to
+      plunder every thing, and render every thing subservient to the dictates of
+      their passions; and this spirit of encroachment, disguised under all
+      possible forms, but always the same in its object and motives, has never
+      ceased to torment the nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, opposing itself to all social compact, or breaking that which
+      already existed, it committed the inhabitants of a country to the
+      tumultuous shock of all their discords; and states thus dissolved, and
+      reduced to the condition of anarchy, were tormented by the passions of all
+      their members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes a nation, jealous of its liberty, having appointed agents to
+      administer its government, these agents appropriated the powers of which
+      they had only the guardianship: they employed the public treasures in
+      corrupting elections, gaining partisans, in dividing the people among
+      themselves. By these means, from being temporary they became perpetual;
+      from elective, hereditary; and the state, agitated by the intrigues of the
+      ambitious, by largesses from the rich and factious, by the venality of the
+      poor and idle, by the influence of orators, by the boldness of the wicked,
+      and the weakness of the virtuous, was convulsed with all the
+      inconveniences of democracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chiefs of some countries, equal in strength and mutually fearing each
+      other, formed impious pacts, nefarious associations; and, apportioning
+      among themselves all power, rank, and honor, unjustly arrogated privileges
+      and immunities; erected themselves into separate orders and distinct
+      classes; reduced the people to their control; and, under the name of
+      aristocracy, the state was tormented by the passions of the wealthy and
+      the great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sacred impostors, in other countries, tending by other means to the same
+      object, abused the credulity of the ignorant. In the gloom of their
+      temples, behind the curtain of the altar, they made their gods act and
+      speak; gave forth oracles, worked miracles, ordered sacrifices, levied
+      offerings, prescribed endowments; and, under the names of theocracy and of
+      religion, the state became tormented by the passions of the priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes a nation, weary of its dissensions or of its tyrants, to lessen
+      the sources of evil, submitted to a single master; but if it limited his
+      powers, his sole aim was to enlarge them; if it left them indefinite, he
+      abused the trust confided to him; and, under the name of monarchy, the
+      state was tormented by the passions of kings and princes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the factions, availing themselves of the general discontent,
+      flattered the people with the hope of a better master; dealt out gifts and
+      promises, deposed the despot to take his place; and their contests for the
+      succession, or its partition, tormented the state with the disorders and
+      devastations of civil war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fine, among these rivals, one more adroit, or more fortunate, gained
+      the ascendency, and concentrated all power within himself. By a strange
+      phenomenon, a single individual mastered millions of his equals, against
+      their will and without their consent; and the art of tyranny sprung also
+      from cupidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, observing the spirit of egotism which incessantly divides
+      mankind, the ambitious man fomented it with dexterity, flattered the
+      vanity of one, excited the jealousy of another, favored the avarice of
+      this, inflamed the resentment of that, and irritated the passions of all;
+      then, placing in opposition their interests and prejudices, he sowed
+      divisions and hatreds, promised to the poor the spoils of the rich, to the
+      rich the subjection of the poor; threatened one man by another, this class
+      by that; and insulating all by distrust, created his strength out of their
+      weakness, and imposed the yoke of opinion, which they mutually riveted on
+      each other. With the army he levied contributions, and with contributions
+      he disposed of the army: dealing out wealth and office on these
+      principles, he enchained a whole people in indissoluble bonds, and they
+      languished under the slow consumption of despotism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the same principle, varying its action under every possible form, was
+      forever attenuating the consistence of states, and an eternal circle of
+      vicissitudes flowed from an eternal circle of passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this spirit of egotism and usurpation produced two effects equally
+      operative and fatal: the one a division and subdivision of societies into
+      their smallest fractions, inducing a debility which facilitated their
+      dissolution; the other, a preserving tendency to concentrate power in a
+      single hand,* which, engulfing successively societies and states, was
+      fatal to their peace and social existence.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is remarkable that this has in all instances been the
+     constant progress of societies; beginning with a state of
+     anarchy or democracy, that is, with a great division of
+     power they have passed to aristocracy, and from aristocracy
+     to monarchy.  Does it not hence follow that those who
+     constitute states under the democratic form, destine them to
+     undergo all the intervening troubles between that and
+     monarchy; but it should at the same time be proved that
+     social experience is already exhausted for the human race,
+     and that this spontaneous movement is not solely the effect
+     of ignorance.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thus, as in a state, a party absorbed the nation, a family the party, and
+      an individual the family; so a movement of absorption took place between
+      state and state, and exhibited on a larger scale in the political order,
+      all the particular evils of the civil order. Thus a state having subdued a
+      state, held it in subjection in the form of a province; and two provinces
+      being joined together formed a kingdom; two kingdoms being united by
+      conquest, gave birth to empires of gigantic size; and in this
+      conglomeration, the internal strength of states, instead of increasing,
+      diminished; and the condition of the people, instead of ameliorating,
+      became daily more abject and wretched, for causes derived from the nature
+      of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because, in proportion as states increased in extent, their administration
+      becoming more difficult and complicated, greater energies of power were
+      necessary to move such masses; and there was no longer any proportion
+      between the duties of sovereigns and their ability to perform their
+      duties:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because despots, feeling their weakness, feared whatever might develop the
+      strength of nations, and studied only how to enfeeble them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because nations, divided by the prejudices of ignorance and hatred,
+      seconded the wickedness of their governments; and availing themselves
+      reciprocally of subordinate agents, aggravated their mutual slavery:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because, the balance between states being destroyed, the strong more
+      easily oppressed the weak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, because in proportion as states were concentrated, the people,
+      despoiled of their laws, of their usages, and of the government of their
+      choice, lost that spirit of personal identification with their government,
+      which had caused their energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And despots, considering empires as their private domains and the people
+      as their property, gave themselves up to depredations, and to all the
+      licentiousness of the most arbitrary authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the strength and wealth of nations were diverted to private
+      expense and personal caprice; and kings, fatigued with gratification,
+      abandoned themselves to all the extravagancies of factitious and depraved
+      taste.* They must have gardens mounted on arcades, rivers raised over
+      mountains, fertile fields converted into haunts for wild beasts; lakes
+      scooped in dry lands, rocks erected in lakes, palaces built of marble and
+      porphyry, furniture of gold and diamonds. Under the cloak of religion,
+      their pride founded temples, endowed indolent priests, built, for vain
+      skeletons, extravagant tombs, mausoleums and pyramids;** millions of hands
+      were employed in sterile labors; and the luxury of princes, imitated by
+      their parasites, and transmitted from grade to grade to the lowest ranks,
+      became a general source of corruption and impoverishment.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is equally worthy of remark, that the conduct and
+     manners of princes and kings of every country and every age,
+     are found to be precisely the same at similar periods,
+     whether of the formation or dissolution of empires.  History
+     every where presents the same pictures of luxury and folly;
+     of parks, gardens, lakes, rocks, palaces, furniture, excess
+     of the table, wine, women, concluding with brutality.
+
+     The absurd rock in the garden of Versailles has alone cost
+     three millions.  I have sometimes calculated what might have
+     been done with the expense of the three pyramids of Gizah,
+     and I have found that it would easily have constructed from
+     the Red Sea to Alexandria, a canal one hundred and fifty
+     feet wide and thirty deep, completely covered in with cut
+     stones and a parapet, together with a fortified and
+     commercial town, consisting of four hundred houses,
+     furnished with cisterns.  What a difference in point of
+     utility between such a canal and these pyramids!
+
+     ** The learned Dupuis could not be persuaded that the
+     pyramids were tombs; but besides the positive testimony of
+     historians, read what Diodorus says of the religious and
+     superstitious importance every Egyptian attached to building
+     his dwelling eternal, b. 1.
+
+     During twenty years, says Herodotus, a hundred thousand men
+     labored every day to build the pyramid of the Egyptian
+     Cheops.  Supposing only three hundred days a year, on
+     account of the sabbath, there will be 30 millions of days'
+     work in a year, and 600 millions in twenty years; at 15 sous
+     a day, this makes 450 millions of francs lost, without any
+     further benefit.  With this sum, if the king had shut the
+     isthmus of Suez by a strong wall, like that of China, the
+     destinies of Egypt might have been entirely changed.
+     Foreign invasions would have been prevented, and the Arabs
+     of the desert would neither have conquered nor harassed that
+     country.  Sterile labors! how many millions lost in putting
+     one stone upon another, under the forms of temples and
+     churches!  Alchymists convert stones into gold; but
+     architects change gold into stone.  Woe to the kings (as
+     well as subjects) who trust their purse to these two classes
+     of empirics!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And in the insatiable thirst of enjoyment, the ordinary revenues no longer
+      sufficing, they were augmented; the cultivator, seeing his labors increase
+      without compensation, lost all courage; the merchant, despoiled, was
+      disgusted with industry; the multitude, condemned to perpetual poverty,
+      restrained their labor to simple necessaries; and all productive industry
+      vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The surcharge of taxes rendering lands a burdensome possession, the poor
+      proprietor abandoned his field, or sold it to the powerful; and fortune
+      became concentrated in a few hands. All the laws and institutions favoring
+      this accumulation, the nation became divided into a group of wealthy
+      drones, and a multitude of mercenary poor; the people were degraded with
+      indigence, the great with satiety, and the number of those interested in
+      the preservation of the state decreasing, its strength and existence
+      became proportionally precarious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, emulation finding no object, science no encouragement,
+      the mind sunk into profound ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The administration being secret and mysterious, there existed no means of
+      reform or amelioration. The chiefs governing by force or fraud, the people
+      viewed them as a faction of public enemies; and all harmony ceased between
+      the governors and governed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And these vices having enervated the states of the wealthy part of Asia,
+      the vagrant and indigent people of the adjacent deserts and mountains
+      coveted the enjoyments of the fertile plains; and, urged by a cupidity
+      common to all, attacked the polished empires, and overturned the thrones
+      of their despots. These revolutions were rapid and easy; because the
+      policy of tyrants had enfeebled the subjects, razed the fortresses,
+      destroyed the warriors; and because the oppressed subjects remained
+      without personal interest, and the mercenary soldiers without courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And hordes of barbarians having reduced entire nations to slavery, the
+      empires, formed of conquerors and conquered, united in their bosom two
+      classes essentially opposite and hostile. All the principles of society
+      were dissolved: there was no longer any common interest, no longer any
+      public spirit; and there arose a distinction of casts and races, which
+      reduced to a regular system the maintenance of disorder; and he who was
+      born of this or that blood, was born a slave or a tyrant&mdash;property or
+      proprietor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The oppressors being less numerous than the oppressed it was necessary to
+      perfect the science of oppression, in order to support this false
+      equilibrium. The art of governing became the art of subjecting the many to
+      the few. To enforce an obedience so contrary to instinct, the severest
+      punishments were established, and the cruelty of the laws rendered manners
+      atrocious. The distinction of persons establishing in the state two codes,
+      two orders of criminal justice, two sets of laws, the people, placed
+      between the propensities of the heart and the oath uttered from the mouth,
+      had two consciences in contradiction with each other; and the ideas of
+      justice and injustice had no longer any foundation in the understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under such a system, the people fell into dejection and despair; and the
+      accidents of nature were added to the other evils which assailed them.
+      Prostrated by so many calamities, they attributed their causes to superior
+      and hidden powers; and, because they had tyrants on earth, they fancied
+      others in heaven; and superstition aggravated the misfortunes of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatal doctrines and gloomy and misanthropic systems of religion arose,
+      which painted their gods, like their despots, wicked and envious. To
+      appease them, man offered up the sacrifice of all his enjoyments. He
+      environed himself in privations, and reversed the order of nature.
+      Conceiving his pleasures to be crimes, his sufferings expiations, he
+      endeavored to love pain, and to abjure the love of self. He persecuted his
+      senses, hated his life; and a self-denying and anti-social morality
+      plunged nations into the apathy of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But provident nature having endowed the heart of man with hope
+      inexhaustible, when his desires of happiness were baffled on this earth,
+      he pursued it into another world. By a sweet illusion he created for
+      himself another country&mdash;an asylum where, far from tyrants, he should
+      recover the rights of nature, and thence resulted new disorders. Smitten
+      with an imaginary world, man despised that of nature. For chimerical
+      hopes, he neglected realities. His life began to appear a troublesome
+      journey&mdash;a painful dream; his body a prison, the obstacle to his
+      felicity; and the earth, a place of exile and of pilgrimage, not worthy of
+      culture. Then a holy indolence spread over the political world; the fields
+      were deserted, empires depopulated, monuments neglected and deserts
+      multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism, combining their
+      operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation and ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus agitated by their own passions, men, whether collectively or
+      individually taken, always greedy and improvident, passing from slavery to
+      tyranny, from pride to baseness, from presumption to despondency, have
+      made themselves the perpetual instruments of their own misfortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These, then, are the principles, simple and natural, which regulated the
+      destiny of ancient states. By this regular and connected series of causes
+      and effects, they rose or fell, in proportion as the physical laws of the
+      human heart were respected or violated; and in the course of their
+      successive changes, a hundred different nations, a hundred different
+      empires, by turns humbled, elevated, conquered, overthrown, have repeated
+      for the earth their instructive lessons. Yet these lessons were lost for
+      the generations which have followed! The disorders in times past have
+      reappeared in the present age! The chiefs of the nations have continued to
+      walk in the paths of falsehood and tyranny!&mdash;the people to wander in
+      the darkness of superstition and ignorance!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since then, continued the Genius, with renewed energy, since the
+      experience of past ages is lost for the living&mdash;since the errors of
+      progenitors have not instructed their descendants, the ancient examples
+      are about to reappear; the earth will see renewed the tremendous scenes it
+      has forgotten. New revolutions will agitate nations and empires; powerful
+      thrones will again be overturned, and terrible catastrophes will again
+      teach mankind that the laws of nature and the precepts of wisdom and truth
+      cannot be infringed with impunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LESSONS OF TIMES PAST REPEATED ON THE PRESENT.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the Genius. Struck with the justice and coherence of his
+      discourse, assailed with a crowd of ideas, repugnant to my habits yet
+      convincing to my reason, I remained absorbed in profound silence. At
+      length, while with serious and pensive mien, I kept my eyes fixed on Asia,
+      suddenly in the north, on the shores of the Black sea, and in the fields
+      of the Crimea, clouds of smoke and flame attracted my attention. They
+      appeared to rise at the same time from all parts of the peninsula; and
+      passing by the isthmus into the continent, they ran, as if driven by a
+      westerly wind, along the oozy lake of Azof, and disappeared in the grassy
+      plains of Couban; and following more attentively the course of these
+      clouds, I observed that they were preceded or followed by swarms of moving
+      creatures, which, like ants or grasshoppers disturbed by the foot of a
+      passenger, agitated themselves with vivacity. Sometimes these swarms
+      appeared to advance and rush against each other; and numbers, after the
+      concussion, remained motionless. While disquieted at this spectacle, I
+      strained my sight to distinguish the objects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you see, said the Genius, those flames which spread over the earth, and
+      do you comprehend their causes and effects?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! Genius, I answered, I see those columns of flame and smoke, and
+      something like insects, accompanying them; but, when I can scarcely
+      discern the great masses of cities and monuments, how should I discover,
+      such little creatures? I can just perceive that these insects mimic
+      battle, for they advance, retreat, attack and pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no mimicry, said the Genius, these are real battles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what, said I, are those mad animalculae, which destroy each other?
+      Beings of a day! will they not perish soon enough?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Genius, touching my sight and hearing, again directed my eyes
+      towards the same object. Look, said he, and listen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! wretches, cried I, oppressed with grief, these columns of flame! these
+      insects! oh! Genius, they are men. These are the ravages of war! These
+      torrents of flame rise from towns and villages! I see the squadrons who
+      kindle them, and who, sword in hand overrun the country: they drive before
+      them crowds of old men, women, and children, fugitive and desolate: I
+      perceive other horsemen, who with shouldered lances, accompany and guide
+      them. I even recognize them to be Tartars by their led horses,* their
+      kalpacks, and tufts of hair: and, doubtless, they who pursue, in
+      triangular hats and green uniforms, are Muscovites. Ah! I now comprehend,
+      a war is kindled between the empire of the Czars and that of the Sultans.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A Tartar horseman has always two horses, of which he leads
+     one in hand.  The Kalpeck is a bonnet made of the skin of a
+     sheep or other animal.  The part of the head covered by this
+     bonnet is shaved, with the exception of a tuft, about the
+     size of a crown piece, and which is suffered to grow to the
+     length of seven or eight inches, precisely where our priests
+     place their tonsure.  It is by this tuft of hair, worn by
+     the majority of Mussulmen, that the angel of the tomb is to
+     take the elect and carry them into paradise.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Not yet, replied the Genius; this is only a preliminary. These Tartars
+      have been, and might still he troublesome neighbors. The Muscovites are
+      driving them off, finding their country would be a convenient extension of
+      their own limits; and as a prelude to another revolution, the throne of
+      the Guerais is destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in fact, I saw the Russian standards floating over the Crimea: and
+      soon after their flag waving on the Euxine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, at the cry of the flying Tartars, the Mussulman empire was in
+      commotion. They are driving off our brethren, cried the children of
+      Mahomet: the people of the prophet are outraged! infidels occupy a
+      consecrated land and profane the temples of Islamism.* Let us arm; let us
+      rush to combat, to avenge the glory of God and our own cause.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is not in the power of the Sultan to cede to a foreign
+     power a province inhabited by true believers.  The people,
+     instigated by the lawyers, would not fail to revolt.  This
+     is one reason which has led those who know the Turks, to
+     regard as chimerical the ceding of Candia, Cyprus, and
+     Egypt, projected by certain European potentates.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And a general movement of war took place in both empires. In every part
+      armed men assembled. Provisions, stores, and all the murderous apparatus
+      of battle were displayed. The temples of both nations, besieged by an
+      immense multitude, presented a spectacle which fixed all my attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one side, the Mussulmen gathered before their mosques, washed their
+      hands and feet, pared their nails, and combed their beards; then spreading
+      carpets upon the ground, and turning towards the south, with their arms
+      sometimes crossed and sometimes extended, they made genuflexions and
+      prostrations, and recollecting the disasters of the late war, they
+      exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      God of mercy and clemency! hast thou then abandoned thy faithful people?
+      Thou who hast promised to thy Prophet dominion over nations, and stamped
+      his religion by so many triumphs, dost thou deliver thy true believers to
+      the swords of infidels?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Imans and the Santons said to the people:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is in chastisement of your sins. You eat pork; you drink wine; you
+      touch unclean things. God hath punished you. Do penance therefore; purify;
+      repeat the profession of faith;* fast from the rising to the setting sun;
+      give the tenth of your goods to the mosques; go to Mecca; and God will
+      render you victorious.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And the people, recovering courage, uttered loud cries:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is but one God, said they transported with fury, and Mahomet is his
+      prophet! Accursed be he who believeth not!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      God of goodness, grant us to exterminate these Christians; it is for thy
+      glory we fight, and our death is a martyrdom for thy name. And then,
+      offering victims, they prepared for battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other side, the Russians, kneeling, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We render thanks to God, and celebrate his power. He hath strengthened our
+      arm to humble his enemies. Hear our prayers, thou God of mercy! To please
+      thee, we will pass three days without eating either meat or eggs. Grant us
+      to extirpate these impious Mahometans, and to overturn their empire. To
+      thee we will consecrate the tenth of our spoil; to thee we will raise new
+      temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the priests filled the churches with clouds of smoke, and said to the
+      people:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We pray for you, God accepteth our incense, and blesseth your arms.
+      Continue to fast and to fight; confess to us your secret sins; give your
+      wealth to the church; we will absolve you from your crimes, and you shall
+      die in a state of grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they sprinkled water upon the people, dealt out to them, as amulets
+      and charms, small relics of the dead, and the people breathed war and
+      combat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Struck with this contrast of the same passions, and grieving for their
+      fatal consequences, I was considering the difficulty with which the common
+      judge could yield to prayers so contradictory; when the Genius, glowing
+      with anger, spoke with vehemence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What accents of madness strike my ear? What blind and perverse delirium
+      disorders the spirits of the nations? Sacrilegious prayers rise not from
+      the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their homicidal vows and impious
+      thanksgivings! Deluded mortals! is it thus you revere the Divinity? Say
+      then; how should he, whom you style your common father, receive the homage
+      of his children murdering one another? Ye victors! with what eye should he
+      view your hands reeking in the blood he hath created? And, what do you
+      expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans? Hath God the heart of a
+      mortal, with passions ever changing? Is he, like you, agitated with
+      vengeance or compassion, with wrath or repentance? What base conception of
+      the most sublime of beings! According to them, it would seem, that God
+      whimsical and capricious, is angered or appeased as a man: that he loves
+      and hates alternately; that he punishes or favors; that, weak or wicked,
+      he broods over his hatred; that, contradictory or perfidious, he lays
+      snares to entrap; that he punishes the evils he permits; that he foresees
+      but hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt judge, he is bribed by
+      offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes laws and revokes them; that,
+      like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes favors without reason, and can
+      only be appeased by servility. Ah! now I know the lying spirit of man!
+      Contemplating the picture which he hath drawn of the Divinity: No, said I,
+      it is not God who hath made man after the image of God; but man hath made
+      God after the image of man; he hath given him his own mind, clothed him
+      with his own propensities; ascribed to him his own judgments. And when in
+      this medley he finds the contradiction of his own principles, with
+      hypocritical humility, he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the
+      absurdities of his own mind the mysteries of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change him; he
+      hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him without
+      ceasing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imposters have arisen on the earth who have called themselves the
+      confidants of God; and, erecting themselves into teachers of the people,
+      have opened the ways of falsehood and iniquity; they have ascribed merit
+      to practices indifferent or ridiculous; they have supposed a virtue, in
+      certain postures, in pronouncing certain words, articulating certain
+      names; they have transformed into a crime the eating of certain meats, the
+      drinking of certain liquors, on one day rather than another. The Jew would
+      rather die than labor on the sabbath; the Persian would endure
+      suffocation, before he would blow the fire with his breath; the Indian
+      places supreme perfection in besmearing himself with cow-dung, and
+      pronouncing mysteriously the word Aum;* the Mussulman believes he has
+      expiated everything in washing his head and arms; and disputes, sword in
+      hand, whether the ablution should commence at the elbow, or finger ends;**
+      the Christian would think himself damned, if he ate flesh instead of milk
+      or butter. Oh sublime doctrines! Doctrines truly from heaven! Oh perfect
+      morals, and worthy of martyrdom or the apostolate! I will cross the seas
+      to teach these admirable laws to the savage people&mdash;to distant
+      nations; I will say unto them:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This word is, in the religion of the Hindoos, a sacred
+     emblem of the Divinity.  It is only to be pronounced in
+     secret, without being heard by any one.  It is formed of
+     three letters, of which the first, a, signifies the
+     principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the
+     conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who
+     puts an end to all, Chiven.  It is pronounced like the
+     monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three
+     Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega
+     mentioned in the New Testament.
+
+     ** This is one of the grand points of schism between the
+     partisans of Omar and those of Ali.  Suppose two Mahometans
+     to meet on a journey, and to accost each other with
+     brotherly affection: the hour of prayer arrives; one begins
+     his ablution at his fingers, the other at the elbow, and
+     instantly they are mortal enemies.  O sublime importance of
+     religious opinions!  O profound philosophy of the authors of
+     them!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Children of nature, how long will you walk in the paths of ignorance? how
+      long will you mistake the true principles of morality and religion? Come
+      and learn its lessons from nations truly pious and learned, in civilized
+      countries. They will inform you how, to gratify God, you must in certain
+      months of the year, languish the whole day with hunger and thirst; how you
+      may shed your neighbor's blood, and purify yourself from it by professions
+      of faith and methodical ablutions; how you may steal his property and be
+      absolved on sharing it with certain persons, who devote themselves to its
+      consumption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sovereign and invisible power of the universe! mysterious mover of nature!
+      universal soul of beings! thou who art unknown, yet revered by mortals
+      under so many names! being incomprehensible and infinite! God, who in the
+      immensity of the heavens directest the movement of worlds, and peoplest
+      the abyss of space with millions of suns! say what do these human insects,
+      which my sight no longer discerns on the earth, appear in thy eyes? To
+      thee, who art guiding stars in their orbits, what are those wormlings
+      writhing themselves in the dust? Of what import to thy immensity, their
+      distinctions of parties and sects? And of what concern the subtleties with
+      which their folly torments itself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your practices! In so many
+      centuries, during which you have been following or altering them, what
+      changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of nature? Is the sun
+      brighter? Is the course of the seasons varied? Is the earth more fruitful,
+      or its inhabitants more happy? If God be good, can your penances please
+      him? If infinite, can your homage add to his glory? If his decrees have
+      been formed on foresight of every circumstance, can your prayers change
+      them? Answer, O inconsistent mortals!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ye conquerors of the earth, who pretend you serve God! doth he need your
+      aid? If he wishes to punish, hath he not earthquakes, volcanoes, and
+      thunder? And cannot a merciful God correct without extermination?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ye Mussulmans, if God chastiseth you for violating the five precepts, how
+      hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them? If he governeth the earth
+      by the Koran, by what did he govern it before the days of the prophet,
+      when it was covered with so many nations who drank wine, ate pork, and
+      went not to Mecca, whom he nevertheless permitted to raise powerful
+      empires? How did he judge the Sabeans of Nineveh and of Babylon; the
+      Persian, worshipper of fire; the Greek and Roman idolators; the ancient
+      kingdoms of the Nile; and your own ancestors, the Arabians and Tartars?
+      How doth he yet judge so many nations who deny, or know not your worship&mdash;the
+      numerous castes of Indians, the vast empire of the Chinese, the sable race
+      of Africa, the islanders of the ocean, the tribes of America?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presumptuous and ignorant men, who arrogate the earth to yourselves! if
+      God were to gather all the generations past and present, what would be, in
+      their ocean, the sects calling themselves universal, of Christians and
+      Mussulmans? What would be the judgments of his equal and common justice
+      over the real universality of mankind? Therein it is that your knowledge
+      loseth itself in incoherent systems; it is there that truth shines with
+      evidence; and there are manifested the powerful and simple laws of nature
+      and reason&mdash;laws of a common and general mover&mdash;of a God
+      impartial and just, who sheds rain on a country without asking who is its
+      prophet; who causeth his sun to shine alike on all the races of men, on
+      the white as on the black, on the Jew, on the Mussulman, the Christian,
+      and the Idolater; who reareth the harvest wherever cultivated with
+      diligence; who multiplieth every nation where industry and order
+      prevaileth; who prospereth every empire where justice is practised, where
+      the powerful are restrained, and the poor protected by the laws; where the
+      weak live in safety, and all enjoy the rights given by nature and a
+      compact formed in justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the principles by which people are judged! this the true
+      religion which regulates the destiny of empires, and which, O Ottomans,
+      hath governed yours! Interrogate your ancestors, ask of them by what means
+      they rose to greatness; when few, poor and idolaters, they came from the
+      deserts of Tartary and encamped in these fertile countries; ask if it was
+      by Islamism, till then unknown to them, that they conquered the Greeks and
+      the Arabs, or was it by their courage, their prudence, moderation, spirit
+      of union&mdash;the true powers of the social state? Then the Sultan
+      himself dispensed justice, and maintained discipline. The prevaricating
+      judge, the extortionate governor, were punished, and the multitude lived
+      at ease. The cultivator was protected from the rapine of the janissary,
+      and the fields prospered; the highways were safe, and commerce caused
+      abundance. You were a band of plunderers, but just among yourselves. You
+      subdued nations, but did not oppress them. Harassed by their own princes,
+      they preferred being your tributaries. What matters it, said the
+      Christian, whether my ruler breaks or adores images, if he renders justice
+      to me? God will judge his doctrines in the heavens above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You were sober and hardy; your enemies timid and enervated; you were
+      expert in battle, your enemies unskillful; your leaders were experienced,
+      your soldiers warlike and disciplined. Booty excited ardor, bravery was
+      rewarded, cowardice and insubordination punished, and all the springs of
+      the human heart were in action. Thus you vanquished a hundred nations, and
+      of a mass of conquered kingdoms compounded an immense empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But other customs have succeeded; and in the reverses attending them, the
+      laws of nature have still exerted their force. After devouring your
+      enemies, your cupidity, still insatiable, has reacted on itself, and,
+      concentrated in your own bowels, has consumed you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having become rich, you have quarrelled for partition and enjoyment, and
+      disorder hath arisen in every class of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sultan, intoxicated with grandeur, has mistaken the object of his
+      functions; and all the vices of arbitrary power have been developed.
+      Meeting no obstacle to his appetites, he has become a depraved being; weak
+      and arrogant, he has kept the people at a distance; and their voice has no
+      longer instructed and guided him. Ignorant, yet flattered, neglecting all
+      instruction, all study, he has fallen into imbecility; unfit for business,
+      he has thrown its burdens on hirelings, and they have deceived him. To
+      satisfy their own passions, they have stimulated and nourished his; they
+      have multiplied his wants, and his enormous luxury has consumed
+      everything. The frugal table, plain clothing, simple dwelling of his
+      ancestors no longer sufficed. To supply his pomp, earth and sea have been
+      exhausted. The rarest furs have been brought from the poles; the most
+      costly tissues from the equator. He has devoured at a meal the tribute of
+      a city, and in a day that of a province. He has surrounded himself with an
+      army of women, eunuchs, and satellites. They have instilled into him that
+      the virtue of kings is to be liberal, and the munificence and treasures of
+      the people have been delivered into the hands of flatterers. In imitation
+      of their master, his servants must also have splendid houses, the most
+      exquisite furniture; carpets embroidered at great cost, vases of gold and
+      silver for the lowest uses, and all the riches of the empire have been
+      swallowed up in the Serai.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To supply this inordinate luxury, the slaves and women have sold their
+      influence, and venality has introduced a general depravation. The favor of
+      the sovereign has been sold to his vizier, and the vizier has sold the
+      empire. The law has been sold to the cadi, and the cadi has made sale of
+      justice. The altar has been sold to the priest, and the priest has sold
+      the kingdom of heaven. And gold obtaining everything, they have sacrificed
+      everything to obtain gold. For gold, friend has betrayed friend, the child
+      his parent, the servant his master, the wife her honor, the merchant his
+      conscience; and good faith, morals, concord, and strength were banished
+      from the state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pacha, who had purchased the government of his province, farmed it out
+      to others, who exercised every extortion. He sold in turn the collection
+      of the taxes, the command of the troops, the administration of the
+      villages; and as every employ has been transient, rapine, spread from rank
+      to rank, has been greedy and implacable. The revenue officer has fleeced
+      the merchant, and commerce was annihilated; the aga has plundered the
+      husbandman, and culture has degenerated. The laborer, deprived of his
+      stock, has been unable to sow; the tax was augmented, and he could not pay
+      it; the bastinado has been threatened, and he has borrowed. Money, from
+      want of security, being locked up from circulation, interest was therefore
+      enormous, and the usury of the rich has aggravated the misery of the
+      laborer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When excessive droughts and accidents of seasons have blasted the harvest,
+      the government has admitted no delay, no indulgence for the tax; and
+      distress bearing hard on the village, a part of its inhabitants have taken
+      refuge in the cities; and their burdens falling on those who remained, has
+      completed their ruin, and depopulated the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If driven to extremity by tyranny and outrage, the villages have revolted,
+      the pacha rejoices. He wages war on them, assails their homes, pillages
+      their property, carries off their stock; and when the fields have become a
+      desert, he exclaims:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What care I? I leave these fields to-morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The earth wanting laborers, the rain of heaven and overflowing of torrents
+      have stagnated in marshes; and their putrid exhalations in a warm climate,
+      have caused epidemics, plagues, and maladies of all sorts, whence have
+      flowed additional suffering, penury, and ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! who can enumerate all the calamities of tyrannical government?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes the pachas declare war against each other, and for their
+      personal quarrels the provinces of the same state are laid waste.
+      Sometimes, fearing their masters, they attempt independence, and draw on
+      their subjects the chastisement of their revolt. Sometimes dreading their
+      subjects, they invite and subsidize strangers, and to insure their
+      fidelity set no bounds to their depredations. Here they persecute the rich
+      and despoil them under false pretences; there they suborn false witnesses,
+      and impose penalties for suppositious offences; everywhere they excite the
+      hatred of parties, encourage informations to obtain amercements, extort
+      property, seize persons; and when their short-sighted avarice has
+      accumulated into one mass all the riches of a country, the government, by
+      an execrable perfidy, under pretence of avenging its oppressed people,
+      takes to itself all their spoils, as if they were the culprits, and
+      uselessly sheds the blood of its agents for a crime of which it is the
+      accomplice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh wretches, monarchs or ministers, who sport with the lives and fortunes
+      of the people! Is it you who gave breath to man, that you dare take it
+      from him? Do you give growth to the plants of the earth, that you may
+      waste them? Do you toil to furrow the field? Do you endure the ardor of
+      the sun, and the torment of thirst, to reap the harvest or thrash the
+      grain? Do you, like the shepherd, watch through the dews of the night? Do
+      you traverse deserts, like the merchant? Ah! on beholding the pride and
+      cruelty of the powerful, I have been transported with indignation, and
+      have said in my wrath, will there never then arise on the earth men who
+      will avenge the people and punish tyrants? A handful of brigands devour
+      the multitude, and the multitude submits to be devoured! Oh! degenerate
+      people! Know you not your rights? All authority is from you, all power is
+      yours. Unlawfully do kings command you on the authority of God and of
+      their lance&mdash;Soldiers be still; if God supports the Sultan he needs
+      not your aid; if his sword suffices, he needs not yours; let us see what
+      he can do alone. The soldiers grounded their arms; and behold these
+      masters of the world, feeble as the meanest of their subjects! People!
+      know that those who govern are your chiefs, not your masters; your agents,
+      not your owners; that they have no authority over you, but by you, and for
+      you; that your wealth is yours and they accountable for it; that, kings or
+      subjects, God has made all men equal, and no mortal has the right to
+      oppress his fellow-creatures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this nation and its chiefs have mistaken these holy truths. They must
+      abide then the consequences of their blindness. The decree is past; the
+      day approaches when this colossus of power shall be crushed and crumbled
+      under its own mass. Yes, I swear it, by the ruins of so many empires
+      destroyed. The empire of the Crescent shall follow the fate of the
+      despotism it has copied. A nation of strangers shall drive the Sultan from
+      his metropolis. The throne of Orkhan shall be overturned. The last shoot
+      of his trunk shall be broken off; and the horde of Oguzians,* deprived of
+      their chief, shall disperse like that of the Nagois. In this dissolution,
+      the people of the empire, loosened from the yoke which united them, shall
+      resume their ancient distinctions, and a general anarchy shall follow, as
+      happened in the empire of the Sophis;** until there shall arise among the
+      Arabians, Armenians, or Greeks, legislators who may compose new states.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Before the Turks took the name of their chief, Othman I.,
+     they bore that of Oguzians; and it was under this
+     appellation that they were driven out of Tartary by Gengis,
+     and came from the borders of Giboun to settle themselves in
+     Anatolia.
+
+     ** In Persia, after the death of Thamas-Koulikan, each
+     province had its chief, and for forty years these chiefs
+     were in a constant state of war.  In this view the Turks do
+     not say without reason: "Ten years of a tyrant are less
+     destructive than a single night of anarchy."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Oh! if there were on earth men profound and bold! what elements for
+      grandeur and glory! But the hour of destiny has already come; the cry of
+      war strikes my ear; and the catastrophe begins. In vain the Sultan leads
+      forth his armies; his ignorant warriors are beaten and dispersed. In vain
+      he calls his subjects; their hearts are ice. Is it not written? say they,
+      what matters who is our master? We cannot lose by the change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain the true believers invoke heaven and the prophet. The prophet is
+      dead; and heaven without pity answers:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cease to invoke me. You have caused your own misfortunes; cure them
+      yourselves. Nature has established laws; your part is to obey them.
+      Observe, reason, and profit by experience. It is the folly of man which
+      ruins him; let his wisdom save him. The people are ignorant; let them gain
+      instruction. Their chiefs are wicked; let them correct and amend; for such
+      is Nature's decree. Since the evils of society spring from cupidity and
+      ignorance, men will never cease to be persecuted, till they become
+      enlightened and wise; till they practise justice, founded on a knowledge
+      of their relations and of the laws of their organization.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A singular moral phenomenon made its appearance in Europe
+     in the year 1788.  A great nation, jealous of its liberty,
+     contracted a fondness for a nation the enemy of liberty; a
+     nation friendly to the arts, for a nation that detests them;
+     a mild and tolerant nation, for a persecuting and fanatic
+     one; a social and gay nation, for a nation whose
+     characteristics are gloom and misanthropy; in a word, the
+     French were smitten with a passion for the Turks: they were
+     desirous of engaging in a war for them, and that at a time
+     when revolution in their own country was just at its
+     commencement. A man, who perceived the true nature of the
+     situation, wrote a book to dissuade them from the war: it
+     was immediately pretended that he was paid by the
+     government, which in reality wished the war, and which was
+     upon the point of shutting him up in a state prison. Another
+     man wrote to recommend the war: he was applauded, and his
+     word taken for the science, the politeness, and importance
+     of the Turks.  It is true that he believed in his own
+     thesis, for he has found among them people who cast a
+     nativity, and alchymists who ruined his fortune; as he found
+     Martinists at Paris, who enabled him to sup with Sesostris,
+     and Magnetizers who concluded with destroying his existence.
+     Notwithstanding this, the Turks were beaten by the Russians,
+     and the man who then predicted the fall of their empire,
+     persists in the prediction.  The result of this fall will be
+     a complete change of the political system, as far as it
+     relates to the coast of the Mediterranean.  If, however, the
+     French become important in proportion as they become free,
+     and if they make use of the advantage they will obtain,
+     their progress may easily prove of the most honorable sort;
+     inasmuch as, by the wise decrees of fate, the true interest
+     of mankind evermore accords with their true morality.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      WILL THE HUMAN RACE IMPROVE?
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At these words, oppressed with the painful sentiment with which their
+      severity overwhelmed me: Woe to the nations! cried I, melting in tears;
+      woe to myself! Ah! now it is that I despair of the happiness of man! Since
+      his miseries proceed from his heart; since the remedy is in his own power,
+      woe for ever to his existence! Who, indeed will ever be able to restrain
+      the lust of wealth in the strong and powerful? Who can enlighten the
+      ignorance of the weak? Who can teach the multitude to know their rights,
+      and force their chiefs to perform their duties? Thus the race of man is
+      always doomed to suffer! Thus the individual will not cease to oppress the
+      individual, a nation to attack a nation; and days of prosperity, of glory,
+      for these regions, shall never return. Alas! conquerors will come; they
+      will drive out the oppressors, and fix themselves in their place; but,
+      inheriting their power, they will inherit their rapacity; and the earth
+      will have changed tyrants, without changing the tyranny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, turning to the Genius, I exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, despair hath settled on my soul. Knowing the nature of man, the
+      perversity of those who govern, and the debasement of the governed&mdash;this
+      knowledge hath disgusted me with life; and since there is no choice but to
+      be the accomplice or the victim of oppression, what remains to the man of
+      virtue but to mingle his ashes with those of the tomb?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Genius then gave me a look of severity, mingled with compassion; and
+      after a few moments of silence, he replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Virtue, then, consists in dying! The wicked man is indefatigable in
+      consummating his crime, and the just is discouraged from doing good at the
+      first obstacle he encounters! But such is the human heart. A little
+      success intoxicates man with confidence; a reverse overturns and confounds
+      him. Always given up to the sensation of the moment, he seldom judges
+      things from their nature, but from the impulse of his passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortal, who despairest of the human race, on what profound combination of
+      facts hast thou established thy conclusion? Hast thou scrutinized the
+      organization of sentient beings, to determine with precision whether the
+      instinctive force which moves them on to happiness is essentially weaker
+      than that which repels them from it? or, embracing in one glance the
+      history of the species, and judging the future by the past, hast thou
+      shown that all improvement is impossible? Say! hath human society, since
+      its origin, made no progress toward knowledge and a better state? Are men
+      still in their forests, destitute of everything, ignorant, stupid and
+      ferocious? Are all the nations still in that age when nothing was seen
+      upon the globe but brutal robbers and brutal slaves? If at any time, in
+      any place, individuals have ameliorated, why shall not the whole mass
+      ameliorate? If partial societies have made improvements, what shall hinder
+      the improvement of society in general? And if the first obstacles are
+      overcome, why should the others be insurmountable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Art thou disposed to think that the human race degenerates? Guard against
+      the illusion and paradoxes of the misanthrope. Man, discontented with the
+      present, imagines for the past a perfection which never existed, and which
+      only serves to cover his chagrin. He praises the dead out of hatred to the
+      living, and beats the children with the bones of their ancestors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To prove this pretended retrograde progress from perfection we must
+      contradict the testimony of reason and of fact; and if the facts of
+      history are in any measure uncertain, we must contradict the living fact
+      of the organization of man; we must prove that he is born with the
+      enlightened use of his senses; that, without experience, he can
+      distinguish aliment from poison; that the child is wiser than the old man;
+      that the blind walks with more safety than the clear-sighted; that the
+      civilized man is more miserable than the savage; and, indeed, that there
+      is no ascending scale in experience and instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believe, young man, the testimony of monuments, and the voice of the
+      tombs. Some countries have doubtless fallen from what they were at certain
+      epochs; but if we weigh the wisdom and happiness of their inhabitants,
+      even in those times, we shall find more of splendor than of reality in
+      their glory; we shall find, in the most celebrated of ancient states,
+      enormous vices and cruel abuses, the true causes of their decay; we shall
+      find in general that the principles of government were atrocious; that
+      insolent robberies, barbarous wars and implacable hatreds were raging from
+      nation to nation;* that natural right was unknown; that morality was
+      perverted by senseless fanaticism and deplorable superstition; that a
+      dream, a vision, an oracle, were constantly the causes of vast commotions.
+      Perhaps the nations are not yet entirely cured of all these evils; but
+      their intensity at least is diminished, and the experience of the past has
+      not been wholly lost. For the last three centuries, especially, knowledge
+      has increased and been extended; civilization, favored by happy
+      circumstances, has made a sensible progress; inconveniences and abuses
+      have even turned to its advantage; for if states have been too much
+      extended by conquest, the people, by uniting under the same yoke, have
+      lost the spirit of estrangement and division which made them all enemies
+      one to the other. If the powers of government have been more concentrated,
+      there has been more system and harmony in their exercise. If wars have
+      become more extensive in the mass, they are less bloody in detail. If men
+      have gone to battle with less personality, less energy, their struggles
+      have been less sanguinary and less ferocious; they have been less free,
+      but less turbulent; more effeminate, but more pacific. Despotism itself
+      has rendered them some service; for if governments have been more
+      absolute, they have been more quiet and less tempestuous. If thrones have
+      become a property and hereditary, they have excited less dissensions, and
+      the people have suffered fewer convulsions; finally, if the despots,
+      jealous and mysterious, have interdicted all knowledge of their
+      administration, all concurrence in the management of public affairs, the
+      passions of men, drawn aside from politics, have fixed upon the arts, and
+      the sciences of nature; and the sphere of ideas in every direction has
+      been enlarged; man, devoted to abstract studies, has better understood his
+      place in the system of nature, and his relations in society; principles
+      have been better discussed, final causes better explained, knowledge more
+      extended, individuals better instructed, manners more social, and life
+      more happy. The species at large, especially in certain countries, has
+      gained considerably; and this amelioration cannot but increase in future,
+      because its two principal obstacles, those even which, till then, had
+      rendered it slow and sometimes retrograde,&mdash;the difficulty of
+      transmitting ideas and of communicating them rapidly,&mdash;have been at
+      last removed.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Read the history of the wars of Rome and Carthage, of
+     Sparta and Messina, of Athens and Syracuse, of the Hebrews
+     and the Phoenicians: yet these are the nations of which
+     antiquity boasts as being most polished!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, among the ancients, each canton, each city, being isolated from
+      all others by the difference of its language, the consequence was
+      favorable to ignorance and anarchy. There was no communication of ideas,
+      no participation of discoveries, no harmony of interests or of wills, no
+      unity of action or design; besides, the only means of transmitting and of
+      propagating ideas being that of speech, fugitive and limited, and that of
+      writing, tedious of execution, expensive and scarce, the consequence was a
+      hindrance of present instruction, loss of experience from one generation
+      to another, instability, retrogression of knowledge, and a perpetuity of
+      confusion and childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the modern world, especially in Europe, great nations having allied
+      themselves in language, and established vast communities of opinions, the
+      minds of men are assimilated, and their affections extended; there is a
+      sympathy of opinion and a unity of action; then that gift of heavenly
+      Genius, the holy art of printing, having furnished the means of
+      communicating in an instant the same idea to millions of men, and of
+      fixing it in a durable manner, beyond the power of tyrants to arrest or
+      annihilate, there arose a mass of progressive instruction, an expanding
+      atmosphere of science, which assures to future ages a solid amelioration.
+      This amelioration is a necessary effect of the laws of nature; for, by the
+      law of sensibility, man as invincibly tends to render himself happy as the
+      flame to mount, the stone to descend, or the water to find its level. His
+      obstacle is his ignorance, which misleads him in the means, and deceives
+      him in causes and effects. He will enlighten himself by experience; he
+      will become right by dint of errors; he will grow wise and good because it
+      is his interest so to be. Ideas being communicated through the nation,
+      whole classes will gain instruction; science will become a vulgar
+      possession, and all men will know what are the principles of individual
+      happiness and of public prosperity. They will know the relations they bear
+      to society, their duties and their rights; they will learn to guard
+      against the illusions of the lust of gain; they will perceive that the
+      science of morals is a physical science, composed, indeed, of elements
+      complicated in their operation, but simple and invariable in their nature,
+      since they are only the elements of the organization of man. They will see
+      the propriety of being moderate and just, because in that is found the
+      advantage and security of each; they will perceive that the wish to enjoy
+      at the expense of another is a false calculation of ignorance, because it
+      gives rise to reprisal, hatred, and vengeance, and that dishonesty is the
+      never-failing offspring of folly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Individuals will feel that private happiness is allied to public good:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weak, that instead of dividing their interests, they ought to unite
+      them, because equality constitutes their force:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rich, that the measure of enjoyment is bounded by the constitution of
+      the organs, and that lassitude follows satiety:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor, that the employment of time, and the peace of the heart, compose
+      the highest happiness of man. And public opinion, reaching kings on their
+      thrones, will force them to confine themselves to the limits of regular
+      authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even chance itself, serving the cause of nations, will sometimes give them
+      feeble chiefs, who, through weakness, will suffer them to become free; and
+      sometimes enlightened chiefs, who, from a principle of virtue, will free
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when nations, free and enlightened, shall become like great
+      individuals, the whole species will have the same facilities as particular
+      portions now have; the communication of knowledge will extend from one to
+      another, and thus reach the whole. By the law of imitation, the example of
+      one people will be followed by others, who will adopt its spirit and its
+      laws. Even despots, perceiving that they can no longer maintain their
+      authority without justice and beneficence, will soften their sway from
+      necessity, from rivalship; and civilization will become universal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There will be established among the several nations an equilibrium of
+      force, which, restraining them all within the bounds of the respect due to
+      their reciprocal rights, shall put an end to the barbarous practice of
+      war, and submit their disputes to civil arbitration.* The human race will
+      become one great society, one individual family, governed by the same
+      spirit, by common laws, and enjoying all the happiness of which their
+      nature is susceptible.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * What is a people?  An individual of the society at large.
+     What a war?  A duel between two individual people.  In what
+     manner ought a society to act when two of its members fight?
+     Interfere and reconcile, or repress them.  In the days of
+     the Abbe de Saint Pierre this was treated as a dream, but
+     happily for the human race it begins to be realized.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Doubtless this great work will be long accomplishing; because the same
+      movement must be given to an immense body; the same leaven must assimilate
+      an enormous mass of heterogeneous parts. But this movement shall be
+      effected; its presages are already to be seen. Already the great society,
+      assuming in its course the same characters as partial societies have done,
+      is evidently tending to a like result. At first disconnected in all its
+      parts, it saw its members for a long time without cohesion; and this
+      general solitude of nations formed its first age of anarchy and childhood;
+      divided afterwards by chance into irregular sections, called states and
+      kingdoms, it has experienced the fatal effects of an extreme inequality of
+      wealth and rank; and the aristocracy of great empires has formed its
+      second age; then, these lordly states disputing for preeminence, have
+      exhibited the period of the shock of factions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At present the contending parties, wearied with discord, feel the want of
+      laws, and sigh for the age of order and of peace. Let but a virtuous chief
+      arise! a just, a powerful people appear! and the earth will raise them to
+      supreme power. The world is waiting for a legislative people; it wishes
+      and demands it; and my heart attends the cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then turning towards the west: Yes, continued he, a hollow sound already
+      strikes my ear; a cry of liberty, proceeding from far distant shores,
+      resounds on the ancient continent. At this cry, a secret murmur against
+      oppression is raised in a powerful nation; a salutary inquietude alarms
+      her respecting her situation; she enquires what she is, and what she ought
+      to be; while, surprised at her own weakness, she interrogates her rights,
+      her resources, and what has been the conduct of her chiefs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet another day&mdash;a little more reflection&mdash;and an immense
+      agitation will begin; a new-born age will open! an age of astonishment to
+      vulgar minds, of terror to tyrants, of freedom to a great nation, and of
+      hope to the human race!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE GREAT OBSTACLE TO IMPROVEMENT.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Genius ceased. But preoccupied with melancholy thoughts, my mind
+      resisted persuasion; fearing, however, to shock him by my resistance, I
+      remained silent. After a while, turning to me with a look which pierced my
+      soul, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thou art silent, and thy heart is agitated with thoughts which it dares
+      not utter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, troubled and terrified, I replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, pardon my weakness. Doubtless thy mouth can utter nothing but
+      truth; but thy celestial intelligence can seize its rays, where my gross
+      faculties can discern nothing but clouds. I confess it; conviction has not
+      penetrated my soul, and I feared that my doubts might offend thee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what is doubt, replied he, that it should be a crime? Can man feel
+      otherwise than as he is affected? If a truth be palpable, and of
+      importance in practice, let us pity him that misconceives it. His
+      punishment will arise from his blindness. If it be uncertain or equivocal,
+      how is he to find in it what it has not? To believe without evidence or
+      proof, is an act of ignorance and folly. The credulous man loses himself
+      in a labyrinth of contradictions; the man of sense examines and discusses,
+      that he may be consistent in his opinions. The honest man will bear
+      contradiction; because it gives rise to evidence. Violence is the argument
+      of falsehood; and to impose a creed by authority is the act and indication
+      of a tyrant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Genius, said I, encouraged by these words, since my reason is free, I
+      strive in vain to entertain the flattering hope with which you endeavor to
+      console me. The sensible and virtuous soul is easily caught with dreams of
+      happiness; but a cruel reality constantly awakens it to suffering and
+      wretchedness. The more I meditate on the nature of man, the more I examine
+      the present state of societies, the less possible it appears to realize a
+      world of wisdom and felicity. I cast my eye over the whole of our
+      hemisphere; I perceive in no place the germ, nor do I foresee the
+      instinctive energy of a happy revolution. All Asia lies buried in profound
+      darkness. The Chinese, governed by an insolent despotism,* by strokes of
+      the bamboo and the cast of lots, restrained by an immutable code of
+      gestures, and by the radical vices of an ill-constructed language,**
+      appear to be in their abortive civilization nothing but a race of
+      automatons. The Indian, borne down by prejudices, and enchained in the
+      sacred fetters of his castes, vegetates in an incurable apathy. The
+      Tartar, wandering or fixed, always ignorant and ferocious, lives in the
+      savageness of his ancestors. The Arab, endowed with a happy genius, loses
+      its force and the fruits of his virtue in the anarchy of his tribes and
+      the jealousy of his families. The African, degraded from the rank of man,
+      seems irrevocably doomed to servitude. In the North I see nothing but
+      vilified serfs, herds of men with which landlords stock their estates.
+      Ignorance, tyranny, and wretchedness have everywhere stupified the
+      nations; and vicious habits, depraving the natural senses, have destroyed
+      the very instinct of happiness and of truth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The emperor of China calls himself the son of heaven; that
+     is, of God: for in the opinion of the Chinese, the material
+     of heaven, the arbiter of fatality, is the Deity himself.
+     "The emperor only shows himself once in ten months, lest the
+     people, accustomed to see him, might lose their respect; for
+     he holds it as a maxim that power can only be supported by
+     force, that the people have no idea of justice, and are not
+     to be governed but by coercion."  Narrative of two Mahometan
+     travellers in 851 and 877, translated by the Abbe Renaudot
+     in 1718.
+
+     Notwithstanding what is asserted by the missionaries, this
+     situation has undergone no change.  The bamboo still reigns
+     in China, and the son of heaven bastinades, for the most
+     trivial fault, the Mandarin, who in his turn bastinades the
+     people.  The Jesuits may tell us that this is the best
+     governed country in the world, and its inhabitants the
+     happiest of men: but a single letter from Amyot has
+     convinced me that China is a truly Turkish government, and
+     the account of Sonnerat confirms it.  See Vol. II. of Voyage
+     aux Indes, in 4to.
+
+     ** As long as the Chinese shall in writing make use of their
+     present characters, they can be expected to make no progress
+     in civilization.  The necessary introductory step must be
+     the giving them an alphabet like our own, or of substituting
+     in the room of their language that of the Tartars.  The
+     improvement made in the latter by M. de Lengles, is
+     calculated to introduce this change. See the Mantchou
+     alphabet, the production of a mind truly learned in the
+     formation of language.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In some parts of Europe, indeed, reason has begun to dawn, but even there,
+      do nations partake of the knowledge of individuals? Are the talents and
+      genius of governors turned to the benefit of the people? And those nations
+      which call themselves polished, are they not the same that for the last
+      three centuries have filled the earth with their injustice? Are they not
+      those who, under the pretext of commerce, have desolated India,
+      depopulated a new continent, and, at present, subject Africa to the most
+      barbarous slavery? Can liberty be born from the bosom of despots? and
+      shall justice be rendered by the hands of piracy and avarice? O Genius, I
+      have seen the civilized countries; and the mockery of their wisdom has
+      vanished before my sight. I saw wealth accumulated in the hands of a few,
+      and the multitude poor and destitute. I have seen all rights, all powers
+      concentered in certain classes, and the mass of the people passive and
+      dependent. I have seen families of princes, but no families of the nation.
+      I have seen government interests, but no public interests or spirit. I
+      have seen that all the science of government was to oppress prudently; and
+      the refined servitude of polished nations appeared to me only the more
+      irremediable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One obstacle above all has profoundly struck my mind. On looking over the
+      world, I have seen it divided into twenty different systems of religion.
+      Every nation has received, or formed, opposite opinions; and every one
+      ascribing to itself the exclusive possession of the truth, must believe
+      the other to be wrong. Now if, as must be the fact in this discordance of
+      opinion, the greater part are in error, and are honest in it, then it
+      follows that our mind embraces falsehood as it does truth; and if so, how
+      is it to be enlightened? When prejudice has once seized the mind, how is
+      it to be dissipated? How shall we remove the bandage from our eyes, when
+      the first article in every creed, the first dogma in all religion, is the
+      absolute proscription of doubt, the interdiction of examination, and the
+      rejection of our own judgment? How is truth to make herself known?&mdash;If
+      she resorts to arguments and proofs, the timid man stifles the voice of
+      his own conscience; if she invokes the authority of celestial powers, he
+      opposes it with another authority of the same origin, with which he is
+      preoccupied; and he treats all innovation as blasphemy. Thus man in his
+      blindness, has riveted his own chains, and surrendered himself forever,
+      without defence, to the sport of his ignorance and his passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To dissolve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy events
+      would be necessary. A whole nation, cured of the delirium of superstition,
+      must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism. Freed from the yoke of
+      false doctrine, a whole people must impose upon itself that of true
+      morality and reason. This people should be courageous and prudent, wise
+      and docile. Each individual, knowing his rights, should not transgress
+      them. The poor should know how to resist seduction, and the rich the
+      allurements of avarice. There should be found leaders disinterested and
+      just, and their tyrants should be seized with a spirit of madness and
+      folly. This people, recovering its rights, should feel its inability to
+      exercise them in person, and should name its representatives. Creator of
+      its magistrates, it should know at once to respect them and to judge them.
+      In the sudden reform of a whole nation, accustomed to live by abuses, each
+      individual displaced should bear with patience his privations, and submit
+      to a change of habits. This nation should have the courage to conquer its
+      liberty; the power to defend it, the wisdom to establish it, and the
+      generosity to extend it to others. And can we ever expect the union of so
+      many circumstances? But suppose that chance in its infinite combinations
+      should produce them, shall I see those fortunate days. Will not my ashes
+      long ere then be mouldering in the tomb?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, sunk in sorrow, my oppressed heart no longer found utterance. The
+      Genius answered not, but I heard him whisper to himself:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us revive the hope of this man; for if he who loves his fellow
+      creatures be suffered to despair, what will become of nations? The past is
+      perhaps too discouraging; I must anticipate futurity, and disclose to the
+      eye of virtue the astonishing age that is ready to begin; that, on viewing
+      the object she desires, she may be animated with new ardor, and redouble
+      her efforts to attain it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE NEW AGE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Scarcely had he finished these words, when a great tumult arose in the
+      west; and turning to that quarter, I perceived, at the extremity of the
+      Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a prodigious movement&mdash;such
+      as when a violent sedition arises in a vast city&mdash;a numberless
+      people, rushing in all directions, pour through the streets and fluctuate
+      like waves in the public places. My ear, struck with the cries which
+      resounded to the heavens, distinguished these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is this new prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We
+      are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and we
+      are in want of subsistence? We are active and laborious, and we live in
+      indigence! We pay enormous tributes, and we are told they are not
+      sufficient! We are at peace without, and our persons and property are not
+      safe within. Who, then, is the secret enemy that devours us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some voices from the midst of the multitude replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raise a discriminating standard; and let all those who maintain and
+      nourish mankind by useful labors gather round it; and you will discover
+      the enemy that preys upon you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The standard being raised, this nation divided itself at once into two
+      bodies of unequal magnitude and contrasted appearance. The one,
+      innumerable, and almost total, exhibited in the poverty of its clothing,
+      in its emaciated appearance and sun-burnt faces, the marks of misery and
+      labor; the other, a little group, an insignificant faction, presented in
+      its rich attire embroidered with gold and silver, and in its sleek and
+      ruddy faces, the signs of leisure and abundance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considering these men more attentively, I found that the great body was
+      composed of farmers, artificers, merchants, all professions useful to
+      society; and that the little group was made up of priests of every order,
+      of financiers, of nobles, of men in livery, of commanders of armies; in a
+      word, of the civil, military, and religious agents of government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two bodies being assembled face to face, and regarding each other
+      with astonishment, I saw indignation and rage arising in one side, and a
+      sort of panic in the other. And the large body said to the little one: Why
+      are you separated from us? Are you not of our number?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, replied the group; you are the people; we are a privileged class, who
+      have our laws, customs, and rights, peculiar to ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;And what labor do you perform in our society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIVILEGED CLASS.&mdash;None; we are not made to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;How, then, have you acquired these riches?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIVILEGED CLASS.&mdash;By taking the pains to govern you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;What! is this what you call governing? We toil and you
+      enjoy! we produce and you dissipate! Wealth proceeds from us, and you
+      absorb it. Privileged men! class who are not the people; form a nation
+      apart, and govern yourselves.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This dialogue between the people and the indolent classes,
+     is applicable to every society; it contains the seeds of all
+     the political vices and disorders that prevail, and which
+     may thus be defined: Men who do nothing, and who devour the
+     substance of others; and men who arrogate to themselves
+     particular rights and exclusive privileges of wealth and
+     indolence.  Compare the Mamlouks of Egypt, the nobility of
+     Europe, the Nairs of India, the Emirs of Arabia, the
+     patricians of Rome, the Christian clergy, the Imans, the
+     Bramins, the Bonzes, the Lamas, etc., etc., and you will
+     find in all the same characteristic feature:&mdash;Men living in
+     idleness at the expense of those who labor.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then the little group, deliberating on this new state of things, some of
+      the most honorable among them said: We must join the people and partake of
+      their labors and burdens, for they are men like us, and our riches come
+      from them; but others arrogantly exclaimed: It would be a shame, an
+      infamy, for us to mingle with the crowd; they are born to serve us. Are we
+      not men of another race&mdash;the noble and pure descendants of the
+      conquerors of this empire? This multitude must be reminded of our rights
+      and its own origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NOBLES.&mdash;People! know you not that our ancestors conquered this
+      land, and that your race was spared only on condition of serving us? This
+      is our social compact! this the government constituted by custom and
+      prescribed by time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;O conquerors, pure of blood! show us your genealogies! we
+      shall then see if what in an individual is robbery and plunder, can be
+      virtuous in a nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And forthwith, voices were heard in every quarter calling out the nobles
+      by their names; and relating their origin and parentage, they told how the
+      grandfather, great-grandfather, or even father, born traders and
+      mechanics, after acquiring wealth in every way, had purchased their
+      nobility for money: so that but very few families were really of the
+      original stock. See, said these voices, see these purse-proud commoners
+      who deny their parents! see these plebian recruits who look upon
+      themselves as illustrious veterans! and peals of laughter were heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the civil governors said: these people are mild, and naturally
+      servile; speak to them of the king and of the law, and they will return to
+      their duty. People! the king wills, the sovereign ordains!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;The king can will nothing but the good of the people; the
+      sovereign can only ordain according to law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CIVIL GOVERNORS.&mdash;The law commands you to be submissive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;The law is the general will; and we will a new order of
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CIVIL GOVERNORS.&mdash;You are then a rebel people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;A nation cannot revolt; tyrants only are rebels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CIVIL GOVERNORS.&mdash;The king is on our side; he commands you to submit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Kings are inseparable from their nations. Our king cannot be
+      with you; you possess only his phantom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the military governors came forward. The people are timorous, said
+      they; we must threaten them; they will submit only to force. Soldiers,
+      chastise this insolent multitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Soldiers, you are of our blood! Will you strike your
+      brothers, your relatives? If the people perish who will nourish the army?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the soldiers, grounding their arms, said to the chiefs:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are likewise the people; show us the enemy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the ecclesiastical governors said: There is but one resource left.
+      The people are superstitious; we must frighten them with the names of God
+      and religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our dear brethren! our children! God has ordained us to govern you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Show us your credentials from God!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;You must have faith; reason leads astray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Do you govern without reason?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;God commands peace! Religion prescribes obedience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Peace supposes justice. Obedience implies conviction of a
+      duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;Suffering is the business of this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Show us the example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;Would you live without gods or kings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;We would live without oppressors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRIESTS.&mdash;You must have mediators, intercessors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEOPLE.&mdash;Mediators with God and with the king! courtiers and priests,
+      your services are too expensive: we will henceforth manage our own
+      affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the little group said: We are lost! the multitude are enlightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people answered: You are safe; since we are enlightened we will
+      commit no violence; we only claim our rights. We feel resentments, but we
+      will forget them. We were slaves, we might command; but we only wish to be
+      free, and liberty is but justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A FREE AND LEGISLATIVE PEOPLE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Considering that all public power was now suspended, and that the habitual
+      restraint of the people had suddenly ceased, I shuddered with the
+      apprehension that they would fall into the dissolution of anarchy. But,
+      taking their affairs into immediate deliberation, they said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not enough that we have freed ourselves from tyrants and parasites;
+      we must prevent their return. We are men, and experience has abundantly
+      taught us that every man is fond of power, and wishes to enjoy it at the
+      expense of others. It is necessary, then, to guard against a propensity
+      which is the source of discord; we must establish certain rules of duty
+      and of right. But the knowledge of our rights, and the estimation of our
+      duties, are so abstract and difficult as to require all the time and all
+      the faculties of a man. Occupied in our own affairs, we have not leisure
+      for these studies; nor can we exercise these functions in our own persons.
+      Let us choose, then, among ourselves, such persons as are capable of this
+      employment. To them we will delegate our powers to institute our
+      government and laws. They shall be the representatives of our wills and of
+      our interests. And in order to attain the fairest representation possible
+      of our wills and our interests, let it be numerous, and composed of men
+      resembling ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having made the election of a numerous body of delegates, the people thus
+      addressed them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have hitherto lived in a society formed by chance, without fixed
+      agreements, without free conventions, without a stipulation of rights,
+      without reciprocal engagements,&mdash;and a multitude of disorders and
+      evils have arisen from this precarious state. We are now determined on
+      forming a regular compact; and we have chosen you to adjust the articles.
+      Examine, then, with care what ought to be its basis and its conditions;
+      consider what is the end and the principles of every association;
+      recognize the rights which every member brings, the powers which he
+      delegates, and those which he reserves to himself. Point out to us the
+      rules of conduct&mdash;the basis of just and equitable laws. Prepare for
+      us a new system of government; for we realize that the one which has
+      hitherto guided us is corrupt. Our fathers have wandered in the paths of
+      ignorance, and habit has taught us to follow in their footsteps.
+      Everything has been done by fraud, violence, and delusion; and the true
+      laws of morality and reason are still obscure. Clear up, then, their
+      chaos; trace out their connection; publish their code, and we will adopt
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people raised a large throne, in the form of a pyramid, and
+      seating on it the men they had chosen, said to them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We raise you to-day above us, that you may better discover the whole of
+      our relations, and be above the reach of our passions. But remember that
+      you are our fellow-citizens; that the power we confer on you is our own;
+      that we deposit it with you, but not as a property or a heritage; that you
+      must be the first to obey the laws you make; that to-morrow you redescend
+      among us, and that you will have acquired no other right but that of our
+      esteem and gratitude. And consider what a tribute of glory the world,
+      which reveres so many apostles of error, will bestow on the first assembly
+      of rational men, who shall have declared the unchangeable principles of
+      justice, and consecrated, in the face of tyrants, the rights of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      UNIVERSAL BASIS OF ALL RIGHT AND ALL LAW.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The men chosen by the people to investigate the true principles of morals
+      and of reason then proceeded in the sacred object of their mission; and,
+      after a long examination, having discovered a fundamental and universal
+      principle, a legislator arose and said to the people:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is the primordial basis, the physical origin of all justice and of
+      all right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever be the active power, the moving cause, that governs the universe,
+      since it has given to all men the same organs, the same sensations, and
+      the same wants, it has thereby declared that it has given to all the same
+      right to the use of its treasures, and that all men are equal in the order
+      of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, since this power has given to each man the necessary means of
+      preserving his own existence, it is evident that it has constituted them
+      all independent one of another; that it has created them free; that no one
+      is subject to another; that each one is absolute proprietor of his own
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Equality and liberty are, therefore, two essential attributes of man, two
+      laws of the Divinity, constitutional and unchangeable, like the physical
+      properties of matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, every individual being absolute master of his own person, it follows
+      that a full and free consent is a condition indispensable to all contracts
+      and all engagements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, since each individual is equal to another, it follows that the
+      balance of what is received and of what is given, should be strictly in
+      equilibrium; so that the idea of justice, of equity, necessarily imports
+      that of equality.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The etymology of the words themselves trace out to us this
+     connection: equilibrium, equalitas, equitas, are all of one
+     family, and the physical idea of equality, in the scales of
+     a balance, is the source and type of all the rest.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Equality and liberty are therefore the physical and unalterable basis of
+      every union of men in society, and of course the necessary and generating
+      principle of every law and of every system of regular government.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of
+     ideas in the first article, liberty being placed before
+     equality, from which it in reality springs.  This defect is
+     not to be wondered at; the science of the rights of man is a
+     new science: it was invented yesterday by the Americans,
+     to-day the French are perfecting it, but there yet remains a
+     great deal to be done.  In the ideas that constitute it
+     there is a genealogical order which, from us basis, physical
+     equality, to the minutest and most remote branches of
+     government, ought to proceed in an uninterrupted series of
+     inferences.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A disregard of this basis has introduced in your nation, and in every
+      other, those disorders which have finally roused you. It is by returning
+      to this rule that you may reform them, and reorganize a happy order of
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But observe, this reorganization will occasion a violent shock in your
+      habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices. Vicious contracts and abusive
+      claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill founded property
+      renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a state of nature.
+      Consider whether you can consent to so many sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, reflecting on the cupidity inherent in the heart of man, I thought
+      that this people would renounce all ideas of amelioration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, in a moment, a great number of men, advancing toward the pyramid,
+      made a solemn abjuration of all their distinctions and all their riches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Establish for us, said they, the laws of equality and liberty; we will
+      possess nothing in future but on the title of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Equality, liberty, justice,&mdash;these shall be our code, and shall be
+      written on our standards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people immediately raised a great standard, inscribed with these
+      three words, in three different colors. They displayed it over the pyramid
+      of the legislators, and for the first time the flag of universal justice
+      floated on the face of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people raised before the pyramid a new altar, on which they placed
+      a golden balance, a sword, and a book with this inscription:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TO EQUAL LAW, WHICH JUDGES AND PROTECTS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And having surrounded the pyramid and the altar with a vast amphitheatre,
+      all the people took their seats to hear the publication of the law. And
+      millions of men, raising at once their hands to heaven, took the solemn
+      oath to live equal, free, and just; to respect their reciprocal properties
+      and rights; to obey the law and its regularly chosen representatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A spectacle so impressive and sublime, so replete with generous emotions,
+      moved me to tears; and addressing myself to the Genius, I exclaimed: Let
+      me now live, for in future I have everything to hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CONSTERNATION AND CONSPIRACY OF TYRANTS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      But scarcely had the solemn voice of liberty and equality resounded
+      through the earth, when a movement of confusion, of astonishment, arose in
+      different nations. On the one hand, the people, warmed with desire, but
+      wavering between hope and fear, between the sentiment of right and the
+      habit of obedience, began to be in motion. The kings, on the other hand,
+      suddenly awakened from the sleep of indolence and despotism, were alarmed
+      for the safety of their thrones; while, on all sides, those clans of civil
+      and religious tyrants, who deceive kings and oppress the people, were
+      seized with rage and consternation; and, concerting their perfidious
+      plans, they said: Woe to us, if this fatal cry of liberty comes to the
+      ears of the multitude! Woe to us, if this pernicious spirit of justice be
+      propagated!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, pointing to the floating banner, they continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Consider what a swarm of evils are included in these three words! If all
+      men are equal, where is our exclusive right to honors and to power? If all
+      men are to be free, what becomes of our slaves, our vassals, our property?
+      If all are equal in the civil state, where is our prerogative of birth, of
+      inheritance? and what becomes of nobility? If they are all equal in the
+      sight of God, what need of mediators?&mdash;where is the priesthood? Let
+      us hasten, then, to destroy a germ so prolific, and so contagious. We must
+      employ all our cunning against this innovation. We must frighten the
+      kings, that they may join us in the cause. We must divide the people by
+      national jealousies, and occupy them with commotions, wars, and conquests.
+      They must be alarmed at the power of this free nation. Let us form a
+      league against the common enemy, demolish that sacrilegious standard,
+      overturn that throne of rebellion, and stifle in its birth the flame of
+      revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, indeed, the civil and religious tyrants of nations formed a general
+      combination; and, multiplying their followers by force and seduction, they
+      marched in hostile array against the free nation; and, surrounding the
+      altar and the pyramid of natural law, they demanded with loud cries:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is this new and heretical doctrine? what this impious altar, this
+      sacrilegious worship? True believers and loyal subjects! can you suppose
+      that truth has been first discovered to-day, and that hitherto you have
+      been walking in error? that those men, more fortunate than you, have the
+      sole privilege of wisdom? And you, rebel and misguided nation, perceive
+      you not that your new leaders are misleading you? that they destroy the
+      principles of your faith, and overturn the religion of your ancestors? Ah,
+      tremble! lest the wrath of heaven should kindle against you; and hasten by
+      speedy repentance to retrieve your error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, inaccessible to seduction as well as to fear, the free nation kept
+      silence, and rising universally in arms, assumed an imposing attitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the legislator said to the chiefs of nations:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If while we walked with a bandage on our eyes the light guided our steps,
+      why, since we are no longer blindfold, should it fly from our search? If
+      guides, who teach mankind to see for themselves, mislead and deceive them,
+      what can be expected from those who profess to keep them in darkness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But hark, ye leaders of nations! If you possess the truth, show it to us,
+      and we will receive it with gratitude, for we seek it with ardor, and have
+      a great interest in finding it. We are men, and liable to be deceived; but
+      you are also men, and equally fallible. Aid us then in this labyrinth,
+      where the human race has wandered for so many ages; help us to dissipate
+      the illusion of so many prejudices and vicious habits. Amid the shock of
+      so many opinions which dispute for our acceptance, assist us in
+      discovering the proper and distinctive character of truth. Let us this day
+      terminate the long combat with error. Let us establish between it and
+      truth a solemn contest, to which we will invite the opinions of men of all
+      nations. Let us convoke a general assembly of the nations. Let them be
+      judges in their own cause; and in the debate of all systems, let no
+      champion, no argument, be wanting, either on the side of prejudice or of
+      reason; and let the sentiment of a general and common mass of evidence
+      give birth to a universal concord of opinions and of hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE NATIONS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the legislator; and the multitude, seized with those emotions
+      which a reasonable proposition always inspires, expressed its applause;
+      while the tyrants, left without support, were overwhelmed with confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A scene of a new and astonishing nature then opened to my view. All that
+      the earth contains of people and of nations; men of every race and of
+      every region, converging from their various climates, seemed to assemble
+      in one allotted place; where, forming an immense congress, distinguished
+      in groups by the vast variety of their dresses, features, and complexion,
+      the numberless multitude presented a most unusual and affecting sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one side I saw the European, with his short close coat, pointed
+      triangular hat, smooth chin, and powdered hair; on the other side the
+      Asiatic, with a flowing robe, long beard, shaved head, and round turban.
+      Here stood the nations of Africa, with their ebony skins, their woolly
+      hair, their body girt with white and blue tissues of bark, adorned with
+      bracelets and necklaces of coral, shells, and glass; there the tribes of
+      the north, enveloped in their leathern bags; the Laplander, with his
+      pointed bonnet and his snow-shoes; the Samoyede, with his feverish body
+      and strong odor; the Tongouse, with his horned cap, and carrying his idols
+      pendant from his neck; the Yakoute, with his freckled face; the Kalmuc,
+      with his flat nose and little retorted eyes. Farther distant were the
+      Chinese, attired in silk, with their hair hanging in tresses; the
+      Japanese, of mingled race; the Malays, with wide-spreading ears, rings in
+      their noses, and palm-leaf hats of vast circumference;* and the tattooed
+      races of the isles of the southern ocean and of the continent of the
+      antipodes.** The view of so many varieties of the same species, of so many
+      extravagant inventions of the same understanding, and of so many
+      modifications of the same organization, affected me with a thousand
+      feelings and a thousand thoughts.*** I contemplated with astonishment this
+      gradation of color, which, passing from a bright carnation to a light
+      brown, a deeper brown, dusky, bronze, olive, leaden, copper, ends in the
+      black of ebony and of jet. And finding the Cassimerian, with his rosy
+      cheek, next to the sun-burnt Hindoo, and the Georgian by the side of the
+      Tartar, I reflected on the effects of climate hot or cold, of soil high or
+      low, marshy or dry, open or shaded. I compared the dwarf of the pole with
+      the giant of the temperate zones, the slender body of the Arab with the
+      ample chest of the Hollander; the squat figure of the Samoyede with the
+      elegant form of the Greek and the Sclavonian; the greasy black wool of the
+      Negro with the bright silken locks of the Dane; the broad face of the
+      Kalmuc, his little angular eyes and flattened nose, with the oval
+      prominent visage, large blue eyes, and aquiline nose of the Circassian and
+      Abazan. I contrasted the brilliant calicoes of the Indian, the
+      well-wrought stuffs of the European, the rich furs of the Siberian, with
+      the tissues of bark, of osiers, leaves and feathers of savage nations; and
+      the blue figures of serpents, flowers, and stars, with which they painted
+      their bodies. Sometimes the variegated appearance of this multitude
+      reminded me of the enamelled meadows of the Nile and the Euphrates, when,
+      after rains or inundations, millions of flowers are rising on every side.
+      Sometimes their murmurs and their motions called to mind the numberless
+      swarms of locusts which, issuing from the desert, cover in the spring the
+      plains of Hauran.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This species of the palm-tree is called Latanier.  Its
+     leaf, similar to a fan-mount, grows upon a stalk issuing
+     directly from the earth.  A specimen may be seen in the
+     botanic garden.
+
+     ** The country of the Papons of New Guinea.
+
+     *** A hall of costumes in one of the galleries of the Louvre
+     would, in every point of view, be an interesting
+     establishment.  It would furnish an admirable treat to the
+     curiosity of a great number of persons, excellent models to
+     the artist, and useful subjects of meditation to the
+     physician, the philosopher and the legislator.
+
+     Picture to yourself a collection of the various faces and
+     figures of every country and nation, exhibiting accurately,
+     color, features and form; what a field for investigation and
+     enquiry as to the influence of climate, customs, food, etc.
+     It might truly be called the science of man!  Buffon has
+     attempted a chapter of this nature, but it only serves to
+     exhibit more strikingly our actual ignorance. Such a
+     collection is said to have been begun at St. Petersburg, but
+     it is also said at the same time to be as imperfect as the
+     vocabulary of the three hundred languages.  The enterprise
+     would be worthy of the French nation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At the sight of so many rational beings, considering on the one hand the
+      immensity of thoughts and sensations assembled in this place, and on the
+      other hand, reflecting on the opposition of so many opinions, and the
+      shock of so many passions of men so capricious, I struggled between
+      astonishment, admiration, and secret dread&mdash;when the legislator
+      commanded silence, and attracted all my attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inhabitants of earth! a free and powerful nation addresses you with words
+      of justice and peace, and she offers you the sure pledges of her
+      intentions in her own conviction and experience. Long afflicted with the
+      same evils as yourselves, we sought for their source, and found them all
+      derived from violence and injustice, erected into law by the inexperience
+      of past ages, and maintained by the prejudices of the present. Then
+      abolishing our artificial and arbitrary institutions, and recurring to the
+      origin of all right and reason, we have found that there existed in the
+      very order of nature and in the physical constitution of man, eternal and
+      immutable laws, which only waited his observance to render him happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O men! cast your eyes on the heavens that give you light, and on the earth
+      that gives you bread! Since they offer the same bounties to you all&mdash;since
+      from the power that gives them motion you have all received the same life,
+      the same organs, have you not likewise all received the same right to
+      enjoy its benefits? Has it not hereby declared you all equal and free?
+      What mortal shall dare refuse to his fellow that which nature gives him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O nations! let us banish all tyranny and all discord; let us form but one
+      society, one great family; and, since human nature has but one
+      constitution, let there exist in future but one law, that of nature&mdash;but
+      one code, that of reason&mdash;but one throne, that of justice&mdash;but
+      one altar, that of union.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ceased; and an immense acclamation resounded to the skies. Ten thousand
+      benedictions announced the transports of the multitude; and they made the
+      earth re-echo JUSTICE, EQUALITY and UNION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But different emotions soon succeeded; soon the doctors and the chiefs of
+      nations exciting a spirit of dispute, there was heard a sullen murmur,
+      which growing louder, and spreading from group to group, became a vast
+      disorder; and each nation setting up exclusive pretensions, claimed a
+      preference for its own code and opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You are in error, said the parties, pointing one to the other. We alone
+      are in possession of reason and truth. We alone have the true law, the
+      real rule of right and justice, the only means of happiness and
+      perfection. All other men are either blind or rebellious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And great agitation prevailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the legislator, after enforcing silence, loudly exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What, O people! is this passionate emotion? Whither will this quarrel
+      conduct you? What can you expect from this dissension? The earth has been
+      for ages a field of disputation, and you have shed torrents of blood in
+      your controversies. What have you gained by so many battles and tears?
+      When the strong has subjected the weak to his opinion, has he thereby
+      aided the cause of truth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O nations! take counsel of your own wisdom. When among yourselves disputes
+      arise between families and individuals, how do you reconcile them? Do you
+      not give them arbitrators?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, cried the whole multitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do so then to the authors of your present dissensions. Order those who
+      call themselves your instructors, and who force their creeds upon you, to
+      discuss before you their reasons. Since they appeal to your interests,
+      inform yourselves how they support them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And you, chiefs and governors of the people! before dragging the masses
+      into the quarrels resulting from your diverse opinions, let the reasons
+      for and against your views be given. Let us establish one solemn
+      controversy, one public scrutiny of truth&mdash;not before the tribunal of
+      a corruptible individual, or of a prejudiced party, but in the grand forum
+      of mankind&mdash;guarded by all their information and all their interests.
+      Let the natural sense of the whole human race be our arbiter and judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SEARCH OF TRUTH.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The people expressed their applause, and the legislator continued: To
+      proceed with order, and avoid all confusion, let a spacious semicircle be
+      left vacant in front of the altar of peace and union; let each system of
+      religion, and each particular sect, erect its proper distinctive standard
+      on the line of this semicircle; let its chiefs and doctors place
+      themselves around the standard, and their followers form a column behind
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The semicircle being traced, and the order published, there instantly rose
+      an innumerable multitude of standards, of all colors and of every form,
+      like what we see in a great commercial port, when, on a day of rejoicing,
+      a thousand different flags and streamers are floating from a forest of
+      masts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sight of this prodigious diversity, I turned towards the Genius and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought that the earth was divided only into eight or ten systems of
+      faith, and I then despaired of a reconciliation; I now behold thousands of
+      different sects, and how can I hope for concord?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these, replied the Genius, are not all; and yet they will be
+      intolerant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as the groups advanced to take their stations, he pointed out to me
+      their distinctive marks, and thus began to explain their characters:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That first group, said he, with a green banner bearing a crescent, a
+      bandage, and a sabre, are the followers of the Arabian prophet. To say
+      there is a God, without knowing what he is; to believe the words of a man,
+      without understanding his language; to go into the desert to pray to God,
+      who is everywhere; to wash the hands with water, and not abstain from
+      blood; to fast all day, and eat all night; to give alms of their own
+      goods, and to plunder those of others; such are the means of perfection
+      instituted by Mahomet&mdash;such are the symbols of his followers; and
+      whoever does not bear them is a reprobate, stricken with anathema, and
+      devoted to the sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A God of clemency, the author of life, has instituted these laws of
+      oppression and murder: he made them for all the world, but has revealed
+      them only to one man; he established them from all eternity, though he
+      made them known but yesterday. These laws are abundantly sufficient for
+      all purposes, and yet a volume is added to them. This volume was to
+      diffuse light, to exhibit evidence, to lead men to perfection and
+      happiness; and yet every page was so full of obscurities, ambiguities, and
+      contradictions, that commentaries and explanations became necessary, even
+      in the life-time of its apostle. Its interpreters, differing in opinion,
+      divided into opposite and hostile sects. One maintains that Ali is the
+      true successor; the other contends for Omar and Aboubekre. This denies the
+      eternity of the Koran; that the necessity of ablutions and prayers. The
+      Carmite forbids pilgrimages, and allows the use of wine; the Hakemite
+      preaches the transmigration of souls. Thus they make up the number of
+      seventy-two sects, whose banners are before you.* In this contestation,
+      every one attributing the evidence of truth exclusively to himself, and
+      taxing all others with heresy and rebellion, turns against them its
+      sanguinary zeal. And their religion, which celebrates a mild and merciful
+      God, the common father of all men,&mdash;changed to a torch of discord, a
+      signal for war and murder, has not ceased for twelve hundred years to
+      deluge the earth in blood, and to ravage and desolate the ancient
+      hemisphere from centre to circumference.**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Mussulmen enumerate in common seventy-two sects, but I
+     read, while I resided among them, a work which gave an
+     account of more than eighty,&mdash;all equally wise and
+     important.
+
+     ** Read the history of Islamism by its own writers, and you
+     will be convinced that one of the principal causes of the
+     wars which have desolated Asia and Africa, since the days of
+     Mahomet, has been the apostolical fanaticism of its
+     doctrine.  Caesar has been supposed to have destroyed three
+     millions of men: it would be interesting to make a similar
+     calculation respecting every founder of a religious system.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Those men, distinguished by their enormous white turbans, their broad
+      sleeves, and their long rosaries, are the Imans, the Mollas, and the
+      Muftis; and near them are the Dervishes with pointed bonnets, and the
+      Santons with dishevelled hair. Behold with what vehemence they recite
+      their professions of faith! They are now beginning a dispute about the
+      greater and lesser impurities&mdash;about the matter and the manner of
+      ablutions,&mdash;about the attributes of God and his perfections&mdash;about
+      the Chaitan, and the good and wicked angels,&mdash;about death, the
+      resurrection, the interrogatory in the tomb, the judgment, the passage of
+      the narrow bridge not broader than a hair, the balance of works, the pains
+      of hell, and the joys of paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next to these, that second more numerous group, with white banners
+      intersected with crosses, are the followers of Jesus. Acknowledging the
+      same God with the Mussulmans, founding their belief on the same books,
+      admitting, like them, a first man who lost the human race by eating an
+      apple, they hold them, however, in a holy abhorrence; and, out of pure
+      piety, they call each other impious blasphemers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great point of their dissension consists in this, that after admitting
+      a God one and indivisible the Christian divides him into three persons,
+      each of which he believes to be a complete and entire God, without ceasing
+      to constitute an identical whole, by the indivisibility of the three. And
+      he adds, that this being, who fills the universe, has reduced himself to
+      the body of a man; and has assumed material, perishable, and limited
+      organs, without ceasing to be immaterial, infinite, and eternal. The
+      Mussulman who does not comprehend these mysteries, rejects them as
+      follies, and the visions of a distempered brain; though he conceives
+      perfectly well the eternity of the Koran, and the mission of the prophet:
+      hence their implacable hatreds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, the Christians, divided among themselves on many points, have
+      formed parties not less violent than the Mussulmans; and their quarrels
+      are so much the more obstinate, as the objects of them are inaccessible to
+      the senses and incapable of demonstration: their opinions, therefore, have
+      no other basis but the will and caprice of the parties. Thus, while they
+      agree that God is a being incomprehensible and unknown, they dispute,
+      nevertheless, about his essence, his mode of acting, and his attributes.
+      While they agree that his pretended transformation into man is an enigma
+      above the human understanding, they dispute on the junction or distinction
+      of his two wills and his two natures, on his change of substance, on the
+      real or fictitious presence, on the mode of incarnation, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence those innumerable sects, of which two or three hundred have already
+      perished, and three or four hundred others, which still subsist, display
+      those numberless banners which here distract your sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first in order, surrounded by a group in varied and fantastic dress,
+      that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black and speckled garments&mdash;with
+      heads shaved, or with tonsures, or with short hair&mdash;with red hats,
+      square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long beards, is the standard of the
+      Roman pontiff, who, uniting the civil government to the priesthood, has
+      erected the supremacy of his city into a point of religion, and made of
+      his pride an article of faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his right you see the Greek pontiff, who, proud of the rivalship of his
+      metropolis, sets up equal pretensions, and supports them against the
+      Western church by the priority of that of the East. On the left are the
+      standards of two recent chiefs,* who, shaking off a yoke that had become
+      tyrannical, have raised altar against altar in their reform, and wrested
+      half of Europe from the pope. Behind these are the subaltern sects,
+      subdivided from the principal divisions, the Nestorians, the Eutycheans,
+      the Jacobites, the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Presbyterians, the
+      Wicliffites, the Osiandrians, the Manicheans, the Pietists, the Adamites,
+      the Contemplatives, the Quakers, the Weepers, and a hundred others,** all
+      of distinct parties, persecuting when strong, tolerant when weak, hating
+      each other in the name of a God of peace, forming each an exclusive heaven
+      in a religion of universal charity, dooming each other to pains without
+      end in a future state, and realizing in this world the imaginary hell of
+      the other.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Luther and Calvin.
+
+     ** Consult upon this subject Dictionnaire des Herseies par
+     l'Abbe Pluquet, in two volumes 8vo.: a work admirably
+     calculated to inspire the mind with philosophy, in the sense
+     that the Lacedemonians taught the children temperance by
+     showing to them the drunken Helots.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      After this group, observing a lonely standard of the color of hyacinth,
+      round which were assembled men clad in all the different dresses of Europe
+      and Asia:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At least, said I, to the Genius, we shall find unanimity here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, said he, at first sight and by a momentary accident. Dost thou not
+      know that system of worship?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, perceiving in Hebrew letters the monogram of the name of God, and
+      the palms which the Rabbins held in their hands:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True, said I, these are the children of Moses, dispersed even to this day,
+      abhorring every nation, and abhorred and persecuted by all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, he replied, and for this reason, that, having neither the time nor
+      liberty to dispute, they have the appearance of unanimity. But no sooner
+      will they come together, compare their principles, and reason on their
+      opinions, than they will separate as formerly, at least into two principal
+      sects;* one of which, taking advantage of the silence of their legislator,
+      and adhering to the literal sense of his books, will deny everything that
+      is not clearly expressed therein; and on this principle will reject as
+      profane inventions, the immortality of the soul, its transmigration to
+      places of pain or pleasure, its resurrection, the final judgment, the good
+      and bad angels, the revolt of the evil Genius, and all the poetical belief
+      of a world to come. And this highly-favored people, whose perfection
+      consists in a slight mutilation of their persons,&mdash;this atom of a
+      people, which forms but a small wave in the ocean of mankind, and which
+      insists that God has made nothing but for them, will by its schism reduce
+      to one-half, its present trifling weight in the scale of the universe.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Sadducees and Pharisees.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He then showed me a neighboring group, composed of men dressed in white
+      robes, wearing a veil over their mouths, and ranged around a banner of the
+      color of the morning sky, on which was painted a globe cleft in two
+      hemispheres, black and white: The same thing will happen, said he, to
+      these children of Zoroaster,* the obscure remnant of a people once so
+      powerful. At present, persecuted like the Jews, and dispersed among all
+      nations, they receive without discussion the precepts of the
+      representative of their prophet. But as soon as the Mobed and the
+      Destours** shall assemble, they will renew the controversy about the good
+      and the bad principle; on the combats of Ormuzd, God of light, and
+      Ahrimanes, God of darkness; on the direct and allegorical sense; on the
+      good and evil Genii; on the worship of fire and the elements; on
+      impurities and ablutions; on the resurrection of the soul and body, or
+      only of the soul;*** on the renovation of the present world, and on that
+      which is to take its place. And the Parses will divide into sects, so much
+      the more numerous, as their families will have contracted, during their
+      dispersion, the manners and opinions of different nations.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * They are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name
+     of Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels.  They are
+     in Asia what the Jews are in Europe.  The name of their pope
+     or high priest is Mobed.
+
+     ** That is to say, their priests.  See, respecting the rites
+     of this religion, Henry Lord Hyde, and the Zendavesta.
+     Their costume is a robe with a belt of four knots, and a
+     veil over their mouth for fear of polluting the fire with
+     their breath.
+
+     *** The Zoroastrians are divided between two opinions; one
+     party believing that both soul and body will rise, the other
+     that it will be the soul only.  The Christians and
+     Mahometans have embraced the most solid of the two.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Next to these, remark those banners of an azure ground, painted with
+      monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and quadruple, with
+      heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of fishes and tortoises;
+      these are the ensigns of the sects of India, who find their gods in
+      various animals, and the souls of their fathers in reptiles and insects.
+      These men support hospitals for hawks, serpents, and rats, and they abhor
+      their fellow creatures! They purify themselves with the dung and urine of
+      cows, and think themselves defiled by the touch of a man! They wear a net
+      over the mouth, lest, in a fly, they should swallow a soul in a state of
+      penance,* and they can see a Pariah** perish with hunger! They acknowledge
+      the same gods, but they separate into hostile bands.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * According to the system of the Metempsychosis, a soul, to
+     undergo purification, passes into the body of some insect or
+     animal.  It is of importance not to disturb this penance, as
+     the work must in that case begin afresh.
+
+     ** This is the name of a cast or tribe reputed unclean,
+     because they eat of what has enjoyed life.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The first standard, retired from the rest, bearing a figure with four
+      heads, is that of Brama, who, though the creator of the universe, is
+      without temples or followers; but, reduced to serve as a pedestal to the
+      Lingam,* he contents himself with a little water which the Bramin throws
+      every morning on his shoulder, reciting meanwhile an idle canticle in his
+      praise.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, vol. 1.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The second, bearing a kite with a scarlet body and a white head, is that
+      of Vichenou, who, though preserver of the world, has passed part of his
+      life in wicked actions. You sometimes see him under the hideous form of a
+      boar or a lion, tearing human entrails, or under that of a horse,* shortly
+      to come armed with a sword to destroy the human race, blot out the stars,
+      annihilate the planets, shake the earth, and force the great serpent to
+      vomit a fire which shall consume the spheres.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the incarnations of Vichenou, or metamorphoses
+     of the sun.  He is to come at the end of the world, that is,
+     at the expiration of the great period, in the form of a
+     horse, like the four horses of the Apocalypse.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The third is that of Chiven, God of destruction and desolation, who has,
+      however, for his emblem the symbol of generation. He is the most wicked of
+      the three, and he has the most followers. These men, proud of his
+      character, express in their devotions to him their contempt for the other
+      gods,* his equals and brothers; and, in imitation of his inconsistencies,
+      while they profess great modesty and chastity, they publicly crown with
+      flowers, and sprinkle with milk and honey, the obscene image of the
+      Lingam.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * When a sectary of Chiven hears the name of Vichenou
+     pronounced, he stops his ears, runs, and purifies himself.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the rear of these, approach the smaller standards of a multitude of
+      gods&mdash;male, female, and hermaphrodite. These are friends and
+      relations of the principal gods, who have passed their lives in wars among
+      themselves, and their followers imitate them. These gods have need of
+      nothing, and they are constantly receiving presents; they are omnipotent
+      and omnipresent, and a priest, by muttering a few words, shuts them up in
+      an idol or a pitcher, to sell their favors for his own benefit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond these, that cloud of standards, which, on a yellow ground, common
+      to them all, bear various emblems, are those of the same god, who reins
+      under different names in the nations of the East. The Chinese adores him
+      in Fot,* the Japanese in Budso, the Ceylonese in Bedhou, the people of
+      Laos in Chekia, of Pegu in Phta, of Siam in Sommona-Kodom, of Thibet in
+      Budd and in La. Agreeing in some points of his history, they all celebrate
+      his life of penitence, his mortifications, his fastings, his functions of
+      mediator and expiator, the enmity between him and another god, his
+      adversary, their battles, and his ascendency. But as they disagree on the
+      means of pleasing him, they dispute about rites and ceremonies, and about
+      the dogmas of interior doctrine and of public doctrine. That Japanese
+      Bonze, with a yellow robe and naked head, preaches the eternity of souls,
+      and their successive transmigrations into various bodies; near him, the
+      Sintoist denies that souls can exist separate from the senses,** and
+      maintains that they are only the effect of the organs to which they
+      belong, and with which they must perish, as the sound of the flute
+      perishes with the flute. Near him, the Siamese, with his eyebrows shaved,
+      and a talipat screen*** in his hand, recommends alms, offerings, and
+      expiations, at the same time that he preaches blind necessity and
+      inexorable fate. The Chinese vo-chung sacrifices to the souls of his
+      ancestors; and next him, the follower of Confucius interrogates his
+      destiny in the cast of dice and the movement of the stars.**** That child,
+      surrounded by a swarm of priests in yellow robes and hats, is the Grand
+      Lama, in whom the god of Thibet has just become incarnate.*5 But a rival
+      has arisen who partakes this benefit with him; and the Kalmouc on the
+      banks of the Baikal, has a God similar to the inhabitant of Lasa. And they
+      agree, also, in one important point&mdash;that god can inhabit only a
+      human body. They both laugh at the stupidity of the Indian who pays homage
+      to cow-dung, though they themselves consecrate the excrements of their
+      high-priest.*6
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The original name of this god is Baits, which in Hebrew
+     signifies an egg.  The Arabs pronounce it Baidh, giving to
+     the dh an emphatic sound which makes it approach to dz.
+     Kempfer, an acurate traveler, writes it Budso, which must be
+     pronounced Boudso, whence is derived the name of Budsoist
+     and of Bonze, applied to the priests.  Clement of
+     Alexandria, in his Stromata, writes it Bedou, as it is
+     pronounced also by the Chingulais; and Saint Jerome, Boudda
+     and Boutta.  At Thibet they call it Budd; and hence the name
+     of the country called Boud-tan and Ti-budd: it was in this
+     province that this system of religion was first inculcated
+     in Upper Asia; La is a corruption of Allah, the name of God
+     in the Syriac language, from which many of the eastern
+     dialects appear to be derived.  The Chinese having neither b
+     nor d, have supplied their place by f and t, and have
+     therefore said Fout.
+
+     ** See in Kempfer the doctrine of the Sintoists, which is a
+     mixture of that of Epicurus and of the Stoics.
+
+     *** It is a leaf of the Latanier species of the palm-tree.
+     Hence the bonzes of Siam take the appellation of Talapoin.
+     The use of this screen is an exclusive privilege.
+
+     **** The sectaries of Confucius are no less addicted to
+     astrology than the bonzes.  It is indeed the malady of every
+     eastern nation.
+
+     *5 The Delai-La-Ma, or immense high priest of La, is the
+     same person whom we find mentioned in our old books of
+     travels, by the name of Prester John, from a corruption of
+     the Persian word Djehan, which signifies the world, to which
+     has been prefixed the French word prestre or pretre, priest.
+     Thus the priest world, and the god world are in the Persian
+     idiom the same.
+
+     *6 In a recent expedition the English have found certain
+     idols of the Lamas filled in the inside with sacred pastils
+     from the close stool of the high priest.  Mr. Hastings, and
+     Colonel Pollier, who is now at Lausanne, are living
+     witnesses of this fact, and undoubtedly worthy of credit.
+     It will be very extraordinary to observe, that this
+     disgusting ceremony is connected with a profound
+     philosophical system, to wit, that of the metempsychosis,
+     admitted by the Lamas.  When the Tartars swallow, the sacred
+     relics, which they are accustomed to do, they imitate the
+     laws of the universe, the parts of which are incessantly
+     absorbed and pass into the substance of each other.  It is
+     upon the model of the serpent who devours his tail, and this
+     serpent is Budd and the world.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      After these, a crowd of other banners, which no man could number, came
+      forward into sight; and the genius exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I should never finish the detail of all the systems of faith which divide
+      these nations. Here the hordes of Tartars adore, in the forms of beasts,
+      birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who, under a principal, but
+      indolent god, govern the universe. In their idolatry they call to mind the
+      ancient paganism of the West. You observe the fantastical dress of the
+      Chamans; who, under a robe of leather, hung round with bells and rattles,
+      idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of snakes and heads of owls, invoke,
+      with frantic cries and factitious convulsions, the dead to deceive the
+      living. There, the black tribes of Africa exhibit the same opinions in the
+      worship of their fetiches. See the inhabitant of Juida worship god in a
+      great snake, which, unluckily, the swine delight to eat.* The Teleutean
+      attires his god in a coat of several colors, like a Russian soldier.** The
+      Kamchadale, observing that everything goes wrong in his frozen country,
+      considers god as an old ill-natured man, smoking his pipe and hunting
+      foxes and martins in his sledge.***
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It frequently happens that the swine devour the very
+     species of serpents the negroes adore, which is a source of
+     great desolation in the country.  President de Brosses has
+     given us, in his History of the Fetiche, a curious
+     collection of absurdities of this nature.
+
+     ** The Teleuteans, a Tartar nation, paint God as wearing a
+     vesture of all colors, particularly red and green; and as
+     these constitute the uniform of the Russian dragoons, they
+     compare him to this description of soldiers.  The Egyptians
+     also dress the God World in a garment of every color.
+     Eusebius Proep. Evang. p 115.  The Teleuteans call God Bou,
+     which is only an alteration of Boudd, the God Egg and World.
+
+     *** Consult upon this subject a work entitled, Description
+     des Peuples, soumis a la Russie, and it will be found that
+     the picture is not overcharged.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But you may still behold a hundred savage nations who have none of the
+      ideas of civilized people respecting God, the soul, another world, and a
+      future life; who have formed no system of worship; and who nevertheless
+      enjoy the rich gifts of nature in the irreligion in which she has created
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS CONTRADICTIONS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The various groups having taken their places, an unbounded silence
+      succeeded to the murmurs of the multitude; and the legislator said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chiefs and doctors of mankind! You remark how the nations, living apart,
+      have hitherto followed different paths, each believing its own to be that
+      of truth. If, however, truth is one, and opinions are various, it is
+      evident that some are in error. If, then, such vast numbers of us are in
+      the wrong, who shall dare to say, "I am in the right?" Begin, therefore,
+      by being indulgent in your dissensions. Let us all seek truth as if no one
+      possessed it. The opinions which to this day have governed the world,
+      originating from chance, propagated in obscurity, admitted without
+      discussion, accredited by a love of novelty and imitation, have usurped
+      their empire in a clandestine manner. It is time, if they are well
+      founded, to give a solemn stamp to their certainty, and legitimize their
+      existence. Let us summon them this day to a general scrutiny, let each
+      propound his creed, let the whole assembly be the judge, and let that
+      alone be acknowledged as true which is so for the whole human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, by order of position, the representative of the first standard on
+      the left was allowed to speak:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not permitted to doubt," said their chief, "that our doctrine is
+      the only true and infallible one. FIRST, it is revealed by God himself&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So is ours," cried all the other standards, "and you are not permitted to
+      doubt it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But at least," said the legislator, "you must prove it, for we cannot
+      believe what we do not know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Our doctrine is proved," replied the first standard, "by numerous facts,
+      by a multitude of miracles, by resurrections of the dead, by rivers dried
+      up, by mountains removed&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And we also have numberless miracles," cried all the others, and each
+      began to recount the most incredible things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "THEIR miracles," said the first standard, "are imaginary, or the fictions
+      of the evil spirit, who has deluded them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are yours," said the others, "that are imaginary;" and each group,
+      speaking of itself, cried out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "None but ours are true, all the others are false."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legislator then asked: "Have you living witnesses of the facts?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," replied they all; "the facts are ancient, the witnesses are dead,
+      but their writings remain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Be it so," replied the legislator; "but if they contradict each other,
+      who shall reconcile them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just judge!" cried one of the standards, "the proof that our witnesses
+      have seen the truth is, that they died to confirm it; and our faith is
+      sealed by the blood of martyrs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And ours too," said the other standards; "we have thousands of martyrs
+      who have died in the most excruciating torments, without ever denying the
+      truth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Christians of every sect, the Mussulmans, the Indians, the
+      Japanese, recited endless legends of confessors, martyrs, penitents, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And one of these parties, having denied the martyrology of the others:
+      "Well," said they, "we will then die ourselves to prove the truth of our
+      belief."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And instantly a crowd of men, of every religion and of every sect,
+      presented themselves to suffer the torments of death. Many even began to
+      tear their arms, and to beat their heads and breasts, without discovering
+      any symptom of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the legislator, preventing them&mdash;"O men!" said he, "hear my words
+      with patience. If you die to prove that two and two make four, will your
+      death add any thing to this truth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No!" answered all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if you die to prove that they make five, will that make them five?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again they all answered, "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, then, is your persuasion to prove, if it changes not the existence
+      of things? Truth is one&mdash;your persuasions are various; many of you,
+      therefore, are in error. Now, if man, as is evident, can persuade himself
+      of error, what is the persuasion of man to prove?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If error has its martyrs, what is the sure criterion of truth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If the evil spirit works miracles, what is the distinctive character of
+      God?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Besides, why resort forever to incomplete and insufficient miracles?
+      Instead of changing the course of nature, why not rather change opinions?
+      Why murder and terrify men, instead of instructing and correcting them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O credulous, but opinionated mortals! none of us know what was done
+      yesterday, what is doing to-day even under our eyes; and we swear to what
+      was done two thousand years ago!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, the weakness and yet the pride of men! The laws of nature are
+      unchangeable and profound&mdash;our minds are full of illusion and
+      frivolity&mdash;and yet we would comprehend every thing&mdash;determine
+      every thing! Forgetting that it is easier for the whole human race to be
+      in error, than to change the nature of the smallest atom."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then," said one of the doctors, "let us lay aside the evidence of
+      fact, since it is uncertain; let us come to argument&mdash;to the proofs
+      inherent in the doctrine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came forward, with a look of confidence, an Iman of the law of
+      Mahomet; and, having advanced into the circle, turned towards Mecca, and
+      recited with great fervor his confession of faith. "Praise be to God,"
+      said he, with a solemn and imposing voice, "the light shines with full
+      evidence, and the truth has no need of examination." Then, showing the
+      Koran, he exclaimed: "Here is the light of truth in its proper essence.
+      There is no doubt in this book. It conducts with safety him who walks in
+      darkness, and who receives without discussion the divine word which
+      descended on the prophet, to save the simple and confound the wise. God
+      has established Mahomet his minister on earth; he has given him the world,
+      that he may subdue with the sword whoever shall refuse to receive his law.
+      Infidels dispute, and will not believe; their obduracy comes from God, who
+      has hardened their hearts to deliver them to dreadful punishments."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This passage contains the sense and nearly the very words
+     of the first chapter of the Koran; and the reader will
+     observe in general, that, in the pictures that follow, the
+     writer has endeavored to give as accurately as possible the
+     letter and spirit of the opinions of each party.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words a violent murmur arose on all sides, and silenced the
+      speaker. "Who is this man," cried all the groups, "who thus insults us
+      without a cause? What right has he to impose his creed on us as conqueror
+      and tyrant? Has not God endowed us, as well as him, with eyes,
+      understanding, and reason? And have we not an equal right to use them, in
+      choosing what to believe and what to reject? If he attacks us, shall we
+      not defend ourselves? If he likes to believe without examination, must we
+      therefore not examine before we believe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what is this luminous doctrine that fears the light? What is this
+      apostle of a God of clemency, who preaches nothing but murder and carnage?
+      What is this God of justice, who punishes blindness which he himself has
+      made? If violence and persecution are the arguments of truth, are
+      gentleness and charity the signs of falsehood?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man then advancing from a neighboring group, said to the Iman:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Admitting that Mahomet is the apostle of the best doctrine,&mdash;the
+      prophet of the true religion,&mdash;have the goodness at least to tell us
+      whether, in the practice of his doctrine, we are to follow his son-in-law
+      Ali, or his vicars Omar and Aboubekre?"*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the two grand parties into which the Mussulmans
+     are divided.  The Turks have embraced the second, the
+     Persians the first.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of these names a terrible schism arose among the Mussulmans
+      themselves. The partisans of Ali and those of Omar, calling out heretics
+      and blasphemers, loaded each other with execrations. The quarrel became so
+      violent that neighboring groups were obliged to interfere, to prevent
+      their coming to blows. At length, tranquillity being somewhat restored,
+      the legislator said to the Imans:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "See the consequences of your principles! If you yourselves were to carry
+      them into practice, you would destroy each other to the last man. Is it
+      not the first law of God that man should live?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, addressing himself to the other groups, he continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Doubtless this intolerant and exclusive spirit shocks every idea of
+      justice, and overturns the whole foundation of morals and society; but
+      before we totally reject this code of doctrine, is it not proper to hear
+      some of its dogmas? Let us not pronounce on the forms, without having some
+      knowledge of the substance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The groups having consented, the Iman began to expound how God, having
+      sent to the nations lost in idolatry twenty-four thousand prophets, had
+      finally sent the last, the seal and perfection of all, Mahomet; on whom be
+      the salvation of peace: how, to prevent the divine word from being any
+      longer perverted by infidels, the supreme goodness had itself written the
+      pages of the Koran. Then, explaining the particular dogmas of Islamism,
+      the Iman unfolded how the Koran, partaking of the divine nature, was
+      uncreated and eternal, like its author: how it had been sent leaf by leaf,
+      in twenty-four thousand nocturnal apparitions of the angel Gabriel: how
+      the angel announced himself by a gentle knocking, which threw the prophet
+      into a cold sweat: how in the vision of one night he had travelled over
+      ninety heavens, riding on the beast Borack, half horse and half woman:
+      how, endowed with the gift of miracles, he walked in the sunshine without
+      a shadow, turned dry trees to green, filled wells and cisterns with water,
+      and split in two the body of the moon: how, by divine command, Mahomet had
+      propagated, sword in hand, the religion the most worthy of God by its
+      sublimity, and the most proper for men by the simplicity of its practice;
+      since it consisted in only eight or ten points:&mdash;To profess the unity
+      of God; to acknowledge Mahomet as his only prophet; to pray five times a
+      day; to fast one month in the year; to go to Mecca once in our life; to
+      pay the tenth of all we possess; to drink no wine; to eat no pork; and to
+      make war upon the infidels.* He taught that by these means every Mussulman
+      becoming himself an apostle and martyr, should enjoy in this world many
+      blessings; and at his death, his soul, weighed in the balance of works,
+      and absolved by the two black angels, should pass the infernal pit on the
+      bridge as narrow as a hair and as sharp as the edge of a sword, and should
+      finally be received to a region of delight, which is watered with rivers
+      of milk and honey, and embalmed in all the perfumes of India and Arabia;
+      and where the celestial Houris&mdash;virgins always chaste&mdash;are
+      eternally crowning with repeated favors the elect of God, who preserve an
+      eternal youth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Whatever the advocates for the philosophy and civilization
+     of the Turks may assert, to make war upon infidels is
+     considered by them as an obligatory precept and an act of
+     religion.  See Reland de Relig. Mahom.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words an involuntary smile was seen on all their lips; and the
+      various groups, reasoning on these articles of faith, exclaimed with one
+      voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it possible that reasonable beings can admit such reveries? Would you
+      not think it a chapter from The Thousand and One Nights?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Samoyede advanced into the circle: "The paradise of Mahomet," said he,
+      "appears to me very good; but one of the means of gaining it is
+      embarrassing: for if we must neither eat nor drink between the rising and
+      setting sun, as he has ordered, how are we to practise that fast in my
+      country, where the sun continues above the horizon six months without
+      setting?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is impossible," cried all the Mussulman doctors, to support the
+      teaching of the prophet; but a hundred nations having attested the fact,
+      the infallibility of Mahomet could not but receive a severe shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is singular," said an European, "that God should be constantly
+      revealing what takes place in heaven, without ever instructing us what is
+      doing on the earth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For my part," said an American, "I find a great difficulty in the
+      pilgrimage. For suppose twenty-five years to a generation, and only a
+      hundred millions of males on the globe,&mdash;each being obliged to go to
+      Mecca once in his life,&mdash;there must be four millions a year on the
+      journey; and as it would be impracticable for them to return the same
+      year, the numbers would be doubled&mdash;that is, eight millions: where
+      would you find provisions, lodgings, water, vessels, for this universal
+      procession? Here must be miracles indeed!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The proof," said a catholic doctor, "that the religion of Mahomet is not
+      revealed, is that the greater part of the ideas which serve for its basis
+      existed a long time before, and that it is only a confused mixture of
+      truths disfigured and taken from our holy religion and from that of the
+      Jews; which an ambitious man has made to serve his projects of domination,
+      and his worldly views. Look through his book; you will see nothing there
+      but the histories of the Bible and the Gospel travestied into absurd
+      fables&mdash;into a tissue of vague and contradictory declamations, and
+      ridiculous or dangerous precepts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Analyze the spirit of these precepts, and the conduct of their apostle;
+      you will find there an artful and audacious character, which, to obtain
+      its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of the people it had to
+      govern. It is speaking to simple men, and it entertains them with
+      miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and it flatters their vanity by
+      despising science; they are poor and rapacious, and it excites their
+      cupidity by the hope of pillage; having nothing at first to give them on
+      earth, it tells them of treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire
+      death as a supreme good; it threatens cowards with hell; it rewards the
+      brave with paradise; it sustains the weak with the opinion of fatality; in
+      short, it produces the attachment it wants by all the allurements of
+      sense, and all the power of the passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How different is the character of our religion! and how completely does
+      its empire, founded on the counteraction of the natural temper, and the
+      mortification of all our passions, prove its divine origin! How forcibly
+      does its mild and compassionate morality, its affections altogether
+      spiritual, attest its emanation from God! Many of its doctrines, it is
+      true, soar above the reach of the understanding, and impose on reason a
+      respectful silence; but this more fully demonstrates its revelation, since
+      the human mind could never have imagined such mysteries."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, holding the Bible in one hand and the four Gospels in the other, the
+      doctor began to relate that, in the beginning, God, after passing an
+      eternity in idleness, took the resolution, without any known cause, of
+      making the world out of nothing; that having created the whole universe in
+      six days, he found himself fatigued on the seventh; that having placed the
+      first human pair in a garden of delights, to make them completely happy,
+      he forbade their tasting a particular fruit which he placed within their
+      reach; that these first parents, having yielded to the temptation, all
+      their race (which were not yet born) had been condemned to bear the
+      penalty of a fault which they had not committed; that, after having left
+      the human race to damn themselves for four or five thousand years, this
+      God of mercy ordered a well beloved son, whom he had engendered without a
+      mother, and who was as old as himself, to go and be put to death on the
+      earth; and this for the salvation of mankind; of whom much the greater
+      portion, nevertheless, have ever since continued in the way of perdition;
+      that to remedy this new difficulty, this same God, born of a virgin,
+      having died and risen from the dead, assumes a new existence every day,
+      and in the form of a piece of bread, multiplies himself by millions at the
+      voice of one of the basest of men. Then, passing on to the doctrine of the
+      sacraments, he was going to treat at large on the power of absolution and
+      reprobation, of the means of purging all sins by a little water and a few
+      words, when, uttering the words indulgence, power of the pope, sufficient
+      grace, and efficacious grace, he was interrupted by a thousand cries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a horrible abuse," cried the Lutherans, "to pretend to remit sins
+      for money."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The notion of the real presence," cried the Calvinists, "is contrary to
+      the text of the Gospel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The pope has no right to decide anything of himself," cried the
+      Jansenists; and thirty other sects rising up, and accusing each other of
+      heresies and errors, it was no longer possible to hear anything
+      distinctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence being at last restored, the Mussulmans observed to the legislator:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Since you have rejected our doctrine as containing things incredible, can
+      you admit that of the Christians? Is not theirs still more contrary to
+      common sense and justice? A God, immaterial and infinite, to become a man!
+      to have a son as old as himself! This god-man to become bread, to be eaten
+      and digested! Have we any thing equal to that? Have the Christians an
+      exclusive right of setting up a blind faith? And will you grant them
+      privileges of belief to our detriment?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some savage tribes then advanced: "What!" said they, "because a man and
+      woman ate an apple six thousand years ago, all the human race are damned?
+      And you call God just? What tyrant ever rendered children responsible for
+      the faults of their fathers? What man can answer for the actions of
+      another? Does not this overturn every idea of justice and of reason?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Others exclaimed: "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these pretended
+      facts? Can we receive them without examining the evidence? The least
+      action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are ordered to
+      believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Jewish Rabbin then addressing the assembly, said: "As to the fundamental
+      facts, we are sureties; but with regard to their form and their
+      application, the case is different, and the Christians are here condemned
+      by their own arguments. For they cannot deny that we are the original
+      source from which they are derived&mdash;the primitive stock on which they
+      are grafted; and hence the reasoning is very short: Either our law is from
+      God, and then theirs is a heresy, since it differs from ours, or our law
+      is not from God, and then theirs falls at the same time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you must make this distinction," replied the Christian: "Your law is
+      from God as typical and preparative, but not as final and absolute: you
+      are the image of which we are the substance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We know," replied the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but they
+      are absolutely gratuitous and false. Your system turns altogether on
+      mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical interpretations.* With
+      violent distortions on the letter of our books, you substitute the most
+      chimerical ideas for the true ones, and find in them whatever pleases you;
+      as a roving imagination will find figures in the clouds. Thus you have
+      made a spiritual Messiah of that which, in the spirit of our prophets, is
+      only a temporal king. You have made a redemption of the human race out of
+      the simple re-establishment of our nation. Your conception of the Virgin
+      is founded on a single phrase, of which you have changed the meaning. Thus
+      you make from our Scriptures whatever your fancy dictates; you even find
+      there your trinity; though there is not a word that has the most distant
+      allusion to such a thing; and it is an invention of profane writers,
+      admitted into your system with a host of other opinions, of every religion
+      and of every sect, during the anarchy of the first three centuries of your
+      era."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * When we read the Fathers of the church, and see upon what
+     arguments they have built the edifice of religion, we are
+     inexpressibly astonished with their credulity or their
+     knavery: but allegory was the rage of that period; the
+     Pagans employed it to explain the actions of their gods, and
+     the Christians acted in the same spirit when they employed
+     it after their fashion.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, the Christian doctors, crying sacrilege and blasphemy,
+      sprang forward in a transport of fury to fall upon the Jew; and a troop of
+      monks, in motley dresses of black and white, advanced with a standard on
+      which were painted pincers, gridirons, lighted fagots, and the words
+      Justice, Charity, Mercy.* "It is necessary," said they, "to make an
+      example of these impious wretches, and burn them for the glory of God."
+      They began even to prepare the pile, when a Mussulman answered in a strain
+      of irony:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This, then, is that religion of peace, that meek and beneficent system
+      which you so much extol! This is that evangelical charity which combats
+      infidelity with persuasive mildness, and repays injuries with patience! Ye
+      hypocrites! It is thus that you deceive mankind&mdash;thus that you
+      propagate your accursed errors! When you were weak, you preached liberty,
+      toleration, peace; when you are strong, you practise persecution and
+      violence&mdash;"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This description answers exactly to the banner of the
+     Inquisition of Spanish Jacobins.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And he was going to begin the history of the wars and slaughters of
+      Christianity, when the legislator, demanding silence, suspended this scene
+      of discord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The monks, affecting a tone of meekness and humility, exclaimed: "It is
+      not ourselves that we would avenge; it is the cause of God; it is the
+      glory of God that we defend."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what right have you, more than we," said the Imans, "to constitute
+      yourselves the representatives of God? Have you privileges that we have
+      not? Are you not men like us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To defend God," said another group, "to pretend to avenge him, is to
+      insult his wisdom and his power. Does he not know, better than men, what
+      befits his dignity?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," replied the monks, "but his ways are secret."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it remains for you to prove," said the Rabbins, "that you have the
+      exclusive privilege of understanding them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, proud of finding supporters to their cause, the Jews thought that
+      the books of Moses were going to be triumphant, when the Mobed (high
+      priest) of the Parses obtained leave to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have heard," said he, "the account of the Jews and Christians of the
+      origin of the world; and, though greatly mutilated, we find in it some
+      facts which we admit. But we deny that they are to be attributed to the
+      legislator of the Hebrews. It was not he who made known to men these
+      sublime truths, these celestial events. It was not to him that God
+      revealed them, but to our holy prophet Zoroaster: and the proof of this is
+      in the very books that they refer to. Examine with attention the laws, the
+      ceremonies, the precepts established by Moses in those books; you will not
+      find the slightest indication, either expressed or understood, of what
+      constitutes the basis of the Jewish and Christian theology. You nowhere
+      find the least trace of the immortality of the soul, or of a future life,
+      or of heaven, or of hell, or of the revolt of the principal angel, author
+      of the evils of the human race. These ideas were not known to Moses, and
+      the reason is very obvious: it was not till four centuries afterwards that
+      Zoroaster first evangelized them in Asia.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceive
+     myself to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400
+     years before Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not till
+      after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first kings, that
+      these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then their appearance was
+      obscure and gradual, according to the progress of the political relations
+      between your ancestors and ours. It was especially when, having been
+      conquered by the kings of Nineveh and Babylon and transported to the banks
+      of the Tygris and the Euphrates, where they resided for three successive
+      generations, that they imbibed manners and opinions which had been
+      rejected as contrary to their law. When our king Cyrus had delivered them
+      from slavery, their heart was won to us by gratitude; they became our
+      disciples and imitators; and they admitted our dogmas in the revision of
+      their books;* for your Genesis, in particular, was never the work of
+      Moses, but a compilation drawn up after the return from the Babylonian
+      captivity, in which are inserted the Chaldean opinions of the origin of
+      the world.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the first periods of the Christian church, not only the
+     most learned of those who have since been denominated
+     heretics, but many of the orthodox conceived Moses to have
+     written neither the law nor the Pentateuch, but that the
+     work was a compilation made by the elders of the people and
+     the Seventy, who, after the death of Moses, collected his
+     scattered ordinances, and mixed with them things that were
+     extraneous; similar to what happened as to the Koran of
+     Mahomet.  See Les Clementines, Homel. 2. sect. 51. and
+     Homel. 3. sect. 42.
+
+     Modern critics, more enlightened or more attentive than the
+     ancients, have found in Genesis in particular, marks of its
+     having been composed on the return from the captivity; but
+     the principal proofs have escaped them.  These I mean to
+     exhibit in an analysis of the book of Genesis, in which I
+     shall demonstrate that the tenth chapter, among others,
+     which treats of the pretended generations of the man called
+     Noah, is a real geographical picture of the world, as it was
+     known to the Hebrews at the epoch of the captivity, which
+     was bounded by Greece or Hellas at the West, mount Caucasus
+     at the North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egypt
+     at the South. All the pretended personages from Adam to
+     Abraham, or his father Terah, are mythological beings,
+     stars, constellations, countries. Adam is Bootes: Noah is
+     Osiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to say Capricorn,
+     or the celestial Genius that opened the year.  The
+     Alexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrod
+     was supposed by the Persians to be their first king, as
+     having invented the art of hunting, and that he was
+     translated into heaven, where he appears under the name of
+     Orion.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "At first the pure followers of the law, opposing to the emigrants the
+      letter of the text and the absolute silence of the prophet, endeavored to
+      repel these innovations; but they ultimately prevailed, and our doctrine,
+      modified by your ideas, gave rise to a new sect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You expected a king to restore your political independence; we announced
+      a God to regenerate and save mankind. From this combination of ideas, your
+      Essenians laid the foundation of Christianity: and whatever your
+      pretensions may be, Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your system
+      of spiritual beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting from
+      the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as they are
+      found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in six gahans,*
+      the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a divine place, under
+      the reign of perfect good; the introduction of evil into the world by the
+      great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the revolt and battles of the Genius of
+      evil and darkness against Ormuzd, God of good and of light; the division
+      of the angels into white and black, or good and bad; their hierarchal
+      orders, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end of the world
+      at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the lamb, the
+      regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the regions of
+      happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the bridge of the
+      bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of Mithras; the
+      unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism of new-born
+      children; the unction of the dead; the confession of sins; and, in a word,
+      he recited so many things analagous to those of the three preceding
+      religions, that his discourse seemed like a commentary or a continuation
+      of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods of
+     time. These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousands
+     of God or of light, meaning the six summer months.  In the
+     first, say the Persians, God created (arranged in order) the
+     heavens; in the second the waters; in the third the earth;
+     in the fourth trees; in the fifth animals; and in the sixth
+     man; corresponding with the account in Genesis.  For
+     particulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry Lord, ch. 2, on the
+     religion of the ancient Persians.  It is remarkable that the
+     same tradition is found in the sacred books of the
+     Etrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all things
+     had comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelve
+     thousand years, which period was distributed to the twelve
+     houses of the sun.  In the first thousand, God made heaven
+     and earth; in the second the firmament; in the third the sea
+     and the waters; in the fourth the sun, moon and stars; in
+     the fifth the souls of animals, birds, and reptiles; in the
+     sixth man.  See Suidas, at the word Tyrrhena; which shows
+     first the identity of their theological and astrological
+     opinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather confusion
+     of ideas, between absolute and systematical creation; that
+     is, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature,
+     which were at first the period of the year, and afterwards
+     periods of 60, of 600, of 25,000, of 36,000 and of 432,000
+     years.
+
+     ** The modern Parses and the ancient Mithriacs, who are the
+     same sect, observe all the Christian sacraments, even the
+     laying on of hands in confirmation.  The priest of Mithra,
+     says Tertullian, (de Proescriptione, ch. 40) promises
+     absolution from sin on confession and baptism; and, if I
+     rightly remember, Mithra marks his soldiers in the forehead,
+     with the chrism called in the Egyptian Kouphi; he celebrates
+     the sacrifice of bread, which is the resurrection, and
+     presents the crown to his followers, menacing them at the
+     same time with the sword, etc.
+
+     In these mysteries they tried the courage of the initiated
+     with a thousand terrors, presenting fire to his face, a
+     sword to his breast, etc.; they also offered him a crown,
+     which he refused, saying, God is my crown: and this crown is
+     to be seen in the celestial sphere by the side of Bootes.
+     The personages in these mysteries were distinguished by the
+     names of the animal constellations.  The ceremony of mass is
+     nothing more than an imitation of these mysteries and those
+     of Eleusis.  The benediction, the Lord be with you, is a
+     literal translation of the formula of admission chou-k, am,
+     p-ka.  See Beausob. Hist. Du Manicheisme, vol. ii.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out against this
+      recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and worshippers of fire,
+      charged them with falsehood, interpolations, falsification of facts; and
+      there arose a violent dispute as to the dates of the events, their order
+      and succession, the origin of the doctrines, their transmission from
+      nation to nation, the authenticity of the books on which they are founded,
+      the epoch of their composition, the character of their compilers, and the
+      validity of their testimony. And the various parties, pointing out
+      reciprocally to each other, the contradictions, improbabilities, and
+      forgeries, accused one another of having established their belief on
+      popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd fables, invented without
+      discernment, and admitted without examination by unknown, partial, or
+      ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown epochs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various Indian
+      sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions of the Jews and
+      the Parses, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly set
+      themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the depositaries of
+      its archives? To hear their calculations of five or six thousand years, it
+      would seem that the world was of yesterday; whereas our monuments prove a
+      duration of many thousands of centuries. And for what reason are their
+      books to be preferred to ours? Are then the Vedes, the Chastres, and the
+      Pourans inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the Zadders?* And is
+      not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as valid as that of the
+      fathers and the gods of the West? Ah! if it were permitted to reveal our
+      mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did not justly conceal them
+      from every eye!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos; they are sometimes written
+      Vedams, Pouranams, Chastrans, because the Hindoos, like the Persians, are
+      accustomed to give a nasal sound to the terminations of their words, which
+      we represent by the affixes on and an, and the Portuguese by the affixes
+      om and am. Many of these books have been translated, thanks to the liberal
+      spirit of Mr. Hastings, who has founded at Calcutta a literary society,
+      and a printing press. At the same time, however, that we express our
+      gratitude to this society, we must be permitted to complain of its
+      exclusive spirit; the number of copies printed of each book being such as
+      it is impossible to purchase them even in England; they are wholly in the
+      hands of the East India proprietors. Scarcely even is the Asiatic
+      Miscellany known in Europe; and a man must be very learned in oriental
+      antiquity before he so much as hears of the Jones's, the Wilkins's, and
+      the Halhed's, etc. As to the sacred books of the Hindoos, all that are yet
+      in our hands are the Bhagvat Geeta, the Ezour-Vedam, the Bagavadam, and
+      certain fragments of the Chastres printed at the end of the Bhagvat Geeta.
+      These books are in Indostan what the Old and New Testament are in
+      Christendom, the Koran in Turkey, the Zadder and the Zendavesta among the
+      Parses, etc. When I have taken an extensive survey of their contents, I
+      have sometimes asked myself, what would be the loss to the human race if a
+      new Omar condemned them to the flames; and, unable to discover any
+      mischief that would ensue, I call the imaginary chest that contains them,
+      the box of Pandora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bramins stopping short at these words: "How can we admit your
+      doctrine," said the legislator, "if you will not make it known? And how
+      did its first authors propagate it, when, being alone possessed of it,
+      their own people were to them profane? Did heaven reveal it to be kept a
+      secret?"*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Vedas or Vedams are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos,
+     as the Bibles with us.  They are three in number; the Rick
+     Veda, the Yadjour Veda, and the Sama Veda; they are so
+     scarce in India, that the English could with great
+     difficulty find an original one, of which a copy is
+     deposited in the British Museum; they who reckon four Vedas,
+     include among them the Attar Veda, concerning ceremonies,
+     but which is lost.  There are besides commentaries named
+     Upanishada, one of which was published by Anquetil du Peron,
+     and entitled Oupnekhat, a curious work.  The date of these
+     books is more than twenty-five centuries prior to our era;
+     their contents prove that all the reveries of the Greek
+     metaphysicians come from India and Egypt.  Since the year
+     1788, the learned men of England are working in India a mine
+     of literature totally unknown in Europe, and which proves
+     that the civilization of India ascends to a very remote
+     antiquity.  After the Vedas come the Chastras amounting to
+     six.  They treat of theology and the Sciences. Afterwards
+     eighteen Pouranas, treating of Mythology and History. See
+     the Bahgouet-guita, the Baga Vadam, and the Ezour-Vedam,
+     etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the Bramins persisting in their silence: "Let them have the honor of
+      the secret," said a European: "Their doctrine is now divulged; we have
+      their books, and I can give you the substance of them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then beginning with an abstract of the four Vedes, the eighteen Pourans,
+      and the five or six Chastres, he recounted how a being, infinite, eternal,
+      immaterial and round, after having passed an eternity in
+      self-contemplation, and determining at last to manifest himself, separated
+      the male and female faculties which were in him, and performed an act of
+      generation, of which the Lingam remains an emblem; how that first act gave
+      birth to three divine powers, Brama, Bichen or Vichenou, and Chib or
+      Chiven;* whose functions were&mdash;the first to create, the second to
+      preserve, and the third to destroy, or change the form of the universe.
+      Then, detailing the history of their operations and adventures, he
+      explained how Brama, proud of having created the world and the eight
+      bobouns, or spheres of probation, thought himself superior to Chib, his
+      equal; how his pride brought on a battle between them, in which these
+      celestial globes were crushed like a basket of eggs; how Brama, vanquished
+      in this conflict, was reduced to serve as a pedestal to Chib,
+      metamorphosed into a Lingam; how Vichenou, the god mediator, has taken at
+      different times to preserve the world, nine mortal forms of animals; how
+      first, in shape of a fish, he saved from the universal deluge a family who
+      repeopled the earth; how afterwards, in the form of a tortoise,** he drew
+      from the sea of milk the mountain Mandreguiri (the pole); then, becoming a
+      boar, he tore the belly of the giant Ereuniachessen, who was drowning the
+      earth in the abyss of Djole, from whence he drew it out with his tusks;
+      how, becoming incarnate in a black shepherd, and under the name of
+      Christ-en, he delivered the world of the enormous serpent Calengem, and
+      then crushed his head, after having been wounded by him in the heel.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These names are differently pronounced according to the
+     different dialects; thus they say Birmah, Bremma, Brouma.
+     Bichen has been turned into Vichen by the easy exchange of a
+     B for a V, and into Vichenou by means of a grammatical
+     affix.  In the same manner Chib, which is synonymous with
+     Satan, and signifies adversary, is frequently written Chiba
+     and Chiv-en; he is called also Rouder and Routr-en, that is,
+     the destroyer.
+
+     ** This is the constellation testudo, or the lyre, which was
+     at first a tortoise, on account of its slow motion round the
+     Pole; then a lyre, because it is the shell of this reptile
+     on which the strings of the lyre are mounted.  See an
+     excellent memoir of M. Dupuis sur l'Origine des
+     Constellations.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, passing on to the history of the secondary Genii, he related how the
+      Eternal, to display his own glory, created various orders of angels, whose
+      business it was to sing his praises and to direct the universe; how a part
+      of these angels revolted under the guidance of an ambitious chief, who
+      strove to usurp the power of God, and to govern all; how God plunged them
+      into a world of darkness, there to undergo the punishment for their
+      crimes; how at last, touched with compassion, he consented to release
+      them, to receive them into favor, after they should undergo a long series
+      of probations; how, after creating for this purpose fifteen orbits or
+      regions of planets, and peopling them with bodies, he ordered these rebel
+      angels to undergo in them eighty-seven transmigrations; he then explained
+      how souls, thus purified, returned to the first source, to the ocean of
+      life and animation from which they had proceeded; and since all living
+      creatures contain portions of this universal soul, he taught how criminal
+      it was to deprive them of it. He was finally proceeding to explain the
+      rites and ceremonies, when, speaking of offerings and libations of milk
+      and butter made to gods of copper and wood, and then of purifications by
+      the dung and urine of cows, there arose a universal murmur, mixed with
+      peals of laughter, which interrupted the orator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each of the different groups began to reason on that religion: "They are
+      idolators," said the Mussulmans; "and should be exterminated." "They are
+      deranged in their intellect," said the followers of Confucius; "we must
+      try to cure them." "What ridiculous gods," said others, "are these
+      puppets, besmeared with grease and smoke! Are gods to be washed like dirty
+      children, from whom you must brush away the flies, which, attracted by
+      honey, are fouling them with their excrements!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a Bramin exclaimed with indignation: "These are profound mysteries,&mdash;emblems
+      of truth, which you are not worthy to hear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And in what respect are you more worthy than we?" exclaimed a Lama of
+      Tibet. "Is it because you pretend to have issued from the head of Brama,
+      and the rest of the human race from the less noble parts of his body? But
+      to support the pride of your distinctions of origin and castes, prove to
+      us in the first place that you are different from other men; establish, in
+      the next place, as historical facts, the allegories which you relate; show
+      us, indeed, that you are the authors of all this doctrine; for we will
+      demonstrate, if necessary, that you have only stolen and disfigured it;
+      that you are only the imitators of the ancient paganism of the West; to
+      which, by an ill assorted mixture, you have allied the pure and spiritual
+      doctrine of our gods&mdash;a doctrine totally detached from the senses,
+      and entirely unknown on earth till Beddou taught it to the nations."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * All the ancient opinions of the Egyptian and Grecian
+     theologians are to be found in India, and they appear to
+     have been introduced, by means of the commerce of Arabia and
+     the vicinity of Persia, time immemorial.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A number of groups having asked what was this doctrine, and who was this
+      god, of whom the greater part had never heard the name, the Lama resumed
+      and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the beginning, a sole-existent and self-existent God, having passed an
+      eternity in the contemplation of his own being, resolved to manifest his
+      perfections out of himself, and created the matter of the world. The four
+      elements being produced, but still in a state of confusion, he breathed on
+      the face of the waters, which swelled like an immense bubble in form of an
+      egg, which unfolding, became the vault or orb of heaven, enclosing the
+      world.* Having made the earth, and the bodies of animals, this God,
+      essence of motion, imparted to them a part of his own being to animate
+      them; for this reason, the soul of everything that breathes being a
+      portion of the universal soul, no one of them can perish; they only change
+      their form and mould in passing successively into different bodies. Of all
+      these forms, the one most pleasing to God is that of man, as most
+      resembling his own perfections. When a man, by an absolute disengagement
+      from his senses, is wholly absorbed in self-contemplation, he then
+      discovers the divinity, and becomes himself God. Of all the incarnations
+      of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest and most solemn was
+      that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in Kachemire, under the
+      name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of self-denial and
+      self-annihilation."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This cosmogony of the Lamas, the Bonzes, and even the
+     Bramins, as Henry Lord asserts, is literally that of the
+     ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians, says Porphyry, call Kneph,
+     intelligence, or efficient cause of the universe.  They
+     relate that this God vomited an egg, from which was produced
+     another God named Phtha or Vulcan, (igneous principle or the
+     sun) and they add, that this egg is the world.  Euseb.
+     Proep. Evang. p. 115.
+
+     They represent, says the same author in another place, the
+     God Kneph, or efficient cause, under the form of a man in
+     deep blue (the color of the sky) having in his hand a
+     sceptre, a belt round his body, and a small bonnet royal of
+     light feathers on his head, to denote how very subtile and
+     fugacious the idea of that being is. Upon which I shall
+     observe that Kneph in Hebrew signifies a wing, a feather,
+     and that this color of sky-blue is to be found in the
+     majority of the Indian Gods, and is, under the name of
+     Narayan, one of their most distinguishing epithets.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, pursuing the history of Fot, the Lama continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was born from the right flank of a virgin of royal blood, who did not
+      cease to be a virgin for having become a mother; that the king of the
+      country, uneasy at his birth, wished to destroy him, and for this purpose
+      ordered a massacre of all the males born at that period, that being saved
+      by shepherds, Beddou lived in the desert till the age of thirty years, at
+      which time he began his mission to enlighten men and cast out devils; that
+      he performed a multitude of the most astonishing miracles; that he spent
+      his life in fasting and severe penitence, and at his death, bequeathed to
+      his disciples a book containing his doctrines."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Lama began to read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He that leaveth his father and mother to follow me," says Fot, "becomes a
+      perfect Samanean (a heavenly man).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He that practices my precepts to the fourth degree of perfection,
+      acquires the faculty of flying in the air, of moving heaven and earth, of
+      prolonging or shortening his life (rising from the dead).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Samanean despises riches, and uses only what is strictly necessary;
+      he mortifies his body, silences his passions, desires nothing, forms no
+      attachments, meditates my doctrines without ceasing, endures injuries with
+      patience, and bears no malice to his neighbor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Heaven and earth shall perish," says Fot: "despise therefore your bodies,
+      which are composed of the four perishable elements, and think only of your
+      immortal soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Listen not to the flesh: fear and sorrow spring from the passions: stifle
+      the passions and you destroy fear and sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whoever dies without having embraced my religion," says Fot, "returns
+      among men, until he embraces it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lama was going on with his reading, when the Christians interrupted
+      him, crying out that this was their own religion adulterated&mdash;that
+      Fot was no other than Jesus himself disfigured, and that the Lamas were
+      the Nestorians and the Manicheans disguised and bastardized.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This is asserted by our missionaries, and among others by
+     Georgi in his unfinished work of the Thibetan alphabet: but
+     if it can be proved that the Manicheans were but
+     plagiarists, and the ignorant echo of a doctrine that
+     existed fifteen hundred years before them, what becomes of
+     the declarations of Georgi?  See upon this subject, Beausob.
+     Hist. du Manicheisme.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the Lama, supported by the Chamans, Bonzes, Gonnis, Talapoins of Siam,
+      of Ceylon, of Japan, and of China, proved to the Christians, even from
+      their own authors, that the doctrine of the Samaneans was known through
+      the East more than a thousand years before the Christian era; that their
+      name was cited before the time of Alexander, and that Boutta, or Beddou,
+      was known before Jesus.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The eastern writers in general agree in placing the birth
+     of Beddou 1027 years before Jesus Christ, which makes him
+     the contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion,
+     they confound him.  It is certain that his doctrine
+     notoriously existed at that epoch; it is found entire in
+     that of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the Indian gymnosophists.
+     But the gymnosophists are cited at the time of Alexander as
+     an ancient sect already divided into Brachmans and
+     Samaneans.  See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien.
+     Pythagoras lived in the ninth century before Jesus Christ;
+     See chronology of the twelve ages; and Orpheus is of still
+     greater antiquity.  If, as is the case, the doctrine of
+     Pythagoras and that of Orpheus are of Egyptian origin, that
+     of Beddou goes back to the common source; and in reality the
+     Egyptian priests recite, that Hermes as he was dying said:
+     "I have hitherto lived an exile from my country, to which I
+     now return.  Weep not for me, I ascend to the celestial
+     abode where each of you will follow in his turn: there God
+     is: this life is only death."&mdash;Chalcidius in Thinaeum.
+
+     Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, the
+     sectaries of Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans.  Farther, Hermes
+     is no other than Beddou himself; for among the Indians,
+     Chinese, Lamas, etc., the planet Mercury and the
+     corresponding day of the week (Wednesday) bear the name of
+     Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rank
+     of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his
+     pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that
+     Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who,
+     placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year;
+     hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius,
+     and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius,
+     having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence his
+     serpent, which is the Hydra, emblem of the Nile (Hydor,
+     humidity); and from this serpent he seems to have derived
+     his name of Hermes, as Remes (with a schin) in the oriental
+     languages, signifies serpent.  Now Beddou and Hermes being
+     the same names, it is manifest of what antiquity is the
+     system ascribed to the former.  As to the name of Samanean,
+     it is precisely that of Chaman, still preserved in Tartary,
+     China, and India.  The interpretation given to it is, man of
+     the woods, a hermit mortifying the flesh, such being the
+     characteristic of this sect; but its literal meaning is,
+     celestial (Samaoui) and explains the system of those who are
+     called by it.&mdash;The system is the same as that of the
+     sectaries of Orpheus, of the Essenians, of the ancient
+     Anchorets of Persia, and the whole eastern country.  See
+     Porphyry, de Abstin. Animal.
+
+     These celestial and penitent men carried in India their
+     insanity to such an extreme as to wish not to touch the
+     earth, and they accordingly lived in cages suspended from
+     the trees, where the people, whose admiration was not less
+     absurd, brought them provisions.  During the night there
+     were frequent robberies, rapes and murders, and it was at
+     length discovered that they were committed by those men,
+     who, descending from their cages, thus indemnified
+     themselves for their restraint during the day.  The Bramins,
+     their rivals, embraced the opportunity of exterminating
+     them; and from that time their name in India has been
+     synonymous with hypocrite.  See Hist. de la Chine, in 5
+     vols. quarto, at the note page 30; Hist. de Huns, 2 vols.
+     and preface to the Ezour-Vedam.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, retorting the pretensions of the Christians against themselves:
+      "Prove to us," said the Lama, "that you are not Samaneans degenerated, and
+      that the man you make the author of your sect is not Fot himself
+      disguised. Prove to us by historical facts that he even existed at the
+      epoch you pretend; for, it being destitute of authentic testimony,* we
+      absolutely deny it; and we maintain that your very gospels are only the
+      books of some Mithriacs of Persia, and the Essenians of Syria, who were a
+      branch of reformed Samaneans."**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * There are absolutely no other monuments of the existence
+     of Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus
+     (Antiq. Jud. lib. 18, c.3,) a single phrase in Tacitus
+     (Annal. lib. 15, c. 44), and the Gospels.  But the passage
+     in Josephus is unanimously acknowledged to be apocryphal,
+     and to have been interpolated towards the close of the third
+     century, (See Trad. de joseph, par M. Gillet); and that of
+     Tacitus in so vague and so evidently taken from the
+     deposition of the Christians before the tribunals, that it
+     may be ranked in the class of evangelical records.  It
+     remains to enquire of what authority are these records.
+     "All the world knows," says Faustus, who, though a
+     Manichean, was one of the most learned men of the third
+     century, "All the world knows that the gospels were neither
+     written by Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, but by certain
+     unknown persons, who rightly judging that they should not
+     obtain belief respecting things which they had not seen,
+     placed at the head of their recitals the names of
+     contemporary apostles." See Beausob. vol. i. and Hist. des
+     Apologistes de la Relig. Chret. par Burigni, a sagacious
+     writer, who has demonstrated the absolute uncertainty of
+     those foundations of the Christian religion; so that the
+     existence of Jesus is no better proved than that of Osiris
+     and Hercules, or that of Fot or Beddou, with whom, says M.
+     de Guignes, the Chinese continually confound him, for they
+     never call Jesus by any other name than Fot.  Hist. de Huns.
+
+     ** That is to say, from the pious romances formed out of the
+     sacred legends of the mysteries of Mithra, Ceres, Isis,
+     etc., from whence are equally derived the books of the
+     Hindoos and the Bonzes.  Our missionaries have long remarked
+     a striking resemblance between those books and the gospels.
+     M. Wilkins expressly mentions it in a note in the Bhagvat
+     Geeta.  All agree that Krisna, Fot, and Jesus have the same
+     characteristic features: but religious prejudice has stood
+     in the way of drawing from this circumstance the proper and
+     natural inference.  To time and reason must it be left to
+     display the truth.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, the Christians set up a general cry, and a new dispute was
+      about to begin; when a number of Chinese Chamans, and Talapoins of Siam,
+      came forward and said that they would settle the whole controversy. And
+      one of them speaking for the whole exclaimed: "It is time to put an end to
+      these frivolous contests by drawing aside the veil from the interior
+      doctrine that Fot himself revealed to his disciples on his death bed.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Budsoists have two doctrines, the one public and
+     ostensible, the other interior and secret, precisely like
+     the Egyptian priests. It may be asked, why this distinction?
+     It is, that as the public doctrine recommends offerings,
+     expiations, endowments, etc., the priests find their profit
+     in preaching it to the people; whereas the other, teaching
+     the vanity of worldly things, and attended with no lucre, it
+     is thought proper to make it known only to adepts. Can the
+     teachers and followers of this religion be better classed
+     than under the heads of knavery and credulity?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "All these theological opinions," continued he, "are but chimeras. All the
+      stories of the nature of the gods, of their actions and their lives, are
+      but allegories and mythological emblems, under which are enveloped
+      ingenious ideas of morals, and the knowledge of the operations of nature
+      in the action of the elements and the movement of the planets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The truth is, that all is reduced to nothing&mdash;that all is illusion,
+      appearance, dream; that the moral metempsychosis is only the figurative
+      sense of the physical metempsychosis, or the successive movement of the
+      elements of bodies which perish not, but which, having composed one body,
+      pass when that is dissolved, into other mediums and form other
+      combinations. The soul is but the vital principle which results from the
+      properties of matter, and from the action of the elements in those bodies
+      where they create a spontaneous movement. To suppose that this product of
+      the play of the organs, born with them, matured with them, and which
+      sleeps with them, can subsist when they cease, is the romance of a
+      wandering imagination, perhaps agreeable enough, but really chimerical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "God itself is nothing more than the moving principle, the occult force
+      inherent in all beings&mdash;the sum of their laws and properties&mdash;the
+      animating principle; in a word, the soul of the universe; which on account
+      of the infinite variety of its connections and its operations, sometimes
+      simple, sometimes multiple, sometimes active, sometimes passive, has
+      always presented to the human mind an unsolvable enigma. All that man can
+      comprehend with certainty is, that matter does not perish; that it
+      possesses essentially those properties by which the world is held together
+      like a living and organized being; that the knowledge of these laws with
+      respect to man is what constitutes wisdom; that virtue and merit consist
+      in their observance; and evil, sin, and vice, in the ignorance and
+      violation of them; that happiness and misery result from these by the same
+      necessity which makes heavy bodies descend and light ones rise, and by a
+      fatality of causes and effects, whose chain extends from the smallest atom
+      to the greatest of the heavenly bodies."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the very expressions of La Loubre, in his
+     description of the kingdom of Siam and the theology of the
+     Bronzes.  Their dogmas, compared with those of the ancient
+     philosophers of Greece and Italy, give a complete
+     representation of the whole system of the Stoics and
+     Epicureans, mixed with astrological superstitious, and some
+     traits of Pythagorism.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, a crowd of theologians of every sect cried out that this
+      doctrine was materialism, and that those who profess it were impious
+      atheists, enemies to God and man, who must be exterminated. "Very well,"
+      replied the Chamans, "suppose we are in error, which is not impossible,
+      since the first attribute of the human mind is to be subject to illusion;
+      but what right have you to take away from men like yourselves, the life
+      which Heaven has given them? If Heaven holds us guilty and in abhorrence,
+      why does it impart to us the same blessings as to you? And if it treats us
+      with forbearance, what authority have you to be less indulgent? Pious men!
+      who speak of God with so much certainty and confidence, be so good as to
+      tell us what it is; give us to comprehend what those abstract and
+      metaphysical beings are, which you call God and soul, substance without
+      matter, existence without body, life without organs or sensation. If you
+      know those beings by your senses or their reflections, render them in like
+      manner perceptible to us; or if you speak of them on testimony and
+      tradition, show us a uniform account, and give a determinate basis to our
+      creed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There now arose among the theologians a great controversy respecting God
+      and his nature, his manner of acting, and of manifesting himself; on the
+      nature of the soul and its union with the body; whether it exists before
+      the organs, or only after they are formed; on the future life, and the
+      other world. And every sect, every school, every individual, differing on
+      all these points, and each assigning plausible reasons, and respectable
+      though opposite authorities for his opinion, they fell into an
+      inextricable labyrinth of contradictions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the legislator, having commanded silence and recalled the dispute to
+      its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of nations; you came
+      together in search of truth. At first, every one of you, thinking he
+      possessed it, demanded of the others an implicit faith; but perceiving the
+      contrariety of your opinions, you found it necessary to submit them to a
+      common rule of evidence, and to bring them to one general term of
+      comparison; and you agreed that each should exhibit the proofs of his
+      doctrine. You began by alleging facts; but each religion and every sect,
+      being equally furnished with miracles and martyrs, each producing an equal
+      number of witnesses, and offering to support them by a voluntary death,
+      the balance on this first point, by right of parity, remained equal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You then passed to the trial of reasoning; but the same arguments
+      applying equally to contrary positions&mdash;the same assertions, equally
+      gratuitous, being advanced and repelled with equal force, and all having
+      an equal right to refuse his assent, nothing was demonstrated. What is
+      more, the confrontation of your systems has brought up more and
+      extraordinary difficulties; for amid the apparent or adventitious
+      diversities, you have discovered a fundamental resemblance, a common
+      groundwork; and each of you pretending to be the inventor, and first
+      depositary, have taxed each other with adulterations and plagiarisms; and
+      thence arises a difficult question concerning the transmission of
+      religious ideas from people to people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Finally, to complete your embarrassment: when you endeavored to explain
+      your doctrines to each other, they appeared confused and foreign, even to
+      their adherents; they were founded on ideas inaccessible to your senses;
+      you consequently had no means of judging of them, and you confessed
+      yourselves in this respect to be only the echoes of your fathers. Hence
+      follows this other question: how came they to the knowledge of your
+      fathers, who themselves had no other means than you to conceive them? So
+      that, on the one hand, the succession of these ideas being unknown, and on
+      the other, their origin and existence being a mystery, all the edifice of
+      your religious opinions becomes a complicated problem of metaphysics and
+      history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Since, however, these opinions, extraordinary as they may be, must have
+      had some origin; since even the most abstract and fantastical ideas have
+      some physical model, it may be useful to recur to this origin, and
+      discover this model&mdash;in a word, to find out from what source the
+      human understanding has drawn these ideas, at present so obscure, of God,
+      of the soul, of all immaterial beings, which make the basis of so many
+      systems; to unfold the filiation which they have followed, and the
+      alterations which they have undergone in their transmissions and
+      ramifications. If, then, there are any persons present who have made a
+      study of these objects, let them come forward, and endeavor, in the face
+      of nations, to dissipate the obscurity in which their opinions have so
+      long remained."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ORIGIN AND FILIATION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At these words, a new group, formed in an instant by men from various
+      standards, but not distinguished by any, came forward into the circle; and
+      one of them spoke in the name of the whole:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Delegates, friends of evidence and virtue! It is not surprising that the
+      subject in question should be enveloped in so many clouds, since, besides
+      its inherent difficulties, thought itself has always been encumbered with
+      superadded obstacles peculiar to this study, where all free enquiry and
+      discussion have been interdicted by the intolerance of every system. But
+      now that our views are permitted to expand, we will expose to open day,
+      and submit to the judgment of nations, that which unprejudiced minds,
+      after long researches, have found to be the most reasonable; and we do
+      this, not with the pretension of imposing a new creed, but with the hope
+      of provoking new lights, and obtaining better information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Doctors and instructors of nations! You know what thick darkness covers
+      the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach. Imposed
+      by authority, inculcated by education, and maintained by example, they
+      pass from age to age, and strengthen their empire from habit and
+      inattention. But if man, enlightened by reflection and experience, brings
+      to mature examination the prejudices of his childhood, he soon discovers a
+      multitude of incongruities and contradictions which awaken his sagacity
+      and excite his reasoning powers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At first, remarking the diversity and opposition of the creeds which
+      divide the nations, he takes courage to question the infallibility which
+      each of them claims, and arming himself with their reciprocal pretensions,
+      he conceives that his senses and his reason, derived immediately from God,
+      are a law not less holy, a guide not less sure, than the mediate and
+      contradictory codes of the prophets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he then examines the texture of these codes themselves, he observes
+      that their laws, pretended to be divine, that is, immutable and eternal,
+      have arisen from circumstances of times, places, and persons; that they
+      have issued one from the other, in a kind of genealogical order, borrowing
+      from each other reciprocally a common and similar fund of ideas, which
+      every lawgiver modifies according to his fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he ascends to the source of these ideas, he finds it involved in the
+      night of time, in the infancy of nations, even to the origin of the world,
+      to which they claim alliance; and there, placed in the darkness of chaos,
+      in the empire of fables and traditions, they present themselves,
+      accompanied with a state of things so full of prodigies, that it seems to
+      forbid all access to the judgment: but this state itself excites a first
+      effort of reason, which resolves the difficulty; for if the prodigies,
+      found in the theological systems, have really existed&mdash;if, for
+      instance, the metamorphoses, the apparitions, the conversations with one
+      or many gods, recorded in the books of the Indians, the Hebrews, the
+      Parses, are historical events, he must agree that nature in those times
+      was totally different from what it is at present; that the present race of
+      men are quite another species from those who then existed; and, therefore,
+      he ought not to trouble his head about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If, on the contrary, these miraculous events have really not existed in
+      the physical order of things, then he readily conceives that they are
+      creatures of the human intellect; and this faculty being still capable of
+      the most fantastical combinations, explains at once the phenomenon of
+      these monsters in history. It only remains, then, to find how and
+      wherefore they have been formed in the imagination. Now, if we examine
+      with care the subjects of these intellectual creations, analyze the ideas
+      which they combine and associate, and carefully weigh all the
+      circumstances which they allege, we shall find that this first obscure and
+      incredible state of things is explained by the laws of nature. We find
+      that these stories of a fabulous kind have a figurative sense different
+      from the apparent one; that these events, pretended to be marvellous, are
+      simple and physical facts, which, being misconceived or misrepresented,
+      have been disfigured by accidental causes dependent on the human mind, by
+      the confusion of signs employed to represent the ideas, the want of
+      precision in words, permanence in language, and perfection in writing; we
+      find that these gods, for instance, who display such singular characters
+      in every system, are only the physical agents of nature, the elements, the
+      winds, the stars, and the meteors, which have been personified by the
+      necessary mechanism of language and of the human understanding; that their
+      lives, their manners, their actions, are only their mechanical operations
+      and connections; and that all their pretended history is only the
+      description of these phenomena, formed by the first naturalists who
+      observed them, and misconceived by the vulgar who did not understand them,
+      or by succeeding generations who forgot them. In a word, all the
+      theological dogmas on the origin of the world, the nature of God, the
+      revelation of his laws, the manifestation of his person, are known to be
+      only the recital of astronomical facts, only figurative and emblematical
+      accounts of the motion of the heavenly bodies. We are convinced that the
+      very idea of a God, that idea at present so obscure, is, in its first
+      origin, nothing but that of the physical powers of the universe,
+      considered sometimes as a plurality by reason of their agencies and
+      phenomena, sometimes as one simple and only being by reason of the
+      universality of the machine and the connection of its parts; so that the
+      being called God has been sometimes the wind, the fire, the water, all the
+      elements; sometimes the sun, the stars, the planets, and their influence;
+      sometimes the matter of the visible world, the totality of the universe;
+      sometimes abstract and metaphysical qualities, such as space, duration,
+      motion, intelligence; and we everywhere see this conclusion, that the idea
+      of God has not been a miraculous revelation of invisible beings, but a
+      natural offspring of the human intellect&mdash;an operation of the mind,
+      whose progress it has followed and whose revolutions it has undergone, in
+      all the progress that has been made in the knowledge of the physical world
+      and its agents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is then in vain that nations attribute their religion to heavenly
+      inspirations; it is in vain that their dogmas pretend to a primeval state
+      of supernatural events: the original barbarity of the human race, attested
+      by their own monuments,* belies these assertions at once. But there is one
+      constant and indubitable fact which refutes beyond contradiction all these
+      doubtful accounts of past ages. From this position, that man acquires and
+      receives no ideas but through the medium of his senses,** it follows with
+      certainty that every notion which claims to itself any other origin than
+      that of sensation and experience, is the erroneous supposition of a
+      posterior reasoning: now, it is sufficient to cast an eye upon the sacred
+      systems of the origin of the world, and of the actions of the gods, to
+      discover in every idea, in every word, the anticipation of an order of
+      things which could not exist till a long time after. Reason, strengthened
+      by these contradictions, rejecting everything that is not in the order of
+      nature, and admitting no historical facts but those founded on
+      probabilities, lays open its own system, and pronounces itself with
+      assurance.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is the unanimous testimony of history, and even of
+     legends, that the first human beings were every where
+     savages, and that it was to civilize them, and teach them to
+     make bread, that the Gods manifested themselves.
+
+     ** The rock on which all the ancients have split, and which
+     has occasioned all their errors, has been their supposing
+     the idea of God to be innate and co-eternal with the soul;
+     and hence all the reveries developed in Plato and Jamblicus.
+     See the Timoeus, the Phedon, and De Mysteriis Egyptiorum,
+     sect. I, c. 3.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Before one nation had received from another nation dogmas already
+      invented; before one generation had inherited ideas acquired by a
+      preceding generation, none of these complicated systems could have existed
+      in the world. The first men, being children of nature, anterior to all
+      events, ignorant of all science, were born without any idea of the dogmas
+      arising from scholastic disputes; of rites founded on the practice of arts
+      not then known; of precepts framed after the development of passions; or
+      of laws which suppose a language, a state of society not then in being; or
+      of God, whose attributes all refer to physical objects, and his actions to
+      a despotic state of government; or of the soul, or of any of those
+      metaphysical beings, which we are told are not the objects of sense, and
+      for which, however, there can be no other means of access to the
+      understanding. To arrive at so many results, the necessary circle of
+      preceding facts must have been observed; slow experience and repeated
+      trials must have taught the rude man the use of his organs; the
+      accumulated knowledge of successive generations must have invented and
+      improved the means of living; and the mind, freed from the cares of the
+      first wants of nature, must have raised itself to the complicated art of
+      comparing ideas, of digesting arguments, and seizing abstract
+      similitudes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I. Origin of the idea of God: Worship of the elements and of the physical
+      powers of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was not till after having overcome these obstacles, and gone through a
+      long career in the night of history, that man, reflecting on his
+      condition, began to perceive that he was subjected to forces superior to
+      his own, and independent of his will. The sun enlightened and warmed him,
+      the fire burned him, the thunder terrified him, the wind beat upon him,
+      the water overwhelmed him. All beings acted upon him powerfully and
+      irresistibly. He sustained this action for a long time, like a machine,
+      without enquiring the cause; but the moment he began his enquiries, he
+      fell into astonishment; and, passing from the surprise of his first
+      reflections to the reverie of curiosity, he began a chain of reasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "First, considering the action of the elements on him, he conceived an
+      idea of weakness and subjection on his part, and of power and domination
+      on theirs; and this idea of power was the primitive and fundamental type
+      of every idea of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Secondly, the action of these natural existences excited in him
+      sensations of pleasure or pain, of good or evil; and by a natural effect
+      of his organization, he conceived for them love or aversion; he desired or
+      dreaded their presence; and fear or hope gave rise to the first idea of
+      religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then, judging everything by comparison, and remarking in these beings a
+      spontaneous movement like his own, he supposed this movement directed by a
+      will,&mdash;an intelligence of the nature of his own; and hence, by
+      induction, he formed a new reasoning. Having experienced that certain
+      practices towards his fellow creatures had the effect to modify their
+      affections and direct their conduct to his advantage, he resorted to the
+      same practices towards these powerful beings of the universe. He reasoned
+      thus with himself: When my fellow creature, stronger than I, is disposed
+      to do me injury, I abase myself before him, and my prayer has the art to
+      calm him. I will pray to these powerful beings who strike me. I will
+      supplicate the intelligences of the winds, of the stars, of the waters,
+      and they will hear me. I will conjure them to avert the evil and give me
+      the good that is at their disposal; I will move them by my tears, I will
+      soften them by offerings, and I shall be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thus simple man, in the infancy of his reason, spoke to the sun and to
+      the moon; he animated with his own understanding and passions the great
+      agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds, and vain actions, to change
+      their inflexible laws. Fatal error! He prayed the stone to ascend, the
+      water to mount above its level, the mountains to remove, and substituting
+      a fantastical world for the real one, he peopled it with imaginary beings,
+      to the terror of his mind and the torment of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In this manner the ideas of God and religion have sprung, like all
+      others, from physical objects; they were produced in the mind of man from
+      his sensations, from his wants, from the circumstances of his life, and
+      the progressive state of his knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, as the ideas of God had their first models in physical agents, it
+      followed that God was at first varied and manifold, like the form under
+      which he appeared to act. Every being was a Power, a Genius; and the first
+      men conceived the universe filled with innumerable gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Again the ideas of God have been created by the affections of the human
+      heart; they became necessarily divided into two classes, according to the
+      sensations of pleasure or pain, love or hatred, which they inspired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The forces of nature, the gods and genii, were divided into beneficent
+      and malignant, good and evil powers; and hence the universality of these
+      two characters in all the systems of religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were for a
+      long time confused and ill-digested. Savage men, wandering in the woods,
+      beset with wants and destitute of resources, had not the leisure to
+      combine principles and draw conclusions; affected with more evils than
+      they found pleasures, their most habitual sentiment was that of fear,
+      their theology terror; their worship was confined to a few salutations and
+      offerings to beings whom they conceived as greedy and ferocious as
+      themselves. In their state of equality and independence, no man offered
+      himself as mediator between men and gods as insubordinate and poor as
+      himself. No one having superfluities to give, there existed no parasite by
+      the name of priest, no tribute by the name of victim, no empire by the
+      name of altar. Their dogmas and their morals were the same thing, it was
+      only self-preservation; and religion, that arbitrary idea, without
+      influence on the mutual relations of men, was a vain homage rendered to
+      the visible powers of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such was the necessary and original idea of God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the orator, addressing himself to the savage nations, continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We appeal to you, men who have received no foreign and factitious ideas;
+      tell us, have you ever gone beyond what I have described? And you, learned
+      doctors, we call you to witness; is not this the unanimous testimony of
+      all ancient monuments?*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It clearly results, says Plutarch, from the verses of
+     Orpheus and the sacred books of the Egyptians and Phrygians,
+     that the ancient theology, not only of the Greeks, but of
+     all nations, was nothing more than a system of physics, a
+     picture of the operations of nature, wrapped up in
+     mysterious allegories and enigmatical symbols, in a manner
+     that the ignorant multitude attended rather to their
+     apparent than to their hidden meaning, and even in what they
+     understood of the latter, supposed there to be something
+     more deep than what they perceived.  Fragment of a work of
+     Plutarch now lost, quoted by Eusebius, Proepar. Evang. lib.
+     3, ch. 1, p. 83.
+
+     The majority of philosophers, says Porphyry, and among
+     others Haeremon (who lived in Egypt in the first age of
+     Christianity), imagine there never to have been any other
+     world than the one we see, and acknowledged no other Gods of
+     all those recognized by the Egyptians, than such as are
+     commonly called planets, signs of the Zodiac, and
+     constellations; whose aspects, that is, rising and setting,
+     are supposed to influence the fortunes of men; to which they
+     add their divisions of the signs into decans and dispensers
+     of time, whom they style lords of the ascendant, whose
+     names, virtues in relieving distempers, rising, setting, and
+     presages of future events, are the subjects of almanacs (for
+     be it observed, that the Egyptian priests had almanacs the
+     exact counterpart of Matthew Lansberg's); for when the
+     priests affirmed that the sun was the architect of the
+     universe, Chaeremon presently concludes that all their
+     narratives respecting Isis and Osiris, together with their
+     other sacred fables, referred in part to the planets, the
+     phases of the moon, and the revolution of the sun, and in
+     part to the stars of the daily and nightly hemispheres and
+     the river Nile; in a word, in all cases to physical and
+     natural existences and never to such as might be immaterial
+     and incorporeal. . . .
+
+     All these philosophers believe that the acts of our will and
+     the motion of our bodies depend on those of the stars to
+     which they are subjected, and they refer every thing to the
+     laws of physical necessity, which they call destiny or
+     Fatum, supposing a chain of causes and effects which binds,
+     by I know not what connection, all beings together, from the
+     meanest atom to the supremest power and primary influence of
+     the Gods; so that, whether in their temples or in their
+     idols, the only subject of worship is the power of destiny.
+     Porphyr. Epist. ad Janebonem.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      II. Second system: Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But those same monuments present us likewise a system more methodical and
+      more complicated&mdash;that of the worship of all the stars; adored
+      sometimes in their proper forms, sometimes under figurative emblems and
+      symbols; and this worship was the effect of the knowledge men had acquired
+      in physics, and was derived immediately from the first causes of the
+      social state; that is, from the necessities and arts of the first degree,
+      which are among the elements of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed, as soon as men began to unite in society, it became necessary for
+      them to multiply the means of subsistence, and consequently to attend to
+      agriculture: agriculture, to be carried on with success, requires the
+      observation and knowledge of the heavens. It was necessary to know the
+      periodical return of the same operations of nature, and the same phenomena
+      in the skies; indeed to go so far as to ascertain the duration and
+      succession of the seasons and the months of the year. It was indispensable
+      to know, in the first place, the course of the sun, who, in his zodiacal
+      revolution, shows himself the supreme agent of the whole creation; then,
+      of the moon, who, by her phases and periods, regulates and distributes
+      time; then, of the stars, and even of the planets, which by their
+      appearance and disappearance on the horizon and nocturnal hemisphere,
+      marked the minutest divisions. Finally, it was necessary to form a whole
+      system of astronomy,* or a calendar; and from these works there naturally
+      followed a new manner of considering these predominant and governing
+      powers. Having observed that the productions of the earth had a regular
+      and constant relation with the heavenly bodies; that the rise, growth, and
+      decline of each plant kept pace with the appearance, elevation, and
+      declination of the same star or the same group of stars; in short, that
+      the languor or activity of vegetation seemed to depend on celestial
+      influences, men drew from thence an idea of action, of power, in those
+      beings, superior to earthly bodies; and the stars, dispensing plenty or
+      scarcity, became powers, genii,** gods, authors of good and evil.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It continues to be repeated every day, on the indirect
+     authority of the book of Genesis, that astronomy was the
+     invention of the children of Noah.  It has been gravely
+     said, that while wandering shepherds in the plains of
+     Shinar, they employed their leisure in composing a planetary
+     system: as if shepherds had occasion to know more than the
+     polar star; and if necessity was not the sole motive of
+     every invention!  If the ancient shepherds were so studious
+     and sagacious, how does it happen that the modern ones are
+     so stupid, ignorant, and inattentive?  And it is a fact that
+     the Arabs of the desert know not so many as six
+     constellations, and understand not a word of astronomy.
+
+     ** It appears that by the word genius, the ancients denoted
+     a quality, a generative power; for the following words,
+     which are all of one family, convey this meaning: generare,
+     genos, genesis, genus, gens.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "As the state of society had already introduced a regular hierarchy of
+      ranks, employments and conditions, men, continuing to reason by
+      comparison, carried their new notions into their theology, and formed a
+      complicated system of divinities by gradation of rank, in which the sun,
+      as first god,* was a military chief or a political king: the moon was his
+      wife and queen; the planets were servants, bearers of commands,
+      messengers; and the multitude of stars were a nation, an army of heroes,
+      genii, whose office was to govern the world under the orders of their
+      chiefs. All the individuals had names, functions, attributes, drawn from
+      their relations and influences; and even sexes, from the gender of their
+      appellations.**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Sabeans, ancient and modern, says Maimonides,
+     acknowledge a principal God, the maker and inhabitant of
+     heaven; but on account of his great distance they conceive
+     him to be inaccessible; and in imitation of the conduct of
+     people towards their kings, they employ as mediators with
+     him, the planets and their angels, whom they call princes
+     and potentates, and whom they suppose to reside in those
+     luminous bodies as in palaces or tabernacles, etc.  More-
+     Nebuchim.
+
+     ** According as the gender of the object was in the language
+     of the nation masculine or feminine, the Divinity who bore
+     its name was male or female.  Thus the Cappadocians called
+     the moon God, and the sun Goddess: a circumstance which
+     gives to the same beings a perpetual variety in ancient
+     mythology.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "And as the social state had introduced certain usages and ceremonies,
+      religion, keeping pace with the social state, adopted similar ones; these
+      ceremonies, at first simple and private, became public and solemn; the
+      offerings became rich and more numerous, and the rites more methodical;
+      they assigned certain places for the assemblies, and began to have chapels
+      and temples; they instituted officers to administer them, and these became
+      priests and pontiffs: they established liturgies, and sanctified certain
+      days, and religion became a civil act, a political tie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But in this arrangement, religion did not change its first principles;
+      the idea of God was always that of physical beings, operating good or
+      evil, that is, impressing sensations of pleasure or pain: the dogma was
+      the knowledge of their laws, or their manner of acting; virtue and sin,
+      the observance or infraction of these laws; and morality, in its native
+      simplicity, was the judicious practice of whatever contributes to the
+      preservation of existence, the well-being of one's self and his fellow
+      creatures.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * We may add, says Plutarch, that these Egyptian priests
+     always regarded the preservation of health as a point of the
+     first importance, and as indispensably necessary to the
+     practice of piety and the service of the gods.  See his
+     account of Isis and Osiris, towards the end.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Should it be asked at what epoch this system took its birth, we shall
+      answer on the testimony of the monuments of astronomy itself; that its
+      principles appear with certainty to have been established about seventeen
+      thousand years ago,* and if it be asked to what people it is to be
+      attributed, we shall answer that the same monuments, supported by
+      unanimous traditions, attribute it to the first tribes of Egypt; and when
+      reason finds in that country all the circumstances which could lead to
+      such a system; when it finds there a zone of sky, bordering on the tropic,
+      equally free from the rains of the equator and the fogs of the North;**
+      when it finds there a central point of the sphere of the ancients, a
+      salubrious climate, a great, but manageable river, a soil fertile without
+      art or labor, inundated without morbid exhalations, and placed between two
+      seas which communicate with the richest countries, it conceives that the
+      inhabitant of the Nile, addicted to agriculture from the nature of his
+      soil, to geometry from the annual necessity of measuring his lands, to
+      commerce from the facility of communications, to astronomy from the state
+      of his sky, always open to observation, must have been the first to pass
+      from the savage to the social state; and consequently to attain the
+      physical and moral sciences necessary to civilized life.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The historical orator follows here the opinion of M.
+     Dupuis, who, in his learned memoirs concerning the Origin of
+     the Constellations and Origin of all Worship, has assigned
+     many plausible reasons to prove that Libra was formerly the
+     sign of the vernal, and Aries of the autumnal equinox; that
+     is, that since the origin of the actual astronomical system,
+     the precession of the equinoxes has carried forward by seven
+     signs the primitive order of the zodiac.  Now estimating the
+     precession at about seventy years and a half to a degree,
+     that is, 2,115 years to each sign; and observing that Aries
+     was in its fifteenth degree, 1,447 years before Christ, it
+     follows that the first degree of Libra could not have
+     coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194
+     years before Christ; now, if you add 1790 years since
+     Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the
+     origin of the Zodiac.  The vernal equinox coincided with the
+     first degree of Aries, 2,504 years before Christ, and with
+     the first degree of Taurus 4,619 years before Christ.  Now
+     it is to be observed, that the worship of the Bull is the
+     principal article in the theological creed of the Egyptians,
+     Persians, Japanese, etc.; from whence it clearly follows,
+     that some general revolution took place among these nations
+     at that time. The chronology of five or six thousand years
+     in Genesis is little agreeable to this hypothesis; but as
+     the book of Genesis cannot claim to be considered as a
+     history farther back than Abraham, we are at liberty to make
+     what arrangements we please in the eternity that preceded.
+     See on this subject the analysis of Genesis, in the first
+     volume of New Researches on Ancient History; see also Origin
+     of Constellatians, by Dupuis, 1781; the Origin of Worship,
+     in 3 vols. 1794, and the Chronological Zodiac, 1806.
+
+     ** M. Balli, in placing the first astronomers at
+     Selingenakoy, near the Bailkal paid no attention to this
+     twofold circumstance: it equally argues against their being
+     placed at Axoum on account of the rains, and the Zimb fly of
+     which Mr. Bruce speaks.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "It was, then, on the borders of the upper Nile, among a black race of
+      men, that was organized the complicated system of the worship of the
+      stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth and the
+      labors of agriculture; and this first worship, characterized by their
+      adoration under their own forms and natural attributes, was a simple
+      proceeding of the human mind. But in a short time, the multiplicity of the
+      objects of their relations, and their reciprocal influence, having
+      complicated the ideas, and the signs that represented them, there followed
+      a confusion as singular in its cause as pernicious in its effects."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III. Third system. Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As soon as this agricultural people began to observe the stars with
+      attention, they found it necessary to individualize or group them; and to
+      assign to each a proper name, in order to understand each other in their
+      designation. A great difficulty must have presented itself in this
+      business: First, the heavenly bodies, similar in form, offered no
+      distinguishing characteristics by which to denominate them; and, secondly,
+      the language in its infancy and poverty, had no expressions for so many
+      new and metaphysical ideas. Necessity, the usual stimulus of genius,
+      surmounted everything. Having remarked that in the annual revolution, the
+      renewal and periodical appearance of terrestrial productions were
+      constantly associated with the rising and setting of certain stars, and to
+      their position as relative to the sun, the fundamental term of all
+      comparison, the mind by a natural operation connected in thought these
+      terrestrial and celestial objects, which were connected in fact; and
+      applying to them a common sign, it gave to the stars, and their groups,
+      the names of the terrestrial objects to which they answered.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The ancients," says Maimonides, "directing all their
+     attention to agriculture, gave names to the stars derived
+     from their occupation during the year."  More Neb. pars 3.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Thus the Ethopian of Thebes named stars of inundation, or Aquarius, those
+      stars under which the Nile began to overflow;* stars of the ox or the
+      bull, those under which they began to plow; stars of the lion, those under
+      which that animal, driven from the desert by thirst, appeared on the banks
+      of the Nile; stars of the sheaf, or of the harvest virgin, those of the
+      reaping season; stars of the lamb, stars of the two kids, those under
+      which these precious animals were brought forth: and thus was resolved the
+      first part of the difficulty.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This must have been June.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Moreover, man having remarked in the beings which surrounded him certain
+      qualities distinctive and proper to each species, and having thence
+      derived a name by which to designate them, he found in the same source an
+      ingenious mode of generalizing his ideas; and transferring the name
+      already invented to every thing which bore any resemblance or analogy, he
+      enriched his language with a perpetual round of metaphors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thus the same Ethiopian having observed that the return of the inundation
+      always corresponded with the rising of a beautiful star which appeared
+      towards the source of the Nile, and seemed to warn the husbandman against
+      the coming waters, he compared this action to that of the animal who, by
+      his barking, gives notice of danger, and he called this star the dog, the
+      barker (Sirius). In the same manner he named the stars of the crab, those
+      where the sun, having arrived at the tropic, retreated by a slow
+      retrograde motion like the crab or cancer. He named stars of the wild
+      goat, or Capricorn, those where the sun, having reached the highest point
+      in his annuary tract, rests at the summit of the horary gnomon, and
+      imitates the goat, who delights to climb the summit of the rocks. He named
+      stars of the balance, or libra, those where the days and nights, being
+      equal, seemed in equilibrium, like that instrument; and stars of the
+      scorpion, those where certain periodical winds bring vapors, burning like
+      the venom of the scorpion. In the same manner he called by the name of
+      rings and serpents the figured traces of the orbits of the stars and the
+      planets, and such was the general mode of naming all the stars and even
+      the planets, taken by groups or as individuals, according to their
+      relations with husbandry and terrestrial objects, and according to the
+      analogies which each nation found between them and the objects of its
+      particular soil and climate.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The ancients had verbs from the substantives crab, goat,
+     tortoise, as the French have at present the verbs serpenter,
+     coquetter.  The history of all languages is nearly the same.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "From this it appeared that abject and terrestrial beings became
+      associated with the superior and powerful inhabitants of heaven; and this
+      association became stronger every day by the mechanism of language and the
+      constitution of the human mind. Men would say by a natural metaphor: The
+      bull spreads over the earth the germs of fecundity (in spring) he restores
+      vegetation and plenty: the lamb (or ram) delivers the skies from the
+      maleficent powers of winter; he saves the world from the serpent (emblem
+      of the humid season) and restores the empire of goodness (summer, joyful
+      season): the scorpion pours out his poison on the earth, and scatters
+      diseases and death. The same of all similar effects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This language, understood by every one, was attended at first with no
+      inconvenience; but in the course of time, when the calendar had been
+      regulated, the people, who had no longer any need of observing the
+      heavens, lost sight of the original meaning of these expressions; and the
+      allegories remaining in common use became a fatal stumbling block to the
+      understanding and to reason. Habituated to associate to the symbols the
+      ideas of their archetypes, the mind at last confounded them: then the same
+      animals, whom fancy had transported to the skies, returned again to the
+      earth; but being thus returned, clothed in the livery of the stars, they
+      claimed the stellary attributes, and imposed on their own authors. Then it
+      was that the people, believing that they saw their gods among them, could
+      pray to them with more convenience: they demanded from the ram of their
+      flock the influences which might be expected from the heavenly ram; they
+      prayed the scorpion not to pour out his venom upon nature; they revered
+      the crab of the sea, the scarabeus of the mud, the fish of the river; and
+      by a series of corrupt but inseparable analogies, they lost themselves in
+      a labyrinth of well connected absurdities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such was the origin of that ancient whimsical worship of the animals;
+      such is the train of ideas by which the character of the divinity became
+      common to the vilest of brutes, and by which was formed that theological
+      system, extremely comprehensive, complicated, and learned, which, rising
+      on the borders of the Nile, propagated from country to country by
+      commerce, war, and conquest, overspread the whole of the ancient world;
+      and which, modified by time, circumstances and prejudices, is still seen
+      entire among a hundred nations, and remains as the essential and secret
+      basis of the theology of those even who despise and reject it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some murmurs at these words being heard from various groups: "Yes!"
+      continued the orator, "hence arose, for instance, among you, nations of
+      Africa, the adoration of your fetiches, plants, animals, pebbles, pieces
+      of wood, before which your ancestors would not have had the folly to bow,
+      if they had not seen in them talismans endowed with the virtue of the
+      stars.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The ancient astrologers, says the most learned of the Jews
+     (Maimonides), having sacredly assigned to each planet a
+     color, an animal, a tree, a metal, a fruit, a plant, formed
+     from them all a figure or representation of the star, taking
+     care to select for the purpose a proper moment, a fortunate
+     day, such as the conjunction of the star, or some other
+     favorable aspect.  They conceived that by their magic
+     ceremonies they could introduce into those figures or idols
+     the influences of the superior beings after which they were
+     modeled.  These were the idols that the Chaldean-Sabeans
+     adored; and in the performance of their worship they were
+     obliged to be dressed in the proper color.  The astrologers,
+     by their practices, thus introduced idolatry, desirous of
+     being regarded as the dispensers of the favors of heaven;
+     and as agriculture was the sole employment of the ancients,
+     they succeeded in persuading them that the rain and other
+     blessings of the seasons were at their disposal.  Thus the
+     whole art of agriculture was exercised by rules of
+     astrology, and the priests made talismans or charms which
+     were to drive away locusts, flies, etc.  See Maimonides,
+     More Nebuchim, pars 3, c. 29.
+
+     The priests of Egypt, Persia, India, etc., pretended to bind
+     the Gods to their idols, and to make them come from heaven
+     at their pleasure.  They threatened the sun and moon, if
+     they were disobedient, to reveal the secret mysteries, to
+     shake the skies, etc., etc.  Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 198,
+     and Jamblicus de Mysteriis Aegypt.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Here, ye nations of Tartary, is the origin of your marmosets, and of all
+      that train of animals with which your chamans ornament their magical
+      robes. This is the origin of those figures of birds and of snakes which
+      savage nations imprint upon their skins with sacred and mysterious
+      ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ye inhabitants of India! in vain you cover yourselves with the veil of
+      mystery: the hawk of your god Vichenou is but one of the thousand emblems
+      of the sun in Egypt; and your incarnations of a god in the fish, the boar,
+      the lion, the tortoise, and all his monstrous adventures, are only the
+      metamorphoses of the sun, who, passing through the signs of the twelve
+      animals (or the zodiac), was supposed to assume their figures, and perform
+      their astronomical functions.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the very words of Jamblicus de Symbolis
+     Aegyptiorum, c. 2, sect. 7.  The sun was the grand Proteus,
+     the universal metamorphist.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "People of Japan, your bull, which breaks the mundane egg, is only the
+      bull of the zodiac, which in former times opened the seasons, the age of
+      creation, the vernal equinox. It is the same bull Apis which Egypt adored,
+      and which your ancestors, Jewish Rabbins, worshipped in the golden calf.
+      This is still your bull, followers of Zoroaster, which, sacrificed in the
+      symbolic mysteries of Mithra, poured out his blood which fertilized the
+      earth. And ye Christians, your bull of the Apocalypse, with his wings,
+      symbol of the air, has no other origin; and your lamb of God, sacrificed,
+      like the bull of Mithra, for the salvation of the world, is only the same
+      sun, in the sign of the celestial ram, which, in a later age, opening the
+      equinox in his turn, was supposed to deliver the world from evil, that is
+      to say, from the constellation of the serpent, from that great snake, the
+      parent of winter, the emblem of the Ahrimanes, or Satan of the Persians,
+      your school masters. Yes, in vain does your imprudent zeal consign
+      idolaters to the torments of the Tartarus which they invented; the whole
+      basis of your system is only the worship of the sun, with whose attributes
+      you have decorated your principal personage. It is the sun which, under
+      the name of Horus, was born, like your God, at the winter solstice, in the
+      arms of the celestial virgin, and who passed a childhood of obscurity,
+      indigence, and want, answering to the season of cold and frost. It is he
+      that, under the name of Osiris, persecuted by Typhon and by the tyrants of
+      the air, was put to death, shut up in a dark tomb, emblem of the
+      hemisphere of winter, and afterwards, ascending from the inferior zone
+      towards the zenith of heaven, arose again from the dead triumphant over
+      the giants and the angels of destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all over
+      your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole is his
+      zodiac;* your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets. Ye pontiffs
+      and prelates! your mitre, your crozier, your mantle are those of Osiris;
+      and that cross whose mystery you extol without comprehending it, is the
+      cross of Serapis, traced by the hands of Egyptian priests on the plan of
+      the figurative world; which, passing through the equinoxes and the
+      tropics, became the emblem of the future life and of the resurrection,
+      because it touched the gates of ivory and of horn, through which the soul
+      passed to heaven."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The Arabs," says Herodotus, "shave their heads in a
+     circle and about the temples, in imitation of Bacchus (that
+     is the sun), who shaves himself is this manner."  Jeremiah
+     speaks also of this custom.  The tuft of hair which the
+     Mahometans preserve, is taken also from the sun, who was
+     painted by the Egyptians at the winter solstice, as having
+     but a single hair upon his head. . . .
+
+     The robes of the goddess of Syria and of Diana of Ephesus,
+     from whence are borrowed the dress of the priests; have the
+     twelve animals of the zodiac painted on them. . . .
+
+     Rosaries are found upon all the Indian idols, constructed
+     more than four thousand years ago, and their use in the East
+     has been universal from time immemorial. . . .
+
+     The crozier is precisely the staff of Bootes or Osiris.
+     (See plate.)
+
+     All the Lamas wear the mitre or cap in the shape of a cone,
+     which was an emblem of the sun.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each other
+      with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator proceeded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas: First,
+      the figurative expressions under which an infant language was obliged to
+      describe the relations of objects; expressions which, passing afterwards
+      from a limited to a general sense, and from a physical to a moral one,
+      caused, by their ambiguities and synonymes, a great number of mistakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or finished,
+      twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had killed them, fought
+      them, conquered them; and of this was composed the historical life of
+      Hercules.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the
+     Constellations, before cited.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the seed time
+      and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and occupations, ran
+      through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he was taken for a
+      legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they framed from this the
+      history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of that description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this
+      conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.* Having said that the
+      planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and ascended to its
+      exaltation, they said that it had died, risen again, was carried into
+      heaven, etc.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of
+     Isis and Osiris.  The Hebrews say, in speaking of the
+     generations of the Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam.
+     From this continual equivoke of ancient language, proceeds
+     every mistake.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves, by which
+      men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of hieroglyphics, or
+      sacred characters, were the first invention of the mind. Thus, to give
+      warning of the inundation, and of the necessity of guarding against it,
+      they painted a boat, the ship Argo; to express the wind, they painted the
+      wing of a bird; to designate the season, or the month, they painted the
+      bird of passage, the insect, or the animal which made its appearance at
+      that period; to describe the winter, they painted a hog or a serpent,
+      which delight in humid places, and the combination of these figures
+      carried the known sense of words and phrases.* But as this sense could not
+      be fixed with precision, as the number of these figures and their
+      combinations became excessive, and overburdened the memory, the immediate
+      consequence was confusion and false interpretations. Genius afterwards
+      having invented the more simple art of applying signs to sounds, of which
+      the number is limited, and painting words, instead of thoughts,
+      alphabetical writing thus threw into disuetude hieroglyphical painting;
+      and its signification, falling daily into oblivion, gave rise to a
+      multitude of illusions, ambiguities, and errors.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The reader will doubtless see with pleasure some examples
+     of ancient hieroglyphics.
+
+     "The Egyptians (says Hor-appolo) represent eternity by the
+     figures of the sun and moon.  They designate the world by
+     the blue serpent with yellow scales (stars, it is the
+     Chinese Dragon).  If they were desirous of expressing the
+     year, they drew a picture of Isis, who is also in their
+     language called Sothis, or dog-star, one of the first
+     constellations, by the rising of which the year commences;
+     its inscription at Sais was, It is I that rise in the
+     constellation of the Dog.
+
+     "They also represent the year by a palm tree, and the month
+     by one of its branches, because it is the nature of this
+     tree to produce a branch every month.  They farther
+     represent it by the fourth part of an acre of land."  The
+     whole acre divided into four denotes the bissextile period
+     of four years.  The abbreviation of this figure of a field
+     in four divisions, is manifestly the letter ha or het, the
+     seventh in the Samaritan alphabet; and in general all the
+     letters of the alphabet are merely astronomical
+     hieroglyphics; and it is for this reason that the mode of
+     writing is from right to left, like the march of the stars.
+     &mdash;"They denote a prophet by the image of a dog, because the
+     dog star (Anoubis) by its rising gives notice of the
+     inundation.  Noubi, in Hebrew signifies prophet&mdash;They
+     represent inundation by a lion, because it takes place under
+     that sign: and hence, says Plutarch, the custom of placing
+     at the gates of temples figures of lions with water issuing
+     from their mouths.&mdash;They express the idea of God and destiny
+     by a star.  They also represent God, says Porphyry, by a
+     black stone, because his nature is dark and obscure.  All
+     white things express the celestial and luminous Gods: all
+     circular ones the world, the moon, the sun, the orbits; all
+     semicircular ones, as bows and crescents are descriptive of
+     the moon.  Fire and the Gods of Olympus they represent by
+     pyramids and obelisks (the name of the sun, Baal, is found
+     in this latter word): the sun by a cone (the mitre of
+     Osiris): the earth, by a cylinder (which revolves): the
+     generative power of the air by the phalus, and that of the
+     earth by a triangle, emblem of the female organ.  Euseb.
+     Proecep.  Evang. p. 98.
+
+     "Clay, says Jamblicus de Symbolis, sect. 7, c. 2. denotes
+     matter, the generative and nutrimental power, every thing
+     which receives the warmth and fermentation of life."
+
+     "A man sitting upon the Lotos or Nenuphar, represents the
+     moving spirit (the sun) which, in like manner as that plant
+     lives in the water without any communication with clay,
+     exists equally distinct from matter, swimming in empty
+     space, resting on itself: it is round also in all its parts,
+     like the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit of the Lotos.
+     (Brama has the eyes of the Lotos, says Chasler Nesdirsen, to
+     denote his intelligence: his eye swims over every thing,
+     like the flower of the Lotos on the waters.)  A man at the
+     helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun
+     which governs all.  And Porphyry tells us that the sun is
+     also represented by a man in a ship resting upon an
+     amphibious crocodile (emblem of air and water).
+
+     "At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a
+     sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and
+     the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which
+     represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of
+     the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at
+     the period of junction, to raise water into the clouds.
+     Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
+
+     "The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account
+     of his rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions
+     of the air where light abounds.
+
+     A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of
+     violence, because it is said to kill its father and to
+     ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical
+     inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on
+     the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A
+     fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1. Entrance, into
+     life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5.  Injustice. See
+     Isis and Osiris.
+
+     "The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus,
+     because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that
+     in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as
+     the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the
+     sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an opposite direction to its
+     own.
+
+     "They represent the world also by the number five, being
+     that of the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth,
+     water, air, fire, and ether, or spiritus.  The Indians have
+     the same number of elements, and according to Macrobius's
+     mystics, they are the supreme God, or primum mobile, the
+     intelligence, or mens, born of him, the soul of the world
+     which proceeds from him, the celestial spheres, and all
+     things terrestrial.  Hence, adds Plutarch, the analogy
+     between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
+
+     "The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because
+     like that animal he is of a reddish color.  Now Typhon
+     signifies whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in
+     Hebrew I find the three words clay, red, and ass to be
+     formed from the same root hamr).  Jamblicus has farther told
+     us that clay was the emblem of matter and he elsewhere adds,
+     that all evil and corruption proceeded from matter; which
+     compared with the phrase of Macrobius, all is perishable,
+     liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives us the
+     theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good
+     and evil of the ancients."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Finally, a third cause of confusion was the civil organization of ancient
+      states. When the people began to apply themselves to agriculture, the
+      formation of a rural calendar, requiring a continued series of
+      astronomical observations, it became necessary to appoint certain
+      individuals charged with the functions of watching the appearance and
+      disappearance of certain stars, to foretell the return of the inundation,
+      of certain winds, of the rainy season, the proper time to sow every kind
+      of grain. These men, on account of their service, were exempt from common
+      labor, and the society provided for their maintenance. With this
+      provision, and wholly employed in their observations, they soon became
+      acquainted with the great phenomena of nature, and even learned to
+      penetrate the secret of many of her operations. They discovered the
+      movement of the stars and planets, the coincidence of their phases and
+      returns with the productions of the earth and the action of vegetation;
+      the medicinal and nutritive properties of plants and fruits; the action of
+      the elements, and their reciprocal affinities. Now, as there was no other
+      method of communicating the knowledge of these discoveries but the
+      laborious one of oral instruction, they transmitted it only to their
+      relations and friends, it followed therefore that all science and
+      instruction were confined to a few families, who, arrogating it to
+      themselves as an exclusive privilege, assumed a professional distinction,
+      a corporation spirit, fatal to the public welfare. This continued
+      succession of the same researches and the same labors, hastened, it is
+      true, the progress of knowledge; but by the mystery which accompanied it,
+      the people were daily plunged in deeper shades, and became more
+      superstitious and more enslaved. Seeing their fellow mortals produce
+      certain phenomena, announce, as at pleasure, eclipses and comets, heal
+      diseases, and handle venomous serpents, they thought them in alliance with
+      celestial powers; and, to obtain the blessings and avert the evils which
+      they expected from above, they took them for mediators and interpreters;
+      and thus became established in the bosom of every state sacrilegious
+      corporations of hypocritical and deceitful men, who centered all powers in
+      themselves; and the priests, being at once astronomers, theologians,
+      naturalists, physicians, magicians, interpreters of the gods, oracles of
+      men, and rivals of kings, or their accomplices, established, under the
+      name of religion, an empire of mystery and a monopoly of instruction,
+      which to this day have ruined every nation. . . ."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the priests of all the groups interrupted the orator, and with loud
+      cries accused him of impiety, irreligion, blasphemy; and endeavored to cut
+      short his discourse; but the legislator observing that this was only an
+      exposition of historical facts, which, if false or forged, would be easily
+      refuted; that hitherto the declaration of every opinion had been free, and
+      without this it would be impossible to discover the truth, the orator
+      proceeded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, from all these causes, and from the continual associations of
+      ill-assorted ideas, arose a mass of disorders in theology, in morals, and
+      in traditions; first, because the animals represented the stars, the
+      characters of the animals, their appetites, their sympathies, their
+      aversions, passed over to the gods, and were supposed to be their actions;
+      thus, the god Ichneumon made war against the god Crocodile; the god Wolf
+      liked to eat the god Sheep; the god Ibis devoured the god Serpent; and the
+      deity became a strange, capricious, and ferocious being, whose idea
+      deranged the judgment of man, and corrupted his morals and his reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Again, because in the spirit of their worship every family, every nation,
+      took for its special patron a star or a constellation, the affections or
+      antipathies of the symbolic animal were transferred to its sectaries; and
+      the partisans of the god Dog were enemies to those of the god Wolf;* those
+      who adored the god Ox had an abhorrence to those who ate him; and religion
+      became the source of hatred and hostility,&mdash;the senseless cause of
+      frenzy and superstition.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are properly the words of Plutarch, who relates that
+     those various worships were given by a king of Egypt to the
+     different towns to disunite and enslave them, and these
+     kings had been taken from the cast of priests.  See Isis and
+     Osiris.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Besides, the names of those animal-stars having, for this same reason of
+      patronage, been conferred on countries, nations, mountains, and rivers,
+      these objects were taken for gods, and hence followed a mixture of
+      geographical, historical, and mythological beings, which confounded all
+      traditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Finally, by the analogy of actions which were ascribed to them, the
+      god-stars, having been taken for men, for heroes, for kings, kings and
+      heroes took in their turn the actions of gods for models, and by imitation
+      became warriors, conquerors, proud, lascivious, indolent, sanguinary; and
+      religion consecrated the crimes of despots, and perverted the principles
+      of government."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV. Fourth system. Worship of two Principles, or Dualism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the mean time, the astronomical priests, enjoying peace and abundance
+      in their temples, made every day new progress in the sciences, and the
+      system of the world unfolding gradually to their view, they raised
+      successively various hypotheses as to its agents and effects, which became
+      so many theological systems.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The voyages of the maritime nations and the caravans of the nomads of
+      Asia and Africa, having given them a knowledge of the earth from the
+      Fortunate Islands to Serica, and from the Baltic to the sources of the
+      Nile, the comparison of the phenomena of the various zones taught them the
+      rotundity of the earth, and gave birth to a new theory. Having remarked
+      that all the operations of nature during the annual period were reducible
+      to two principal ones, that of producing and that of destroying; that on
+      the greater part of the globe these two operations were performed in the
+      intervals of the two equinoxes; that is to say, during the six months of
+      summer every thing was procreating and multiplying, and that during winter
+      everything languished and almost died; they supposed in Nature two
+      contrary powers, which were in a continual state of contention and
+      exertion; and considering the celestial sphere in this view, they divided
+      the images which they figured upon it into two halves or hemispheres; so
+      that the constellations which were on the summer heaven formed a direct
+      and superior empire; and those which were on the winter heaven composed an
+      antipode and inferior empire. Therefore, as the constellations of summer
+      accompanied the season of long, warm, and unclouded days, and that of
+      fruits and harvests, they were considered as the powers of light,
+      fecundity, and creation; and, by a transition from a physical to a moral
+      sense, they became genii, angels of science, of beneficence, of purity and
+      virtue. And as the constellations of winter were connected with long
+      nights and polar fogs, they were the genii of darkness, of destruction, of
+      death; and by transition, angels of ignorance, of wickedness, of sin and
+      vice. By this arrangement the heaven was divided into two domains, two
+      factions; and the analogy of human ideas already opened a vast field to
+      the errors of imagination; but the mistake and the illusion were
+      determined, if not occasioned by a particular circumstance. (Observe plate
+      Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the projection of the celestial sphere, as traced by the astronomical
+      priests,* the zodiac and the constellations, disposed in circular order,
+      presented their halves in diametrical opposition; the hemisphere of
+      winter, antipode of that of summer, was adverse, contrary, opposed to it.
+      By a continual metaphor, these words acquired a moral sense; and the
+      adverse genii, or angels, became revolted enemies.** From that moment all
+      the astronomical history of the constellations was changed into a
+      political history; the heavens became a human state, where things happened
+      as on the earth. Now, as the earthly states, the greater part despotic,
+      had already their monarchs, and as the sun was apparently the monarch of
+      the skies, the summer hemisphere (empire of light) and its constellations
+      (a nation of white angels) had for king an enlightened God, a creator
+      intelligent and good. And as every rebel faction must have its chief, the
+      heaven of winter, the subterranean empire of darkness and woe, and its
+      stars, a nation of black angels, giants and demons, had for their chief a
+      malignant genius, whose character was applied by different people to the
+      constellation which to them was the most remarkable. In Egypt it was at
+      first the Scorpion, first zodiacal sign after Libra, and for a long time
+      chief of the winter signs ; then it was the Bear, or the polar Ass, called
+      Typhon, that is to say, deluge,** on account of the rains which deluge the
+      earth during the dominion of that star. At a later period,*** in
+      Persia,**** it was the Serpent, who, under the name of Abrimanes, formed
+      the basis of the system of Zoroaster; and it is the same, O Christians and
+      Jews! that has become your serpent of Eve (the celestial virgin,) and that
+      of the cross; in both cases it is the emblem of Satan, the enemy and great
+      adversary of the Ancient of Days, sung by Daniel.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The ancient priests had three kinds of spheres, which it
+     may be useful to make known to the reader.
+
+     "We read in Eusebius," says Porphyry, "that Zoroaster was
+     the first who, having fixed upon a cavern pleasantly
+     situated in the mountains adjacent to Persia, formed the
+     idea of consecrating it to Mithra (the sun) creator and
+     father of all things: that is to say, having made in this
+     cavern several geometrical divisions, representing the
+     seasons and the elements, he imitated on a small scale the
+     order and disposition of the universe by Mithra.  After
+     Zoroaster, it became a custom to consecrate caverns for the
+     celebration of mysteries: so that in like manner as temples
+     were dedicated to the Gods, rural altars to heroes and
+     terrestrial deities, etc., subterranean abodes to infernal
+     deities, so caverns and grottoes were consecrated to the
+     world, to the universe, and to the nymphs: and from hence
+     Pythagoras and Plato borrowed the idea of calling the earth
+     a cavern, a cave, de Antro Nympharum.
+
+     Such was the first projection of the sphere in relief;
+     though the Persians give the honor of the invention to
+     Zoroaster, it is doubtless due to the Egyptians; for we may
+     suppose from this projection being the most simple that it
+     was the most ancient; the caverns of Thebes, full of similar
+     pictures, tend to strengthen this opinion.
+
+     The following was the second projection: "The prophets or
+     hierophants," says Bishop Synnesius, "who had been initiated
+     in the mysteries, do not permit the common workmen to form
+     idols or images of the Gods; but they descend themselves
+     into the sacred caves, where they have concealed coffers
+     containing certain spheres upon which they construct those
+     images secretly and without the knowledge of the people, who
+     despise simple and natural things and wish for prodigies and
+     fables."  (Syn. in Calvit.)  That is, the ancient priests
+     had armillary spheres like ours; and this passage, which so
+     well agrees with that of Chaeremon, gives us the key to all
+     their theological astrology.
+
+     Lastly, they had flat models of the nature of Plate V. with
+     the difference that they were of a very complicated nature,
+     having every fictitious division of decan and subdecan, with
+     the hieroglyphic signs of their influence.  Kircher has
+     given us a copy of one of them in his Egyptian Oedipus, and
+     Gybelin a figured fragment in his book of the calendar
+     (under the name of the Egyptian Zodiac).  The ancient
+     Egyptians, says the astrologer Julius Firmicus, (Astron.
+     lib. ii. and lib. iv., c. 16), divide each sign of the
+     Zodiac into three sections; and each section was under the
+     direction of an imaginary being whom they called decan or
+     chief of ten; so that there were three decans a month, and
+     thirty-six a year.  Now these decans, who were also called
+     Gods (Theoi), regulated the destinies of mankind&mdash;and they
+     were placed particularly in certain stars.  They afterwards
+     imagined in every ten three other Gods, whom they called
+     arbiters; so that there were nine for every month, and these
+     were farther divided into an infinite number of powers.  The
+     Persians and Indians made their spheres on similar plans;
+     and if a picture thereof were to be drawn from the
+     description given by Scaliger at the end of Manilius, we
+     should find in it a complete explanation of their
+     hieroglyphics, for every article forms one.
+
+     ** If it was for this reason the Persians always wrote the
+     name of Ahrimanes inverted thus: ['Ahrimanes' upside down
+     and backwards].
+
+     *** Typhon, pronounced Touphon by the Greeks, is precisely
+     the touphan of the Arabs, which signifies deluge; and these
+     deluges in mythology are nothing more than winter and the
+     rains, or the overflowing of the Nile: as their pretended
+     fires which are to destroy the world, are simply the summer
+     season.  And it is for this reason that Aristotle (De
+     Meteor, lib. I. c. xiv), says, that the winter of the great
+     cyclic year is a deluge; and its summer a conflagration.
+     "The Egyptians," says Porphyry, "employ every year a
+     talisman in remembrance of the world: at the summer solstice
+     they mark their houses, flocks and trees with red, supposing
+     that on that day the whole world had been set on fire.  It
+     was also at the same period that they celebrated the pyrric
+     or fire dance."  And this illustrates the origin of
+     purification by fire and by water; for having denominated
+     the tropic of Cancer the gate of heaven, and the genial heat
+     of celestial fire, and that of Capricorn the gate of deluge
+     or of water, it was imagined that the spirit or souls who
+     passed through these gates in their way to and from heaven,
+     were roasted or bathed: hence the baptism of Mithra; and the
+     passage through flames, observed throughout the East long
+     before Moses.
+
+     **** That is when the ram became the equinoctial sign, or
+     rather when the alteration of the skies showed that it was
+     no longer the bull.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "In Syria, it was the hog or wild boar, enemy of Adonis; because in that
+      country the functions of the Northern Bear were performed by the animal
+      whose inclination for mire and dirt was emblematic of winter. And this is
+      the reason, followers of Moses and Mahomet! that you hold him in horror,
+      in imitation of the priests of Memphis and Balbec, who detested him as the
+      murderer of their God, the sun. This likewise, O Indians! is the type of
+      your Chib-en; and it has been likewise the Pluto of your brethren, the
+      Romans and Greeks; in like manner, your Brama, God the creator, is only
+      the Persian Ormuzd, and the Egyptian Osiris, whose very name expresses
+      creative power, producer of forms. And these gods received a worship
+      analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary; which worship was
+      divided into two branches, according to their characters. The good god
+      receives a worship of love and joy, from which are derived all religious
+      acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances, banquets, offerings of flowers,
+      milk, honey, perfumes; in a word, everything grateful to the senses and to
+      the soul.* The evil god, on the contrary, received a worship of fear and
+      pain; whence originated all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears,
+      desolations, mournings, self-denials, bloody offerings, and cruel
+      sacrifices.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * All the ancient festivals respecting the return and
+     exaltation of the sun were of this description: hence the
+     hilaria of the Roman calendar at the period of the passage,
+     Pascha, of the vernal equinox.  The dances were imitations
+     of the march of the planets. Those of the Dervises still
+     represent it to this day.
+
+     ** "Sacrifices of blood," says Porphyry, "were only offered
+     to Demons and evil Genii to avert their wrath.  Demons are
+     fond of blood, humidity, stench."  Apud. Euseb. Proep. Ev.,
+     p. 173.
+
+     "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "only offer bloody victims
+     to Typhon.  They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animal
+     immolated is held in execration and loaded with all the sins
+     of the people." The goat of Moses.  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+     Strabo says, speaking of Moses, and the Jews, "Circumcision
+     and the prohibition of certain kinds of meat sprung from
+     superstition." And I observe, respecting the ceremony of
+     circumcision, that its object was to take from the symbol of
+     Osiris, (Phallus) the pretended obstacle to fecundity: an
+     obstacle which bore the seal of Typhon, "whose nature," says
+     Plutarch, "is made up of all that hinders, opposes, causes
+     obstruction."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Hence arose that distinction of terrestrial beings into pure and impure,
+      sacred and abominable, according as their species were of the number of
+      the constellations of one of these two gods, and made part of his domain;
+      and this produced, on the one hand, the superstitions concerning
+      pollutions and purifications; and, on the other, the pretended efficacious
+      virtues of amulets and talismans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You conceive now," continued the orator, addressing himself to the
+      Persians, the Indians, the Jews, the Christians, the Mussulmans, "you
+      conceive the origin of those ideas of battles and rebellions, which
+      equally abound in all your mythologies. You see what is meant by white and
+      black angels, your cherubim and seraphim, with heads of eagles, of lions,
+      or of bulls; your deus, devils, demons, with horns of goats and tails of
+      serpents; your thrones and dominions, ranged in seven orders or
+      gradations, like the seven spheres of the planets; all beings acting the
+      same parts, and endowed with the same attributes in your Vedas, Bibles,
+      and Zend-avestas, whether they have for chiefs Ormuzd or Brama, Typhon or
+      Chiven, Michael or Satan;&mdash;whether they appear under the form of
+      giants with a hundred arms and feet of serpents, or that of gods
+      metamorphosed into lions, storks, bulls or cats, as they are in the sacred
+      fables of the Greeks and Egyptians. You perceive the successive filiation
+      of these ideas, and how, in proportion to their remoteness from their
+      source, and as the minds of men became refined, their gross forms have
+      been polished, and rendered less disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But in the same manner as you have seen the system of two opposite
+      principles or gods arise from that of symbols, interwoven into its
+      texture, your attention shall now be called to a new system which has
+      grown out of this, and to which this has served in its turn as the basis
+      and support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V. Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed, when the vulgar heard speak of a new heaven and another world,
+      they soon gave a body to these fictions; they erected therein a real
+      theatre of action, and their notions of astronomy and geography served to
+      strengthen, if not to originate, this illusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the one hand, the Phoenician navigators who passed the pillars of
+      Hercules, to fetch the tin of Thule and the amber of the Baltic, related
+      that at the extremity of the world, the end of the ocean (the
+      Mediterranean), where the sun sets for the countries of Asia, were the
+      Fortunate Islands, the abode of eternal spring; and beyond were the
+      hyperborean regions, placed under the earth (relatively to the tropics)
+      where reigned an eternal night.* From these stories, misunderstood, and no
+      doubt confusedly related, the imagination of the people composed the
+      Elysian fields,** regions of delight, placed in a world below, having
+      their heaven, their sun, and their stars; and Tartarus, a place of
+      darkness, humidity, mire, and frost. Now, as man, inquisitive of that
+      which he knows not, and desirous of protracting his existence, had already
+      interrogated himself concerning what was to become of him after his death,
+      as he had early reasoned on the principle of life which animates his body,
+      and which leaves it without deforming it, and as he had imagined airy
+      substances, phantoms, and shades, he fondly believed that he should
+      continue, in the subterranean world, that life which it was too painful
+      for him to lose; and these lower regions seemed commodious for the
+      reception of the beloved objects which he could not willingly resign.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Nights of six months duration.
+
+     ** Aliz, in the Phoenician or Hebrew language signifies
+     dancing and joyous.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "On the other hand, the astrological and geological priests told such
+      stories and made such descriptions of their heavens, as accorded perfectly
+      well with these fictions. Having, in their metaphorical language, called
+      the equinoxes and solstices the gates of heaven, the entrance of the
+      seasons, they explained these terrestrial phenomena by saying, that
+      through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the ram) and through
+      the gate of Cancer, descended the vivifying fires which give life to
+      vegetation in the spring, and the aqueous spirits which bring, at the
+      solstice, the inundation of the Nile; that through the gate of ivory
+      (Libra, formerly Sagittarius, or the bowman) and that of Capricorn, or the
+      urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens returned to their source,
+      and reascended to their origin; and the Milky Way, which passed through
+      the gates of the solstices, seemed to be placed there to serve them as a
+      road or vehicle.* Besides, in their atlas, the celestial scene presented a
+      river (the Nile, designated by the windings of the hydra), a boat, (the
+      ship Argo) and the dog Sirius, both relative to this river, whose
+      inundation they foretold. These circumstances, added to the preceding, and
+      still further explaining them, increased their probability, and to arrive
+      at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and
+      Acheron in the boat of the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates
+      of horn or ivory, guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions
+      were applied to a civil use, and thence received a further consistency.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     *See Macrob. Som. Scrip. c. 12.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Having remarked that in their burning climate the putrefaction of dead
+      bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in many of
+      their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead beyond the
+      limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the West. To go there,
+      it was necessary to pass the channels of the river, and consequently to be
+      received into a boat, and pay something to the ferryman, without which the
+      body, deprived of sepulture, must have been the prey of wild beasts. This
+      custom suggested to the civil and religious legislators the means of a
+      powerful influence on manners; and, addressing uncultivated and ferocious
+      men with the motives of filial piety and a reverence for the dead, they
+      established, as a necessary condition, their undergoing a previous trial,
+      which should decide whether the deceased merited to be admitted to the
+      rank of the family in the black city. Such an idea accorded too well with
+      all the others, not to be incorporated with them: the people soon adopted
+      it; and hell had its Minos and its Rhadamanthus, with the wand, the bench,
+      the ushers, and the urn, as in the earthly and civil state. It was then
+      that God became a moral and political being, a lawgiver to men, and so
+      much the more to be dreaded, as this supreme legislator, this final judge,
+      was inaccessible and invisible. Then it was that this fabulous and
+      mythological world, composed of such odd materials and disjointed parts,
+      became a place of punishments and of rewards, where divine justice was
+      supposed to correct what was vicious and erroneous in the judgment of men.
+      This spiritual and mystical system acquired the more credit, as it took
+      possession of man by all his natural inclinations. The oppressed found in
+      it the hope of indemnity, and the consolation of future vengeance; the
+      oppressor, expecting by rich offerings to purchase his impunity, formed
+      out of the errors of the vulgar an additional weapon of oppression; the
+      chiefs of nations, the kings and priests, found in this a new instrument
+      of domination by the privilege which they reserved to themselves of
+      distributing the favors and punishments of the great judge, according to
+      the merit or demerit of actions, which they took care to characterize as
+      best suited their system.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This, then, is the manner in which an invisible and imaginary world has
+      been introduced into the real and visible one; this is the origin of those
+      regions of pleasure and pain, of which you Persians have made your
+      regenerated earth, your city of resurrection, placed under the equator,
+      with this singular attribute, that in it the blessed cast no shade.* Of
+      these materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have you
+      formed your New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, your paradise, your heaven,
+      copied in all its parts from the astrological heaven of Hermes: and your
+      hell, ye Mussulmans, your bottomless pit, surmounted by a bridge, your
+      balance for weighing souls and good works, your last judgment by the
+      angels Monkir and Nekir, are likewise modeled from the mysterious
+      ceremonies of the cave of Mithras** and your heaven differs not in the
+      least from that of Osiris, of Ormuzd, and of Brama.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * There is on this subject a passage in Plutarch, so
+     interesting and explanatory of the whole of this system,
+     that we shall cite it entire.  Having observed that the
+     theory of good and evil had at all times occupied the
+     attention of philosophers and theologians, he adds: "Many
+     suppose there to be two gods of opposite inclinations, one
+     delighting in good, the other in evil; the first of these is
+     called particularly by the name of God, the second by that
+     of Genius or Demon.  Zoroaster has denominated them Oromaze
+     and Ahrimanes, and has said that of whatever falls under the
+     cognizance of our senses, light is the best representation
+     of the one, and darkness and ignorance of the other.  He
+     adds, that Mithra is an intermediate being, and it is for
+     this reason the Persians call Mithra the mediator or
+     intermediator.  Each of these Gods has distinct plants and
+     animals consecrated to him: for example, dogs, birds and
+     hedge-hogs belong to the good Genius, and all aquatic
+     animals to the evil one.
+
+     "The Persians also say, that Oromaze was born or formed out
+     of the purest light; Ahrimanes, on the contrary, out of the
+     thickest darkness: that Oromaze made six gods as good as
+     himself, and Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones: that
+     Oromaze afterwards multiplied himself threefold (Hermes
+     trismegistus) and removed to a distance as remote from the
+     sun as the sun is remote from the earth that he there formed
+     stars, and, among others, Sirius, which he placed in the
+     heavens as a guard and sentinel.  He made also twenty-four
+     other Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanes
+     created an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, and
+     from that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).
+     But Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth to
+     be made equal and smooth, that all men may live happy.
+
+     "Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one of
+     these Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years during
+     which the other is kept in subjection; that they afterwards
+     contend with equal weapons during a similar portion of time,
+     but that in the end the evil Genius will fall (never to rise
+     again).  Then men will become happy, and their bodies cast
+     no shade.  The God who mediates all these things reclines at
+     present in repose, waiting till he shall be pleased to
+     execute them."  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+     There is an apparent allegory through the whole of this
+     passage. The egg is the fixed sphere, the world: the six
+     Gods of Oromaze are the six signs of summer, those of
+     Ahrimanes the six signs of winter.  The forty-eight other
+     Gods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient
+     sphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze.  The
+     office of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that the
+     origin of these ideas was Egyptian: finally, the expression
+     that the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that the
+     bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that the
+     equator was considered as their true paradise.
+
+     ** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they
+     celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against
+     Celsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets
+     and the heavens. The initiated took the name of
+     constellations, and assumed the figures of animals.  One was
+     a lion, another a raven, and a third a ram.  Hence the use
+     of masks in the first representation of the drama.  See Ant.
+     Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244.  "In the mysteries of Ceres the
+     chief in the procession called himself the creator; the
+     bearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the person
+     nearest to the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon,
+     Mercury.  In Egypt there was a festival in which the men and
+     women represented the year, the age, the seasons, the
+     different parts of the day, and they walked in precession
+     after Bacchus.  Athen. lib. v., ch. 7.  In the cave of
+     Mithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the seven
+     spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and
+     descended.  This is precisely the ladder in Jacob's vision,
+     which shows that at that epoch a the whole system was
+     formed.  There is in the French king's library a superb
+     volume of pictures of the Indian Gods, in which the ladder
+     is represented with the souls of men mounting it."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      VI. Sixth System. The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe under
+      diverse Emblems.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "While the nations were wandering in the dark labyrinth of mythology and
+      fables, the physical priests, pursuing their studies and enquiries into
+      the order and disposition of the universe, came to new conclusions, and
+      formed new systems concerning powers and first causes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Long confined to simple appearances, they saw nothing in the movement of
+      the stars but an unknown play of luminous bodies rolling round the earth,
+      which they believed the central point of all the spheres; but as soon as
+      they discovered the rotundity of our planet, the consequences of this
+      first fact led them to new considerations; and from induction to induction
+      they rose to the highest conceptions in astronomy and physics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed, after having conceived this luminous idea, that the terrestrial
+      globe is a little circle inscribed in the greater circle of the heavens,
+      the theory of concentric circles came naturally into their hypothesis, to
+      determine the unknown circle of the terrestrial globe by certain known
+      portions of the celestial circle; and the measurement of one or more
+      degrees of the meridian gave with precision the whole circumference. Then,
+      taking for a compass the known diameter of the earth, some fortunate
+      genius applied it with a bold hand to the boundless orbits of the heavens;
+      and man, the inhabitant of a grain of sand, embracing the infinite
+      distances of the stars, launches into the immensity of space and the
+      eternity of time: there he is presented with a new order of the universe
+      of which the atom-globe which he inhabited appeared no longer to be the
+      centre; this important post was reserved to the enormous mass of the sun;
+      and that body became the flaming pivot of eight surrounding spheres, whose
+      movements were henceforth subjected to precise calculations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was indeed a great effort for the human mind to have undertaken to
+      determine the disposition and order of the great engines of nature; but
+      not content with this first effort, it still endeavored to develop the
+      mechanism, and discover the origin and the instinctive principle. Hence,
+      engaged in the abstract and metaphysical nature of motion and its first
+      cause, of the inherent or incidental properties of matter, its successive
+      forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space unbounded, the
+      physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of subtile reasoning and
+      scholastic controversy.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you will
+     find our assertions respecting the knowledge of the priests
+     amply proved.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "In the first place, the action of the sun on terrestrial bodies, teaching
+      them to regard his substance as a pure and elementary fire, they made it
+      the focus and reservoir of an ocean of igneous and luminous fluid, which,
+      under the name of ether, filled the universe and nourished all beings.
+      Afterwards, having discovered, by a physical and attentive analysis, this
+      same fire, or another perfectly resembling it, in the composition of all
+      bodies, and having perceived it to be the essential agent of that
+      spontaneous movement which is called life in animals and vegetation in
+      plants, they conceived the mechanism and harmony of the universe, as of a
+      homogeneous whole, of one identical body, whose parts, though distant, had
+      nevertheless an intimate relation;* and the world was a living being,
+      animated by the organic circulation of an igneous and even electrical
+      fluid,** which, by a term of comparison borrowed first from men and
+      animals, had the sun for a heart and a focus.***
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the very words of Jamblicus.  De Myst. Egypt.
+
+     ** The more I consider what the ancients understood by ether
+     and spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the stronger
+     do I find the analogy between it and the electrial fluid.  A
+     luminous fluid, principle of warmth and motion, pervading
+     the universe, forming the matter of the stars, having small
+     round particles, which insinuate themselves into bodies, and
+     fill them by dilating itself, be their extent what it will.
+     What can more strongly resemble electricity?
+
+     *** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun the
+     heart of the world.  Som. Scrip. c. 20.  The Egyptians, says
+     Plutarch, call the East the face, the North the right side,
+     and the South the left side of the world, because there the
+     heart is placed.  They continually compare the universe to a
+     man; and hence the celebrated microcosm of the Alchymists.
+     We observe, by the bye, that the Alchymists, Cabalists,
+     Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and every other such
+     sort of visionaries, are but the mistaken disciples of this
+     ancient school: we say mistaken, because, in spite of their
+     pretensions, the thread of the occult science is broken.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "From this time the physical theologians seem to have divided into several
+      classes; one class, grounding itself on these principles resulting from
+      observation; that nothing can be annihilated in the world; that the
+      elements are indestructible; that they change their combinations but not
+      their nature; that the life and death of beings are but the different
+      modifications of the same atoms; that matter itself possesses properties
+      which give rise to all its modes of existence; that the world is eternal,*
+      or unlimited in space and duration; said that the whole universe was God;
+      and, according to them, God was a being, effect and cause, agent and
+      patient, moving principle and thing moved, having for laws the invariable
+      properties that constitute fatality; and this class conveyed their idea by
+      the emblem of Pan (the great whole); or of Jupiter, with a forehead of
+      stars, body of planets, and feet of animals; or of the Orphic Egg,** whose
+      yolk, suspended in the center of a liquid, surrounded by a vault,
+      represented the globe of the sun, swimming in ether in the midst of the
+      vault of heaven;*** sometimes by a great round serpent, representing the
+      heavens where they placed the moving principle, and for that reason of an
+      azure color, studded with spots of gold, (the stars) devouring his tail&mdash;that
+      is, folding and unfolding himself eternally, like the revolutions of the
+      spheres; sometimes by that of a man, having his feet joined together and
+      tied, to signify immutable existence, wrapped in a cloak of all colors,
+      like the face of nature, and bearing on his head a sphere of gold,****
+      emblem of the sphere of the stars; or by that of another man, sometimes
+      seated on the flower of the lotos borne on the abyss of waters, sometimes
+      lying on a pile of twelve cushions, denoting the twelve celestial signs.
+      And here, Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Tibetans, and Chinese, is the
+      theology, which, founded by the Egyptians and transmitted to you, is
+      preserved in the pictures which you compose of Brama, of Beddou, of
+      Somona-Kodom of Omito. This, ye Jews and Christians, is likewise the
+      opinion of which you have preserved a part in your God moving on the face
+      of the waters, by an allusion to the wind*5 which, at the beginning of the
+      world, that is, the departure of the sun from the sign of Cancer,
+      announced the inundation of the Nile, and seemed to prepare the creation."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See the Pythagorean, Ocellus Lacunus.
+
+     ** Vide Oedip. Aegypt. Tome II., page 205.
+
+     *** This comparison of the sun with the yolk of an egg
+     refers: 1. To its round and yellow figure; 2. To its central
+     situation; 3. To the germ or principle of life contained in
+     the yolk.  May not the oval form of the egg allude to the
+     elipsis of the orbs?  I am inclined to this opinion.  The
+     word Orphic offers a farther observation.  Macrobius says
+     (Som. Scrip. c. 14. and c. 20), that the sun is the brain of
+     the universe, and that it is from analogy that the skull of
+     a human being is round, like the planet, the seat of
+     intelligence.  Now the word Oerph signifies in Hebrew the
+     brain and its seat (cervix): Orpheus, then, is the same as
+     Bedou or Baits; and the Bonzes are those very Orphics which
+     Plutarch represents as quacks, who ate no meat, vended
+     talismans and little stones, and deceived individuals, and
+     even governments themselves. See a learned memoir of Freret
+     sur les Orphiques, Acad. des Inscrp. vol. 25, in quarto.
+
+     **** See Porphyry in Eusebus. Proep. Evang., lib. 3, p. 115.
+
+     *5 The Northern or Etesian wind, which commences regularly
+     at the solstice, with the inundation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      VII. Seventh System. Worship of the SOUL of the WORLD, that is to say, the
+      Element of Fire, vital Principle of the Universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But others, disgusted at the idea of a being at once effect and cause,
+      agent and patient, and uniting contrary natures in the same nature,
+      distinguished the moving principle from the thing moved; and premising
+      that matter in itself was inert they pretended that its properties were
+      communicated to it by a distinct agent, of which itself was only the cover
+      or the case. This agent was called by some the igneous principle, known to
+      be the author of all motion; by others it was supposed to be the fluid
+      called ether, which was thought more active and subtile; and, as in
+      animals the vital and moving principle was called a soul, a spirit, and as
+      they reasoned constantly by comparisons, especially those drawn from human
+      beings, they gave to the moving principle of the universe the name of
+      soul, intelligence, spirit; and God was the vital spirit, which extended
+      through all beings and animated the vast body of the world. And this class
+      conveyed their idea sometimes by Youpiter,* essence of motion and
+      animation, principle of existence, or rather existence itself; sometimes
+      by Vulcan or Phtha, elementary principle of fire; or by the altar of
+      Vesta, placed in the center of her temple like the sun in the heavens;
+      sometimes by Kneph, a human figure, dressed in dark blue, having in one
+      hand a sceptre and a girdle (the zodiac), with a cap of feathers to
+      express the fugacity of thought, and producing from his mouth the great
+      egg.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This is the true pronunciation of the Jupiter of the
+     Latins. . . . Existence itself.  This is the signification
+     of the word You.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Now, as a consequence of this system, every being containing in itself a
+      portion of the igneous and etherial fluid, common and universal mover, and
+      this fluid soul of the world being God, it followed that the souls of all
+      beings were portions of God himself partaking of all his attributes, that
+      is, being a substance indivisible, simple, and immortal; and hence the
+      whole system of the immortality of the soul, which at first was eternity.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the system of the first spiritualists, the soul was not
+     created with, or at the same time as the body, in order to
+     be inserted in it: its existence was supposed to be anterior
+     and from all eternity.  Such, in a few words, is the
+     doctrine of Macrobius on this head.  Som. Seip. passim.
+
+     "There exists a luminous, igneous, subtile fluid, which
+     under the name of ether and spiritus, fills the universe.
+     It is the essential principle and agent of motion and life,
+     it is the Deity. When an earthly body is to be animated, a
+     small round particle of this fluid gravitates through the
+     milky way towards the lunar sphere; where, when it arrives,
+     it unites with a grosser air, and becomes fit to associate
+     with matter: it then enters and entirely fills the body,
+     animates it, suffers, grows, increases, and diminishes with
+     it; lastly, when the body dies, and its gross elements
+     dissolve, this incorruptible particle takes its leave of it,
+     and returns to the grand ocean of ether, if not retained by
+     its union with the lunar air: it is this air or gas, which,
+     retaining the shape of the body, becomes a phantom or ghost,
+     the perfect representation of the deceased.  The Greeks
+     called this phantom the image or idol of the soul; the
+     Pythagoreans, its chariot, its frame; and the Rabbinical
+     school, its vessel, or boat.  When a man had conducted
+     himself well in this world, his whole soul, that is its
+     chariot and ether, ascended to the moon, where a separation
+     took place: the chariot lived in the lunar Elysium, and the
+     ether returned to the fixed sphere, that is, to God: for the
+     fixed heaven, says Macrobius, was by many called by the name
+     of God (c. 14).  If a man had not lived virtuously, the soul
+     remained on earth to undergo purification, and was to wander
+     to and fro, like the ghosts of Homer, to whom this doctrine
+     must have been known, since he wrote after the time of
+     Pherecydes and Pythagoras, who were its promulgators in
+     Greece.  Herodotus upon this occasion says, that the whole
+     romance of the soul and its transmigrations was invented by
+     the Egyptians, and propagated in Greece by men, who
+     pretended to be its authors.  I know their names, adds he,
+     but shall not mention them (lib. 2).  Cicero, however, has
+     positively informed us, that it was Pherecydes, master of
+     Pythagoras.  Tuscul. lib. 1, sect. 16. Now admitting that
+     this system was at that period a novelty, it accounts for
+     Solomon's treating it as a fable, who lived 130 years before
+     Pherecydes.  'Who knoweth,' said he, 'the spirit of a man
+     that it goeth upwards?  I said in my heart concerning the
+     estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them and
+     that they might see that they themselves are beasts.  For
+     that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even
+     one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the
+     other; yea they have all one breath, so that a man hath no
+     pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'" Eccles. c.
+     iii: v. 18.
+
+     And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator of
+     Herodotus (M. Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justly
+     observes in note 389 of the second book; where he says also
+     that the immortality of the soul was not introduced among
+     the Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians.  In
+     other respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properly
+     analysed, appears to be merely a system of physics badly
+     understood.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Hence, also its transmigrations, known by the name of metempsychosis,
+      that is, the passage of the vital principle from one body to another; an
+      idea which arose from the real transmigration of the material elements.
+      And behold, ye Indians, ye Boudhists, ye Christians, ye Mussulmans! whence
+      are derived all your opinions on the spirituality of the soul; behold what
+      was the source of the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato, your masters, who
+      were themselves but the echoes of another, the last sect of visionary
+      philosophers, which we will proceed to examine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII. Eighth system. The WORLD-MACHINE: Worship of the Demi-Ourgos, or
+      Grand Artificer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hitherto the theologians, employing themselves in examining the fine and
+      subtile substances of ether or the generating fire, had not, however,
+      ceased to treat of beings palpable and perceptible to the senses; and
+      theology continued to be the theory of physical powers, placed sometimes
+      exclusively in the stars, and sometimes disseminated through the universe;
+      but at this period, certain superficial minds, losing the chain of ideas
+      which had directed them in their profound studies, or ignorant of the
+      facts on which they were founded, distorted all the conclusions that
+      flowed from them by the introduction of a strange and novel chimera. They
+      pretended that this universe, these heavens, these stars, this sun,
+      differed in no respect from an ordinary machine; and applying to this
+      first hypothesis a comparison drawn from the works of art, they raised an
+      edifice of the most whimsical sophisms. A machine, said they, does not
+      make itself; it has had an anterior workman; its very existence proves it.
+      The world is a machine; therefore it had an artificer.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * All the arguments of the spiritualists are founded on
+     this.  See Macrobius, at the end of the second book, and
+     Plato, with the comments of Marcilius Ficinus.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Here, then, is the Demi-Ourgos or grand artificer, constituted God
+      autocratical and supreme. In vain the ancient philosophy objected to this
+      by saying that the artificer himself must have had parents and
+      progenitors; and that they only added another step to the ladder by taking
+      eternity from the world, and giving it to its supposed author. The
+      innovators, not content with this first paradox, passed on to a second;
+      and, applying to their artificer the theory of the human understanding,
+      they pretended that the Demi-Ourgos had framed his machine on a plan
+      already existing in his understanding. Now, as their masters, the
+      naturalists, had placed in the regions of the fixed stars the great primum
+      mobile, under the name of intelligence and reason, so their mimics, the
+      spiritualists, seizing this idea, applied it to their Demi-Ourgos, and
+      making it a substance distinct and self-existent, they called it mens or
+      logos (reason or word). And, as they likewise admitted the existence of
+      the soul of the world, or solar principle, they found themselves obliged
+      to compose three grades of divine beings, which were: first, the
+      Demi-Ourgos, or working god; secondly, the logos, word or reason; thirdly,
+      the spirit or soul (of the world).* And here, Christians! is the romance
+      on which you have founded your trinity; here is the system which, born a
+      heretic in the temples of Egypt, transported a pagan into the schools of
+      Greece and Italy, is now found to be good, catholic, and orthodox, by the
+      conversion of its partisans, the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, to
+      Christianity.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These are the real types of the Christian Trinity.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "It is thus that God, after having been, First, The visible and various
+      action of the meteors and the elements;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Secondly, The combined powers of the stars, considered in their relations
+      to terrestrial beings;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirdly, These terrestrial beings themselves, by confounding the symbols
+      with their archetypes;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourthly, The double power of nature in its two principal operations of
+      producing and destroying;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifthly, The animated world, with distinction of agent and patient, of
+      effect and cause;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sixthly, The solar principle, or the element of fire considered as the
+      only mover;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has thus become, finally, in the last resort, a chimerical and abstract
+      being, a scholastic subtilty, of substance without form, a body without a
+      figure, a very delirium of the mind, beyond the power of reason to
+      comprehend. But vainly does it seek in this last transformation to elude
+      the senses; the seal of its origin is imprinted upon it too deep to be
+      effaced; and its attributes, all borrowed from the physical attributes of
+      the universe, such as immensity, eternity, indivisibility,
+      incomprehensibility; or on the moral affections of man, such as goodness,
+      justice, majesty; its names* even, all derived from the physical beings
+      which were its types, and especially from the sun, from the planets, and
+      from the world, constantly bring to mind, in spite of its corrupters,
+      indelible marks of its real nature.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In our last analysis we found all the names of the Deity
+     to be derived from some material object in which it was
+     supposed to reside.  We have given a considerable number of
+     instances; let us add one more relative to our word God.
+     This is known to be the Deus of the Latins, and the Theos of
+     the Greeks.  Now by the confession of Plato (in Cratylo), of
+     Macrobius (Saturn, lib. 1, c. 24,) and of Plutarch (Isis and
+     Osiris) its root is thein, which signifies to wander, like
+     planein, that is to say, it is synonymous with planets;
+     because, add our authors, both the ancient Greeks and
+     Barbarians particularly worshipped the planets.  I know that
+     such enquiries into etymologies have been much decried: but
+     if, as is the case, words are the representative signs of
+     ideas, the genealogy of the one becomes that of the other,
+     and a good etymological dictionary would be the most perfect
+     history of the human understanding.  It would only be
+     necessary in this enquiry to observe certain precautions,
+     which have hitherto been neglected, and particularly to make
+     an exact comparison of the value of the letters of the
+     different alphabets.  But, to continue our subject, we shall
+     add, that in the Phoenician language, the word thah (with
+     ain) signifies also to wander, and appears to be the
+     derivation of thein.  If we suppose Deus to be derived from
+     the Greek Zeus, a proper name of You-piter, having zaw, I
+     live, for its root, its sense will be precisely that of you,
+     and will mean soul of the world, igneous principle.  (See
+     note p. 143).  Div-us, which only signifies Genius, God of
+     the second order, appears to me to come from the oriental
+     word div substituted for dib, wolf and chacal, one of the
+     emblems of the sun.  At Thebes, says Macrobius, the sun was
+     painted under the form of a wolf or chacal, for there are no
+     wolves in Egypt.  The reason of this emblem, doubtless, is
+     that the chacal, like the cock announces by its cries the
+     sun's rising; and this reason is confirmed by the analogy of
+     the words lykos, wolf, and lyke, light of the morning,
+     whence comes lux.
+
+     Dius, which is to be understood also of the sun, must be
+     derived from dih, a hawk.  "The Egyptians," says Porphyry
+     (Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 92,) "represent the sun under the
+     emblem of a hawk, because this bird soars to the highest
+     regions of air where light abounds."  And in reality we
+     continually see at Cairo large flights of these birds,
+     hovering in the air, from whence they descend not but to
+     stun us with their shrieks, which are like the monosyllable
+     dih: and here, as in the preceding example, we find an
+     analogy between the word dies, day, light, and dius, god,
+     sun.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Such is the chain of ideas which the human mind had already run through
+      at an epoch previous to the records of history; and since their continuity
+      proves that they were the produce of the same series of studies and
+      labors, we have every reason to place their origin in Egypt, the cradle of
+      their first elements. This progress there may have been rapid; because the
+      physical priests had no other food, in the retirement of the temples, but
+      the enigma of the universe, always present to their minds; and because in
+      the political districts into which that country was for a long time
+      divided, every state had its college of priests, who, being by turns
+      auxiliaries or rivals, hastened by their disputes the progress of science
+      and discovery.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * One of the proofs that all these systems were invented in
+     Egypt, is that this is the only country where we see a
+     complete body of doctrine formed from the remotest
+     antiquity.
+
+     Clemens Alexandrinus has transmitted to us (Stromat. lib.
+     6,) a curious detail of the forty-two volumes which were
+     borne in the procession of Isis.  "The priest," says he, "or
+     chanter, carries one of the symbolic instruments of music,
+     and two of the books of Mercury; one containing hymns of the
+     gods, the other the list of kings.  Next to him the
+     horoscope (the regulator of time,) carries a palm and a
+     dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the four
+     books of Mercury which treat of astrology: the first on the
+     order of the planets, the second on the risings of the sun
+     and moon, and the two last on the rising and aspect of the
+     stars.  Then comes the sacred author, with feathers on his
+     head (like Kneph) and a book in his hand, together with ink,
+     and a reed to write with, (as is still the practice among
+     the Arabs).  He must be versed in hieroglyphics, must
+     understand the description of the universe, the course of
+     the sun, moon, stars, and planets, be acquainted with the
+     division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes, with the course of
+     the Nile, with instruments, measures, sacred ornaments, and
+     sacred places.  Next comes the stole bearer, who carries the
+     cubit of justice, or measure of the Nile, and a cup for the
+     libations; he bears also in the procession ten volumes on
+     the subject of sacrifices, hymns, prayers, offerings,
+     ceremonies, festivals. Lastly arrives the prophet, bearing
+     in his bosom a pitcher, so as to be exposed to view; he is
+     followed by persons carrying bread (as at the marriage of
+     Cana.) This prophet, as president of the mysteries, learns
+     ten other sacred volumes, which treat of the laws, the gods,
+     and the discipline of the priests.  Now there are in all
+     forty-two volumes, thirty-six of which are studied and got
+     by heart by these personages, and the remaining six are set
+     apart to be consulted by the pastophores; they treat of
+     medicine, the construction of the human body (anatomy),
+     diseases, remedies, instruments, etc., etc."
+
+     We leave the reader to deduce all the consequences of an
+     Encyclopedia.  It is ascribed to Mercury; but Jamblicus
+     tells us that each book, composed by priests, was dedicated
+     to that god, who, on account of his title of genius or decan
+     opening the zodiac, presided over every enterprise.  He is
+     the Janus of the Romans, and the Guianesa of the Indians,
+     and it is remarkable that Yanus and Guianes are homonymous.
+     In short it appears that these books are the source of all
+     that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and Latins in
+     every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc.  What is
+     most to be regretted in their loss is that part which
+     related to the principles of medicine and diet, in which the
+     Egyptians appear to have made a considerable progress, and
+     to have delivered many useful observations.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "There happened early on the borders of the Nile, what has since been
+      repeated in every country; as soon as a new system was formed its novelty
+      excited quarrels and schisms; then, gaining credit by persecution itself,
+      sometimes it effaced antecedent ideas, sometimes it modified and
+      incorporated them; then, by the intervention of political revolutions, the
+      aggregation of states and the mixture of nations confused all opinions;
+      and the filiation of ideas being lost, theology fell into a chaos, and
+      became a mere logogriph of old traditions no longer understood. Religion,
+      having strayed from its object was now nothing more than a political
+      engine to conduct the credulous vulgar; and it was used for this purpose,
+      sometimes by men credulous themselves and dupes of their own visions, and
+      sometimes by bold and energetic spirits in pursuit of great objects of
+      ambition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX. Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World (You-piter).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such was the legislator of the Hebrews; who, wishing to separate his
+      nation from all others, and to form a distinct and solitary empire,
+      conceived the design of establishing its basis on religious prejudices,
+      and of raising around it a sacred rampart of opinions and of rites. But in
+      vain did he prescribe the worship of the symbols which prevailed in lower
+      Egypt and in Phoenicia;* for his god was nevertheless an Egyptian god,
+      invented by those priests of whom Moses had been the disciple; and
+      Yahouh,** betrayed by its very name, essence (of beings), and by its
+      symbol, the burning bush, is only the soul of the world, the moving
+      principle which the Greeks soon after adopted under the same denomination
+      in their you-piter, regenerating being, and under that of Ei,
+      existence,*** which the Thebans consecrated by the name of Kneph, which
+      Sais worshipped under the emblem of Isis veiled, with this inscription: I
+      am al that has been, all that is, and all that is to come, and no mortal
+      has raised my veil; which Pythagoras honored under the name of Vesta, and
+      which the stoic philosophy defined precisely by calling it the principle
+      of fire. In vain did Moses wish to blot from his religion every thing
+      which had relation to the stars; many traits call them to mind in spite of
+      all he has done. The seven planetary luminaries of the great candlestick;
+      the twelve stones, or signs in the Urim of the high priests; the feast of
+      the two equinoxes, (entrances and gates of the two hemispheres); the
+      ceremony of the lamb, (the celestial ram then in his fifteenth degree);
+      lastly, the name even of Osiris preserved in his song,**** and the ark, or
+      coffer, an imitation of the tomb in which that God was laid, all remain as
+      so many witnesses of the filiation of his ideas, and of their extraction
+      from the common source.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "At a certain period," says Plutarch (de Iside) "all the
+     Egyptians have their animal gods painted.  The Thebans are
+     the only people who do not employ painters, because they
+     worship a god whose form comes not under the senses, and
+     cannot be represented."  And this is the god whom Moses,
+     educated at Heliopolis, adopted; but the idea was not of his
+     invention.
+
+     ** Such is the true pronunciation of the Jehovah of the
+     moderns, who violate, in this respect, every rule of
+     criticism; since it is evident that the ancients,
+     particularly the eastern Syrians and Phoenicians, were
+     acquainted neither with the J nor the P which are of Tartar
+     origin.  The subsisting usage of the Arabs, which we have
+     re-established here, is confirmed by Diodorus, who calls the
+     god of Moses Iaw, (lib. 1), and Iaw and Yahouh are
+     manifestly the same word: the identity continues in that of
+     You-piter; but in order to render it more complete, we shall
+     demonstrate the signification to be the same.
+
+     In Hebrew, that is to say, in one of the dialects of the
+     common language of lower Asia, Yahouh is the participle of
+     the verb hih, to exist, to be, and signifies existing: in
+     other words, the principle of life, the mover or even motion
+     (the universal soul of beings).  Now what is Jupiter?  Let
+     us hear the Greeks and Latins explain their theology.  "The
+     Egyptians," says Diodorus, after Manatho, priest of Memphis,
+     "in giving names to the five elements, called spirit, or
+     ether, You-piter, on account of the true meaning of that
+     word: for spirit is the source of life, author of the vital
+     principle in animals; and for this reason they considered
+     him as the father, the generator of beings."  For the same
+     reason Homer says, father, and king of men and gods.  (Diod.
+     lib. 1, sect 1).
+
+     "Theologians," says Macrobius, "consider You-piter as the
+     soul of the world."  Hence the words of Virgil: " Muses let
+     us begin with You-piter; the world is full of You-piter."
+     (Somn. Scrip., ch. 17).  And in the Saturnalia, he says,
+     "Jupiter is the sun himself." It was this also which made
+     Virgil say, "The spirit nourishes the life (of beings), and
+     the soul diffused through the vast members (of the
+     universe), agitates the whole mass, and forms but one
+     immense body."
+
+     "Ioupiter," says the ancient verses of the Orphic sect,
+     which originated in Egypt; verses collected by Onomacritus
+     in the days of Pisistratus, "Ioupiter, represented with the
+     thunder in his hand, is the beginning, origin, end, and
+     middle of all things: a single and universal power, he
+     governs every thing; heaven, earth, fire, water, the
+     elements, day, and night.  These are what constitute his
+     immense body: his eyes are the sun and moon: he is space and
+     eternity: in fine," adds Porphyry.  "Jupiter is the world,
+     the universe, that which constitutes the essence and life of
+     all beings.  Now," continues the same author, "as
+     philosophers differed in opinion respecting the nature and
+     constituent parts of this god, and as they could invent no
+     figure that should represent all his attributes, they
+     painted him in the form of a man.  He is in a sitting
+     posture, in allusion to his immutable essence; the upper
+     part of his body is uncovered, because it is in the upper
+     regions of the universe (the stars) that he most
+     conspicuously displays himself.  He is covered from the
+     waist downwards, because respecting terrestrial things he is
+     more secret and concealed.  He holds a scepter in his left
+     hand, because on the left side is the heart, and the heart
+     is the seat of the understanding, which, (in human beings)
+     regulates every action."  Euseb. Proeper. Evang., p 100.
+
+     The following passage of the geographer and philosopher,
+     Strabo, removes every doubt as to the identity of the ideas
+     of Moses and those of the heathen theologians.
+
+     "Moses, who was one of the Egyptian priests, taught his
+     followers that it was an egregious error to represent the
+     Deity under the form of animals, as the Egyptians did, or in
+     the shape of man, as was the practice of the Greeks and
+     Africans.  That alone is the Deity, said he, which
+     constitutes heaven, earth, and every living thing; that
+     which we call the world, the sum of all things, nature; and
+     no reasonable person will think of representing such a being
+     by the image of any one of the objects around us.  It is for
+     this reason, that, rejecting every species of images or
+     idols, Moses wished the Deity to be worshipped without
+     emblems, and according to his proper nature; and he
+     accordingly ordered a temple worthy of him to be erected,
+     etc.  Geograph. lib. 16, p. 1104, edition of 1707.
+
+     The theology of Moses has, then, differed in no respect from
+     that of his followers, that is to say, from that of the
+     Stoics and Epicureans, who consider the Deity as the soul of
+     the world.  This philosophy appears to have taken birth, or
+     to have been disseminated when Abraham came into Egypt (200
+     years before Moses), since he quitted his system of idols
+     for that of the god Yahouh; so that we may place its
+     promulgation about the seventeenth or eighteenth century
+     before Christ; which corresponds with what we have said
+     before.
+
+     As to the history of Moses, Diodorus properly represents it
+     when he says, lib. 34 and 40, "That the Jews were driven out
+     of Egypt at a time of dearth, when the country was full of
+     foreigners, and that Moses, a man of extraordinary prudence
+     seized this opportunity of establishing his religion in the
+     mountains of Judea."  It will seem paradoxical to assert,
+     that the 600,000 armed men whom he conducted thither ought
+     to be reduced to 6,000; but I can confirm the assertion by
+     so many proofs drawn from the books themselves, that it will
+     be necessary to correct an error which appears to have
+     arisen from the mistake of the transcribers.
+
+     *** This was the monosyllable written on the gates of the
+     temple of Delphos.  Plutarch has made it the subject of a
+     dissertation.
+
+     **** These are the literal expressions of the book of
+     Deuteronomy, chap. XXXII.  "The works of Tsour are perfect."
+     Now Tsour has been translated by the word creator; its
+     proper signification is to give forms, and this is one of
+     the definitions of Osiris in Plutarch.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      X. Religion of Zoroaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such also was Zoroaster; who, five centuries after Moses, and in the time
+      of David, revived and moralized among the Medes and Bactrians, the whole
+      Egyptian system of Osiris and Typhon, under the names Ormuzd and
+      Ahrimanes; who called the reign of summer, virtue and good; the reign of
+      winter, sin and evil; the renewal of nature in spring, creation of the
+      world; the conjunction of the spheres at secular periods, resurrection;
+      and the Tartarus and Elysium of the astrologers and geographers were named
+      future life, hell and paradise. In a word, he did nothing but consecrate
+      the existing dreams of the mystical system.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XI. Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such again are the propagators of the dismal doctrine of the Samaneans;
+      who, on the basis of the Metempsychosis, have erected the misanthropic
+      system of self-denial, and of privations; who, laying it down as a
+      principle that the body is only a prison where the soul lives in an impure
+      confinement, that life is only a dream, an illusion, and the world only a
+      passage to another country, to a life without end, placed virtue and
+      perfection in absolute immobility, in the destruction of all sentiment, in
+      the abnegation of physical organs, in the annihilation of all our being;
+      whence resulted fasts, penances, macerations, solitude, contemplations,
+      and all the practices of the deplorable delirium of the Anchorites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XII. Brahmism, or Indian System.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And such, too, were the founders of the Indian System; who, refining
+      after Zoroaster on the two principles of creation and destruction,
+      introduced an intermediary principle, that of preservation, and on their
+      trinity in unity, of Brama, Chiven, and Vichenou, accumulated the
+      allegories of their ancient traditions, and the alembicated subtilities of
+      their metaphysics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These are the materials which existed in a scattered state for many
+      centuries in Asia; when a fortuitous concourse of events and
+      circumstances, on the borders of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean,
+      served to form them into new combinations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIII. Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun, under the
+      cabalistical names of Chrish-en, or Christ, and Ye-sus or Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In constituting a separate nation, Moses strove in vain to defend it
+      against the invasion of foreign ideas. An invisible inclination, founded
+      on the affinity of their origin, had constantly brought back the Hebrews
+      towards the worship of the neighboring nations; and the commercial and
+      political relations which necessarily existed between them, strengthened
+      this propensity from day to day. As long as the constitution of the state
+      remained entire, the coercive force of the government and the laws opposed
+      these innovations, and retarded their progress; nevertheless the high
+      places were full of idols; and the god Sun had his chariot and horses
+      painted in the palaces of the kings, and even in the temples of Yahouh;
+      but when the conquests of the sultans of Nineveh and Babylon had dissolved
+      the bands of civil power, the people, left to themselves and solicited by
+      their conquerors, restrained no longer their inclination for profane
+      opinions, and they were publicly established in Judea. First, the Assyrian
+      colonies, which came and occupied the lands of the tribes, filled the
+      kingdom of Samaria with dogmas of the Magi, which very soon penetrated
+      into the kingdom of Judea. Afterwards, Jerusalem being subjugated, the
+      Egyptians, the Syrians, the Arabs, entering this defenceless country,
+      introduced their opinions; and the religion of Moses was doubly mutilated.
+      Besides the priests and great men, being transported to Babylon and
+      educated in the sciences of the Chaldeans, imbibed, during a residence of
+      seventy years, the whole of their theology; and from that moment the
+      dogmas of the hostile Genius (Satan), the archangel Michael,* the ancient
+      of days (Ormuzd), the rebel angels, the battles in heaven, the immortality
+      of the soul, and the resurrection, all unknown to Moses, or rejected by
+      his total silence respecting them, were introduced and naturalized among
+      the Jews.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The names of the angels and of the months, such as
+     Gabriel, Michael, Yar, Nisan, etc., came from Babylon with
+     the Jews:" says expressly the Talmud of Jerusalem.  See
+     Beousob. Hist. du Manich. Vol. II, p. 624, where he proves
+     that the saints of the Almanac are an imitation of the 365
+     angels of the Persians; and Jamblicus in his Egyptian
+     Mysteries, sect. 2, c. 3, speaks of angels, archangels,
+     seraphims, etc., like a true Christian.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "The emigrants returned to their country with these ideas; and their
+      innovation at first excited disputes between their partisans the
+      Pharisees, and their opponents the Saducees, who maintained the ancient
+      national worship; but the former, aided by the propensities of the people
+      and their habits already contracted, and supported by the Persians, their
+      deliverers and masters, gained the ascendant over the latter; and the Sons
+      of Moses consecrated the theology of Zoroaster.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The whole philosophy of the gymnosophists," says Diogenes
+     Laertius on the authority of an ancient writer, "is derived
+     from that of the Magi, and many assert that of the Jews to
+     have the same origin."  Lib. 1. c. 9.  Megasthenes, an
+     historian of repute in the days of Seleucus Nicanor, and who
+     wrote particularly upon India, speaking of the philosophy of
+     the ancients respecting natural things, puts the Brachmans
+     and the Jews precisely on the same footing.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "A fortuitous analogy between two leading ideas was highly favorable to
+      this coalition, and became the basis of a last system, not less surprising
+      in the fortune it has had in the world, than in the causes of its
+      formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "After the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Samaria, some judicious
+      men foresaw the same destiny for Jerusalem, which they did not fail to
+      predict and publish; and their predictions had the particular turn of
+      being terminated by prayers for a re-establishment and regeneration,
+      uttered in the form of prophecies. The Hierophants, in their enthusiasm,
+      had painted a king as a deliverer, who was to re-establish the nation in
+      its ancient glory; the Hebrews were to become once more a powerful, a
+      conquering nation, and Jerusalem the capital of an empire extended over
+      the whole earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Events having realized the first part of these predictions, the ruin of
+      Jerusalem, the people adhered to the second with a firmness of belief in
+      proportion to their misfortunes; and the afflicted Jews expected, with the
+      impatience of want and desire, this victorious king and deliverer, who was
+      to come and save the nation of Moses, and restore the empire of David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the other hand, the sacred and mythological traditions of preceding
+      times had spread through all Asia a dogma perfectly analogous. The cry
+      there was a great mediator, a final judge, a future saviour, a king, god,
+      conqueror and legislator, who was to restore the golden age upon earth,*
+      to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the empire of
+      good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished these ideas
+      with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a consolation under
+      that deplorable state of suffering into which they had been plunged by the
+      devastations of successive conquests, and the barbarous despotism of their
+      governments. This conformity between the oracles of different nations, and
+      those of the prophets, excited the attention of the Jews; and doubtless
+      the prophets had the art to compose their descriptions after the style and
+      genius of the sacred books employed in the Pagan mysteries. There was
+      therefore a general expectation in Judea of a great ambassador, a final
+      Saviour; when a singular circumstance determined the epoch of his coming.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This is the reason of the application of the many Pagan
+     oracles to Jesus, and particularly the fourth eclogue of
+     Virgil, and the Sybilline verses so celebrated among the
+     ancients.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "It is found in the sacred books of the Persians and Chaldeans, that the
+      world, composed of a total revolution of twelve thousand, was divided into
+      two partial revolutions; one of which, the age and reign of good,
+      terminated in six thousand; the other, the age and reign of evil, was to
+      terminate in six thousand more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By these records, the first authors had understood the annual revolution
+      of the great celestial orb called the world, (a revolution composed of
+      twelve months or signs, divided each into a thousand parts), and the two
+      systematic periods, of winter and summer, composed each of six thousand.
+      These expressions, wholly equivocal and badly explained, having received
+      an absolute and moral, instead of a physical and astrological sense, it
+      happened that the annual world was taken for the secular world, the
+      thousand of the zodiacal divisions, for a thousand of years; and
+      supposing, from the state of things, that they lived in the age of evil,
+      they inferred that it would end with the six thousand pretended years.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * We have already seen this tradition current among the
+     Tuscans; it was disseminated through most nations, and shows
+     us what we ought to think of all the pretended creations and
+     terminations of the world, which are merely the beginnings
+     and endings of astronomical periods invented by astrologers.
+     That of the year or solar revolution, being the most simple
+     and perceptible, served as a model to the rest, and its
+     comparison gave rise to the most whimsical ideas.  Of this
+     description is the idea of the four ages of the world among
+     the Indians.  Originally these four ages were merely the
+     four seasons; and as each season was under the supposed
+     influence of a planet, it bore the name of the metal
+     appropriated to that planet; thus spring was the age of the
+     sun, or of gold; summer the age of the moon, or of silver;
+     autumn the age of Venus, or of brass; and winter the age of
+     Mars, or of iron.  Afterwards when astronomers invented the
+     great year of 25 and 36 thousand common years, which had for
+     its object the bringing back all the stars to one point of
+     departure and a general conjunction, the ambiguity of the
+     terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and the
+     myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which
+     were thus measured were easily converted into so many
+     revolutions of the sun.  Thus the different periods of
+     creation which have been so great a source of difficulty and
+     misapprehension to curious enquirers, were in reality
+     nothing more than hypothetical calculations of astronomical
+     periods.  In the same manner the creation of the world has
+     been attributed to different seasons of the year, just as
+     these different seasons have served for the fictitious
+     period of these conjunctions; and of consequence has been
+     adopted by different nations for the commencement of an
+     ordinary year.  Among the Egyptians this period fell upon
+     the summer solstice, which was the commencement of their
+     year; and the departure of the spheres, according to their
+     conjectures, fell in like manner upon the period when the
+     sun enters cancer.  Among the Persians the year commenced at
+     first in the spring, or when the sun enters Aries; and from
+     thence the first Christians were led to suppose that God
+     created the world in the spring: this opinion is also
+     favored by the book of Genesis; and it is farther
+     remarkable, that the world is not there said to be created
+     by the God of Moses (Yahouh), but by the Elohim or gods in
+     the plural, that is by the angels or genii, for so the word
+     constantly means in the Hebrew books.  If we farther observe
+     that the root of the word Elohim signifies strong or
+     powerful, and that the Egyptians called their decans strong
+     and powerful leaders, attributing to them the creation of
+     the world, we shall presently perceive that the book of
+     Genesis affirms neither more nor less than that the world
+     was created by the decans, by those very genii whom,
+     according to Sanchoniathon, Mercury excited against Saturn,
+     and who were called Elohim.  It may be farther asked why the
+     plural substantive Elohim is made to agree with the singular
+     verb bara (the Elohim creates). The reason is that after the
+     Babylonish captivity the unity of the Supreme Being was the
+     prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was therefore thought
+     proper to introduce a pious solecism in language, which it
+     is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the names
+     of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a
+     plural verb, to which Elohim is the nominative case
+     understood, as Raouben (Reuben), they have looked upon me,
+     and Samaonni (Simeon), they have granted me my prayer; to
+     wit, the Elohim.  The reason of this etymology is to be
+     found in the religious creeds of the wives of Jacob, whose
+     gods were the taraphim of Laban, that is, the angels of the
+     Persians, and Egyptian decans.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Now, according to calculations admitted by the Jews, they began to reckon
+      near six thousand years since the supposed creation of the world.* This
+      coincidence caused a fermentation in the public mind. Nothing was thought
+      of but the approaching end. They consulted the hierophants and the
+      mystical books, which differed as to the term; the great mediator, the
+      final judge, was expected and desired, to put an end to so many
+      calamities. This being was so much spoken of, that some person finally was
+      said to have seen him; and a first rumor of this sort was sufficient to
+      establish a general certainty. Popular report became an established fact:
+      the imaginary being was realized; and all the circumstances of
+      mythological tradition, being assembled around this phantom, produced a
+      regular history, of which it was no longer permitted to doubt.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * According to the computation of the Seventy, the period
+     elapsed consisted of about 5,600 years, and this computation
+     was principally followed.  It is well known how much, in the
+     first ages of the church, this opinion of the end of the
+     world agitated the minds of men.  In the sequel, the general
+     councils encouraged by finding that the general
+     conflagration did not come, pronounced the expectation that
+     prevailed heretical, and its believers were called
+     Millenarians; a circumstance curious enough, since it is
+     evident from the history of the gospels that Jesus Christ
+     was a Millenarian, and of consequence a heretic.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "These mythological traditions recounted that, in the beginning, a woman
+      and a man had by their fall introduced sin and misery into the world.
+      (Consult plate of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By this was denoted the astronomical fact, that the celestial virgin and
+      the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal equinox,
+      delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed, on falling
+      below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of evil,
+      Ahrimanes, represented by the constellation of the Serpent.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "The Persians," says Chardin, "call the constellation of
+     the serpent Ophiucus, serpent of Eve: and this serpent
+     Ophiucas or Ophioneus plays a similar part in the theology
+     of the Phoenicians," for Pherecydes, their disciple and the
+     master of Pythagoras, said "that Ophioneus Serpentinus had
+     been chief of the rebels against Jupiter."  See Mars. Ficin.
+     Apol. Socrat. p. m. 797, col. 2.  I shall add that ephah
+     (with ain) signifies in Hebrew, serpent.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the man.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In a physical sense to seduce, seducere, means only to
+     attract, to draw after us.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "And in fact, the virgin, setting first, seems to draw the herdsman after
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight and
+      good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And in fact, the Virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit, which she
+      seems to offer to the Herdsman; and the branch, emblem of autumn, placed
+      in the picture of Mithra* between winter and summer, seems to open the
+      door and give knowledge, the key of good and evil.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See this picture in Hyde, page 111, edition of 1760.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and that a
+      cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to guard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the horizon,
+      Perseus rises on the other side;* and this Genius, with a sword in his
+      hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the garden and dominion
+      of fruits and flowers.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Rather the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so
+     beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his
+     hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the
+     horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the
+     serpents which surround it are Orphiucus and the Polar
+     Dragon, who then occupy the zenith. This shows us in what
+     manner the ancients composed all their figures and fables.
+     They took such constellations as they found at the same time
+     on the circle of the horizon, and collecting the different
+     parts, they formed groups which served them as an almanac in
+     hieroglyphic characters.  Such is the secret of all their
+     pictures, and the solution of all their mythological
+     monsters.  The virgin is also Andromeda, delivered by
+     Perseus from the whale that pursues her (pro-sequitor).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That of this virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a child, who
+      should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the world from sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This denotes the son, which, at the moment of the winter solstice,
+      precisely when the Persian Magi drew the horoscope of the new year, was
+      placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern
+      horizon; on this account he was figured in their astrological pictures
+      under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin,* and became
+      afterwards, at the vernal equinox, the ram, or the lamb, triumphant over
+      the constellation of the Serpent, which disappeared from the skies.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Such was the picture of the Persian sphere, cited by Aben
+     Ezra in the Coelam Poeticum of Blaeu, p. 71.  "The picture
+     of the first decan of the Virgin," says that writer.
+     "represents a beautiful virgin with flowing hair; sitting in
+     a chair, with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an
+     infant, called Jesus by some nations, and Christ in Greek."
+
+     In the library of the king of France is a manuscript in
+     Arabic, marked 1165, in which is a picture of the twelve
+     signs; and that of the Virgin represents a young woman with
+     an infant by her side: the whole scene indeed of the birth
+     of Jesus is to be found in the adjacent part of the heavens.
+     The stable is the constellation of the charioteer and the
+     goat, formerly Capricorn: a constellation called proesepe
+     Jovis Heniochi, stable of Iou; and the word Iou is found in
+     the name Iou-seph (Joseph).  At no great distance is the ass
+     of Typhon (the great she-bear), and the ox or bull, the
+     ancient attendants of the manger.  Peter the porter, is
+     Janus with his keys and bald forehead: the twelve apostles
+     are the genii of the twelve months, etc.  This Virgin has
+     acted very different parts in the various systems of
+     mythology: she has been the Isis of the Egyptians, who said
+     of her in one of their inscriptions cited by Julian, the
+     fruit I have brought forth is the sun.  The majority of
+     traits drawn by Plutarch apply to her, in the same manner as
+     those of Osiris apply to Bootes: also the seven principal
+     stars of the she-bear, called David's chariot, were called
+     the chariot of Osiris (See Kirker); and the crown that is
+     situated behind, formed of ivy, was called Chen-Osiris, the
+     tree of Osiris.  The Virgin has likewise been Ceres, whose
+     mysteries were the same with those of Isis and Mithra; she
+     has been the Diana of the Ephesians; the great goddess of
+     Syria, Cybele, drawn by lions; Minerva, the mother of
+     Bacchus; Astraea, a chaste virgin taken up into heaven at
+     the end of a golden age; Themis at whose feet is the balance
+     that was put in her hands; the Sybil of Virgil, who descends
+     into hell, or sinks below the hemisphere with a branch in
+     her hand, etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That, in his infancy, this restorer of divine and celestial nature would
+      live abased, humble, obscure and indigent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And this, because the winter sun is abased below the horizon; and that
+      this first period of his four ages or seasons, is a time of obscurity,
+      scarcity, fasting, and want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That, being put to death by the wicked, he had risen gloriously; that he
+      had reascended from hell to heaven, where he would reign forever
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is a sketch of the life of the sun; who, finishing his career at the
+      winter solstice, when Typhon and the rebel angels gain the dominion, seems
+      to be put to death by them; but who soon after is born again, and rises*
+      into the vault of heaven, where he reigns.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Resurgere, to rise a second time, cannot signify to return
+     to life, but in a metaphorical sense; but we see continually
+     mistakes of this kind result from the ambiguous meaning of
+     the words made use of in ancient tradition.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Finally, these traditions went so far as to mention even his astrological
+      and mythological names, and inform us that he was called sometimes Chris,
+      that is to say, preserver,* and from that, ye Indians, you have made your
+      god Chrish-en or Chrish-na; and, ye Greek and Western Christians, your
+      Chris-tos, son of Mary, is the same; sometimes he is called Yes, by the
+      union of three letters, which by their numerical value form the number
+      608, one of the solar periods.** And this, Europeans, is the name which,
+      with the Latin termination, is become your Yes-us or Jesus, the ancient
+      and cabalistic name attributed to young Bacchus, the clandestine son
+      (nocturnal) of the Virgin Minerva, who, in the history of his whole life,
+      and even of his death, brings to mind the history of the god of the
+      Christians, that is, of the star of day, of which they are each of them
+      the emblems."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Greeks used to express by X, or Spanish iota, the
+     aspirated ha of the Orientals, who said haris.  In Hebrew
+     heres signifies the sun, but in Arabic the meaning of the
+     radical word is, to guard, to preserve, and of haris,
+     guardian, preserver.  It is the proper epithet of Vichenou,
+     which demonstrates at once the identity of the Indian and
+     Christian Trinities, and their common origin.  It is
+     manifestly but one system, which divided into two branches,
+     one extending to the east, and the other to the west,
+     assumed two different forms: Its principal trunk is the
+     Pythagorean system of the soul of the world, or Iou-piter.
+     The epithet piter, or father, having been applied to the
+     demi-ourgos of Plato, gave rise to an ambiguity which caused
+     an enquiry to be made respecting the son of this father.  In
+     the opinion of the philosophers the son was understanding,
+     Nous and Logos, from which the Latins made their Verbum.
+     And thus we clearly perceive the origin of the eternal
+     father and of the Verbum his son, proceeding from him (Mens
+     Ex Deo nata, says Macrobius): the oenima or spiritus mundi,
+     was the Holy Ghost; and it is for this reason that Manes,
+     Pasilides, Valentinius, and other pretended heretics of the
+     first ages, who traced things to their source, said, that
+     God the Father was the supreme inaccessible light (that of
+     the heaven, the primum mobile, or the aplanes); the Son the
+     secondary light resident in the sun, and the Holy Ghost the
+     atmosphere of the earth (See Beausob. vol. II, p. 586):
+     hence, among the Syrians, the representation of the Holy
+     Ghost by a dove, the bird of Venus Urania, that is of the
+     air. The Syrians (says Nigidius de Germaico) assert that a
+     dove sat for a certain number of days on the egg of a fish,
+     and that from this incubation Venus was born: Sextus
+     Empiricus also observes (Inst. Pyrrh. lib. 3, c. 23) that
+     the Syrians abstain from eating doves; which intimates to us
+     a period commencing in the sign Pisces, in the winter
+     solstice.  We may farther observe, that if Chris comes from
+     Harisch by a chin, it will signify artificer, an epithet
+     belonging to the sun.  These variations, which must have
+     embarrassed the ancients, prove it to be the real type of
+     Jesus, as had been already remarked in the time of
+     Tertullian.  "Many, says this writer, suppose with greater
+     probability that the sun is our God, and they refer us to
+     the religion of the Persians."  Apologet. c. 16.
+
+     ** See a curious ode to the sun, by Martianus Capella,
+     translated by Gebelin.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Here a great murmur having arisen among all the Christian groups, the
+      Lamas, the Mussulmans and the Indians called them to order, and the orator
+      went on to finish his discourse:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know at present," said he, "how the rest of this system was composed
+      in the chaos and anarchy of the three first centuries; what a multitude of
+      singular opinions divided the minds of men, and armed them with an
+      enthusiasm and a reciprocal obstinacy; because, being equally founded on
+      ancient tradition, they were equally sacred. You know how the government,
+      after three centuries, having embraced one of these sects, made it the
+      orthodox, that is to say, the pre-dominant religion, to the exclusion of
+      the rest; which, being less in number, became heretics; you know how and
+      by what means of violence and seduction this religion was propagated,
+      extended, divided, and enfeebled; how, six hundred years after the
+      Christian innovation, another system was formed from it and from that of
+      the Jews; and how Mahomet found the means of composing a political and
+      theological empire at the expense of those of Moses and the vicars of
+      Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, if you take a review of the whole history of the spirit of all
+      religion, you will see that in its origin it has had no other author than
+      the sensations and wants of man; that the idea of God has had no other
+      type and model than those of physical powers, material beings, producing
+      either good or evil, by impressions of pleasure or pain on sensitive
+      beings; that in the formation of all these systems the spirit of religion
+      has always followed the same course, and been uniform in its proceedings;
+      that in all of them the dogma has never failed to represent, under the
+      name of gods, the operations of nature, and passions and prejudices of
+      men; that the moral of them all has had for its object the desire of
+      happiness and the aversion to pain; but that the people, and the greater
+      part of legislators, not knowing the route to be pursued, have formed
+      false, and therefore discordant, ideas of virtue and vice of good and
+      evil, that is to say, of what renders man happy or miserable; that in
+      every instance, the means and the causes of propagating and establishing
+      systems have exhibited the same scenes of passion and the same events;
+      everywhere disputes about words, pretexts for zeal, revolutions and wars
+      excited by the ambition of princes, the knavery of apostles, the credulity
+      of proselytes, the ignorance of the vulgar, the exclusive cupidity and
+      intolerant arrogance of all. Indeed, you will see that the whole history
+      of the spirit of religion is only the history of the errors of the human
+      mind, which, placed in a world that it does not comprehend, endeavors
+      nevertheless to solve the enigma; and which, beholding with astonishment
+      this mysterious and visible prodigy, imagines causes, supposes reasons,
+      builds systems; then, finding one defective, destroys it for another not
+      less so; hates the error that it abandons, misconceives the one that it
+      embraces, rejects the truth that it is seeking, composes chimeras of
+      discordant beings; and thus, while always dreaming of wisdom and
+      happiness, wanders blindly in a labyrinth of illusion and doubt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ALL RELIGIONS HAVE THE SAME OBJECT.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke the orator in the name of those men who had studied the origin
+      and succession of religious ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theologians of various systems, reasoning on this discourse: "It is an
+      impious representation," said some, "whose tendency is nothing less than
+      to overturn all belief, to destroy subordination in the minds of men, and
+      annihilate our ministry and power." "It is a romance," said others, "a
+      tissue of conjectures, composed with art, but without foundation." The
+      moderate and prudent men added: "Supposing all this to be true, why reveal
+      these mysteries? Doubtless our opinions are full of errors; but these
+      errors are a necessary restraint on the multitude. The world has gone thus
+      for two thousand years; why change it now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A murmur of disapprobation, which never fails to rise at every innovation,
+      now began to increase; when a numerous group of the common classes of
+      people, and of untaught men of all countries and of every nation, without
+      prophets, without doctors, and without doctrine, advancing in the circle,
+      drew the attention of the whole assembly; and one of them, in the name of
+      all, thus addressed the multitude:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mediators and arbiters of nations! the strange relations which have
+      occupied the present debate were unknown to us until this day. Our
+      understanding, confounded and amazed at so many statements, some of them
+      learned, others absurd and all incomprehensible, remains in uncertainty
+      and doubt. One only reflection has struck us: on reviewing so many
+      prodigious facts, so many contradictory assertions, we ask ourselves: What
+      are all these discussions to us? What need have we of knowing what passed
+      five or six thousand years ago, in countries we never heard of, and among
+      men who will ever be unknown to us? True or false, what interest have we
+      in knowing whether the world has existed six thousand, or twenty-five
+      thousand years? Whether it was made of nothing, or of something; by
+      itself, or by a maker, who in his turn would require another maker? What!
+      we are not sure of what happens near us, and shall we answer for what
+      happens in the sun, in the moon, or in imaginary regions of space? We have
+      forgotten our own infancy, and shall we know the infancy of the world? And
+      who will attest what no one has seen? who will certify what no man
+      comprehends?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Besides, what addition or diminution will it make to our existence, to
+      answer yes or no to all these chimeras? Hitherto neither our fathers nor
+      ourselves have had the least knowledge or notion of them, and we do not
+      perceive that we have had on this account either more or less of the sun,
+      more or less of subsistence, more or less of good or of evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If the knowledge of these things is so necessary, why have we lived as
+      well without it as those who have taken so much trouble concerning it? If
+      this knowledge is superfluous, why should we burden ourselves with it
+      to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then addressing himself to the doctors and theologians:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What!" said he, "is it necessary that we, poor and ignorant men, whose
+      every moment is scarcely sufficient for the cares of life, and the labors
+      of which you take the profit,&mdash;is it necessary for us to learn the
+      numberless histories that you have recounted, to read the quantity of
+      books that you have cited, and to study the various languages in which
+      they are composed! A thousand years of life would not suffice&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not necessary," replied the doctors, "that you should acquire all
+      this science; we have it for you&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But even you," replied the simple men, "with all your science, you are
+      not agreed; of what advantage, then, is your science? Besides, how can you
+      answer for us? If the faith of one man is applicable to many, what need
+      have even you to believe? your fathers may have believed for you; and this
+      would be reasonable, since they have seen for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Farther, what is believing, if believing influences no action? And what
+      action is influenced by believing, for instance, that the world is or is
+      not eternal?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The latter would be offensive to God," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How prove you that?" replied the simple men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In our books," answered the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We do not understand them," returned the simple men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We understand them for you," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is the difficulty," replied the simple men. "By what right do you
+      constitute yourselves mediators between God and us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By his orders," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is the proof of these orders?" said the simple men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In our books," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We understand them not," said the simple men; "and how came this just God
+      to give you this privilege over us? Why did this common father oblige us
+      to believe on a less degree of evidence than you? He has spoken to you; be
+      it so; he is infallible, and deceives you not. But it is you who speak to
+      us! And who shall assure us that you are not in error yourselves, or that
+      you will not lead us into error? And if we should be deceived, how will
+      that just God save us contrary to law, or condemn us on a law which we
+      have not known?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has given you the natural law," said the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what is the natural law?" replied the simple men. "If that law is
+      sufficient, why has he given any other? If it is not sufficient, why did
+      he make it imperfect?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His judgments are mysteries," said the doctors, "and his justice is not
+      like that of men."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If his justice," replied the simple men, "is not like ours, by what rule
+      are we to judge of it? And, moreover, why all these laws, and what is the
+      object proposed by them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To render you more happy," replied a doctor, "by rendering you better and
+      more virtuous. It is to teach man to enjoy his benefits, and not injure
+      his fellows, that God has manifested himself by so many oracles and
+      prodigies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case," said the simple men, "there is no necessity for so many
+      studies, nor of such a variety of arguments; only tell us which is the
+      religion that best answers the end which they all propose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately, on this, every group, extolling its own morality above that
+      of all others, there arose among the different sects a new and most
+      violent dispute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is we," said the Mussulmans, "who possess the most excellent morals,
+      who teach all the virtues useful to men and agreeable to God. We profess
+      justice, disinterestedness, resignation to providence, charity to our
+      brethren, alms-giving, and devotion; we torment not the soul with
+      superstitious fears; we live without alarm, and die without remorse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How dare you speak of morals," answered the Christian priests, "you,
+      whose chief lived in licentiousness and preached impurity? You, whose
+      first precept is homicide and war? For this we appeal to experience: for
+      these twelve hundred years your fanatical zeal has not ceased to spread
+      commotion and carnage among the nations. If Asia, so flourishing in former
+      times, is now languishing in barbarity and depopulation, it is in your
+      doctrine that we find the cause; in that doctrine, the enemy of all
+      instruction, which sanctifies ignorance, which consecrates the most
+      absolute despotism in the governors, imposes the most blind and passive
+      obedience in the people, that has stupefied the faculties of man, and
+      brutalized the nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not so with our sublime and celestial morals; it was they which
+      raised the world from its primitive barbarity, from the senseless and
+      cruel superstitions of idolatry, from human sacrifices,* from the shameful
+      orgies of pagan mysteries; they it was that purified manners, proscribed
+      incest and adultery, polished savage nations, banished slavery, and
+      introduced new and unknown virtues, charity for men, their equality in the
+      sight of God, forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries, the restraint of
+      all the passions, the contempt of worldly greatness, a life completely
+      spiritual and completely holy!"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Read the cold declaration of Eusebius (Proep. Evang. lib.
+     I, p. 11,), who pretends that, since the coming of Christ,
+     there have been neither wars, nor tyrants, nor cannibals,
+     nor sodomites, nor persons committing incest, nor savages
+     destroying their parents, etc.  When we read these fathers
+     of the church we are astonished at their insincerity or
+     infatuation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "We admire," said the Mussulmans, "the ease with which you reconcile that
+      evangelical meekness, of which you are so ostentatious, with the injuries
+      and outrages with which you are constantly galling your neighbors. When
+      you criminate so severely the great man whom we revere, we might fairly
+      retort on the conduct of him whom you adore; but we scorn such advantages,
+      and confining ourselves to the real object in question, we maintain that
+      the morals of your gospel have by no means that perfection which you
+      ascribe to them; it is not true that they have introduced into the world
+      new and unknown virtues: for example, the equality of men in the sight of
+      God,&mdash;that fraternity and that benevolence which follow from it, were
+      formal doctrines of the sect of the Hermatics or Samaneans,* from whom you
+      descend. As to the forgiveness of injuries, the Pagans themselves had
+      taught it; but in the extent that you give it, far from being a virtue, it
+      becomes an immorality, a vice. Your so much boasted precept of turning one
+      cheek after the other, is not only contrary to every sentiment of man, but
+      is opposed to all ideas of justice. It emboldens the wicked by impunity,
+      debases the virtuous by servility, delivers up the world to despotism and
+      tyranny, and dissolves all society. Such is the true spirit of your
+      doctrines. Your gospels in their precepts and their parables, never
+      represent God but as a despot without any rules of equity; a partial
+      father treating a debauched and prodigal son with more favor than his
+      respectful and virtuous children; a capricious master, who gives the same
+      wages to workmen who had wrought but one hour, as to those who had labored
+      through the whole day; one who prefers the last comers to the first. The
+      moral is everywhere misanthropic and antisocial; it disgusts men with life
+      and with society; and tends only to encourage hermitism and celibacy.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The equality of mankind in a state of nature and in the
+     eyes of God was one of the principal tenets of the
+     Samaneans, and they appear to be the only ancients that
+     entertained this opinion.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "As to the manner in which you have practised these morals, we appeal in
+      our turn to the testimony of facts. We ask whether it is this evangelical
+      meekness which has excited your interminable wars between your sects, your
+      atrocious persecutions of pretended heretics, your crusades against
+      Arianism, Manicheism, Protestantism, without speaking of your crusades
+      against us, and of those sacrilegious associations, still subsisting, of
+      men who take an oath to continue them?* We ask you whether it be gospel
+      charity which has made you exterminate whole nations in America, to
+      annihilate the empires of Mexico and Peru; which makes you continue to
+      dispeople Africa and sell its inhabitants like cattle, notwithstanding
+      your abolition of slavery; which makes you ravage India and usurp its
+      dominions; and whether it be the same charity which, for three centuries
+      past, has led you to harrass the habitations of the people of three
+      continents, of whom the most prudent, the Chinese and Japanese, were
+      constrained to drive you off, that they might escape your chains and
+      recover their internal peace?"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The oath taken by the knights of the Order of Malta, is to
+     kill, or make the Mahometans prisoners, for the glory of
+     God.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Here the Bramins, the Rabbins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, the Priests of the
+      Molucca islands, and the coasts of Guinea, loading the Christian doctors
+      with reproaches: "Yes!" cried they, "these men are robbers and hypocrites,
+      who preach simplicity, to surprise confidence; humility, to enslave with
+      more ease; poverty, to appropriate all riches to themselves. They promise
+      another world, the better to usurp the present; and while they speak to
+      you of tolerance and charity, they burn, in the name of God, the men who
+      do not worship him in their manner."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lying priests," retorted the missionaries, "it is you who abuse the
+      credulity of ignorant nations to subjugate them. It is you who have made
+      of your ministry an art of cheating and imposture; you have converted
+      religion into a traffic of cupidity and avarice. You pretend to hold
+      communications with spirits, and they give for oracles nothing but your
+      wills. You feign to read the stars, and destiny decrees only your desires.
+      You cause idols to speak, and the gods are but the instruments of your
+      passions. You have invented sacrifices and libations, to collect for your
+      own profit the milk of flocks, and the flesh and fat of victims; and under
+      the cloak of piety you devour the offerings of the gods, who cannot eat,
+      and the substance of the people who are forced to labor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you," replied the Bramins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, "you sell to the
+      credulous living, your vain prayers for the souls of the dead. With your
+      indulgences and your absolutions you have usurped the power of God
+      himself; and making a traffic of his favors and pardons, you have put
+      heaven at auction; and by your system of expiations you have formed a
+      tariff of crimes, which has perverted all consciences."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * As long as it shall be possible to obtain purification
+     from crimes and exemption from punishment by means of money
+     or other frivolous practices; as long as kings and great men
+     shall suppose that building temples or instituting
+     foundations, will absolve them from the guilt of oppression
+     and homicide; as long as individuals shall imagine that they
+     may rob and cheat, provided they observe fast during Lent,
+     go to confession, and receive extreme unction, it is
+     impossible there should exist in society any morality or
+     virtue; and it is from a deep conviction of truth, that a
+     modern philosopher has called the doctrine of expiations la
+     verola des societes.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Add to this," said the Imans, "that these men have invented the most
+      insidious of all systems of wickedness,&mdash;the absurd and impious
+      obligation of recounting to them the most intimate secrets of actions and
+      of thoughts (confessions); so their insolent curiosity has carried their
+      inquisition even into the sanctuary of the marriage bed,* and the
+      inviolable recesses of the heart."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Confession is a very ancient invention of the priests, who
+     did not fail to avail themselves of that means of governing.
+     It was practised in the Egyptian, Greek, Phrygian, Persian
+     mysteries, etc. Plutarch has transmitted us the remarkable
+     answer of a Spartan whom a priest wanted to confess.  "Is it
+     to you or to God I am to confess?"  "To God," answered the
+     priest: "In that case," replied the Spartan, "man, begone!"
+     (Remarkable Savings of the Lacedemonians.)  The first
+     Christians confessed their faults publicly, like the
+     Essenians.  Afterwards, priests began to be established,
+     with power of absolution from the sin of idolatry.  In the
+     time of Theodosius, a woman having publicly confessed an
+     intrigue with a deacon, bishop Necterius, and his successor
+     Chrysostom, granted communion without confession.  It was
+     not until the seventh century that the abbots of convents
+     exacted from monks and nuns confession twice a year; and it
+     was at a still later period that bishops of Rome generalized
+     it.
+
+     The Mussulmen, who suppose women to have no souls, are
+     shocked at the idea of confession; and say; How can an
+     honest man think of listening to the recital of the actions
+     or the secret thoughts of a woman?  May we not also ask, on
+     the other hand, how can an honest woman consent to reveal
+     them?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thus by mutual reproaches the doctors of the different sects began to
+      reveal all the crimes of their ministry&mdash;all the vices of their
+      craft; and it was found that among all nations the spirit of the
+      priesthood, their system of conduct, their actions their morals, were
+      absolutely the same:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they had everywhere formed secret associations and corporations at
+      enmity with the rest of society:*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * That we may understand the general feelings of priests
+     respecting the rest of mankind, whom they always call by the
+     name of the people, let us hear one of the doctors of the
+     church.  "The people," says Bishop Synnesius, in Calvit.
+     page 315, "are desirous of being deceived, we cannot act
+     otherwise respecting them.  The case was similar with the
+     ancient priests of Egypt, and for this reason they shut
+     themselves up in their temples, and there composed their
+     mysteries, out of the reach of the eye of the people."  And
+     forgetting what he has before just said, he adds: "for had
+     the people been in the secret they might have been offended
+     at the deception played upon them.  In the mean time how is
+     it possible to conduct one's self otherwise with the people
+     so long as they are people?  For my own part, to myself I
+     shall always be a philosopher, but in dealing with the mass
+     of mankind, I shall be a priest."
+
+     "A little jargon," says Geogory Nazianzen to St. Jerome
+     (Hieron. ad. Nep.) "is all that is necessary to impose on
+     the people.  The less they comprehend, the more they admire.
+     Our forefathers and doctors of the church have often said,
+     not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity
+     dictated to them."
+
+     "We endeavor," says Sanchoniaton, "to excite admiration by
+     means of the marvellous." (Proep. Evang. lib. 3.)
+
+     Such was the conduct of all the priests of antiquity, and is
+     still that of the Bramins and Lamas who are the exact
+     counterpart of the Egyptian priests.  Such was the practice
+     of the Jesuits, who marched with hasty strides in the same
+     career.  It is useless to point out the whole depravity of
+     such a doctrine.  In general every association which has
+     mystery for its basis, or an oath of secrecy, is a league of
+     robbers against society, a league divided in its very bosom
+     into knaves and dupes, or in other words agents and
+     instruments.  It is thus we ought to judge of those modern
+     clubs, which, under the name of Illuminatists, Martinists,
+     Cagliostronists, and Mesmerites, infest Europe.  These
+     societies are the follies and deceptions of the ancient
+     Cabalists, Magicians, Orphies, etc., "who," says Plutarch,
+     "led into errors of considerable magnitude, not only
+     individuals, but kings and nations."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That they had everywhere attributed to themselves prerogatives and
+      immunities, by means of which they lived exempt from the burdens of other
+      classes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they everywhere avoided the toils of the laborer, the dangers of the
+      soldier, and the disappointments of the merchant:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they lived everywhere in celibacy, to shun even the cares of a
+      family:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That, under the cloak of poverty, they found everywhere the secret of
+      procuring wealth and all sorts of enjoyments:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That under the name of mendicity they raised taxes to a greater amount
+      than princes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That in the form of gifts and offerings they had established fixed and
+      certain revenues exempt from charges:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That under pretence of retirement and devotion they lived in idleness and
+      licentiousness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they had made a virtue of alms-giving, to live quietly on the labors
+      of others:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That they had invented the ceremonies of worship, as a means of attracting
+      the reverence of the people, while they were playing the parts of gods, of
+      whom they styled themselves the interpreters and mediators, to assume all
+      their powers; that, with this design, they had (according to the degree of
+      ignorance or information of their people) assumed by turns the character
+      of astrologers, drawers of horoscopes, fortune-tellers, magicians,*
+      necromancers, quacks, physicians, courtiers, confessors of princes, always
+      aiming at the great object to govern for their own advantage:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * What is a magician, in the sense in which people
+     understand the word?  A man who by words and gestures
+     pretends to act on supernatural beings, and compel them to
+     descend at his call and obey his orders.  Such was the
+     conduct of the ancient priests, and such is still that of
+     all priests in idolatrous nations; for which reason we have
+     given them the denomination of Magicians.
+
+     And when a Christian priest pretends to make God descend
+     from heaven, to fix him to a morsel of leaven, and render,
+     by means of this talisman, souls pure and in a state of
+     grace, what is this but a trick of magic?  And where is the
+     difference between a Chaman of Tartary who invokes the
+     Genii, or an Indian Bramin, who makes Vichenou descend in a
+     vessel of water to drive away evil spirits? Yes, the
+     identity of the spirit of priests in every age and country
+     is fully established!  Every where it is the assumption of
+     an exclusive privilege, the pretended faculty of moving at
+     will the powers of nature; and this assumption is so direct
+     a violation of the right of equality, that whenever the
+     people shall regain their importance, they will forever
+     abolish this sacrilegious kind of nobility, which has been
+     the type and parent stock of the other species of nobility.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That sometimes they had exalted the power of kings and consecrated their
+      persons, to monopolize their favors, or participate their sway:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That sometimes they had preached up the murder of tyrants (reserving it to
+      themselves to define tyranny), to avenge themselves of their contempt or
+      their disobedience:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that they always stigmatised with impiety whatever crossed their
+      interests; that they hindered all public instruction, to exercise the
+      monopoly of science; that finally, at all times and in all places, they
+      had found the secret of living in peace in the midst of the anarchy they
+      created, in safety under the despotism that they favored, in idleness
+      amidst the industry they preached, and in abundance while surrounded with
+      scarcity; and all this by carrying on the singular trade of selling words
+      and gestures to credulous people, who purchase them as commodities of the
+      greatest value.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A curious work would be the comparative history of the
+     agnuses of the pope and the pastils of the grand Lama.  It
+     would be worth while to extend this idea to religions
+     ceremonies in general, and to confront column by column, the
+     analogous or contrasting points of faith and superstitious
+     practices in all nations.  There is one more species of
+     superstition which it would be equally salutary to cure,
+     blind veneration for the great; and for this purpose it
+     would be alone sufficient to write a minute detail of the
+     private life of kings and princes.  No work could be so
+     philosophical as this; and accordingly we have seen what a
+     general outcry was excited among kings and the panders of
+     kings, when the Anecdotes of the Court of Berlin first
+     appeared.  What would be the alarm were the public put in
+     possession of the sequel of this work?  Were the people
+     fairly acquainted with all the absurdities of this species
+     of idol, they would no longer be exposed to covet their
+     specious pleasures of which the plausible and hollow
+     appearance disturbs their peace, and hinders them from
+     enjoying the much more solid happiness of their own
+     condition.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then the different nations, in a transport of fury, were going to tear in
+      pieces the men who had thus abused them; but the legislator, arresting
+      this movement of violence, addressed the chiefs and doctors:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What!" said he, "instructors of nations, is it thus that you have
+      deceived them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the terrified priests replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O legislator! we are men. The people are so superstitious! they have
+      themselves encouraged these errors."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Consider in this view the Brabanters.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And the kings said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O legislator! the people are so servile and so ignorant! they prostrated
+      themselves before the yoke, which we scarcely dared to show them."*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The inhabitants of Vienna, for example, who harnessed
+     themselves like cattle and drew the chariot of Leopold.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then the legislator, turning to the people&mdash;"People!" said he,
+      "remember what you have just heard; they are two indelible truths. Yes,
+      you yourselves cause the evils of which you complain; yourselves encourage
+      the tyrants, by a base adulation of their power, by an imprudent
+      admiration of their false beneficence, by servility in obedience, by
+      licentiousness in liberty, and by a credulous reception of every
+      imposition. On whom shall you wreak vengeance for the faults committed by
+      your own ignorance and cupidity?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people, struck with confusion, remained in mournful silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF CONTRADICTIONS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The legislator then resumed his discourse: "O nations!" said he, "we have
+      heard the discussion of your opinions. The different sentiments which
+      divide you have given rise to many reflections, and furnished several
+      questions which we shall propose to you to solve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "First, considering the diversity and opposition of the creeds to which
+      you are attached, we ask on what motives you found your persuasion? Is it
+      from a deliberate choice that you follow the standard of one prophet
+      rather than another? Before adopting this doctrine, rather than that, did
+      you first compare? did you carefully examine them? Or have you received
+      them only from the chance of birth, from the empire of education and
+      habit? Are you not born Christians on the borders of the Tiber, Mussulmans
+      on those of the Euphrates, Idolaters on the Indus, just as you are born
+      fair in cold climates, and sable under the scorching sun of Africa? And if
+      your opinions are the effect of your fortuitous position on the earth, of
+      consanguinity, of imitation, how is it that such a hazard should be a
+      ground of conviction, an argument of truth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Secondly, when we reflect on the mutual proscriptions and arbitrary
+      intolerance of your pretensions, we are frightened at the consequences
+      that flow from your own principles. Nations! who reciprocally devote each
+      other to the bolts of heavenly wrath, suppose that the universal Being,
+      whom you revere, should this moment descend from heaven on this multitude;
+      and, clothed with all his power, should sit on this throne to judge you;
+      suppose that he should say to you: Mortals! it is your own justice that I
+      am going to exercise upon you. Yes, of all the religious systems that
+      divide you, one alone shall this day be preferred; all the others, all
+      this multitude of standards, of nations, of prophets, shall be condemned
+      to eternal destruction. This is not enough: among the particular sects of
+      the chosen system, one only can be favored; all the others must be
+      condemned: neither is this enough;&mdash;from this little remnant of a
+      group I must exclude all those who have not fulfilled the conditions
+      enjoined by its precepts. O men! to what a small number of elect have you
+      limited your race! to what a penury of beneficence do you reduce the
+      immensity of my goodness! to what a solitude of beholders do you condemn
+      my greatness and my glory!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But," said the legislator rising, "no matter you have willed it so.
+      Nations! here is an urn in which all your names are placed: one only is a
+      prize: approach, and draw this tremendous lottery!" And the nations,
+      seized with terror cried: "No, no; we are all brothers, all equal; we
+      cannot condemn each other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then," said the legislator, resuming his seat: "O men! who dispute on so
+      many subjects, lend an attentive ear to one problem which you exhibit, and
+      which you ought to decide yourselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people, giving great attention, he lifted an arm towards heaven,
+      and, pointing to the sun, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nations, does that sun, which enlightens you, appear square or
+      triangular?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," answered they with one voice, "it is round."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, taking the golden balance that was on the altar:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This gold," said the legislator, "that you handle every day, is it
+      heavier than the same volume of copper?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," answered all the people, "gold is heavier than Copper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, taking the sword:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this iron," said the legislator, "softer than lead?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is sugar sweet, and gall bitter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you love pleasure and hate pain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thus, then, you are agreed in these points, and many others of the same
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, tell us, is there a cavern in the centre of the earth, or
+      inhabitants in the moon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This question caused a universal murmur. Every one answered differently&mdash;some
+      yes, others no; one said it was probable, another said it was an idle and
+      ridiculous question; some, that it was worth knowing. And the discord was
+      universal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some time the legislator, having obtained silence, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Explain to us, O Nations! this problem: we have put to you several
+      questions which you have answered with one voice, without distinction of
+      race or of sect: white men, black men, followers of Mahomet and of Moses,
+      worshippers of Boudha and of Jesus, all have returned the same answer. We
+      then proposed another question, and you have all disagreed! Why this
+      unanimity in one case, and this discordance in the other?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the group of simple men and savages answered and said: "The reason of
+      this is plain. In the first case we see and feel the objects, and we speak
+      from sensation; in the second, they are beyond the reach of our senses&mdash;we
+      speak of them only from conjecture."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have resolved the problem," said the legislator; "and your own
+      consent has established this first truth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That whenever objects can be examined and judged of by your senses, you
+      are agreed in opinion; and that you only differ when the objects are
+      absent and beyond your reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From this first truth flows another equally clear and worthy of notice.
+      Since you agree on things which you know with certainty, it follows that
+      you disagree only on those which you know not with certainty, and about
+      which you are not sure; that is to say, you dispute, you quarrel, you
+      fight, for that which is uncertain, that of which you doubt. O men! is
+      this wisdom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it not, then, demonstrated that truth is not the object of your
+      contests? that it is not her cause which you defend, but that of your
+      affections, and your prejudices? that it is not the object, as it really
+      is in itself, that you would verify, but the object as you would have it;
+      that is to say, it is not the evidence of the thing that you would
+      enforce, but your own personal opinion, your particular manner of seeing
+      and judging? It is a power that you wish to exercise, an interest that you
+      wish to satisfy, a prerogative that you arrogate to yourself; it is a
+      contest of vanity. Now, as each of you, on comparing himself to every
+      other, finds himself his equal and his fellow, he resists by a feeling of
+      the same right. And your disputes, your combats, your intolerance, are the
+      effect of this right which you deny each other, and of the intimate
+      conviction of your equality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, the only means of establishing harmony is to return to nature, and
+      to take for a guide and regulator the order of things which she has
+      founded; and then your accord will prove this other truth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That real beings have in themselves an identical, constant and uniform
+      mode of existence; and that there is in your organs a like mode of being
+      affected by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But at the same time, by reason of the mobility of these organs as
+      subject to your will, you may conceive different affections, and find
+      yourselves in different relations with the same objects; so that you are
+      to them like a mirror, capable of reflecting them truly as they are, or of
+      distorting and disfiguring them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hence it follows, that whenever you perceive objects as they are, you
+      agree among yourselves, and with the objects; and this similitude between
+      your sensations and their manner of existence, is what constitutes their
+      truth with respect to you; and, on the contrary, whenever you differ in
+      opinion, your disagreement is a proof that you do not represent them such
+      as they are,&mdash;that you change them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hence, also, it follows, that the causes of your disagreement exist not
+      in the objects themselves, but in your minds, in your manner of perceiving
+      or judging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To establish, therefore, a uniformity of opinion, it is necessary first
+      to establish the certainty, completely verified, that the portraits which
+      the mind forms are perfectly like the originals; that it reflects the
+      objects correctly as they exist. Now, this result cannot be obtained but
+      in those cases where the objects can be brought to the test, and submitted
+      to the examination of the senses. Everything which cannot be brought to
+      this trial is, for that reason alone, impossible to be determined; there
+      exists no rule, no term of comparison, no means of certainty, respecting
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From this we conclude, that, to live in harmony and peace, we must agree
+      never to decide on such subjects, and to attach to them no importance; in
+      a word, we must trace a line of distinction between those that are capable
+      of verification, and those that are not; and separate by an inviolable
+      barrier the world of fantastical beings from the world of realities; that
+      is to say, all civil effect must be taken away from theological and
+      religious opinions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This, O ye people of the earth! is the object proposed by a great nation
+      freed from her fetters and her prejudices; this is the work which, under
+      her eye and by her orders, we had undertaken, when your kings and your
+      priests came to interrupt it. O kings and priests! you may suspend, yet
+      for a while, the solemn publication of the laws of nature; but it is no
+      longer in your power to annihilate or to subvert them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A general shout then arose from every part of the assembly; and the
+      nations universally, and with one voice, testified their assent to the
+      proposals of the delegates: "Resume," said they, "your holy and sublime
+      labors, and bring them to perfection. Investigate the laws which nature,
+      for our guidance, has implanted in our breasts, and collect from them an
+      authentic and immutable code; nor let this code be any longer for one
+      family only, but for us all without exception. Be the legislators of the
+      whole human race, as you are the interpreters of nature herself. Show us
+      the line of partition between the world of chimeras and that of realities;
+      and teach us, after so many religions of error and delusion, the religion
+      of evidence and truth!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the delegates, having resumed their enquiries into the physical and
+      constituent attributes of man, and examined the motives and affections
+      which govern him in his individual and social state, unfolded in these
+      words the laws on which nature herself has founded his happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <a name="linknature" id="linknature"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE LAW OF NATURE.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the constant and regular order of events, by which God governs
+      the universe; an order which his wisdom presents to the senses and reason
+      of men, as an equal and common rule for their actions, to guide them,
+      without distinction of country or sect, towards perfection and happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Give a clear definition of the word law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The word law, taken literary, signifies lecture,* because originally,
+      ordinances and regulations were the lectures, preferably to all others,
+      made to the people, in order that they might observe them, and not incur
+      the penalties attached to their infraction: whence follows the original
+      custom explaining the true idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The definition of law is, "An order or prohibition to act with the express
+      clause of a penalty attached to the infraction, or of a recompense
+      attached to the observance of that order."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * From the Latin word lex, lectio.  Alcoran likewise
+     signifies lecture and is only a literal translation of the
+     word law.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Q. Do such orders exist in nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What does the word nature signify?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The word nature bears three different significations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. It signifies the universe, the material world: in this first sense we
+      say the beauties of nature, the riches of nature, that is to say, the
+      objects in the heavens and on the earth exposed to our sight;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. It signifies the power that animates, that moves the universe,
+      considering it as a distinct being, such as the soul is to the body; in
+      this second sense we say, "The intentions of nature, the incomprehensible
+      secrets of nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. It signifies the partial operations of that power on each being, or on
+      each class of beings; and in this third sense we say, "The nature of man
+      is an enigma; every being acts according to its nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherefore, as the actions of each being, or of each species of beings, are
+      subjected to constant and general rules, which cannot be infringed without
+      interrupting and troubling the general or particular order, those rules of
+      action and of motion are called natural laws, or laws of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Give me examples of those laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is a law of nature, that the sun illuminates successively the
+      surface of the terrestrial globe;&mdash;that its presence causes both
+      light and heat;&mdash;that heat acting upon water, produces vapors;&mdash;that
+      those vapors rising in clouds into the regions of the air, dissolve into
+      rain or snow, and renew incessantly the waters of fountains and rivers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a law of nature, that water flows downwards; that it endeavors to
+      find its level; that it is heavier than air; that all bodies tend towards
+      the earth; that flame ascends towards the heavens;&mdash;that it
+      disorganizes vegetables and animals; that air is essential to the life of
+      certain animals; that, in certain circumstances, water suffocates and
+      kills them; that certain juices of plants, certain minerals attack their
+      organs, and destroy their life, and so on in a multitude of other
+      instances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherefore, as all those and similar facts are immutable, constant, and
+      regular, so many real orders result from them for man to conform himself
+      to, with the express clause of punishment attending the infraction of
+      them, or of welfare attending their observance. So that if man pretends to
+      see clear in darkness, if he goes in contradiction to the course of the
+      seasons, or the action of the elements; if he pretends to remain under
+      water without being drowned, to touch fire without burning himself, to
+      deprive himself of air without being suffocated, to swallow poison without
+      destroying himself, he receives from each of those infractions of the laws
+      of nature a corporeal punishment proportionate to his fault; but if on the
+      contrary, he observes and practises each of those laws according to the
+      regular and exact relations they have to him he preserves his existence,
+      and renders it as happy as it can be: and as the only and common end of
+      all those laws, considered relatively to mankind, is to preserve, and
+      render them happy, it has been agreed upon to reduce the idea to one
+      simple expression, and to call them collectively the law of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CHARACTERS OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What are the characters of the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. There can be assigned ten principal ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the first?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be inherent to the existence of things, and, consequently, primitive
+      and anterior to every other law: so that all those which man has received,
+      are only imitations of it, and their perfection is ascertained by the
+      resemblance they bear to this primordial model.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the second?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be derived immediately from God, and presented by him to each man,
+      whereas all other laws are presented to us by men, who may be either
+      deceived or deceivers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the third?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be common to all times, and to all countries, that is to say, one
+      and universal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is no other law universal?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for no other is agreeable or applicable to all the people of the
+      earth; they are all local and accidental, originating from circumstances
+      of places and of persons; so that if such a man had not existed, or such
+      an event happened, such a law would never have been enacted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the fourth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be uniform and invariable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is no other law uniform and invariable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for what is good and virtue according to one, is evil and vice
+      according to another; and what one and the same law approves of at one
+      time, it often condemns at another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the fifth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be evident and palpable, because it consists entirely of facts
+      incessantly present to the senses, and to demonstration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are not other laws evident?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for they are founded on past and doubtful facts, on equivocal and
+      suspicious testimonies, and on proofs inaccessible to the senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the sixth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be reasonable, because its precepts and entire doctrine are
+      conformable to reason, and to the human understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is no other law reasonable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for all are in contradiction to the reason and the understanding of
+      men, and tyrannically impose on him a blind and impracticable belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the seventh character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be just, because in that law, the penalties are proportionate to the
+      infractions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are not other laws just?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for they often exceed bounds, either in rewarding deserts, or in
+      punishing delinquencies, and consider as meritorious or criminal, null or
+      indifferent actions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the eighth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature, all men being
+      brothers and equal in rights, it recommends to them only peace and
+      toleration, even for errors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are not other laws pacific?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for all preach dissension, discord, and war, and divide mankind by
+      exclusive pretensions of truth and domination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the ninth character?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. To be equally beneficent to all men, in teaching them the true means of
+      becoming better and happier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are not other laws beneficent likewise?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for none of them teach the real means of attaining happiness; all
+      are confined to pernicious or futile practices; and this is evident from
+      facts, since after so many laws, so many religions, so many legislators
+      and prophets, men are still as unhappy and ignorant, as they were six
+      thousand years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the last character of the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. That it is alone sufficient to render men happier and better, because
+      it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws, either civil or
+      religious, that is to say, it constitutes essentially the moral part of
+      them; so that if other laws were divested of it, they would be reduced to
+      chimerical and imaginary opinions devoid of any practical utility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Recapitulate all those characters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. We have said that the law of nature is,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     1.  Primitive;     6.  Reasonable;
+     2.  Immediate;     7.  Just;
+     3.  Universal;     8.  Pacific;
+     4.  Invariable;    9.  Beneficent: and
+     5.  Evident;      10.  Alone sufficient.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And such is the power of all these attributes of perfection and truth,
+      that when in their disputes the theologians can agree upon no article of
+      belief, they recur to the law of nature, the neglect of which, say they,
+      forced God to send from time to time prophets to proclaim new laws; as if
+      God enacted laws for particular circumstances, as men do; especially when
+      the first subsists in such force, that we may assert it to have been at
+      all times and in all countries the rule of conscience for every man of
+      sense or understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. If, as you say, it emanates immediately from God, does it teach his
+      existence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, most positively: for, to any man whatever, who observes with
+      reflection the astonishing spectacle of the universe, the more he
+      meditates on the properties and attributes of each being, on the admirable
+      order and harmony of their motions, the more it is demonstrated that there
+      exists a supreme agent, a universal and identic mover, designated by the
+      appellation of God; and so true it is that the law of nature suffices to
+      elevate him to the knowledge of God, that all which men have pretended to
+      know by supernatural means, has constantly turned out ridiculous and
+      absurd, and that they have ever been obliged to recur to the immutable
+      conceptions of natural reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Then it is not true that the followers of the law of nature are
+      atheists?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; it is not true; on the contrary, they entertain stronger and nobler
+      ideas of the Divinity than most other men; for they do not sully him with
+      the foul ingredients of all the weaknesses and passions entailed on
+      humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What worship do they pay to him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. A worship wholly of action; the practice and observance of all the
+      rules which the supreme wisdom has imposed on the motion of each being;
+      eternal and unalterable rules, by which it maintains the order and harmony
+      of the universe, and which, in their relations to man, constitute the law
+      of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Was the law of nature known before this period:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It has been at all times spoken of: most legislators pretend to adopt
+      it as the basis of their laws; but they only quote some of its precepts,
+      and have only vague ideas of its totality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because, though simple in its basis, it forms in its developements and
+      consequences, a complicated whole which requires an extensive knowledge of
+      facts, joined to all the sagacity of reasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does not instinct alone teach the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for by instinct is meant nothing more than that blind sentiment by
+      which we are actuated indiscriminately towards everything that flatters
+      the senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why, then, is it said that the law of nature is engraved in the hearts
+      of all men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is said for two reasons: first, because it has been remarked, that
+      there are acts and sentiments common to all men, and this proceeds from
+      their common organization; secondly, because the first philosophers
+      believed that men were born with ideas already formed, which is now
+      demonstrated to be erroneous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Philosophers, then, are fallible?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. First, because they are men; secondly, because the ignorant call all
+      those who reason, right or wrong, philosophers; thirdly, because those who
+      reason on many subjects, and who are the first to reason on them, are
+      liable to be deceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. If the law of nature be not written, must it not become arbitrary and
+      ideal?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: because it consists entirely in facts, the demonstration of which
+      can be incessantly renewed to the senses, and constitutes a science as
+      accurate and precise as geometry and mathematics; and it is because the
+      law of nature forms an exact science, that men, born ignorant and living
+      inattentive and heedless, have had hitherto only a superficial knowledge
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF NATURE RELATING TO MAN.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Explain the principles of the law of nature with relation to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. They are simple; all of them are comprised in one fundamental and
+      single precept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is that precept?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is self-preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is not happiness also a precept of the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes: but as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only from the
+      development of man's faculties and his social system, it is not the
+      immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some measure, a
+      superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental object of
+      preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does nature order man to preserve himself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By two powerful and involuntary sensations, which it has attached, as
+      two guides, two guardian Geniuses to all his actions: the one a sensation
+      of pain, by which it admonishes him of, and deters him from, everything
+      that tends to destroy him; the other, a sensation of pleasure, by which it
+      attracts and carries him towards everything that tends to his preservation
+      and the development of his existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Pleasure, then, is not an evil, a sin, as casuists pretend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No, only inasmuch as it tends to destroy life and health which, by the
+      avowal of those same casuists, we derive from God himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is pleasure the principal object of our existence, as some philosophers
+      have asserted?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; not more than pain; pleasure is an incitement to live as pain is a
+      repulsion from death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How do you prove this assertion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By two palpable facts: One, that pleasure, when taken immoderately,
+      leads to destruction; for instance, a man who abuses the pleasure of
+      eating or drinking, attacks his health, and injures his life. The other,
+      that pain sometimes leads to self-preservation; for instance, a man who
+      permits a mortified member to be cut off, suffers pain in order not to
+      perish totally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But does not even this prove that our sensations can deceive us
+      respecting the end of our preservation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; they can momentarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How do our sensations deceive us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. In two ways: by ignorance, and by passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. When do they deceive us by ignorance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. When we act without knowing the action and effect of objects on our
+      senses: for example, when a man touches nettles without knowing their
+      stinging quality, or when he swallows opium without knowing its
+      soporiferous effects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. When do they deceive us by passion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. When, conscious of the pernicious action of objects, we abandon
+      ourselves, nevertheless, to the impetuosity of our desires and appetites:
+      for example, when a man who knows that wine intoxicates, does nevertheless
+      drink it to excess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the result?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. That the ignorance in which we are born, and the unbridled appetites to
+      which we abandon ourselves, are contrary to our preservation; that,
+      therefore, the instruction of our minds and the moderation of our passions
+      are two obligations, two laws, which spring directly from the first law of
+      preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But being born ignorant, is not ignorance a law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No more than to remain in the naked and feeble state of infancy. Far
+      from being a law of nature, ignorance is an obstacle to the practice of
+      all its laws. It is the real original sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why, then, have there been moralists who have looked upon it as a
+      virtue and perfection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because, from a strange or perverted disposition, they confounded the
+      abuse of knowledge with knowledge itself; as if, because men abuse the
+      power of speech, their tongues should be cut out; as if perfection and
+      virtue consisted in the nullity, and not in the proper development of our
+      faculties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Instruction, then, is indispensable to man's existence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, so indispensable, that without it he is every instant assailed and
+      wounded by all that surrounds him; for if he does not know the effects of
+      fire, he burns himself; those of water he drowns himself; those of opium,
+      he poisons himself; if, in the savage state, he does not know the wiles of
+      animals, and the art of seizing game, he perishes through hunger; if in
+      the social state, he does not know the course of the seasons, he can
+      neither cultivate the ground, nor procure nourishment; and so on, of all
+      his actions, respecting all his wants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But can man individually acquire this knowledge necessary to his
+      existence, and to the development of his faculties?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; not without the assistance of his fellow men, and by living in
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But is not society to man a state against nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: it is on the contrary a necessity, a law that nature imposed on him
+      by the very act of his organization; for, first, nature has so constituted
+      man, that he cannot see his species of another sex without feeling
+      emotions and an attraction which induce him to live in a family, which is
+      already a state of society; secondly, by endowing him with sensibility,
+      she organized him so that the sensations of others reflect within him, and
+      excite reciprocal sentiments of pleasure and of grief, which are
+      attractions, and indissoluble ties of society; thirdly, and finally, the
+      state of society, founded on the wants of man, is only a further means of
+      fulfilling the law of preservation: and to pretend that this state is out
+      of nature, because it is more perfect, is the same as to say, that a
+      bitter and wild fruit of the forest, is no longer the production of
+      nature, when rendered sweet and delicious by cultivation in our gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why, then, have philosophers called the savage state the state of
+      perfection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because, as I have told you, the vulgar have often given the name of
+      philosophers to whimsical geniuses, who, from moroseness, from wounded
+      vanity, or from a disgust to the vices of society, have conceived
+      chimerical ideas of the savage state, in contradiction with their own
+      system of a perfect man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the true meaning of the word philosopher?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The word philosopher signifies a lover of wisdom; and as wisdom
+      consists in the practice of the laws of nature, the true philosopher is he
+      who knows those laws, and conforms the whole tenor of his conduct to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is man in the savage state?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. A brutal, ignorant animal, a wicked and ferocious beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is he happy in that state?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for he only feels momentary sensations, which are habitually of
+      violent wants which he cannot satisfy, since he is ignorant by nature, and
+      weak by being isolated from his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is he free?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; he is the most abject slave that exists; for his life depends on
+      everything that surrounds him: he is not free to eat when hungry, to rest
+      when tired, to warm himself when cold; he is every instant in danger of
+      perishing; wherefore nature offers but fortuitous examples of such beings;
+      and we see that all the efforts of the human species, since its origin,
+      sorely tends to emerge from that violent state by the pressing necessity
+      of self-preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But does not this necessity of preservation engender in individuals
+      egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary to the
+      social state?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our neighbor, it is
+      no longer self-love, but the hatred of others. Self-love, taken in its
+      true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest
+      support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in
+      return they should injure us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus mans preservation, and the unfolding of his faculties, directed
+      towards this end, teach the true law of nature in the production of the
+      human being; and it is from this essential principle that are derived, are
+      referred, and in its scale are weighed, all ideas of good and evil, of
+      vice and virtue, of just and unjust, of truth or error, of lawful or
+      forbidden, on which is founded the morality of individual, or of social
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      BASIS OF MORALITY; OF GOOD, OF EVIL, OF SIN, OF CRIME, OF VICE AND OF
+      VIRTUE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is good, according to the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is everything that tends to preserve and perfect man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is evil?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. That which tends to man's destruction or deterioration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is meant by physical good and evil, and by moral good and evil?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the word physical is understood, whatever acts immediately on the
+      body. Health is a physical good; and sickness a physical evil. By moral,
+      is meant what acts by consequences more or less remote. Calumny is a moral
+      evil; a fair reputation is a moral good, because both one and the other
+      occasion towards us, on the part of other men, dispositions and
+      habitudes,* which are useful or hurtful to our preservation, and which
+      attack or favor our means of existence.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is from this word habitudes, (reiterated actions,) in
+     Latin mores, that the word moral, and all its family, are
+     derived.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Q. Everything that tends to preserve, or to produce is therefore a good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; and it is for that reason that certain legislators have classed
+      among the works agreeable to the divinity, the cultivation of a field and
+      the fecundity of a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Whatever tends to cause death is, therefore, an evil?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; and it is for that reason some legislators have extended the idea
+      of evil and of sin even to the killing of animals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other evil can
+      be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is a sin in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for the
+      preservation and perfection of man and of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Can intention be a merit or a crime?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a commencement of
+      sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is virtue according to the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is meant by the word individual?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It means a man considered separately from every other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is vice according to the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and abstracted from
+      the senses?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate, and that
+      end is always to destroy or preserve the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they attack or
+      which they favor; and according to the number of persons in whom those
+      faculties are favored or injured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Give me some examples?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of saving
+      his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men, than that of
+      saving only the life of one, and an action useful to the whole human race
+      is more virtuous than an action that is only useful to one single nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue,
+      and forbid that of evil and vice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue for
+      the preservation of our body, and by the losses which result to our
+      existence from the practice of evil and vice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Its precepts are then in action?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect and in
+      its future consequences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How do you divide the virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. We divide them in three classes, first, individual virtues, as relative
+      to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relative to a family;
+      thirdly, social virtues, as relative to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF INDIVIDUAL VIRTUES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which are the individual virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. There are five principal ones, to wit: first, science, which comprises
+      prudence and wisdom; secondly, temperance, comprising sobriety and
+      chastity; thirdly, courage, or strength of body and mind; fourthly,
+      activity, that is to say, love of labor and employment of time; fifthly,
+      and finally, cleanliness, or purity of body, as well in dress as in
+      habitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe science?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because the man acquainted with the causes and effects of things
+      attends in a careful and sure manner to his preservation, and to the
+      development of his faculties. Science is to him the eye and the light,
+      which enable him to discern clearly and accurately all the objects with
+      which he is conversant, and hence by an enlightened man is meant a learned
+      and well-informed man. With science and instruction a man never wants for
+      resources and means of subsistence; and upon this principle a philosopher,
+      who had been shipwrecked, said to his companions, that were inconsolable
+      for the loss of their wealth: "For my part, I carry all my wealth within
+      me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the vice contrary to science?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature forbid ignorance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the grievous detriments resulting from it to our existence; for the
+      ignorant man who knows neither causes nor effects, commits every instant
+      errors most pernicious to himself and to others; he resembles a blind man
+      groping his way at random, and who, at every step, jostles or is jostled
+      by every one he meets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What difference is there between an ignorant and a silly man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The same difference as between him who frankly avows his blindness and
+      the blind man who pretends to sight; silliness is the reality of
+      ignorance, to which is superadded the vanity of knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are ignorance and silliness common?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, very common; they are the usual and general distempers of mankind:
+      more than three thousand years ago the wisest of men said: "The number of
+      fools is infinite;" and the world has not changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the reason of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because much labor and time are necessary to acquire instruction, and
+      because men, born ignorant and indolent, find it more convenient to remain
+      blind, and pretend to see clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What difference is there between a learned and a wise man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The learned knows, and the wise man practices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is prudence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the anticipated perception, the foresight of the effects and
+      consequences of every action; by means of which foresight, man avoids the
+      dangers which threaten him, while he seizes on and creates opportunities
+      favorable to him: he thereby provides for his present and future safety in
+      a certain and secure manner, whereas the imprudent man, who calculates
+      neither his steps nor his conduct, nor efforts, nor resistance, falls
+      every instant into difficulties and dangers, which sooner or later impair
+      his faculties and destroy his existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. When the Gospel says, "Happy are the poor of spirit," does it mean the
+      ignorant and imprudent?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for, at the same time that it recommends the simplicity of doves,
+      it adds the prudent cunning of serpents. By simplicity of mind is meant
+      uprightness, and the precept of the Gospel is that of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON TEMPERANCE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is temperance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is a regular use of our faculties, which makes us never exceed in
+      our sensations the end of nature to preserve us; it is the moderation of
+      the passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which is the vice contrary to temperance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. The disorder of the passions, the avidity of all kind of enjoyments, in
+      a word, cupidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Which are the principal branches of temperance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Sobriety, and continence or chastity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe sobriety?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By its powerful influence over our health. The sober man digests with
+      comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are
+      clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his
+      business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity; he does
+      not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and gladness, the
+      wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured him. Thus, from one
+      virtue alone, generous nature derives innumerable recompenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does it prohibit gluttony?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the numerous evils that are attached to it. The glutton, oppressed
+      with aliments, digests with anxiety; his head, troubled by the fumes of
+      indigestion, is incapable of conceiving clear and distinct ideas; he
+      abandons himself with violence to the disorderly impulse of lust and
+      anger, which impair his health; his body becomes bloated, heavy, and unfit
+      for labor; he endures painful and expensive distempers; he seldom lives to
+      be old; and his age is replete with infirmities and sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Should abstinence and fasting be considered as virtuous actions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, when one has eaten too much; for then abstinence and fasting are
+      simple and efficacious remedies; but when the body is in want of aliment,
+      to refuse it any, and let it suffer from hunger or thirst, is delirium and
+      a real sin against the law of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is drunkenness considered in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. As a most vile and pernicious vice. The drunkard, deprived of the sense
+      and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the divinity: he
+      debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable even to guide his
+      steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts and even
+      risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him to the
+      ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes in his
+      drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous bargains, and injures his fortune; he
+      makes use of opprobrious language, which creates him enemies and
+      repentance; he fills his house with trouble and sorrow, and ends by a
+      premature death or by a cacochymical old age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature interdict absolutely the use of wine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; it only forbids the abuse; but as the transition from the use to
+      the abuse is easy and prompt among the generality of men, perhaps the
+      legislators, who have proscribed the use of wine, have rendered a service
+      to humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature forbid the use of certain kinds of meat, or of
+      certain vegetables, on particular days, during certain seasons?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; it absolutely forbids only whatever is injurious to health; its
+      precepts, in this respect, vary according to persons, and even constitute
+      a very delicate and important science for the quality, the quantity, and
+      the combination of aliments have the greatest influence, not only over the
+      momentary affections of the soul, but even over its habitual disposition.
+      A man is not the same when fasting as after a meal, even if he were sober.
+      A glass of spirituous liquor, or a dish of coffee, gives degrees of
+      vivacity, of mobility, of disposition to anger, sadness, or gaiety; such a
+      meat, because it lies heavy on the stomach, engenders moroseness and
+      melancholy; such another, because it facilitates digestion, creates
+      sprightliness, and an inclination to oblige and to love. The use of
+      vegetables, because they have little nourishment, enfeebles the body, and
+      gives a disposition to repose, indolence, and ease; the use of meat,
+      because it is full of nourishment, and of spirituous liquors, because they
+      stimulate the nerves, creates vivacity, uneasiness, and audacity. Now from
+      those habitudes of aliment result habits of constitution and of the
+      organs, which form afterwards different kinds of temperaments, each of
+      which is distinguished by a peculiar characteristic. And it is for this
+      reason that, in hot countries especially, legislators have made laws
+      respecting regimen or food. The ancients were taught by long experience
+      that the dietetic science constituted a considerable part of morality;
+      among the Egyptians, the ancient Persians, and even among the Greeks, at
+      the Areopagus, important affairs were examined fasting; and it has been
+      remarked that, among those people, where public affairs were discussed
+      during the heat of meals, and the fumes of digestion, deliberations were
+      hasty and violent, and the results of them frequently unreasonable, and
+      productive of turbulence and confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON CONTINENCE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature prescribe continence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes: because a moderate use of the most lively of pleasures is not only
+      useful, but indispensable, to the support of strength and health: and
+      because a simple calculation proves that, for some minutes of privation,
+      you increase the number of your days, both in vigor of body and of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does it forbid libertinism?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the numerous evils which result from it to the physical and the
+      moral existence. He who carries it to an excess enervates and pines away;
+      he can no longer attend to study or labor; he contracts idle and expensive
+      habits, which destroy his means of existence, his public consideration,
+      and his credit; his intrigues occasion continual embarrassment, cares,
+      quarrels and lawsuits, without mentioning the grievous deep-rooted
+      distempers, and the loss of his strength by an inward and slow poison; the
+      stupid dullness of his mind, by the exhaustion of the nervous system; and,
+      in fine, a premature and infirm old age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature look on that absolute chastity so recommended in
+      monastical institutions, as a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for that chastity is of no use either to the society that
+      witnesses, or the individual who practises it; it is even prejudicial to
+      both. First, it injures society by depriving it of population, which is
+      one of its principal sources of wealth and power; and as bachelors confine
+      all their views and affections to the term of their lives, they have in
+      general an egotism unfavorable to the interests of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the second place, it injures the individuals who practise it, because
+      it deprives them of a number of affections and relations which are the
+      springs of most domestic and social virtues; and besides, it often
+      happens, from circumstances of age, regimen, or temperament, that absolute
+      continence injures the constitution and causes severe diseases, because it
+      is contrary to the physical laws on which nature has founded the system of
+      the reproduction of beings; and they who recommend so strongly chastity,
+      even supposing them to be sincere, are in contradiction with their own
+      doctrine, which consecrates the law of nature by the well known
+      commandment: increase and multiply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is chastity considered a greater virtue in women than in men?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because a want of chastity in women is attended with inconveniences
+      much more serious and dangerous for them and for society; for, without
+      taking into account the pains and diseases they have in common with men,
+      they are further exposed to all the disadvantages and perils that precede,
+      attend, and follow child-birth. When pregnant contrary to law, they become
+      an object of public scandal and contempt, and spend the remainder of their
+      lives in bitterness and misery. Moreover, all the expense of maintaining
+      and educating their fatherless children falls on them: which expense
+      impoverishes them, and is every way prejudicial to their physical and
+      moral existence. In this situation, deprived of the freshness and health
+      that constitute their charm, carrying with them an extraneous and
+      expensive burden, they are less prized by men, they find no solid
+      establishment, they fall into poverty, misery, and wretchedness, and thus
+      drag on in sorrow their unhappy existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature extend so far as the scruples of desires and
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; because, in the physical laws of the human body, thoughts and
+      desires inflame the senses, and soon provoke to action: now, by another
+      law of nature in the organization of our body, those actions become
+      mechanical wants which recur at certain periods of days or of weeks, so
+      that, at such a time, the want is renewed of such an action and such a
+      secretion; if this action and this secretion be injurious to health, the
+      habitude of them becomes destructive of life itself. Thus thoughts and
+      desires have a true and natural importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Should modesty be considered as a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; because modesty, inasmuch as it is a shame of certain actions,
+      maintains the soul and body in all those habits useful to good order, and
+      to self-preservation. The modest woman is esteemed, courted, and
+      established, with advantages of fortune which ensure her existence, and
+      render it agreeable to her, while the immodest and prostitute are
+      despised, repulsed, and abandoned to misery and infamy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON COURAGE AND ACTIVITY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are courage and strength of body and mind virtues in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and most important virtues; for they are the efficacious and
+      indispensable means of attending to our preservation and welfare. The
+      courageous and strong man repulses oppression, defends his life, his
+      liberty, and his property; by his labor he procures himself an abundant
+      subsistence, which he enjoys in tranquillity and peace of mind. If he
+      falls into misfortunes, from which his prudence could not protect him, he
+      supports them with fortitude and resignation; and it is for this reason
+      that the ancient moralists have reckoned strength and courage among the
+      four principal virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Should weakness and cowardice be considered as vices?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, since it is certain that they produce innumerable calamities. The
+      weak or cowardly man lives in perpetual cares and agonies; he undermines
+      his health by the dread, oftentimes ill founded, of attacks and dangers:
+      and this dread which is an evil, is not a remedy; it renders him, on the
+      contrary, the slave of him who wishes to oppress him; and by the servitude
+      and debasement of all his faculties, it degrades and diminishes his means
+      of existence, so far as the seeing his life depend on the will and caprice
+      of another man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But, after what you have said on the influence of aliments, are not
+      courage and force, as well as many other virtues, in a great measure the
+      effect of our physical constitution and temperament?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, it is true; and so far, that those qualities are transmitted by
+      generation and blood, with the elements on which they depend: the most
+      reiterated and constant facts prove that in the breed of animals of every
+      kind, we see certain physical and moral qualities, attached to the
+      individuals of those species, increase or decay according to the
+      combinations and mixtures they make with other breeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But, then, as our will is not sufficient to procure us those qualities,
+      is it a crime to be destitute of them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No, it is not a crime, but a misfortune; it is what the ancients call
+      an unlucky fatality; but even then we have it yet in our power to acquire
+      them; for, as soon as we know on what physical elements such or such a
+      quality is founded, we can promote its growth, and hasten its
+      developments, by a skillful management of those elements; and in this
+      consists the science of education, which, according as it is directed,
+      meliorates or degrades individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch as
+      totally to change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it is of
+      the greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature by which
+      those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily effected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of
+      nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because the man who works and employs his time usefully, derives from
+      it a thousand precious advantages to his existence. If he is born poor,
+      his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and still more so, if he is
+      sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon acquires a competency, and
+      enjoys the sweets of life; his very labor gives him virtues; for, while he
+      occupies his body and mind, he is not affected with unruly desires, time
+      does not lie heavy on him, he contracts mild habits, he augments his
+      strength and health, and attains a peaceful and happy old age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the
+      others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even the
+      science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which
+      accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured with
+      disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the desires
+      of his senses, which, becoming every day more inordinate, render him
+      intemperate, gluttonous, lascivious, enervated, cowardly, vile, and
+      contemptible. By the certain effect of all those vices, he ruins his
+      fortune, consumes his health, and terminates his life in all the agonies
+      of sickness and of poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. From what you say, one would think that poverty was a vice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No, it is not a vice; but it is still less a virtue, for it is by far
+      more ready to injure than to be useful; it is even commonly the result, or
+      the beginning of vice, for the effect of all individual vices is to lead
+      to indigence, and to the privation of the necessaries of life; and when a
+      man is in want of necessaries, he is tempted to procure them by vicious
+      means, that is to say, by means injurious to society. All the individual
+      virtues tend, on the contrary, to procure to a man an abundant
+      subsistence; and when he has more than he can consume, it is much easier
+      for him to give to others, and to practice the actions useful to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Do you look upon opulence as a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; but still less as a vice: it is the use alone of wealth that can be
+      called virtuous or vicious, according as it is serviceable or prejudicial
+      to man and to society. Wealth is an instrument, the use and employment
+      alone of which determine its virtue or vice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON CLEANLINESS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is cleanliness included among the virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because it is, in reality, one of the most important among them, on
+      account of its powerful influence over the health and preservation of the
+      body. Cleanliness, as well in dress as in residence, obviates the
+      pernicious effects of the humidity, baneful odors, and contagious
+      exhalations, proceeding from all things abandoned to putrefaction.
+      Cleanliness, maintains free transpiration; it renews the air, refreshes
+      the blood, and disposes even the mind to cheerfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this it appears that persons attentive to the cleanliness of their
+      bodies and habitations are, in general, more healthy, and less subject to
+      disease, than those who live in filth and nastiness; and it is further
+      remarked, that cleanliness carries with it, throughout all the branches of
+      domestic administration, habits of order and arrangement, which are the
+      chief means and first elements of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Uncleanliness or filthiness is, then, a real vice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, as real a one as drunkenness, or as idleness, from which in a
+      great measure it is derived. Uncleanliness is the second, and often the
+      first, cause of many inconveniences, and even of grievous disorders; it is
+      a fact in medicine, that it brings on the itch, the scurf, tetters,
+      leprosies, as much as the use of tainted or sour aliments; that it favors
+      the contagious influence of the plague and malignant fevers, that it even
+      produces them in hospitals and prisons; that it occasions rheumatisms, by
+      incrusting the skin with dirt, and thereby preventing transpiration;
+      without reckoning the shameful inconvenience of being devoured by vermin&mdash;the
+      foul appendage of misery and depravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most ancient legislators, therefore, considered cleanliness, which they
+      called purity, as one of the essential dogmas of their religions. It was
+      for this reason that they expelled from society, and even punished
+      corporeally those who were infected with distempers produced by
+      uncleanliness; that they instituted and consecrated ceremonies of
+      ablutions baths, baptisms, and of purifications, even by fire and the
+      aromatic fumes of incense, myrrh, benjamin, etc., so that the entire
+      system of pollutions, all those rites of clean and unclean things,
+      degenerated since into abuses and prejudices, were only founded originally
+      on the judicious observation, which wise and learned men had made, of the
+      extreme influence that cleanliness in dress and abode exercises over the
+      health of the body, and by an immediate consequence over that of the mind
+      and moral faculties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus all the individual virtues have for their object, more or less
+      direct, more or less near, the preservation of the man who practises them
+      and by the preservation of each man, they lead to that of families and
+      society, which are composed of the united sum of individuals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON DOMESTIC VIRTUES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What do you mean be domestic virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. I mean the practice of actions useful to a family, supposed to live in
+      the same house.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Domestic is derived from the Latin word domus, a house.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Q. What are those virtues?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. They are economy, paternal love, filial love, conjugal love, fraternal
+      love, and the accomplishment of the duties of master and servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is economy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is, according to the most extensive meaning of the word, the proper
+      administration of every thing that concerns the existence of the family or
+      house; and as subsistence holds the first rank, the word economy in
+      confined to the employment of money for the wants of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is economy a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because a man who makes no useless expenses acquires a superabundancy,
+      which is true wealth, and by means of which he procures for himself and
+      his family everything that is really convenient and useful; without
+      mentioning his securing thereby resources against accidental and
+      unforeseen losses, so that he and his family enjoy an agreeable and
+      undisturbed competency, which is the basis of human felicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Dissipation and prodigality, therefore, are vices?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, for by them man, in the end, is deprived of the necessaries of
+      life; he falls into poverty and wretchedness; and his very friends,
+      fearing to be obliged to restore to him what he has spent with or for
+      them, avoid him as a debtor does his creditor, and he remains abandoned by
+      the whole world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is paternal love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is the assiduous care taken by parents to make their children
+      contract the habit of every action useful to themselves and to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is paternal tenderness a virtue in parents?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because parents, who rear their children in those habits, procure for
+      themselves, during the course of their lives, enjoyments and helps that
+      give a sensible satisfaction at every instant, and which assure to them,
+      when advanced in years, supports and consolations against the wants and
+      calamities of all kinds with which old age is beset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is paternal love a common virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; notwithstanding the ostentation made of it by parents, it is a rare
+      virtue. They do not love their children, they caress and spoil them. In
+      them they love only the agents of their will, the instruments of their
+      power, the trophies of their vanity, the pastime of their idleness. It is
+      not so much the welfare of their children that they propose to themselves,
+      as their submission and obedience; and if among children so many are seen
+      ungrateful for benefits received, it is because there are among parents as
+      many despotic and ignorant benefactors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why do you say that conjugal love is a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because the concord and union resulting from the love of the married,
+      establish in the heart of the family a multitude of habits useful to its
+      prosperity and preservation. The united pair are attached to, and seldom
+      quit their home; they superintend each particular direction of it; they
+      attend to the education of their children; they maintain the respect and
+      fidelity of domestics; they prevent all disorder and dissipation; and from
+      the whole of their good conduct, they live in ease and consideration;
+      while married persons who do not love one another, fill their house with
+      quarrels and troubles, create dissension between their children and the
+      servants, leaving both indiscriminately to all kinds of vicious habits;
+      every one in turn spoils, robs, and plunders the house; the revenues are
+      absorbed without profit; debts accumulate; the married pair avoid each
+      other, or contend in lawsuits; and the whole family falls into disorder,
+      ruin, disgrace and want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is adultery an offence in the law of nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; for it is attended with a number of habits injurious to the
+      married and to their families. The wife or husband, whose affections are
+      estranged, neglect their house, avoid it, and deprive it, as much as they
+      can, of its revenues or income, to expend them with the object of their
+      affections; hence arise quarrels, scandal, lawsuits, the neglect of their
+      children and servants, and at last the plundering and ruin of the whole
+      family; without reckoning that the adulterous woman commits a most
+      grievous theft, in giving to her husband heirs of foreign blood, who
+      deprive his real children of their legitimate portion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is filial love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is, on the side of children, the practice of those actions useful to
+      themselves and to their parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe filial love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By three principal motives:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. By sentiment; for the affectionate care of parents inspires, from the
+      most tender age, mild habits of attachment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. By justice; for children owe to their parents a return and indemnity
+      for the cares, and even for the expenses, they have caused them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. By personal interest; for, if they use them ill, they give to their own
+      children examples of revolt and ingratitude, which authorize them, at a
+      future day, to behave to themselves in a similar manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are we to understand by filial love a passive and blind submission?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; but a reasonable submission, founded on the knowledge of the mutual
+      rights and duties of parents and children; rights and duties, without the
+      observance of which their mutual conduct is nothing but disorder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why is fraternal love a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because the concord and union, which result from the love of brothers,
+      establish the strength, security, and conservation of the family: brothers
+      united defend themselves against all oppression, they aid one another in
+      their wants, they help one another in their misfortunes, and thus secure
+      their common existence; while brothers disunited, abandoned each to his
+      own personal strength, fall into all the inconveniences attendant on an
+      insulated state and individual weakness. This is what a certain Scythian
+      king ingeniously expressed when, on his death-bed, calling his children to
+      him, he ordered them to break a bundle of arrows. The young men, though
+      strong, being unable to effect it, he took them in his turn, and untieing
+      them, broke each of the arrows separately with his fingers. "Behold," said
+      he, "the effects of union; united together, you will be invincible; taken
+      separately, you will be broken like reeds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What are the reciprocal duties of masters and of servants?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. They consist in the practice of the actions which are respectively and
+      justly useful to them; and here begin the relations of society; for the
+      rule and measure of those respective actions is the equilibrium or
+      equality between the service and the recompense, between what the one
+      returns and the other gives; which is the fundamental basis of all
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus all the domestic and individual virtues refer, more or less
+      mediately, but always with certitude, to the physical object of the
+      amelioration and preservation of man, and are thereby precepts resulting
+      from the fundamental law of nature in his formation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SOCIAL VIRTUES; JUSTICE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is every reunion of men living together under the clauses of an
+      expressed or tacit contract, which has for its end their common
+      preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Are the social virtues numerous?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; they are in as great number as the kinds of actions useful to
+      society; but all may be reduced to one principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is that fundamental principle?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is justice, which alone comprises all the virtues of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Why do you say that justice is the fundamental and almost only virtue
+      of society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because it alone embraces the practice of all the actions useful to it;
+      and because all the other virtues, under the denominations of charity,
+      humanity, probity, love of one's country, sincerity, generosity,
+      simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only varied forms and diversified
+      applications of the axiom, "Do not to another what you do not wish to be
+      done to yourself," which is the definition of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does the law of nature prescribe justice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By three physical attributes, inherent in the organization of man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What are those attributes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. They are equality, liberty, and property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is equality a physical attribute of man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because all men, having equally eyes, hands, mouths, ears, and the
+      necessity of making use of them, in order to live, have, by this reason
+      alone, an equal right to life, and to the use of the aliments which
+      maintain it; they are all equal before God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Do you suppose that all men hear equally, see equally, feel equally,
+      have equal wants, and equal passions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is evident, and daily demonstrated, that one is short, and
+      another long-sighted; that one eats much, another little; that one has
+      mild, another violent passions; in a word, that one is weak in body and
+      mind, while another is strong in both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. They are, therefore, really unequal?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, in the development of their means, but not in the nature and
+      essence of those means. They are made of the same stuff, but not in the
+      same dimensions; nor are the weight and value equal. Our language
+      possesses no one word capable of expressing the identity of nature, and
+      the diversity of its form and employment. It is a proportional equality;
+      and it is for this reason I have said, equal before God, and in the order
+      of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is liberty a physical attribute of man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Because all men having senses sufficient for their preservation&mdash;no
+      one wanting the eye of another to see, his ear to hear, his mouth to eat,
+      his feet to walk&mdash;they are all, by this very reason, constituted
+      naturally independent and free; no man is necessarily subjected to
+      another, nor has he a right to dominate over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But if a man is born strong, has he a natural right to master the weak
+      man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is neither a necessity for him, nor a convention between
+      them; it is an abusive extension of his strength; and here an abuse is
+      made of the word right, which in its true meaning implies, justice or
+      reciprocal faculty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is property a physical attribute of man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Inasmuch as all men being constituted equal or similar to one another,
+      and consequently independent and free, each is the absolute master, the
+      full proprietor of his body and of the produce of his labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is justice derived from these three attributes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. In this, that men being equal and free, owing nothing to each other,
+      have no right to require anything from one another only inasmuch as they
+      return an equal value for it; or inasmuch as the balance of what is given
+      is in equilibrium with what is returned: and it is this equality, this
+      equilibrium which is called justice, equity;* that is to say that equality
+      and justice are but one and the same word, the same law of nature, of
+      which the social virtues are only applications and derivatives.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Aequitas, aequilibrium, aequalitas, are all of the same
+     family.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL VIRTUES.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Q. Explain how the social virtues are derived from the law of nature. How
+      is charity or the love of one's neighbor a precept and application of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By reason of equality and reciprocity; for when we injure another, we
+      give him a right to injure us in return; thus, by attacking the existence
+      of our neighbor, we endanger our own, from the effect of reciprocity; on
+      the other hand, by doing good to others, we have room and right to expect
+      an equivalent exchange; and such is the character of all social virtues,
+      that they are useful to the man who practises them, by the right of
+      reciprocity which they give him over those who are benefited by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Charity is then nothing but justice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: it is only justice; with this slight difference, that strict
+      justice confines itself to saying, "Do not to another the harm you would
+      not wish he should do to you;" and that charity, or the love of one's
+      neighbor, extends so far as to say, "Do to another the good which you
+      would wish to receive from him." Thus when the gospel said, that this
+      precept contained the whole of the law and the prophets, it announced
+      nothing more than the precept of the law of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it enjoin forgiveness of injuries?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, when that forgiveness implies self-preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it prescribe to us, after having received a blow on one cheek, to
+      hold out the other?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is, in the first place, contrary to the precept of loving
+      our neighbor as ourselves, since thereby we should love, more than
+      ourselves, him who makes an attack on our preservation. Secondly, such a
+      precept in its literal sense, encourages the wicked to oppression and
+      injustice. The law of nature has been more wise in prescribing a
+      calculated proportion of courage and moderation, which induces us to
+      forget a first or unpremediated injury, but which punishes every act
+      tending to oppression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature prescribe to do good to others beyond the bounds
+      of reason and measure?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is a sure way of leading them to ingratitude. Such is the
+      force of sentiment and justice implanted in the heart of man, that he is
+      not even grateful for benefits conferred without discretion. There is only
+      one measure with them, and that is to be just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is alms-giving a virtuous action?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, when it is practised according to the rule first mentioned;
+      without which it degenerates into imprudence and vice, inasmuch as it
+      encourages laziness, which is hurtful to the beggar and to society; no one
+      has a right to partake of the property and fruits of another's labor,
+      without rendering an equivalent of his own industry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature consider as virtues faith and hope, which are
+      often joined with charity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for they are ideas without reality; and if any effects result from
+      them, they turn rather to the profit of those who have not those ideas,
+      than of those who have them; so that faith and hope may be called the
+      virtues of dupes for the benefit of knaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature prescribe probity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, for probity is nothing more than respect for one's own rights in
+      those of another; a respect founded on a prudent and well combined
+      calculation of our interests compared to those of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. But does not this calculation, which embraces the complicated interests
+      and rights of the social state, require an enlightened understanding and
+      knowledge, which make it a difficult science?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and a science so much the more delicate as the honest man
+      pronounces in his own cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Probity, then, shows an extension and justice in the mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, for an honest man almost always neglects a present interest, in
+      order not to destroy a future one; whereas the knave does the contrary,
+      and loses a great future interest for a present smaller one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Improbity, therefore, is a sign of false judgment and a narrow mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and rogues may be defined ignorant and silly calculators; for they
+      do not understand their true interest, and they pretend to cunning:
+      nevertheless, their cunning only ends in making known what they are&mdash;in
+      losing all confidence and esteem, and the good services resulting from
+      them for their physical and social existence. They neither live in peace
+      with others, nor with themselves; and incessantly menaced by their
+      conscience and their enemies, they enjoy no other real happiness but that
+      of not being hanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature forbid robbery?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, for the man who robs another gives him a right to rob him; from
+      that moment there is no security in his property, nor in his means of
+      preservation: thus in injuring others, he, by a counterblow, injures
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it interdict even an inclination to rob?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; for that inclination leads naturally to action, and it is for this
+      reason that envy is considered a sin?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How does it forbid murder?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the most powerful motives of self-preservation; for, first, the man
+      who attacks exposes himself to the risk of being killed, by the right of
+      defence; secondly, if he kills, he gives to the relations and friends of
+      the deceased, and to society at large, an equal right of killing him; so
+      that his life is no longer in safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How can we, by the law of nature, repair the evil we have done?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By rendering a proportionate good to those whom we have injured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it allow us to repair it by prayers, vows, offerings to God,
+      fasting and mortifications?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No: for all those things are foreign to the action we wish to repair:
+      they neither restore the ox to him from whom it has been stolen, honor to
+      him whom we have deprived of it, nor life to him from whom it has been
+      taken away; consequently they miss the end of justice; they are only
+      perverse contracts by which a man sells to another goods which do not
+      belong to him; they are a real depravation of morality, inasmuch as they
+      embolden to commit crimes through the hope of expiating them; wherefore,
+      they have been the real cause of all the evils by which the people among whom
+      those expiatory practices were used, have been continually tormented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does the law of nature order sincerity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; for lying, perfidy, and perjury create distrust, quarrels, hatred,
+      revenge, and a crowd of evils among men, which tend to their common
+      destruction; while sincerity and fidelity establish confidence, concord,
+      and peace, besides the infinite good resulting from such a state of things
+      to society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it prescribe mildness and modesty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes; for harshness and obduracy, by alienating from us the hearts of
+      other men, give them an inclination to hurt us; ostentation and vanity, by
+      wounding their self-love and jealousy, occasion us to miss the end of a
+      real utility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Does it prescribe humility as a virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. No; for it is a propensity in the human heart to despise secretly
+      everything that presents to it the idea of weakness; and self-debasement
+      encourages pride and oppression in others; the balance must be kept in
+      equipoise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. You have reckoned simplicity of manners among the social virtues; what
+      do you understand by that word?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. I mean the restricting our wants and desires to what is truly useful to
+      the existence of the citizen and his family; that is to say, the man of
+      simple manners has but few wants, and lives content with a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. How is this virtue prescribed to us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. By the numerous advantages which the practice of it procures to the
+      individual and to society; for the man whose wants are few, is free at
+      once from a crowd of cares, perplexities, and labors; he avoids many
+      quarrels and contests arising from avidity and a desire of gain; he spares
+      himself the anxiety of ambition, the inquietudes of possession, and the
+      uneasiness of losses; finding superfluity everywhere, he is the real rich
+      man; always content with what he has, he is happy at little expense; and
+      other men, not fearing any competition from him, leave him in quiet, and
+      are disposed to render him the services he should stand in need of. And if
+      this virtue of simplicity extends to a whole people, they insure to
+      themselves abundance; rich in everything they do not consume, they acquire
+      immense means of exchange and commerce; they work, fabricate, and sell at
+      a lower price than others, and attain to all kinds of prosperity, both at
+      home and abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What is the vice contrary to this virtue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. It is cupidity and luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. Is luxury a vice in the individual and in society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Yes, and to that degree, that it may be said to include all the others;
+      for the man who stands in need of many things, imposes thereby on himself
+      all the anxiety, and submits to all the means just or unjust of acquiring
+      them. Does he possess an enjoyment, he covets another; and in the bosom of
+      superfluity, he is never rich; a commodious dwelling is not sufficient for
+      him, he must have a beautiful hotel; not content with a plenteous table,
+      he must have rare and costly viands: he must have splendid furniture,
+      expensive clothes, a train of attendants, horses, carriages, women,
+      theatrical representations and games. Now, to supply so many expenses,
+      much money must be had; and he looks on every method of procuring it as
+      good and even necessary; at first he borrows, afterwards he steals, robs,
+      plunders, turns bankrupt, is at war with every one, ruins and is ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should a nation be involved in luxury, it occasions on a larger scale the
+      same devastations; by reason that it consumes its entire produce, it finds
+      itself poor even with abundance; it has nothing to sell to foreigners; its
+      manufactures are carried on at a great expense, and are sold too dear; it
+      becomes tributary for everything it imports; it attacks externally its
+      consideration, power, strength, and means of defence and preservation,
+      while internally it undermines and falls into the dissolution of its
+      members. All its citizens being covetous of enjoyments, are engaged in a
+      perpetual struggle to obtain them; all injure or are near injuring
+      themselves; and hence arise those habits and actions of usurpation, which
+      constitute what is denominated moral corruption, intestine war between
+      citizen and citizen. From luxury arises avidity, from avidity, invasion by
+      violence and perfidy; from luxury arises the iniquity of the judge, the
+      venality of the witness, the improbity of the husband, the prostitution of
+      the wife, the obduracy of parents, the ingratitude of children, the
+      avarice of the master, the dishonesty of the servant, the dilapidation of
+      the administrator, the perversity of the legislator, lying, perfidy,
+      perjury, assassination, and all the disorders of the social state; so that
+      it was with a profound sense of truth, that ancient moralists have laid
+      the basis of the social virtues on simplicity of manners, restriction of
+      wants, and contentment with a little; and a sure way of knowing the extent
+      of a man's virtues and vices is, to find out if his expenses are
+      proportionate to his fortune, and calculate, from his want of money, his
+      probity, his integrity in fulfilling his engagements, his devotion to the
+      public weal, and his sincere or pretended love of his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What do you mean by the word country?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. I mean the community of citizens who, united by fraternal sentiments,
+      and reciprocal wants, make of their respective strength one common force,
+      the reaction of which on each of them assumes the noble and beneficent
+      character of paternity. In society, citizens form a bank of interest; in
+      our country we form a family of endearing attachments; it is charity, the
+      love of one's neighbor extended to a whole nation. Now as charity cannot
+      be separated from justice, no member of the family can pretend to the
+      enjoyment of its advantages, except in proportion to his labor; if he
+      consumes more than it produces, he necessarily encroaches on his
+      fellow-citizens; and it is only by consuming less than what he produces or
+      possesses, that he can acquire the means of making sacrifices and being
+      generous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Q. What do you conclude from all this?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. I conclude from it that all the social virtues are only the habitude of
+      actions useful to society and to the individual who practices them; That
+      they refer to the physical object of man's preservation; That nature
+      having implanted in us the want of that preservation, has made a law to us
+      of all its consequences, and a crime of everything that deviates from it;
+      That we carry in us the seed of every virtue, and of every perfection;
+      That it only requires to be developed; That we are only happy inasmuch as
+      we observe the rules established by nature for the end of our
+      preservation; And that all wisdom, all perfection, all law, all virtue,
+      all philosophy, consist in the practice of these axioms founded on our own
+      organization:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself; Live for thy fellow
+      citizens, that they may live for thee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY.*
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In 1797, Dr. Priestly published a pamphlet, entitled,
+     "Observation on the increase of infidelity, with
+     animadversions upon the writings of several modern
+     unbelievers, and especially the Ruins of Mr. Volney." The
+     motto to this tract was:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Minds of little penetration rest naturally on the surface of things. They
+      do not like to pierce deep into them, for fear of labor and trouble;
+      sometimes still more for fear of truth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Letter is an answer from Volney, taken from the Anti-Jacobin Review
+      of March and April, 1799.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIR.&mdash;I received in due time your pamphlet on the increase of
+      infidelity, together with the note without date which accompanied it.* My
+      answer has been delayed by the incidents of business, and even by ill
+      health, which you will surely excuse: this delay has, besides, no
+      inconvenience in it. The question between us is not of a very urgent
+      nature: the world would not go on less well with or without my answer as
+      with or without your book. I might, indeed, have dispensed with returning
+      you any answer at all; and I should have been warranted in so doing, by
+      the manner in which you have stated the debate, and by the opinion pretty
+      generally received that, on certain occasions, and with certain persons,
+      the most noble reply is silence. You seem to have been aware of this
+      yourself, considering the extreme precautions you have taken to deprive me
+      of this resource; but as according to our French customs, any answer is an
+      act of civility, I am not willing to concede the advantage of politeness&mdash;besides,
+      although silence is sometimes very significant, its eloquence is not
+      understood by every one, and the public which has not leisure to analyze
+      disputes (often of little interest) has a reasonable right to require at
+      least some preliminary explanations; reserving to itself, should the
+      discussion degenerate into the recriminative clamors of an irritated
+      self-love, to allow the right of silence to him in whom it becomes the
+      virtue of moderation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Dr. Priestly sent his pamphlet to Volney, desiring his
+     answer to the strictures on his opinions in his Ruins of
+     Empires.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I have read, therefore, your animadversions on my Ruins, which you are
+      pleased to class among the writings of modern unbelievers, and since you
+      absolutely insist on my expressing my opinion before the public, I shall
+      now fulfill this rather disagreeable task with all possible brevity, for
+      the sake of economizing the time of our readers. In the first place, sir,
+      it appears evidently, from your pamphlet, that your design is less to
+      attack my book than my personal and moral character; and in order that the
+      public may pronounce with accuracy on this point, I submit several
+      passages fitted to throw light on the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You say, in the preface of your discourses, p. 12, "There are, however,
+      unbelievers more ignorant than Mr. Paine, Mr. Volney, Lequino, and others
+      in France say," &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also in the preface of your present observations, p. 20. "I can truly say
+      that in the writings of Hume, Mr. Gibbon, Voltaire, Mr. Volney&mdash;there
+      is nothing of solid argument: all abound in gross mistakes and
+      misrepresentations." Idem, p. 38&mdash;"Whereas had he (Mr. Volney) given
+      attention to the history of the times in which Christianity was
+      promulgated . . . he could have no more doubt . . . &amp;c., it is as much
+      in vain to argue with such a person as this, as with a Chinese or even a
+      Hottentot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Idem, p. 119&mdash;"Mr. Volney, if we may judge from his numerous
+      quotations of ancient writers in all the learned languages, oriental as
+      well as occidental, must be acquainted with all; for he makes no mention
+      of any translation, and yet if we judge from this specimen of his
+      knowledge of them, he cannot have the smallest tincture of that of the
+      Hebrew or even of the Greek."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, at last, after having published and posted me in your very title
+      page, as an unbeliever and an infidel; after having pointed me out in your
+      motto as one of those superficial spirits who know not how to find out,
+      and are unwilling to encounter, truth; you add, p. 124, immediately after
+      an article in which you speak of me under all these denominations&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The progress of infidelity, in the present age, is attended with a
+      circumstance which did not so frequently accompany it in any former
+      period, at least, in England, which is, that unbelievers in revelation
+      generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God so
+      as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a
+      Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of no
+      sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and
+      misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the
+      main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can you
+      hold any converse with a man of such bad connexions? In the second place,
+      your invitation, or rather, your summons to me, to point out the mistakes
+      which I think you have made with respect to my opinions, suggest to me
+      several observations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First. You suppose that the public attaches a high importance to your
+      mistakes and to my opinions: but I cannot act upon a supposition. Am I not
+      an unbeliever?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Secondly. You say, p. 18, that the public will expect it from me: Where
+      are the powers by which you make the public speak and act? Is this also a
+      revelation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirdly. You require me to point out your mistakes. I do not know that I
+      am under any such obligation: I have not reproached you with them; it is
+      not, indeed, very correct to ascribe to me, by selection or
+      indiscriminately, as you have done, all the opinions scattered through my
+      book, since, having introduced many different persons, I was under the
+      necessity of making them deliver different sentiments, according to their
+      different characters. The part which belongs to me is that of a traveler,
+      resting upon the ruins and meditating on the causes of the misfortunes of
+      the human race. To be consistent with yourself you ought to have assigned
+      to me that of the Hottentot or Samoyde savage, who argues with the
+      Doctors, chap. xxiii, and I should have accepted it; you have preferred
+      that of the erudite historian, chap. xxii, nor do I look upon this as a
+      mistake; I discover on the contrary, an insidious design to engage me in a
+      duel of self-love before the public, wherein you would excite the
+      exclusive interest of the spectators by supporting the cause which they
+      approve; while the task which you would impose on me, would only, in the
+      event of success, be attended with sentiments of disapprobation. Such is
+      your artful purpose, that, in attacking me as doubting the existence of
+      Jesus, you might secure to yourself, by surprise, the favor of every
+      Christian sect, although your own incredulity in his divine nature is not
+      less subversive of Christianity than the profane opinion, which does not
+      find in history the proof required by the English law to establish a fact:
+      to say nothing of the extraordinary kind of pride assumed in the silent,
+      but palpable, comparison of yourself to Paul and to Christ, by likening
+      your labors to theirs as tending to the same object, p. 10, preface.
+      Nevertheless, as the first impression of an attack always confers an
+      advantage, you have some ground for expecting you may obtain the apostolic
+      crown; unfortunately for your purpose I entertain no disposition to that
+      of martrydom: and however glorious it might be to me to fall under the arm
+      of him who has overcome Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire and even Frederick II., I
+      find myself under the necessity of declining your theological challenge,
+      for a number of substantial reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Because, to religious quarrels there is no end, since the prejudices of
+      infancy and education almost unavoidably exclude impartial reasoning, and
+      besides, the vanity of the champions becomes committed by the very
+      publicity of the contest, never to give up a first assertion, whence
+      result a spirit of sectarism and faction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Because no one has a right to ask of me an account of my religious
+      opinions. Every inquisition of this kind is a pretension to sovereignty, a
+      first step towards persecution; and the tolerant spirit of this country,
+      which you invoke, has much less in view to engage men to speak, than to
+      invite them to be silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. Because, supposing I do hold the opinions you attribute to me, I wish
+      not to engage my vanity so as never to retract, nor to deprive myself of
+      the resource of a conversion on some future day after more ample
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. And because, reverend sir, if, in the support of your own thesis, you
+      should happen to be discomfited before the Christian audience, it would be
+      a dreadful scandal; and I will not be a cause for scandal, even for the
+      sake of good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. Because in this metaphysical contest our arms are too unequal; you
+      speaking in your mother tongue, which I scarcely lisp, might bring forth
+      huge volumes, while I could hardly oppose pages; and the public, who would
+      read neither production, might take the weight of the books for that of
+      reasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. And because, being endowed with the gift of faith in a pretty
+      sufficient quantity, you might swallow in a quarter of an hour more
+      articles than my logic would digest in a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. Because again, if you were to oblige me to attend your sermons, as you
+      have compelled me to read your pamphlet, the congregation would never
+      believe that a man powdered and adorned like any worldling, could be in
+      the right against a man dressed out in a large hat, with straight hair,*
+      and a mortified countenance, although the gospel, speaking of the
+      pharisees of other times, who were unpowdered, says that when one fasts he
+      must anoint his head and wash his face.**
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Dr. Priestly has discarded his wig since he went to
+     America, and wears his own hair.  Editor A. J. Reveiw.
+
+     ** St. Matthew, Chapter VI. verses 16 and 17.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      8. Because, finally, a dispute to one having nothing else to do would be a
+      gratification, while to me, who can employ my time better, it would be an
+      absolute loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall not then, reverend sir, make you my confessor in matters of
+      religion, but I will disclose to you my opinion, as a man of letters, on
+      the composition of your book. Having in former days, read many works of
+      theology, I was curious to learn whether by any chemical process you had
+      discovered real beings in that world of invisibles. Unfortunately, I am
+      obliged to declare to the public, which, according to your expression, p.
+      19, "hopes to be instructed, to be led into truth, and not into error by
+      me," that I have not found in your book a single new argument, but the
+      mere repetition of what is told over and over in thousands of volumes, the
+      whole fruit of which has been to procure for their authors a cursory
+      mention in the dictionary of heresies. You everywhere lay down that as
+      proved which remains to be proved; with this peculiarity, that, as Gibbon
+      says, firing away your double battery against those who believe too much,
+      and those who believe too little, you hold out your own peculiar
+      sensations, as to the precise criterion of truth; so that we must all be
+      just of your size in order to pass the gate of that New Jerusalem which
+      you are building. After this, your reputation as a divine might have
+      become problematical with me; but recollecting the principle of the
+      association of ideas so well developed by Locke, whom you hold in
+      estimation, and whom, for that reason I am happy to cite to you, although
+      to him I owe that pernicious use of my understanding which makes me
+      disbelieve what I do not comprehend&mdash;I perceive why the public having
+      originally attached the idea of talents to the name of Mr. Priestly,
+      doctor in chemistry, continued by habit to associate it with the name of
+      Mr. Priestly, doctor in divinity; which, however, is not the same thing:
+      an association of ideas the more vicious as it is liable to be moved
+      inversely.* Happily you have yourself raised a bar of separation between
+      your admirers, by advising us in the first page of your preface, that your
+      present book is especially destined for believers. To cooperate, however,
+      with you, sir, in this judicious design, I must observe that it is
+      necessary to retrench two passages, seeing they afford the greatest
+      support to the arguments of unbelievers.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Mr. Blair, doctor of divinity, and Mr. Black, doctor in
+     chemistry, met at the coffee house in Edinburg: a new
+     theological pamphlet written by doctor Priestly was thrown
+     upon the table, "Really," said Dr. Blair, "this man had
+     better confine himself to chemistry, for he is absolutely
+     ignorant in theology:"&mdash;"I beg your pardon," answered Dr.
+     Black, "he is in the right, he is a minister of the gospel,
+     he ought to adhere to his profession, for in truth he knows
+     nothing of chemistry."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      You say, p. 15, "What is manifestly contrary to natural reason cannot be
+      received by it;"&mdash;and p. 62, "With respect to intellect, men and
+      brute animals are born in the same state, having the same external senses,
+      which are the only inlets to all ideas, and consequently the source of all
+      the knowledge and of all the mental habits they ever acquire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now if you admit, with Locke, and with us infidels, that every one has the
+      right of rejecting whatever is contrary to his natural reason, and that
+      all our ideas and all our knowledge are acquired only by the inlets of our
+      external senses; What becomes of the system of revelation, and of that
+      order of things in times past, which is so contradictory to that of the
+      time present? unless we consider it as a dream of the human brain during
+      the state of superstitious ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these two single phrases, I could overturn the whole edifice of your
+      faith. Dread not, however, sir, in me such overflowing zeal. For the same
+      reason that I have not the frenzy of martyrdom, I have not that of making
+      proselytes. It becomes those ardent, or rather acrimonious tempers, who
+      mistake the violence of their sentiments for the enthusiasm of truth; the
+      ambition of noise and rumor, for the love of glory; and for the love of
+      their neighbor, the detestation of his opinions, and the secret desire of
+      dominion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for me, who have not received from nature the turbulent qualities of an
+      apostle, and never sustained in Europe the character of a dissenter, I am
+      come to America neither to agitate the conscience of men, nor to form a
+      sect, nor to establish a colony, in which, under the pretext of religion,
+      I might erect a little empire to myself. I have never been seen
+      evangelizing my ideas, either in temples or in public meetings. I have
+      never likewise practiced that quackery of beneficence, by which a certain
+      divine, imposing a tax upon the generosity of the public, procures for
+      himself the honors of a more numerous audience, and the merit of
+      distributing at his pleasure a bounty which costs him nothing, and for
+      which he receives grateful thanks dexterously stolen from the original
+      donors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Either in the capacity of a stranger, or in that of a citizen, a sincere
+      friend to peace, I carry into society neither the spirit of dissension,
+      nor the desire of commotion; and because I respect in every one what I
+      wish him to respect in me, the name of liberty is in my mind nothing else
+      but the synonyma of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a man, whether from moderation or indolence, a spectator of the world
+      rather than an actor in it, I am every day less tempted to take on me the
+      management of the minds or bodies of men: it is sufficient for an
+      individual to govern his own passions and caprices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If by one of these caprices, I am induced to think it may be useful,
+      sometimes, to publish my reflections, I do it without obstinacy or
+      pretension to that implicit faith, the ridicule of which you desire to
+      impart to me, p. 123. My whole book of the Ruins which you treat so
+      ungratefully, since you thought it amusing, p. 122, evidently bears this
+      character. By means of the contrasted opinions I have scattered through
+      it, it breathes that spirit of doubt and uncertainty which appears to me
+      the best suited to the weakness of the human mind, and the most adapted to
+      its improvement, inasmuch as it always leaves a door open to new truths;
+      while the spirit of dogmatism and immovable belief, limiting our progress
+      to a first received opinion, binds us at hazard, and without resource, to
+      the yoke of error or falsehood, and occasions the most serious mischiefs
+      to society; since by combining with the passions, it engenders fanaticism,
+      which, sometimes misled and sometimes misleading, though always intolerant
+      and despotic, attacks whatever is not of its own nature; drawing upon
+      itself persecution when it is weak, and practising persecution when it is
+      powerful; establishing a religion of terror, which annihilates the
+      faculties, and vitiates the conscience: so that, whether under a political
+      or a religious aspect, the spirit of doubt is friendly to all ideas of
+      liberty, truth, or genius, while a spirit of confidence is connected with
+      the ideas of tyranny, servility, and ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, as is the fact, our own experience and that of others daily teaches us
+      that what at one time appeared true, afterwards appeared demonstrably
+      false, how can we connect with our judgments that blind and presumptuous
+      confidence which pursues those of others with so much hatred?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt it is reasonable, and even honest, to act according to our
+      present feelings and conviction: but if these feelings and their causes do
+      vary by the very nature of things, how dare we impose upon ourselves or
+      others an invariable conviction? How, above all, dare we require this
+      conviction in cases where there is really no sensation, as happens in
+      purely speculative questions, in which no palpable fact can be presented?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore, when opening the book of nature, (a more authentic one and more
+      easy to be read than leaves of paper blackened over with Greek or Hebrew,)
+      and when I reflected that the slightest change in the material world has
+      not been in times past, nor is at present effected by the difference of so
+      many religions and sects which have appeared and still exist on the globe,
+      and that the course of the seasons, the path of the sun, the return of
+      rain and drought, are the same for the inhabitants of each country,
+      whether Christians, Mussulmans, Idolaters, Catholics, Protestants, etc., I
+      am induced to believe that the universe is governed by laws of wisdom and
+      justice, very different from those which human ignorance and intolerance
+      would enact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as in living with men of very opposite religious persuasions, I have
+      had occasion to remark that their manners were, nevertheless, very
+      analogous; that is to say, among the different Christian sects, among the
+      Mahometans, and even among those people who were of no sect, I have found
+      men who practise all the virtues, public and private, and that too without
+      affectation; while others, who were incessantly declaiming of God and
+      religion, abandoned themselves to every vicious habit which their belief
+      condemned, I thereby became convinced that Ethics, the doctrines of
+      morality, are the only essential, as they are only demonstrable, part of
+      religion. And as, by your own avowal, the only end of religion is to
+      render men better, in order to add to their happiness, p. 62, I have
+      concluded that there are but two great systems of religion in the world,
+      that of good sense and beneficence, and that of malice and hypocrisy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In closing this letter, I find myself embarrassed by the nature of the
+      sentiment which I ought to express to you, for in declaring as you have
+      done, p. 123, that you do not care for the contempt of such as me*
+      (ignorant as you were of my opinion), you tell me plainly that you do not
+      care for their esteem. I leave, therefore, to your discernment and taste
+      to determine the sentiment most congenial to my situation and your desert.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "And what does it do for me here, except, perhaps, expose
+     me to the contempt of such men as Mr. Volney, which,
+     however, I feel myself pretty well able to bear?" p. 124.
+     This language is the more surprising, as Dr. Priestly never
+     received anything from me but civilities.  In the year 1791
+     I sent him a dissertation of mine on the Chronology of the
+     Ancients, in consequence of some charts which he had himself
+     published.  His only answer was to abuse me in a pamphlet in
+     1792.  After this first abuse, on meeting me here last
+     winter, he procured me an invitation to dine with his friend
+     Mr. Russell, at whose house he lodged; after having shown me
+     polite attention at that dinner, he abuses me in his new
+     pamphlet.  After this second abuse he meets me in Spruce
+     Street, and takes me by the hand as a friend, and speaks of
+     me in a large company under that denomination.  Now I ask
+     the public, what kind of a man is Dr. Priestly?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      C. F. VOLNEY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphia, March 10, 1797.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      P. S. I do not accompany this public letter with a private note to Dr.
+      Priestly, because communications of that nature carry an appearance of
+      bravado, which, even in exercising the right of a necessary defence,
+      appear to me imcompatible with decency and politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Compiled by the publisher from recognized authorities.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Zodiac is an imaginary girdle or belt in the celestial sphere, which
+      extends about eight degrees on each side of the Ecliptic. It is divided
+      into twelve portions, called the signs of the Zodiac, within which all the
+      planets make their revolutions. The Zodiac is so called from the animals
+      represented upon it, and is supposed to have originated in remote ages and
+      in latitudes where the camel and elephant were comparatively unknown. This
+      pictorial representation of the zodiac was probably the origin, as M.
+      Dupuis suggests, of the Arabian and Egyptian adoration of animals and
+      birds, and has led in the natural progress of events to the adoration of
+      images by both Christians and pagans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Signs of the Zodiac, (says Godfrey Higgins in The Anacalypsis) with
+      the exception of the Scorpion, which was exchanged by Dan for the Eagle,
+      were carried by the different tribes of the Israelites on their standards;
+      and Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio or the Eagle&mdash;the four signs
+      of Reuben, Judah, Ephriam, and Dan&mdash;were placed at the four corners,
+      (the four cardinal points), of their encampment, evidently in allusion to
+      the cardinal points of the sphere, the equinoxes and solstices, when the
+      equinox was in Taurus. (See Parkhurst's Lexicon.) These coincidences prove
+      that this religious system had its origin before the bull ceased to be an
+      equinoctial sign, and prove also, that the religion of Moses was
+      originally the same in its secret mysteries as that of the Heathen, or, if
+      my reader likes it better, that the Heathen secret mysteries were the same
+      as those of Moses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ecliptic, a great circle of the sphere, (shown on the preceding map by
+      two parallel lines), is supposed to be drawn through the middle of the
+      Zodiac, cutting the Equator at two points, (called the Equinoctial
+      points), at an angle with the equinoctial of 23 degrees 28 minutes, (the
+      sun's greatest declination), and is the path which the earth is supposed
+      to describe amidst the fixed stars in performing its annual circuit around
+      the sun. It is called the Ecliptic because the eclipses of the sun and
+      moon always occur under it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Signs are each the twelfth part of the Ecliptic or Zodiac, (30
+      degrees,) and are reckoned from the point of intersection of the ecliptic
+      and equator at the vernal equinox. They are named respectively Aries,
+      Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
+      Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces. These names are borrowed from the
+      constellations of the zodiac of the same denomination, which corresponded
+      when these divisions were originally made; but in consequence of the
+      precession, recession, or retrocession of the equinoxes, (about 50 1/10"
+      yearly, at the rate of about 72 years to a degree, displacing an entire
+      sign in about 2152 years, and making an entire revolution of the
+      equinoctial in about 25,868 years), the positions of these constellations
+      in the heavens no longer correspond with the divisions of the ecliptic of
+      the same name, but are in advance of them. Thus, the constellation Aries
+      is now in that part of the ecliptic called Taurus, and the stars of Taurus
+      are in Gemini, those of Gemini in Cancer, and so on throughout the
+      ecliptic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The relative positions of the signs and constellations in the zodiac and
+      ecliptic seem thus to have gradually changed with the revolving years; and
+      the worship of the three constellations, Taurus, Aries, and Pisces, with
+      which Christianity is so intimately connected, seems to have changed in a
+      corresponding degree. The worship of the bull of Egypt&mdash;the celestial
+      Taurus&mdash;has given place to that of the lamb of Palestine&mdash;the
+      celestial Aries; and under the astronomical emblem Pisces&mdash;the
+      twelfth sign of the zodiac&mdash;the dominant faith of to-day was
+      appropriately taught by the twelve apostolic fishermen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is from one of these chosen fishermen, St. Peter, that the Pope of Rome
+      claims to have derived his arbitrary power for binding and loosing on
+      earth those who are to be bound and loosed in heaven. (Matt. xvi, 19.) The
+      grave responsibility of wielding with justice and equity this tremendous
+      power over the future destiny of mankind, seems never to have disconcerted
+      any of the successors of St. Peter. They have all proved to be equally
+      arrogant and intolerant, zealous for both temporal and spiritual
+      domination, and merciless to those who have opposed their pretensions. The
+      present incumbent of the papal chair, who modestly claims the attribute of
+      infallibility, seems proud of his inherited title, The Great Fisherman!
+      and hopes in the progress of time, with the assistance of his monks,
+      bishops, and cardinals, to entangle all nations in his net of faith, and
+      to dictate with unquestioned authority the religious worship of the entire
+      human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the precession of the equinoxes still continues as of yore, and as the
+      masses still continue credulous and devout, they may in succeeding ages be
+      again called upon to worship the god Apis, when the sign of Taurus shall
+      again coincide in the zodiac and the ecliptic; and Aries, "the lamb of
+      God," may again be offered in the "fullness of time" as a sacrifice for
+      mankind, again be crucified, and again shed his redeeming blood to wash
+      away the sins of a believing world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Dupuis has satisfactorily shown in The History of all Religions that
+      the twelve labors of the god and saviour Hercules were astronomical
+      allegories&mdash;the history of the passage of the sun through the twelve
+      signs of the zodiac&mdash;and these labors are so similar to the
+      sufferings of Jesus, that the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst has been obliged, much
+      against his inclination, to acknowledge that they "were types of what the
+      real Saviour was to do and suffer." (Parkhurst, p.47.) An intimate
+      connection, if not identity, is thus shown between ancient and modern
+      belief&mdash;between the paganism of the past and the orthodoxy of the
+      present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ZODIACAL SIGNS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARIES, the Ram: (marked [symbol for ARIES])&mdash;A northern
+      constellation, usually named as the first sign in the zodiac, into which,
+      when the sun enters at the vernal equinox in March, the days and nights
+      are of equal length. Aries has been regarded by the devout during many
+      ages as the celestial representative, visible in the heavens, of "the Lamb
+      of God that taketh away the sins of the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TAURUS, the Bull:(marked thus, [symbol for TAURUS])&mdash;The second sign
+      in the zodiac, which by the Arabians is called Ataur. This constellation
+      was worshipped for ages by the idolatrous Egyptians as the heavenly
+      representative of their god Osiris; and derives its name, according to
+      Grecian fable, from the bull into which Jupiter transformed himself in
+      order to carry Europa over into Crete; but the constellation was probably
+      so named by the Egyptians to designate that period of the year, (April),
+      in which cows mostly bring forth their young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Rev. Mr. Maurice in his work on the antiquities of India, has shown
+      that the May-day festival and the May-pole of Great Britain with its
+      garlands, etc., are the remains of an ancient festival of Egypt and India,
+      and probably of Phoenicia, when these nations, in countries very distant,
+      and from times very remote, have all, with one consent, celebrated the
+      entrance of the sun into the sign of Taurus at the vernal equinox."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GEMINI, the Twins: (marked thus, [symbol for GEMINI])&mdash;A zodiacal
+      constellation, visible in May, containing the two bright stars Castor and
+      Pollux, the fabled sons of Leda and Jupiter, who during their lives had
+      cleared the Hellespont and neighboring seas of pirates, and were therefore
+      deemed the protectors of navigators and sailors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CANCER, the Crab: (marked thus, [symbol for CANCER])&mdash;Is the fourth
+      sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters on the 21st day of June, and is
+      thence called the summer solstice. According to Grecian fable, the crab
+      was transported to heaven at the request of Juno, after it had been slain
+      by Hercules during his battle with the serpent Python, but the evident
+      design of the name is to represent the apparent backward motion of the sun
+      in June, which is said to resemble the motions of a crab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LEO, the Lion: ([symbol for LEO]).&mdash;Is the fifth sign in the zodiac,
+      and contains one star of the first magnitude, called Regulus, or Cor
+      Leonis&mdash;the Lion's Heart. The fervid heat of July, when the sun has
+      attained its greatest power, is now symbolized in our almanacs by the
+      figure of an enraged lion; and the feasts or sacrifices formerly
+      celebrated among the ancients during this month, in honor of the sun,
+      (which they also represented under the form of a lion,) were called
+      Leonitica. The priests who performed the sacred rites were called Leones.
+      This feast was sometimes called Mithriaca, because Mithra was the name of
+      the sun among the Persians. The sacred writings abound with references to
+      the "king of beasts;" among the most interesting of which is the story of
+      the battle between the lion and Samson, the Jewish Herculus; while the
+      most wonderful example of animal evolution on record is found in the
+      sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where we are gravely informed that "the
+      lion shall eat straw like the bullock."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIRGO, Virgin Mother, Venus, Eve, Isis, &amp;c.&mdash;([symbol for
+      VIRGO]).&mdash;Is the sixth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about
+      the 21st of August. The myths and fables regarding the virgin which abound
+      among all nations and all religions, are both various and voluminous, and
+      we may add somewhat improbable. They all agree, however, in this, that the
+      female, shown on the preceding diagram, holding in her right hand a branch
+      of ripened fruit,&mdash;the apples of Paradise,&mdash;was intended to
+      represent the reproductive powers of nature,&mdash;the abundance,
+      satisfaction and contentment which mortals enjoy during the happy period
+      of harvest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LIBRA, the Balance.&mdash;The seventh sign of the zodiac, directly
+      opposite to Aries, from which it is distant 180 degrees. It is marked thus
+      [symbol for LIBRA], after the manner of a pair of scales; to denote,
+      probably, that when the sun arrives at this part of the ecliptic, the days
+      and nights are equal, as if weighed in a balance. Hence the period when
+      the sun enters Libra, (about September 21st,) is called the Autumnal
+      equinox. On the 25th of September was born John the Baptist, the
+      forerunner of his cousin Jesus, who came to his exaltation of glory on the
+      25th of March, the Vernal equinox. "The equinoxes and solstices," says
+      Higgins, "equally marked the births and deaths of John and Jesus." The one
+      preceded and prepared the way for the other, who receded. One advanced,
+      the other declined. Jesus ascended, John descended. Astrologically
+      speaking, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John iii, 30.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SCORPIO, the Scorpion.&mdash;The eighth sign of the zodiac, which the sun
+      enters on the 23d of October, is marked thus [symbol for SCORPIO]. Scorpio
+      is fabled to have killed the great hunter Orion, and for that exploit to
+      have been placed among the constellations. For this reason it is also said
+      that when Scorpio rises Orion sets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAGITTARIUS, the Archer: (marked thus, [symbol for SAGITTARIUS]) is the
+      ninth zodiacal sign, and corresponds with the month of November. This sign
+      is represented like a centaur and was fabled to be Crotus, the son of
+      Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAPRICORNUS, the Goat.([symbol for CAPRICORNUS])&mdash;The tenth sign of
+      the zodiac, which the sun enters the 21st of December, (the longest night
+      in the year,) called the winter solstice. This sign is drawn to represent
+      the horns of a goat, and is fabled to have been Pan, who in the war of the
+      giants was taken to heaven in the shape of a goat. Others claim that it
+      was the goat of Amalthaea, which fed Jupiter with her milk. Macrobius, who
+      calls Cancer and Capricorn the gates of the sun, makes the latter sign to
+      represent his motion, after the manner of a goat climbing the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AQUARIUS, the Water Bearer.&mdash;A constellation in the heavens so
+      called, because during its rising there is usually an abundance of rain.
+      It is the eleventh sign in the zodiac, reckoned from Aries, and is marked
+      thus, [symbol for AQUARIUS]. It rises in January and sets in February, and
+      is supposed by the poets to be Ganymede.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PISCES, the Fishes, [symbol for PISCES].&mdash;The twelfth sign of the
+      zodiac, rises in February and is represented by two fishes tied together
+      by the tails. These fishes are fabled by the Greeks to be those into which
+      Venus and Cupid were changed to escape from the giant Typhon. This fable
+      may not be true, but that wonderful miracles were once performed with two
+      small fishes is stated in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke,
+      where it is said that 5000 hungry mortals were cheaply, if not sumptuously
+      regaled with two small fishes and five loaves of bread; while a large
+      surplus of this piscatory diet, larger indeed than the original stock,
+      still remained intact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the vestibule or approaches to catholic churches is usually found a
+      vase filled with water, (called Piscina,) and this water is considered
+      holy. The Fish-days are observed as holy days, or fast days, in which Fish
+      may be eaten and meat is forbidden; and learned writers have asserted that
+      in the worship of Pisces may be found the true secret of the origin of the
+      rite of baptism. The Fish-god Oannes, is said to have come out of the
+      Erythraean Sea and taught the Babylonians all kinds of useful knowledge.
+      Ionnes or Jonas went headlong into the sea and into a fish, and has kindly
+      recorded for our instruction his remarkable adventures. The miraculous
+      draughts of fishes in the apostolic age still excite the emulation of
+      modern fishermen, who cannot even hope to rival the wonders that have been
+      recorded. St. Peter is said to have secured ready money from the mouth of
+      a fish that he caught with a hook and line in the sea of Galilee. (Matthew
+      xvii, 27.) His success was justly rewarded, and to him was delegated the
+      power of ruling the infant church. Pisces thus displaced Aries. The
+      fisherman succeeded the shepherd. The precession of the equinoxes produced
+      a new avatar; a new sign arose in the heavens; and a new saviour was born
+      to save mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CONSTELLATIONS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIRIUS, the Dog Star.&mdash;A bright star of the first magnitude in the
+      mouth of the constellation Canis Major. This is the brightest star that
+      appears in our firmament, and is supposed by some to be the nearest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LEPUS.&mdash;One of the southern constellations, placed near Orion,
+      according to Grecian fable, because it was one of the animals which he
+      hunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ERIDANUS.&mdash;A winding southern constellation, near the Cetus,
+      containing the bright star Achemar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CETUS, the Whale.&mdash;A southern constellation, and one of the
+      forty-eight old asterisms. It is fabled to have been the sea monster sent
+      by Neptune to devour Andromeda, which was killed by Perseus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CRATER, the Cup.&mdash;A southern constellation, near Hydra. This is
+      supposed by Hyainus to be the cup which Apollo gave to the Corvus, or
+      Raven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORVUS.&mdash;One of the old constellations in the southern hemisphere,
+      near Sagittarius. This bird is fabled to have been translated to heaven by
+      Apollo for discovering to him the infidelity of the nymph Coronis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARGO NAVIS, the Ship.&mdash;A constellation near to the Canis Major, and
+      the name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four companions to
+      Colchis in quest of the golden fleece, and was said to have been
+      translated into the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CANOPUS.&mdash;The name formerly given to a star in the second bend of
+      Eridanus. A bright star of the first magnitude in the rudder of the ship
+      Argo, which, according to Pliny, was visible at Alexandria in Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CENTAURUS.&mdash;One of the forty-eight old constellations in the southern
+      hemisphere, represented in the form of half man and half horse, who was
+      fabled by the Greeks to have been Chiron, the tutor of Achilles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AVA, or ALTAR.&mdash;One of the old constellations, and fabled to have
+      been that at which the giants entered into their conspiracy against the
+      gods; wherefore Jupiter, in commemoration of the event, transplanted the
+      altar into the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PEGASUS.&mdash;One of the forty-eight old constellations of the northern
+      hemisphere, figured in the form of a flying horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DELPHINUS, or DOLPHIN.&mdash;A northern constellation, near Pegasus. The
+      Dolphin is fabled to have been translated to heaven by Neptune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AQUILA, the Eagle.&mdash;In the Arabic Altair, but in the Persian tables
+      the Flying Vulture. This is one of the old constellations, situated near
+      Delphinus in the northern hemisphere. According to Grecian fable, Aquila
+      represented Ganymede or Hebe, who was transported to heaven and made
+      cup-bearer to Jupiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAGITTA&mdash;the Dart or Arrow, called by the Arabians Schahan. One of
+      the old constellations in the northern hemisphere, near Aquila and
+      Delphinus. It is fabled to have been the arrow with which Hercules slew
+      the vulture that was devouring the liver of Prometheus who was, like
+      Jesus, crucified for loving mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CYGNUS, the Swan.&mdash;An old constellation in the milky-way, between
+      Equus and the Dragon. This is fabled to be the swan into which Jupiter
+      transformed himself in order to deceive the virtuous Leda, wife of
+      Tyndareus, king of Sparta. The Grecian matron, like the Jewish virgin,
+      thus became the mother of a God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LYRA.&mdash;A northern constellation between Hercules and Cygnus,
+      containing a white star of the first magnitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MILKY-WAY.&mdash;Galaxy, or Via Lactia.&mdash;A broad luminous path or
+      circle encompassing the heavens, which is easily discernible by its white
+      appearance, from which it derives its name. It is supposed to be the
+      blended light of innumerable fixed stars, which are not distinguishable
+      with ordinary telescopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HYDRA, the Serpent.&mdash;A southern constellation of great length, which
+      is drawn to represent a serpent. The Hydra is fabled to have been placed
+      in the heavens by Apollo, to frighten the Raven from drinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ORION, the hunter.&mdash;A constellation of the southern hemisphere with
+      respect to the ecliptic, but half southern and half northern with respect
+      to the equinoctial. It is placed near the feet of the bull, and is
+      composed of seventeen stars in the form of a sword, which has given
+      occasion to the poets to speak of Orion's sword. He was described by the
+      Greeks as a "mighty hunter," who for his exploits was placed in the
+      heavens by Jupiter, between the Canis and the Lepus. He is believed by
+      many to have been the "mighty hunter" spoken of in the bible, under the
+      name of Nimrod. (See Gen. x: 8, 9; 1 Chron. i: 10; Micha v: 6, Job ix, 9;
+      Amos v, 8.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PERSEUS.&mdash;This constellation is named from Perseus, the son of
+      Jupiter by Danae, who was translated into the heavens by the assistance of
+      Minerva, for having released Andromeda from her confinement on the rock to
+      which she was chained. He is represented in the preceding illustration
+      holding a drawn sword in his right hand and in his left the head of
+      Medusa, the Gorgon, whose terrifying appearance changed all who beheld her
+      into stone, and whom he had destroyed with the assistance of the wings he
+      had borrowed from Mercury, the helmet from Pluto, the sword from Vulcan,
+      and the shield from Minerva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JOSEPH'S STABLE; AURIGA, the Wagoner:&mdash;A northern constellation
+      between Perseus and Gemini, represented by the figure of an old man
+      supporting a goat. He is said to have been taken to heaven by Jupiter
+      after the invention of wagons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      URSA MAJOR, the Bear.&mdash;One of the prominent northern constellations,
+      situated near the north pole. It contains the stars called the Dipper.
+      Ursa Minor contains the pole-star, which is shown in the extremity of the
+      tail of the bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANDROMEDA.&mdash;A northern constellation, represented by a woman chained;
+      as, according to Grecian fable, Andromeda, the daughter of Cassiopia, was
+      bound to a rock by the Nereides, and afterwards released by Perseus.
+      Minerva changed her into a constellation after her death, and placed her
+      in the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DRACO OR DRAGON.&mdash;A northern constellation, supposed to represent the
+      Dragon that guarded the Hesperian fruit, and was killed by Hercules. It is
+      said that Juno took it up to heaven and placed it among the
+      constellations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BOOTIS, the Ox driver: so called because this constellation seems to
+      follow the Great Bear as the driver follows his oxen. Bootis is
+      represented as grasping in his right hand a sickle and in his left a club,
+      and is fabled to have been Icarius, who was transported to heaven because
+      he was a great cultivator of the vine; for when Bootes rises the works of
+      ploughing and cultivation go forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORONA BOREALIS. Northern Crown.&mdash;One of the old northern
+      constellations, between Hercules and Bootes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORONA AUSTRALIS&mdash;Southern Crown.&mdash;One of the old constellations
+      in the southern hemisphere, between Sagittarius and Scorpio. The Corona
+      were fabled to be Menippe and Metioche, two daughters of Orion, who
+      sacrificed themselves at the suggestion of an oracle, to protect Boeotia,
+      their native country, from the ravages of a pestilence: it being the
+      belief of idolatrous nations that an angry god could be propitiated by
+      human sacrifices, and that the death of the innocent might atone for the
+      sins of the guilty. The deities of Hades were astonished, it is said, at
+      the patriotism and devotion of these Grecian maidens, who had so
+      generously and uselessly sacrificed their lives. After their death two
+      stars were seen to issue from the altars that still smoked with their
+      blood, and these stars were placed in the heavens in the form of a crown
+      or coronet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CEPHEUS AND CASSIOPIA.&mdash;One of the old asterism in the northern
+      hemisphere, near the pole. According to Grecian fables, Cassiopia and her
+      husband Cepheus, king of Etheopia, were placed among the constellations to
+      witness the punishment inflicted on their daughter, Andromeda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TRIANGULARIUM.&mdash;A name for both one of the old and new constellations
+      in the northern hemisphere, between Andromeda and Aries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SERPENTARIUS, called Ophiucus, is a constellation in the northern
+      hemisphere, between Scorpio and Hercules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HERCULES, one of the old northern constellations. In Grecian mythology it
+      was taught and believed that Hercules, the Theban, was born of a human
+      mother and an immortal father, like other so-called saviours of mankind.
+      His mother, the fair Alcmena, wife of Amphitryon, having found favor in
+      the eyes of the god Jupiter, soon fell an unwilling victim to his
+      celestial wiles. The life of the infant Hercules, born of this unnatural
+      union, was threatened by the jealous Juno, the same as the life of the
+      infant Jesus was threatened by the tyrant Herod. Like Jesus, Hercules
+      devoted his life to the benefit of the human race, and like Jesus he was
+      also worshipped after his death as a God in heaven. He is shown in the
+      astrological chart, enveloped in the skin of the lion he has slain, with
+      his club upraised, and his foot placed threateningly above the head of the
+      Dragon, as if about to fulfill the scriptural prophecy, that "the seed of
+      the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Ruins, by C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/1397.txt b/old/1397.txt
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+++ b/old/1397.txt
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+Project Gutenberg's The Ruins, by C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ruins
+
+Author: C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #1397]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RUINS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RUINS,
+
+OR, MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES:
+
+
+AND
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE,
+
+
+by C. F. VOLNEY,
+
+COMTE ET PAIR DE FRANCE. COMMANDEUR DE LA LEGION D'HONNEUR, MEMBRE DE
+L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE, ET DE PLUSIEURS AUTRES SOCIETES SAVANTES.
+
+DEPUTY TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF 1789, AND AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN EGYPT
+AND SYRIA," "NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY," ETC.
+
+
+TO WHICH IS ADDED
+
+VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE BY COUNT DARU,
+AND THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS BY THE EDITOR.
+
+
+I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will employ myself on
+the means of effecting good for him, and build my own happiness on the
+promotion of his.--Volney.
+
+
+NEW YORK, TWENTIETH CENTURY PUB. CO., 4 WARREN ST. 1890.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
+
+
+Having recently purchased a set of stereotyped plates of Volney's Ruins,
+with a view of reprinting the same, I found, on examination, that they
+were considerably worn by the many editions that had been printed
+from them and that they greatly needed both repairs and corrections. A
+careful estimate showed that the amount necessary for this purpose would
+go far towards reproducing this standard work in modern type and in an
+improved form. After due reflection this course was at length decided
+upon, and all the more readily, as by discarding the old plates and
+resetting the entire work, the publisher was enabled to greatly enhance
+its value, by inserting the translator's preface as it appeared in the
+original edition, and also to restore many notes and other valuable
+material which had been carelessly omitted in the American reprint.
+
+An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the
+fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may
+be appropriately referred to, in this connection. It is there stated, in
+describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes,
+her opulent metropolis, that "There a people, now forgotten, discovered,
+while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences.
+A race of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and
+frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil
+and religious systems which still govern the universe."
+
+A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to
+prove that this statement is substantially correct, and that we are in
+reality indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid imagination of
+the persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems
+now so highly revered by the different branches of both the Semitic
+and Aryan races. This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr.
+Volney's writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of
+all religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long
+concealed beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the
+Egyptian Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Dioderus, that
+"the Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship,
+of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other
+religious practice."
+
+That an imaginative and superstitious race of black men should have
+invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system
+of religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the
+intellects of the leading representatives of modern theology,--that
+still clings to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential influence
+the literature and faith of the civilized and cultured nations of Europe
+and America, is indeed a strange illustration of the mad caprice of
+destiny, of the insignificant and apparently trivial causes that oft
+produce the most grave and momentous results.
+
+
+The translation here given closely follows that published in Paris by
+Levrault, Quai Malaquais, in 1802, which was under the direction and
+careful supervision of the talented author; and whatever notes Count
+Volney then thought necessary to insert in his work, are here carefully
+reproduced without abridgment or modification.
+
+
+The portrait, maps and illustrations are from a French edition of
+Volney's complete works, published by Bossange Freres at No. 12 Rue de
+Seine, Paris, in 1821,--one year after the death of Mr. Volney. It is a
+presentation copy "on the part of Madame, the Countess de Volney, and
+of the nephew of the author," and it may therefore be taken for
+granted that Mr. Volney's portrait, as here given, is correct, and was
+satisfactory to his family.
+
+
+An explanation of the figures and diagrams shown on the map of the
+Astrological Heaven of the Ancients has been added in the appendix by
+the publisher.
+
+PETER ECKLER.
+
+New York, January 3, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
+
+OF THE ENGLISH EDITION PUBLISHED IN PARIS.
+
+
+To offer the public a new translation of Volney's Ruins may require some
+apology in the view of those who are acquainted with the work only in
+the English version which already exists, and which has had a general
+circulation. But those who are conversant with the book in the author's
+own language, and have taken pains to compare it with that version,
+must have been struck with the errors with which the English performance
+abounds. They must have regretted the loss of many original beauties,
+some of which go far in composing the essential merits of the work.
+
+The energy and dignity of the author's manner, the unaffected elevation
+of his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity of his
+diction, are everywhere suited to his subject, which is solemn, novel,
+luminous, affecting,--a subject perhaps the most universally interesting
+to the human race that has ever been presented to their contemplation.
+It takes the most liberal and comprehensive view of the social state
+of man, develops the sources of his errors in the most perspicuous and
+convincing manner, overturns his prejudices with the greatest delicacy
+and moderation, sets the wrongs he has suffered, and the rights he ought
+to cherish, in the clearest point of view, and lays before him the true
+foundation of morals--his only means of happiness.
+
+As the work has already become a classical one, even in English, and as
+it must become and continue to be so regarded in all languages in which
+it shall be faithfully rendered, we wish it to suffer as little as
+possible from a change of country;--that as much of the spirit of the
+original be transfused and preserved as is consistent with the nature of
+translation.
+
+How far we have succeeded in performing this service for the English
+reader we must not pretend to determine. We believe, however, that
+we have made an improved translation, and this without claiming any
+particular merit on our part, since we have had advantages which our
+predecessor had not. We have been aided by his labors; and, what is of
+still more importance, our work has been done under the inspection of
+the author, whose critical knowledge of both languages has given us
+a great facility in avoiding such errors as might arise from hurry or
+mistake.
+
+Paris, November 1, 1802.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE OF THE LONDON EDITION.*
+
+     * Published by T. Allman, 42 Holborn Hill, London, 1851.
+
+The plan of this publication was formed nearly ten years ago; and
+allusions to it may be seen in the preface to Travels in Syria and
+Egypt, as well as at the end of that work, (published in 1787). The
+performance was in some forwardness when the events of 1788 in France
+interrupted it. Persuaded that a development of the theory of political
+truth could not sufficiently acquit a citizen of his debt to society,
+the author wished to add practice; and that particularly at a time when
+a single arm was of consequence in the defence of the general cause.
+
+The same desire of public benefit which induced him to suspend his work,
+has since engaged him to resume it, and though it may not possess the
+same merit as if it had appeared under the circumstances that gave rise
+to it, yet he imagines that at a time when new passions are bursting
+forth,--passions that must communicate their activity to the religious
+opinions of men,--it is of importance to disseminate such moral truths
+as are calculated to operate as a curb and restraint. It is with this
+view he has endeavored to give to these truths, hitherto treated as
+abstract, a form likely to gain them a reception.
+
+It was found impossible not to shock the violent prejudices of some
+readers; but the work, so far from being the fruit of a disorderly
+and perturbed spirit, has been dictated by a sincere love of order and
+humanity.
+
+After reading this performance it will be asked, how it was possible in
+1784 to have had an idea of what did not take place till the year
+1790? The solution is simple. In the original plan the legislator was
+a fictitious and hypothetical being: in the present, the author has
+substituted an existing legislator; and the reality has only made the
+subject additionally interesting.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.*
+
+     * The copy from which this preface is reprinted was
+     published in Boston by Charles Gaylord, in 1833.  It was
+     given to the writer, when a mere lad, by a lady--almost a
+     stranger--who was traveling through the little hamlet on the
+     banks of the Hudson where he then resided.  This lady
+     assured me that the book was of great value, containing
+     noble and sublime truths; and the only condition she
+     attached to the gift was, that I should read it carefully
+     and endeavor to understand its meaning.  This I willingly
+     promised and faithfully performed; and all who have "climbed
+     the heights," and escaped from the thraldom of superstitious
+     faith, will concede the inestimable value of such a gift--
+     rich with the peace and consolation that the truth imparts.
+     --Pub.
+
+If books were to be judged of by their volume, the following would have
+but little value; if appraised by their contents, it will perhaps be
+reckoned among the most instructive.
+
+In general, nothing is more important than a good elementary book; but,
+also, nothing is more difficult to compose and even to read: and why?
+Because, as every thing in it should be analysis and definition, all
+should be expressed with truth and precision. If truth and precision are
+wanting, the object has not been attained; if they exist, its very force
+renders it abstract.
+
+The first of these defects has been hitherto evident in all books of
+morality. We find in them only a chaos of incoherent maxims, precepts
+without causes, and actions without a motive. The pedants of the human
+race have treated it like a little child: they have prescribed to it
+good behavior by frightening it with spirits and hobgoblins. Now that
+the growth of the human race is rapid, it is time to speak reason to it;
+it is time to prove to men that the springs of their improvement are to
+be found in their very organization, in the interest of their passions,
+and in all that composes their existence. It is time to demonstrate that
+morality is a physical and geometrical science, subject to the rules
+and calculations of the other mathematical sciences: and such is the
+advantage of the system expounded in this book, that the basis of
+morality being laid in it on the very nature of things, it is both
+constant and immutable; whereas, in all other theological systems,
+morality being built upon arbritary opinions, not demonstrable and often
+absurd, it changes, decays, expires with them, and leaves men in an
+absolute depravation. It is true that because our system is founded
+on facts and not on reveries, it will with much greater difficulty
+be extended and adopted: but it will derive strength from this very
+struggle, and sooner or later the eternal religion of Nature must
+overturn the transient religions of the human mind.
+
+
+This book was published for the first time in 1793, under the title of
+The French Citizen's Catechism. It was at first intended for a national
+work, but as it may be equally well entitled the Catechism of men of
+sense and honor, it is to be hoped that it will become a book common
+to all Europe. It is possible that its brevity may prevent it from
+attaining the object of a popular classical work, but the author will be
+satisfied if he has at least the merit of pointing out the way to make a
+better.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.
+
+VOLNEY'S RUINS;
+
+OR MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES.
+
+
+The superior merits of this work are too well known to require
+commendation; but as it is not generally known that there are in
+circulation three English translations of it, varying materially in
+regard to faithfulness and elegance of diction, the publisher of the
+present edition inserts the following extracts for the information of
+purchasers and readers:
+
+
+
+
+PARIS TRANSLATION,
+
+First published in this Country by Dixon and Sickels.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail, solitary ruins! holy sepulchres, and silent walls! you I invoke;
+to you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret
+terror, the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious
+sentiments--sublime contemplations. What useful lessons! what affecting
+and profound reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult
+you. When the whole earth, in chains and silence, bowed the neck before
+its tyrants, you had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor,
+and confounding the dust of the king with that of the meanest slave,
+had announced to man the sacred dogma of Equality! Within your pale, in
+solitary adoration of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions
+of the dead; not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude,
+armed with fire and sword, but under the august aspect of justice,
+poising in her hand the sacred balance, wherein are weighed the actions
+of men at the gates of eternity.
+
+O Tombs! what virtues are yours! you appal the tyrant's heart, and
+poison with secret alarm his impious joys; he flies, with coward step,
+your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON TRANSLATION.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Solitary ruins, sacred tombs, ye mouldering and silent walls, all hail!
+To you I address my invocation. While the vulgar shrink from your aspect
+with secret terror, my heart finds in the contemplation a thousand
+delicious sentiments, a thousand admirable recollections. Pregnant, I
+may truly call you, with useful lessons, with pathetic and irresistible
+advice to the man who knows how to consult you. A while ago the whole
+world bowed the neck in silence before the tyrants that oppressed it;
+and yet in that hopeless moment you already proclaimed the truths that
+tyrants hold in abhorrence: mixing the dust of the proudest kings with
+that of the meanest slaves, you called upon us to contemplate this
+example of Equality. From your caverns, whither the musing and anxious
+love of Liberty led me, I saw escape its venerable shade, and with
+unexpected felicity, direct its flight and marshal my steps the way to
+renovated France.
+
+Tombs! what virtues and potency do you exhibit! Tyrants tremble at your
+aspect--you poison with secret alarm their impious pleasures--they turn
+from you with impatience, and, coward like, endeavor to forget you amid
+the sumptuousness of their palaces.
+
+
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA TRANSLATION.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail, ye solitary ruins, ye sacred tombs, and silent walls! 'Tis your
+auspicious aid that I invoke; 'tis to you my soul, wrapt in meditation,
+pours forth its prayers! What though the profane and vulgar mind shrinks
+with dismay from your august and awe-inspiring aspect; to me you unfold
+the sublimest charms of contemplation and sentiment, and offer to my
+senses the luxury of a thousand delicious and enchanting thoughts!
+How sumptuous the feast to a being that has a taste to relish, and an
+understanding to consult you! What rich and noble admonitions;
+what exquisite and pathetic lessons do you read to a heart that is
+susceptible of exalted feelings! When oppressed humanity bent in timid
+silence throughout the globe beneath the galling yoke of slavery, it was
+you that proclaimed aloud the birthright of those truths which tyrants
+tremble at while they detect, and which, by sinking the loftiest head of
+the proudest potentate, with all his boasted pageantry, to the level
+of mortality with his meanest slave, confirmed and ratified by your
+unerring testimony the sacred and immortal doctrine of Equality.
+
+Musing within the precincts of your inviting scenes of philosophic
+solitude, whither the insatiate love of true-born Liberty had led me, I
+beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character and habit of
+a blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and instruments of murder, and
+followed by a frantic and intoxicated multitude, but under the placid
+and chaste aspect of Justice, holding with a pure and unsullied hand the
+sacred scales in which the actions of mortals are weighed on the brink
+of eternity.
+
+
+The first translation was made and published in London soon after the
+appearance of the work in French, and, by a late edition, is still
+adopted without alteration. Mr. Volney, when in this country in 1797,
+expressed his disapprobation of this translation, alleging that the
+translator must have been overawed by the government or clergy from
+rendering his ideas faithfully; and, accordingly, an English gentleman,
+then in Philadelphia, volunteered to correct this edition. But by his
+endeavors to give the true and full meaning of the author with great
+precision, he has so overloaded his composition with an exuberance
+of words, as in a great measure to dissipate the simple elegance and
+sublimity of the original. Mr. Volney, when he became better acquainted
+with the English language, perceived this defect; and with the aid of
+our countryman, Joel Barlow, made and published in Paris a new, correct,
+and elegant translation, of which the present edition is a faithful and
+correct copy.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     Publisher's Preface
+     Translator's Preface
+     Preface of London Edition
+     Preface of the American Edition
+     Advertisement of the American Edition
+     The Life of Volney
+     A List of Volney's Works
+     Invocation
+
+     Chap.
+     I.     The Journey
+     II.    The Reverie
+     III.   The Apparition
+     IV.    The Exposition
+     V.     Condition of Man in the Universe
+     VI.    The Primitive State of Man
+     VII.   Principles of Society
+     VIII.  Sources of the Evils of Societies
+     IX.    Origin of Governments and Laws
+     X.     General Causes of the Prosperity of Ancient States
+     XI.    General Causes of the Revolutions and Ruin of Ancient States
+     XII.   Lessons of Times Past repeated on the Present
+     XIII.  Will the Human Race Improve
+     XIV.   The Great Obstacle to Improvement
+     XV.    The New Age
+     XVI.   A Free and Legislative People
+     XVII.  Universal Basis of all Right and all Law
+     XVIII. Consternation and Conspiracy of Tyrants
+     XIX.   General Assembly of the Nations
+     XX.    The Search of Truth
+     XXI.   Problem of Religious Contradictions
+     XXII.  Origin and Filiation of Religious Ideas
+         I.     Origin of the Idea of God: Worship of the Elements
+                   and of the Physical Powers of Nature
+         II.    Second System.  Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism
+         III.   Third System.  Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry
+         IV.    Fourth System.  Worship of two Principles, or Dualism
+         V.     Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State
+         VI.    Sixth System.  The Animated World, or Worship of the
+                    Universe under diverse Emblems
+         VII.   Seventh System.  Worship of the Soul of the World, that
+                    is to say, the Element of Fire, Vital Principle
+                    of the Universe
+         VIII.  Eighth System.  The World Machine: Worship of the Demi-
+                   Ourgos, or Grand Artificer
+         IX.    Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World
+                  (You-piter)
+         X.     Religion of Zoroaster
+         XI.    Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans
+         XII.   Brahmism, or Indian System
+         XIII.  Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun
+                   under the cabalistic names of Chrish-en or Christ
+                   and Yesus or Jesus
+     XXIII. All Religions have the same Object
+     XXIV.  Solution of the Problem of Contradictions
+
+
+     THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+     Chap.
+     I.     Of the Law of Nature
+     II.    Characters of the Law of Nature
+     III.   Principles of the Law of Nature relating to Man
+     IV.    Basis of Morality: of Good, of Evil, of Sin, of Crime,
+               of Vice, and of Virtue
+     V.     Of Individual Virtues
+     VI.    On Temperance
+     VII.   On Continence
+     VIII.  On Courage and Activity
+     IX.    On Cleanliness
+     X.     On Domestic Virtues
+     XI.    The Social Virtues; Justice
+     XII.   Development of the Social Virtues
+
+     Volney's Answer to Dr. Priestly.
+
+     Appendix: The Zodiacal Signs and Constellations
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF VOLNEY.
+
+By Count Daru.
+
+
+Constantine Francis Chassebeuf De Volney was born in 1757 at Craon, in
+that intermediate condition of life, which is of all the happiest, since
+it is deprived only of fortune's too dangerous favors, and can aspire to
+the social and intellectual advantages reserved for a laudable ambition.
+
+From his earliest youth, he devoted himself to the search after truth,
+without being disheartened by the serious studies which alone can
+initiate us into her secrets. After having become acquainted with the
+ancient languages, the natural sciences and history, and being admitted
+into the society of the most eminent literary characters, he submitted,
+at the age of twenty, to an illustrious academy, the solution of one of
+the most difficult problems that the history of antiquity has left open
+for discussion. This attempt received no encouragement from the learned
+men who were appointed his judges; and the author's only appeal from
+their sentence was to his courage and his efforts.
+
+Soon after, a small inheritance having fallen to his lot, the difficulty
+was how to spend it (these are his own words.) He resolved to employ
+it in acquiring, by a long voyage, a new fund of information, and
+determined to visit Egypt and Syria. But these countries could not be
+explored to advantage without a knowledge of the language. Our young
+traveller was not to be discouraged by this difficulty. Instead of
+learning Arabic in Europe, he withdrew to a convent of Copts, until he
+had made himself master of an idiom that is spoken by so many nations
+of the East. This resolution showed one of those undaunted spirits that
+remain unshaken amid the trials of life.
+
+Although, like other travellers, he might have amused us with an account
+of his hardships and the perils surmounted by his courage, he overcame
+the temptation of interrupting his narrative by personal adventures. He
+disdained the beaten track. He does not tell us the road he took, the
+accidents he met with, or the impressions he received. He carefully
+avoids appearing upon the stage; he is an inhabitant of the country,
+who has long and well observed it, and who describes its physical,
+political, and moral state. The allusion would be entire if an old
+Arab could be supposed to possess all the erudition, all the European
+philosophy, which are found united and in their maturity in a traveller
+of twenty-five.
+
+But though a master in all those artifices by which a narration is
+rendered interesting, the young man is not to be discerned in the pomp
+of labored descriptions. Although possessed of a lively and brilliant
+imagination, he is never found unwarily explaining by conjectural
+systems the physical or moral phenomena he describes. In his
+observations he unites prudence with science. With these two guides he
+judges with circumspection, and sometimes confesses himself unable to
+account for the effects he has made known to us.
+
+Thus his account has all the qualities that persuade--accuracy
+and candor. And when, ten years later, a vast military enterprise
+transported forty thousand travellers to the classic ground, which he
+had trod unattended, unarmed and unprotected, they all recognized a sure
+guide and an enlightened observer in the writer who had, as it seemed,
+only preceded them to remove or point out a part of the difficulties of
+the way.
+
+The unanimous testimony of all parties proved the accuracy of his
+account and the justness of his observations; and his Travels in Egypt
+and Syria were, by universal suffrage, recommended to the gratitude and
+the confidence of the public.
+
+Before the work had undergone this trial it had obtained in the learned
+world such a rapid and general success, that it found its way into
+Russia. The empress, then (in 1787) upon the throne, sent the author
+a medal, which he received with respect, as a mark of esteem for his
+talents, and with gratitude, as a proof of the approbation given to his
+principles. But when the empress declared against France, Volney sent
+back the honorable present, saying: "If I obtained it from her esteem, I
+can only preserve her esteem by returning it."
+
+The revolution of 1789, which had drawn upon France the menaces of
+Catharine, had opened to Volney a political career. As deputy in the
+assembly of the states-general, the first words he uttered there were
+in favor of the publicity of their deliberations. He also supported
+the organization of the national guards, and that of the communes and
+departments.
+
+At the period when the question of the sale of the domain lands was
+agitated (in 1790), he published an essay in which he lays down the
+following principles: "The force of a State is in proportion to
+its population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in
+proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest,
+that is to the spirit of property. Whence it follows, that the nearer
+the cultivator approaches the passive condition of a mercenary, the less
+industry and activity are to be expected from him; and, on the other
+hand, the nearer he is to the condition of a free and entire proprietor,
+the more extension he gives to his own forces, to the produce of his
+lands, and the general prosperity of the State."
+
+The author draws this conclusion, that a State is so much the more
+powerful as it includes a greater number of proprietors,--that is, a
+greater division of property.
+
+Conducted into Corsica by that spirit of observation which belongs only
+to men whose information is varied and extensive, he perceived at the
+first glance all that could be done for the improvement of agriculture
+in that country: but he knew that, for a people firmly attached to
+ancient customs, there can exist no other demonstration or means of
+persuasion than example. He purchased a considerable estate, and made
+experiments on those kinds of tillage that he hoped to naturalize
+in that climate. The sugar-cane, cotton, indigo and coffee soon
+demonstrated the success of his efforts. This success drew upon him the
+notice of the government. He was appointed director of agriculture and
+commerce in that island, where, through ignorance, all new methods are
+introduced with such difficulty.
+
+It is impossible to calculate all the good that might have resulted from
+this peaceable magistracy; and we know that neither instruction, zeal,
+nor a persevering courage was wanting to him who had undertaken it.
+Of this he had given convincing proofs. It was in obedience to another
+sentiment, no less respectable, that he voluntarily interrupted the
+course of his labors. When his fellow citizens of Angers appointed him
+their deputy in the constituent assembly, he resigned the employment he
+held under government, upon the principle that no man can represent
+the nation and be dependent for a salary upon those by whom it is
+administered.
+
+Through respect for the independence of his legislative functions,
+he had ceased to occupy the place he possessed in Corsica before his
+election, but he had not ceased to be a benefactor of that country. He
+returned thither after the session of the constituent assembly. Invited
+into that island by the principal inhabitants, who were anxious to put
+into practice his lessons, he spent there a part of the years 1792 and
+1793.
+
+On his return he published a work entitled: An Account of the Present
+State of Corsica. This was an act of courage; for it was not a physical
+description, but a political review of the condition of a population
+divided into several factions and distracted by violent animosities.
+Volney unreservedly revealed the abuses, solicited the interest of
+France in favor of the Corsicans, without flattering them, and boldly
+denounced their defects and vices; so that the philosopher obtained the
+only recompense he could expect from his sincerity--he was accused by
+the Corsicans of heresy.
+
+To prove that he had not merited this reproach, he published soon after
+a short treatise entitled: The Law of Nature, or Physical Principles of
+Morality.
+
+He was soon exposed to a much more dangerous charge, and this, it must
+be confessed, he did merit. This philosopher, this worthy citizen, who
+in our first National assembly had seconded with his wishes and his
+talents the establishment of an order of things which he considered
+favorable to the happiness of his country, was accused of not being
+sincerely attached to that liberty for which he had contended; that is
+to say, of being averse to anarchy. An imprisonment of ten months, which
+only ended after the 9th of Thermidor, was a new trial reserved for his
+courage.
+
+The moment at which he recovered his liberty, was when the horror
+inspired by criminal excesses had recalled men to those noble sentiments
+which fortunately are one of the first necessaries of civilized life.
+They sought for consolations in study and literature after so many
+misfortunes, and organized a plan of public instruction.
+
+It was in the first place necessary to insure the aptitude of those to
+whom education should be confided; but as the systems were various, the
+best methods and a unity of doctrine were to be determined. It was not
+enough to interrogate the masters, they were to be formed, new ones were
+to be created, and for that purpose a school was opened in 1794, wherein
+the celebrity of the professors promised new instruction even to the
+best informed. This was not, as was objected, beginning the edifice at
+the roof, but creating architects, who were to superintend all the arts
+requisite for constructing the building.
+
+The more difficult their functions were, the greater care was to be
+taken in the choice of the professors; but France, though then accused
+of being plunged in barbarism, possessed men of transcendent talents,
+already enjoying the esteem of all Europe, and we may be bold to say,
+that by their labors, our literary glory had likewise extended its
+conquests. Their names were proclaimed by the public voice, and Volney's
+was associated with those of the men most illustrious in science and in
+literature.*
+
+     * Lagrange, Laplace, Berthollet, Garat, Bernardin de Saint-
+     Pierre, Daubenton, Hauy, Volney, Sicard, Monge, Thouin, La
+     Harpe, Buache Mentelle.
+
+This institution, however, did not answer the expectations that had been
+formed of it, because the two thousand students that assembled from all
+parts of France were not equally prepared to receive these transcendent
+lessons, and because it had not been sufficiently ascertained how far
+the theory of education should be kept distinct from education itself.
+
+Volney's Lectures on History, which were attended by an immense
+concourse of auditors, became one of his chief claims to literary glory.
+When forced to interrupt them, by the suppression of the Normal school,
+he might have reasonably expected to enjoy in his retirement that
+consideration which his recent functions had added to his name. But,
+disgusted with the scenes he had witnessed in his native land, he felt
+that passion revive within him which, in his youth, had led him to visit
+Africa and Asia. America, civilized within a century, and free only
+within a few years, fixed his attention. There every thing was new,--the
+inhabitants, the constitution, the earth itself. These were objects
+worthy of his observation. When embarking for this voyage, however, he
+felt emotions very different from those which formerly accompanied him
+into Turkey. Then in the prime of life, he joyfully bid adieu to a
+land where peace and plenty reigned, to travel amongst barbarians;
+now, mature in years, but dismayed at the spectacle and experience of
+injustice and persecution, it was with diffidence, as we learn from
+himself, that he went to implore from a free people an asylum for a
+sincere friend of that liberty that had been so profaned.
+
+Our traveller had gone to seek for repose beyond the seas. He there
+found himself exposed to aggression from a celebrated philosopher, Dr.
+Priestley. Although the subject of this discussion was confined to the
+investigation of some speculative opinions, published by the French
+writer in his work entitled The Ruins, the naturalist in this attack
+employed a degree of violence which added nothing to the force of his
+arguments, and an acrimony of expression not to be expected from a
+philosopher. M. Volney, though accused of Hottentotism and ignorance,
+preserved in his defence, all the advantages that the scurrility of
+his adversary gave over him. He replied in English, and Priestley's
+countrymen could only recognize the Frenchman in the refinement and
+politeness of his answer.
+
+Whilst M. Volney was travelling in America, there had been formed in
+France a literary body which, under the name of Institute, had attained
+in a very few years a distinguished rank amongst the learned societies
+of Europe. The name of the illustrious traveller was inscribed in it
+at its formation, and he acquired new rights to the academical
+honors conferred on him during his absence, by the publication of his
+observations On the Climate and Soil of the United States.
+
+These rights were further augmented by the historical and physiological
+labors of the Academician. An examination and justification of The
+Chronology of Herodotus, with numerous and profound researches on The
+History of the most Ancient Nations, occupied for a long time him who
+had observed their monuments and traces in the countries they inhabited.
+The trial he had made of the utility of the Oriental languages inspired
+him with an ardent desire to propagate the knowledge of them; and to be
+propagated, he felt how necessary it was to render it less difficult.
+In this view he conceived the project of applying to the study of the
+idioms of Asia, a part of the grammatical notions we possess concerning
+the languages of Europe. It only appertains to those conversant with
+their relations of dissimilitude or conformity to appreciate the
+possibility of realizing this system. The author has, however, already
+received the most flattering encouragement and the most unequivocal
+appreciation, by the inscription of his name amongst the members of
+the learned and illustrious society founded by English commerce in the
+Indian peninsula.
+
+M. Volney developed his system in three works,* which prove that this
+idea of uniting nations separated by immense distances and such various
+idioms, had never ceased to occupy him for twenty-five years. Lest those
+essays, of the utility of which he was persuaded, should be interrupted
+by his death, with the clay-cold hand that corrected his last work, he
+drew up a will which institutes a premium for the prosecution of his
+labors. Thus he prolonged, beyond the term of a life entirely devoted to
+letters, the glorious services he had rendered to them.
+
+     * On the Simplification of Oriental Languages, 1795. The
+     European Alphabet Applied to the Languages of Asia, 1819.
+     Hebrew Simplified, 1820.
+
+This is not the place, nor does it belong to me to appreciate the merit
+of the writings which render Volney's name illustrious. His name had
+been inscribed in the list of the Senate, and afterwards of the House
+of Peers. The philosopher who had travelled in the four quarters of
+the world, and observed their social state, had other titles to his
+admission into this body, than his literary glory. His public life, his
+conduct in the constituent assembly, his independent principles, the
+nobleness of his sentiments, the wisdom and fixity of his opinions, had
+gained him the esteem of those who can be depended upon, and with whom
+it is so agreeable to discuss political interests.
+
+Although no man had a better right to have an opinion, no one was more
+tolerant for the opinions of others. In State assemblies as well as
+in Academical meetings, the man whose counsels were so wise, voted
+according to his conscience, which nothing could bias; but the
+philosopher forgot his superiority to hear, to oppose with moderation,
+and sometimes to doubt. The extent and variety of his information,
+the force of his reason, the austerity of his manners, and the noble
+simplicity of his character, had procured him illustrious friends in
+both hemispheres; and now that this erudition is extinct in the tomb,*
+we may be allowed at least to predict that he was one of the very few
+whose memory shall never die.
+
+     * He died in Paris on the 20th of April, 1820.
+
+
+A list of the Works Published by Count Volney.
+
+
+TRAVELS IN EGYPT AND SYRIA during the years 1783, 1784, and 1785: 2
+vols. 8vo.--1787.
+
+CHRONOLOGY OF THE TWELVE CENTURIES that preceded the entrance of Xerxes
+into Greece.
+
+CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TURKISH WAR, in 1788.
+
+THE RUINS, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires--1791.
+
+ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT STATE OF CORSICA--1793.
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE, or Physical Principles of Morality--1793.
+
+ON THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES--1795.
+
+A LETTER TO DR. PRIESTLEY--1797.
+
+LECTURES ON HISTORY, delivered at the Normal School in the year 3--1800.
+
+ON THE CLIMATE AND SOIL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, to which is
+added an account of Florida, of the French colony of Scioto, of some
+Canadian Colonies, and of the Savages--1803.
+
+REPORT MADE TO THE CELTIC ACADEMY ON THE RUSSIAN WORK OF PROFESSOR
+PALLAS, entitled "A Comparative Vocabulary of all the Languages in the
+World."
+
+THE CHRONOLOGY OF HERODOTUS conformable with his Text--1808 and 1809.
+
+NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY, 3 vols. 8vo.--1814
+
+THE EUROPEAN ALPHABET Applied to the Languages of Asia--1819.
+
+A HISTORY OF SAMUEL--1819.
+
+HEBREW SIMPLIFIED--1820.
+
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail solitary ruins, holy sepulchres and silent walls! you I invoke; to
+you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret terror,
+the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious
+sentiments--sublime contemplations. What useful lessons, what affecting
+and profound reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult
+you! When the whole earth, in chains and silence bowed the neck before
+its tyrants, you had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor;
+and confounding the dust of the king with that of the meanest slave,
+had announced to man the sacred dogma of Equality. Within your pale, in
+solitary adoration of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions
+of the dead; not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude,
+armed with fire and sword, but under the august aspect of Justice,
+poising in her hand the sacred balance wherein are weighed the actions
+of men at the gates of eternity!
+
+O Tombs! what virtues are yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and
+poison with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward step,
+your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.*
+You punish the powerful oppressor; you wrest from avarice and extortion
+their ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the feeble whom they have
+despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of
+the rich; you console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from
+distress; and you give to the soul that just equipoise of strength and
+sensibility which constitutes wisdom--the true science of life. Aware
+that all must return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the
+burdens of grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires
+within the limits of justice; yet, knowing that he must run his destined
+course of life, he fills with employment all its hours, and enjoys the
+comforts that fortune has allotted him. You thus impose on the impetuous
+sallies of cupidity a salutary rein! you calm the feverish ardor
+of enjoyments which disturb the senses; you free the soul from the
+fatiguing conflict of the passions; elevate it above the paltry
+interests which torment the crowd; and surveying, from your commanding
+position, the expanse of ages and nations, the mind is only accessible
+to the great affections--to the solid ideas of virtue and of glory.
+
+     * The cathedral of St. Denis is the tomb of the kings of
+     France; and it was because the towers of that edifice are
+     seen from the Castle of St. Germain, that Louis XIV. quitted
+     that admirable residence, and established a new one in the
+     savage forests of Versailles.
+
+     (This note, like many others, has been omitted from the
+     American editions.  It seems pertinent to the subject, and
+     is explanatory of the text.--Pub.)
+
+Ah! when the dream of life is over, what will then avail all its
+agitations, if not one trace of utility remains behind?
+
+
+O Ruins! to your school I will return! I will seek again the calm of
+your solitudes; and there, far from the afflicting spectacle of the
+passions, I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will
+employ myself on the means of effecting good for him, and build my own
+happiness on the promotion of his.
+
+
+
+THE RUINS OF EMPIRES.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE JOURNEY.
+
+
+In the eleventh year of the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid, son of Ahmid, emperor
+of the Turks; when the Nogais-Tartars were driven from the Crimea, and a
+Mussulman prince of the blood of Gengis-Kahn became the vassal and
+guard of a Christian woman and queen,* I was travelling in the Ottoman
+dominions, and through those provinces which were anciently the kingdoms
+of Egypt and Syria.
+
+     * In the eleventh year of Abd-ul-Hamid, that is 1784 of the
+     Christian era, and 1198 of the Hegira.  The emigration of
+     the Tartars took place in March, immediately on the
+     manifesto of the empress, declaring the Crimea to be
+     incorporated with Russia.  The Mussulman prince of the blood
+     of Gengis-khan was Chahin-Guerai. Gengis-Khan was borne and
+     served by the kings whom he conquered: Chahin, on the
+     contrary, after selling his country for a pension of eighty
+     thousand roubles, accepted the commission of captain of
+     guards to Catherine II.  He afterwards returned home, and
+     according to custom was strangled by the Turks.
+
+My whole attention bent on whatever concerns the happiness of man in
+a social state, I visited cities, and studied the manners of their
+inhabitants; entered palaces, and observed the conduct of those who
+govern; wandered over fields, and examined the condition of those
+who cultivated them: and nowhere perceiving aught but robbery and
+devastation, tyranny and wretchedness, my heart was oppressed with
+sorrow and indignation.
+
+I saw daily on my road fields abandoned, villages deserted, and cities
+in ruin. Often I met with ancient monuments, wrecks of temples, palaces
+and fortresses, columns, aqueducts and tombs. This spectacle led me to
+meditate on times past, and filled my mind with contemplations the most
+serious and profound.
+
+Arrived at the city of Hems, on the border of the Orontes, and being
+in the neighborhood of Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to visit its
+celebrated ruins. After three days journeying through arid deserts,
+having traversed the Valley of Caves and Sepulchres, on issuing into
+the plain, I was suddenly struck with a scene of the most stupendous
+ruins--a countless multitude of superb columns, stretching in avenues
+beyond the reach of sight. Among them were magnificent edifices, some
+entire, others in ruins; the earth every where strewed with fragments
+of cornices, capitals, shafts, entablatures, pilasters, all of
+white marble, and of the most exquisite workmanship. After a walk of
+three-quarters of an hour along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of
+a vast edifice, formerly a temple dedicated to the Sun; and accepting
+the hospitality of some poor Arabian peasants, who had built their
+hovels on the area of the temple, I determined to devote some days to
+contemplate at leisure the beauty of these stupendous ruins.
+
+Daily I visited the monuments which covered the plain; and one evening,
+absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the Valley of Sepulchres. I
+ascended the heights which surround it from whence the eye commands the
+whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun had sunk
+below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind
+the distant mountains of Syria; the full-orbed moon was rising in the
+east, on a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was
+clear, the air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the
+horrors of approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered
+the sultry emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given
+their camels to repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and
+uniform plain; profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only
+of the jackal,* and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard
+at distant intervals. Darkness now increased, and through the dusk could
+only be discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls. The solitude
+of the place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene,
+impressed on my mind a religious pensiveness. The aspect of a great city
+deserted, the memory of times past, compared with its present state, all
+elevated my mind to high contemplations. I sat on the shaft of a column,
+my elbow reposing on my knee, and head reclining on my hand, my eyes
+fixed, sometimes on the desert, sometimes on the ruins, and fell into a
+profound reverie.
+
+     * An animal resembling a dog and a fox.  It preys on other
+     small animals, and upon the bodies of the dead on the field
+     of battle. It is the Canis aureus of Linnaeus.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE REVERIE.
+
+
+Here, said I, once flourished an opulent city; here was the seat of a
+powerful empire. Yes! these places now so wild and desolate, were once
+animated by a living multitude; a busy crowd thronged in these streets,
+now so solitary. Within these walls, where now reigns the silence
+of death, the noise of the arts, and the shouts of joy and festivity
+incessantly resounded; these piles of marble were regular palaces; these
+fallen columns adorned the majesty of temples; these ruined galleries
+surrounded public places. Here assembled a numerous people for the
+sacred duties of their religion, and the anxious cares of their
+subsistence; here industry, parent of enjoyments, collected the riches
+of all climes, and the purple of Tyre was exchanged for the precious
+thread of Serica;* the soft tissues of Cassimere for the sumptuous
+tapestry of Lydia; the amber of the Baltic for the pearls and perfumes
+of Arabia; the gold of Ophir for the tin of Thule.
+
+     * The precious thread of Serica.--That is, the silk
+     originally derived from the mountainous country where the
+     great wall terminates, and which appears to have been the
+     cradle of the Chinese empire.  The tissues of Cassimere.--
+     The shawls which Ezekiel seems to have described under the
+     appellation of Choud-choud.  The gold of Ophir.--This
+     country, which was one of the twelve Arab cantons, and which
+     has so much and so unsuccessfully been sought for by the
+     antiquarians, has left, however, some trace of itself in
+     Ofor, in the province of Oman, upon the Persian Gulf,
+     neighboring on one side to the Sabeans, who are celebrated
+     by Strabo for their abundance of gold, and on the other to
+     Aula or Hevila, where the pearl fishery was carried on.  See
+     the 27th chapter of Ezekiel, which gives a very curious and
+     extensive picture of the commerce of Asia at that period.
+
+And now behold what remains of this powerful city: a miserable skeleton!
+What of its vast domination: a doubtful and obscure remembrance! To
+the noisy concourse which thronged under these porticoes, succeeds the
+solitude of death. The silence of the grave is substituted for the busy
+hum of public places; the affluence of a commercial city is changed into
+wretched poverty; the palaces of kings have become a den of wild beasts;
+flocks repose in the area of temples, and savage reptiles inhabit the
+sanctuary of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed? how
+have so many labors been annihilated? Do thus perish then the works of
+men--thus vanish empires and nations?
+
+And the history of former times revived in my mind; I remembered those
+ancient ages when many illustrious nations inhabited these countries; I
+figured to myself the Assyrian on the banks of the Tygris, the Chaldean
+on the banks of the Euphrates, the Persian reigning from the Indus to
+the Mediterranean. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of
+Jerusalem and Samaria, the warlike states of the Philistines, and
+the commercial republics of Phoenicia. This Syria, said I, now so
+depopulated, then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded
+with towns, villages, and hamlets.* In all parts were seen cultivated
+fields, frequented roads, and crowded habitations. Ah! whither have
+flown those ages of life and abundance?--whither vanished those
+brilliant creations of human industry? Where are those ramparts of
+Nineveh, those walls of Babylon, those palaces of Persepolis, those
+temples of Balbec and of Jerusalem? Where are those fleets of Tyre,
+those dock-yards of Arad, those work-shops of Sidon, and that multitude
+of sailors, of pilots, of merchants, and of soldiers? Where those
+husbandmen, harvests, flocks, and all the creation of living beings
+in which the face of the earth rejoiced? Alas! I have passed over this
+desolate land! I have visited the palaces, once the scene of so much
+splendor, and I beheld nothing but solitude and desolation. I sought the
+ancient inhabitants and their works, and found nothing but a trace, like
+the foot-prints of a traveller over the sand. The temples are fallen,
+the palaces overthrown, the ports filled up, the cities destroyed; and
+the earth, stripped of inhabitants, has become a place of sepulchres.
+Great God! whence proceed such fatal revolutions? What causes have so
+changed the fortunes of these countries? Wherefore are so many cities
+destroyed? Why has not this ancient population been reproduced and
+perpetuated?
+
+     * According to Josephus and Strabo, there were in Syria
+     twelve millions of souls, and the traces that remain of
+     culture and habitation confirm the calculation.
+
+Thus absorbed in meditation, a crowd of new reflections continually
+poured in upon my mind. Every thing, continued I, bewilders my judgment,
+and fills my heart with trouble and uncertainty. When these countries
+enjoyed what constitutes the glory and happiness of man, they were
+inhabited by infidel nations: It was the Phoenician, offering human
+sacrifices to Moloch, who gathered into his stores the riches of all
+climates; it was the Chaldean, prostrate before his serpent-god,*
+who subjugated opulent cities, laid waste the palaces of kings, and
+despoiled the temples of the gods; it was the Persian, worshipper of
+fire, who received the tribute of a hundred nations; they were the
+inhabitants of this very city, adorers of the sun and stars, who erected
+so many monuments of prosperity and luxury. Numerous herds, fertile
+fields, abundant harvests--whatsoever should be the reward of piety--was
+in the hands of these idolaters. And now, when a people of saints and
+believers occupy these fields, all is become sterility and solitude.
+The earth, under these holy hands, produces only thorns and briers. Man
+soweth in anguish, and reapeth tears and cares. War, famine, pestilence,
+assail him by turns. And yet, are not these the children of the
+prophets? The Mussulman, Christian, Jew, are they not the elect children
+of God, loaded with favors and miracles? Why, then, do these privileged
+races no longer enjoy the same advantages? Why are these fields,
+sanctified by the blood of martyrs, deprived of their ancient fertility?
+Why have those blessings been banished hence, and transferred for so
+many ages to other nations and different climes?
+
+     * The dragon Bell.
+
+At these words, revolving in my mind the vicissitudes which have
+transmitted the sceptre of the world to people so different in religion
+and manners from those in ancient Asia to the most recent of Europe,
+this name of a natal land revived in me the sentiment of my country; and
+turning my eyes towards France, I began to reflect on the situation in
+which I had left her.*
+
+     * In the year 1782, at the close of the American war.
+
+I recalled her fields so richly cultivated, her roads so admirably
+constructed, her cities inhabited by a countless people, her fleets
+spread over every sea, her ports filled with the produce of both the
+Indies: and then comparing the activity of her commerce, the extent of
+her navigation, the magnificence of her buildings, the arts and industry
+of her inhabitants, with what Egypt and Syria had once possessed, I was
+gratified to find in modern Europe the departed splendor of Asia; but
+the charm of my reverie was soon dissolved by a last term of comparison.
+Reflecting that such had once been the activity of the places I was
+then contemplating, who knows, said I, but such may one day be the
+abandonment of our countries? Who knows if on the banks of the Seine,
+the Thames, the Zuyder-Zee, where now, in the tumult of so many
+enjoyments, the heart and the eye suffice not for the multitude of
+sensations,--who knows if some traveller, like myself, shall not one day
+sit on their silent ruins, and weep in solitude over the ashes of their
+inhabitants, and the memory of their former greatness.
+
+At these words, my eyes filled with tears: and covering my head with the
+fold of my mantle, I sank into gloomy meditations on all human affairs.
+Ah! hapless man, said I in my grief, a blind fatality sports with thy
+destiny!* A fatal necessity rules with the hand of chance the lot of
+mortals! But no: it is the justice of heaven fulfilling its decrees!--a
+God of mystery exercising his incomprehensible judgments! Doubtless
+he has pronounced a secret anathema against this land: blasting with
+maledictions the present, for the sins of past generations. Oh! who
+shall dare to fathom the depths of the Omnipotent?
+
+     * Fatality is the universal and rooted prejudice of the
+     East.  "It was written," is there the answer to every thing.
+     Hence result an unconcern and apathy, the most powerful
+     impediments to instruction and civilization.
+
+And sunk in profound melancholy, I remained motionless.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE APPARITION.
+
+
+While thus absorbed, a sound struck my ear, like the agitation of a
+flowing robe, or that of slow footsteps on dry and rustling grass.
+Startled, I opened my mantle, and looking about with fear and trembling,
+suddenly, on my left, by the glimmering light of the moon, through
+the columns and ruins of a neighboring temple, I thought I saw an
+apparition, pale, clothed in large and flowing robes, such as spectres
+are painted rising from their tombs. I shuddered: and while agitated and
+hesitating whether to fly or to advance toward the object, a distinct
+voice, in solemn tones, pronounced these words:
+
+How long will man importune heaven with unjust complaint? How long, with
+vain clamors, will he accuse Fate as the author of his calamities? Will
+he forever shut his eyes to the light, and his heart to the admonitions
+of truth and reason? The light of truth meets him everywhere; yet he
+sees it not! The voice of reason strikes his ear; and he hears it
+not! Unjust man! if for a moment thou canst suspend the delusion which
+fascinates thy senses, if thy heart can comprehend the language of
+reason, interrogate these ruins! Read the lessons which they present to
+thee! And you, evidences of twenty centuries, holy temples! venerable
+tombs! walls once so glorious, appear in the cause of nature herself!
+Approach the tribunal of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust
+accusations! Come and confound the declamations of a false wisdom or
+hypocritical piety, and avenge the heavens and the earth of man who
+calumniates them both!
+
+What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law,
+sports with the destiny of mortals? What is that unjust necessity, which
+confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of folly? In what
+consist the anathemas of heaven over this land? Where is that divine
+malediction which perpetuates the abandonment of these fields? Say,
+monuments of past ages! have the heavens changed their laws and the
+earth its motion? Are the fires of the sun extinct in the regions of
+space? Do the seas no longer emit their vapors? Are the rains and the
+dews suspended in the air? Do the mountains withhold their springs? Are
+the streams dried up? And do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed?
+Answer, generation of falsehood and iniquity, hath God deranged the
+primitive and settled order of things which he himself assigned to
+nature? Hath heaven denied to earth, and earth to its inhabitants,
+the blessings they formerly dispensed? If nothing hath changed in the
+creation, if the same means now exist which before existed, why then are
+not the present what former generations were? Ah! it is falsely that you
+accuse fate and heaven! it is unjustly that you accuse God as the cause
+of your evils! Say, perverse and hypocritical race! if these places are
+desolate, if these powerful cities are reduced to solitude, is it God
+who has caused their ruin? Is it his hand which has overthrown these
+walls, destroyed these temples, mutilated these columns, or is it the
+hand of man? Is it the arm of God which has carried the sword into your
+cities, and fire into your fields, which has slaughtered the people,
+burned the harvests, rooted up trees, and ravaged the pastures, or is
+it the hand of man? And when, after the destruction of crops, famine
+has ensued, is it the vengeance of God which has produced it, or the
+mad fury of mortals? When, sinking under famine, the people have fed
+on impure aliments, if pestilence ensues, is it the wrath of God which
+sends it, or the folly of man? When war, famine and pestilence, have
+swept away the inhabitants, if the earth remains a desert, is it God
+who has depopulated it? Is it his rapacity which robs the husbandman,
+ravages the fruitful fields, and wastes the earth, or is it the rapacity
+of those who govern? Is it his pride which excites murderous wars,
+or the pride of kings and their ministers? Is it the venality of his
+decisions which overthrows the fortunes of families, or the corruption
+of the organs of the law? Are they his passions which, under a thousand
+forms, torment individuals and nations, or are they the passions of man?
+And if, in the anguish of their miseries, they see not the remedies,
+is it the ignorance of God which is to blame, or their ignorance? Cease
+then, mortals, to accuse the decrees of Fate, or the judgments of the
+Divinity! If God is good, will he be the author of your misery? If he is
+just, will he be the accomplice of your crimes? No, the caprice of which
+man complains is not the caprice of fate; the darkness that misleads his
+reason is not the darkness of God; the source of his calamities is
+not in the distant heavens, it is beside him on the earth; it is not
+concealed in the bosom of the divinity; it dwells within himself, he
+bears it in his own heart.
+
+Thou murmurest and sayest: What! have an infidel people then enjoyed the
+blessings of heaven and earth? Are the holy people of God less fortunate
+than the races of impiety? Deluded man! where then is the contradiction
+which offends thee? Where is the inconsistency which thou imputest to
+the justice of heaven? Take into thine own hands the balance of rewards
+and punishments, of causes and effects. Say: when these infidels
+observed the laws of the heavens and the earth, when they regulated
+well-planned labors by the order of the seasons and the course of
+the stars, should the Almighty have disturbed the equilibrium of the
+universe to defeat their prudence? When their hands cultivated these
+fields with toil and care, should he have diverted the course of the
+rains, suspended the refreshing dews, and planted crops of thorns?
+When, to render these arid fields productive, their industry constructed
+aqueducts, dug canals, and led the distant waters across the desert,
+should he have dried up their sources in the mountains? Should he have
+blasted the harvests which art had nourished, wasted the plains which
+peace had peopled, overthrown cities which labor had created, or
+disturbed the order established by the wisdom of man? And what is that
+infidelity which founded empires by its prudence, defended them by
+its valor, and strengthened them by its justice--which built powerful
+cities, formed capacious ports, drained pestilential marshes, covered
+the ocean with ships, the earth with inhabitants; and, like the
+creative spirit, spread life and motion throughout the world? If such
+be infidelity, what then is the true faith? Doth sanctity consist in
+destruction? The God who peoples the air with birds, the earth with
+animals, the waters with fishes--the God who animates all nature--is he
+then a God of ruins and tombs? Demands he devastation for homage, and
+conflagration for sacrifice? Requires he groans for hymns, murderers for
+votaries, a ravaged and desolate earth for his temple? Behold then, holy
+and believing people, what are your works! behold the fruits of your
+piety! You have massacred the people, burned their cities, destroyed
+cultivation, reduced the earth to a solitude; and you ask the reward
+of your works! Miracles then must be performed! The people whom you
+extirpated must be recalled to life, the walls rebuilt which you have
+overthrown, the harvests reproduced which you have destroyed, the waters
+regathered which you have dispersed; the laws, in fine, of heaven and
+earth reversed; those laws, established by God himself, in demonstration
+of his magnificence and wisdom; those eternal laws, anterior to all
+codes, to all the prophets those immutable laws, which neither the
+passions nor the ignorance of man can pervert. But that passion which
+mistaketh, that ignorance which observeth neither causes nor effects,
+hath said in its folly: "All things flow from chance; a blind fatality
+poureth out good and evil upon the earth; success is not to the prudent,
+nor felicity to the wise;" or, assuming the language of hypocrisy, she
+hath said, "all things are from God; he taketh pleasure in deceiving
+wisdom and confounding reason." And Ignorance, applauding herself in her
+malice, hath said, "thus will I place myself on a par with that science
+which confounds me--thus will I excel that prudence which fatigues and
+torments me." And Avarice hath added: "I will oppress the weak, and
+devour the fruits of his labors; and I will say, it is fate which hath
+so ordained." But I! I swear by the laws of heaven and earth, and by the
+law which is written in the heart of man, that the hypocrite shall be
+deceived in his cunning--the oppressor in his rapacity! The sun shall
+change his course, before folly shall prevail over wisdom and knowledge,
+or ignorance surpass prudence, in the noble and sublime art of procuring
+to man his true enjoyments, and of building his happiness on an enduring
+foundation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EXPOSITION
+
+
+Thus spoke the Phantom. Confused with this discourse, and my heart
+agitated with different reflections, I remained long in silence. At
+length, taking courage, I thus addressed him: Oh, Genius of tombs and
+ruins! Thy presence, thy severity, hath disordered my senses; but the
+justice of thy discourse restoreth confidence to my soul. Pardon my
+ignorance. Alas, if man is blind, shall his misfortune be also his
+crime? I may have mistaken the voice of reason; but never, knowingly,
+have I rejected its authority. Ah! if thou readest my heart, thou
+knowest with what enthusiasm it seeketh truth. Is it not in its pursuit
+that thou seest me in this sequestered spot? Alas! I have wandered over
+the earth, I have visited cities and countries; and seeing everywhere
+misery and desolation, a sense of the evils which afflict my fellow men
+hath deeply oppressed my soul. I have said, with a sigh: is man then
+born but for sorrow and anguish? And I have meditated upon human misery
+that I might discover a remedy. I have said, I will separate myself from
+the corruption of society; I will retire far from palaces where the mind
+is depraved by satiety and from the hovel where it is debased by misery.
+I will go into the desert and dwell among ruins; I will interrogate
+ancient monuments on the wisdom of past ages; I will invoke from the
+bosom of the tombs the spirit which once in Asia gave splendor to
+states, and glory to nations; I will ask of the ashes of legislators,
+by what secret causes do empires rise and fall; from what sources spring
+the Prosperity and misfortunes of nations, on what principles can the
+Peace of Society, and the happiness of man be established?
+
+I ceased, and with submissive look awaited the answer of the Genius.
+
+Peace and happiness, said he, attend those who practice justice! Since
+thy heart, O mortal, with sincerity seeketh truth; since thine eyes can
+still recognize her through the mist of prejudice, thy prayer shall not
+be in vain. I will unfold to thy view that truth thou invokest; I will
+teach thy reason that knowledge thou seekest; I will reveal to thee the
+science of ages and the wisdom of the tombs.
+
+Then approaching and laying his hand on my head, he said:
+
+Rise, mortal, and extricate thy senses from the dust in which thou
+movest.
+
+Suddenly a celestial flame seemed to dissolve the bands which held us to
+the earth; and, like a light vapor, borne on the wings of the Genius,
+I felt myself wafted to the regions above. Thence, from the aerial
+heights, looking down upon the earth, I perceived a scene altogether
+new. Under my feet, floating in the void, a globe like that of the moon,
+but smaller and less luminous, presented to me one of its phases; and
+that phase* had the aspect of a disk varigated with large spots, some
+white and nebulous, others brown, green or gray, and while I strained my
+sight to distinguish what they were, the Genius exclaimed:
+
+     * See Plate representing half the terrestrial globe,
+     opposite page 10.
+
+Disciple of Truth, knowest thou that object?
+
+O Genius, answered I, if I did not see the moon in another quarter of
+the heavens, I should have supposed that to be her globe. It has
+the appearance of that planet seen through the telescope during the
+obscuration of an eclipse. These varigated spots might be mistaken for
+seas and continents.
+
+They are seas and continents, said he, and those of the very hemisphere
+which you inhabit.
+
+What! said I, is that the earth--the habitation of man?
+
+Yes, replied he, that brown space which occupies irregularly a great
+portion of the disk, and envelops it almost on every side, is what you
+call the great ocean, which advancing from the south pole towards the
+equator, forms first the great gulf of India and Africa, then extends
+eastward across the Malay islands to the confines of Tartary, while
+towards the west it encircles the continents of Africa and of Europe,
+even to the north of Asia.
+
+That square peninsula under our feet is the arid country of the Arabs;
+the great continent on its left, almost as naked in its interior, with
+a little verdure only towards its borders, is the parched soil inhabited
+by black-men.* To the north, beyond a long, narrow and irregular sea,**
+are the countries of Europe, rich in meadows and cultivated fields. On
+its right, from the Caspian Sea, extend the snowy and naked plains of
+Tartary. Returning in this direction that white space is the vast and
+barren desert of Cobi, which separates China from the rest of the world.
+You see that empire in the furrowed plain which obliquely rounds itself
+off from our sight. On yonder coasts, those ragged tongues of land
+and scattered points are the peninsulas and islands of the Malays, the
+wretched possessors of the spices and perfumes. That triangle which
+advances so far into the sea, is the too famous peninsula of India.***
+You see the winding course of the Ganges, the rough mountains of Thibet,
+the lovely valley of Cachemere, the briny deserts of Persia, the banks
+of the Euphrates and Tygris, the deep bed of the Jordan and the canals
+of the solitary Nile.
+
+     * Africa.
+
+     ** The Mediterranean.
+
+     *** Of what real good has been the commerce of India to the
+     mass of the people?  On the contrary, how great the evil
+     occasioned by the superstition of this country having been
+     added the general superstition!
+
+O Genius, said I, interrupting him, the sight of a mortal reaches not
+to objects at such a distance. He touched my eyes, and immediately they
+became piercing as those of an eagle; nevertheless the rivers still
+appeared like waving lines, the mountains winding furrows, and the
+cities little compartments like the squares of a chess-board.
+
+And the Genius proceeded to enumerate and point out the objects to
+me: Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow valley
+watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the
+ancient kingdom of Ethiopia.* Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of
+Thebes with her hundred palaces,** the parent of cities, and monument of
+the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while
+others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A
+race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled
+hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and
+religious systems which still govern the universe. Lower down, those
+dusky points are the pyramids whose masses have astonished you. Beyond
+that, the coast, hemmed in between the sea and a narrow ridge of
+mountains, was the habitation of the Phoenicians. These were the famous
+cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon, of Gaza, and of Berytus. That
+thread of water with no outlet, is the river Jordan; and those naked
+rocks were once the theatre of events that have resounded throughout
+the world. Behold that desert of Horeb, and that Mount Sinai; where,
+by means beyond vulgar reach, a genius, profound and bold, established
+institutions which have weighed on the whole human race. On that dry
+shore which borders it, you perceive no longer any trace of splendor;
+yet there was an emporium of riches. There were those famous Ports of
+Idumea, whence the fleets of Phoenicia and Judea, coasting the Arabian
+peninsula, went into the Persian gulf, to seek there the pearls of
+Hevila, the gold of Saba and of Ophir. Yes, there on that coast of Oman
+and of Barhain was the seat of that commerce of luxuries, which, by its
+movements and revolutions, fixed the destinies of ancient nations.***
+Thither came the spices and precious stones of Ceylon, the shawls of
+Cassimere, the diamonds of Golconda, the amber of Maldivia, the musk of
+Thibet, the aloes of Cochin, the apes and peacocks of the continent of
+India, the incense of Hadramaut, the myrrh, the silver, the gold dust
+and ivory of Africa; thence passing, sometimes by the Red Sea on the
+vessels of Egypt and Syria, these luxuries nourished successively the
+wealth of Thebes, of Sidon, of Memphis and of Jerusalem; sometimes,
+ascending the Tygris and Euphrates, they awakened the activity of the
+Assyrians, Medes, Chaldeans, and Persians; and that wealth, according
+to the use or abuse of it, raised or reversed by turns their domination.
+Hence sprung the magnificence of Persepolis, whose columns you
+still perceive; of Ecbatana, whose sevenfold wall is destroyed; of
+Babylon,**** now leveled with the earth; of Nineveh, of which scarce
+the name remains; of Thapsacus, of Anatho, of Gerra, and of desolated
+Palmyra. O names for ever glorious! fields of renown! countries of
+never-dying memory! what sublime lessons doth your aspect offer! what
+profound truths are written on the surface of your soil! remembrances of
+times past, return into my mind! places, witnesses of the life of man in
+so many different ages, retrace for me the revolutions of his fortune!
+say, what were their springs and secret causes! say, from what sources
+he derived success and disgrace! unveil to himself the causes of his
+evils! correct him by the spectacle of his errors! teach him the wisdom
+which belongeth to him, and let the experience of past ages become a
+means of instruction, and a germ of happiness to present and future
+generations.
+
+     * In the new Encyclopedia 3rd vol. Antiquities is published
+     a memoir, respecting the chronology of the twelve ages
+     anterior to the passing of Xerxes into Greece, in which I
+     conceive myself to have proved that upper Egypt formerly
+     composed a distinct kingdom known to the Hebrews by the name
+     of Kous and to which the appellation of Ethiopia was
+     specially given.  This kingdom preserved its independence to
+     the time of Psammeticus; at which period, being united to
+     the Lower Egypt, it lost its name of Ethiopia, which
+     thenceforth was bestowed upon the nations of Nubia and upon
+     the different tribes of blacks, including Thebes, their
+     metropolis.
+
+     ** The idea of a city with a hundred gates, in the common
+     acceptation of the word, is so absurd, that I am astonished
+     the equivoque has not before been felt.
+
+     It has ever been the custom of the East to call palaces and
+     houses of the great by the name of gates, because the
+     principal luxury of these buildings consists in the singular
+     gate leading from the street into the court, at the farthest
+     extremity of which the palace is situated.  It is under the
+     vestibule of this gate that conversation is held with
+     passengers, and a sort of audience and hospitality given.
+     All this was doubtless known to Homer; but poets make no
+     commentaries, and readers love the marvellous.
+
+     This city of Thebes, now Lougsor, reduced to the condition
+     of a miserable village, has left astonishing monuments of
+     its magnificence.  Particulars of this may be seen in the
+     plates of Norden, in Pocock, and in the recent travels of
+     Bruce.  These monuments give credibility to all that Homer
+     has related of its splendor, and lead us to infer its
+     political power and external commerce.
+
+     Its geographical position was favorable to this twofold
+     object. For, on one side, the valley of the Nile, singularly
+     fertile, must have early occasioned a numerous population;
+     and, on the other, the Red Sea, giving communication with
+     Arabia and India, and the Nile with Abyssinia and the
+     Mediterranean, Thebes was thus naturally allied to the
+     richest countries on the globe; an alliance that procured it
+     an activity so much the greater, as Lower Egypt, at first a
+     swamp, was nearly, if not totally, uninhabited.  But when at
+     length this country had been drained by the canals and dikes
+     which Sesostris constructed, population was introduced
+     there, and wars arose which proved fatal to the power of
+     Thebes.  Commerce then took another route, and descended to
+     the point of the Red Sea, to the canals of Sesostris (see
+     Strabo), and wealth and activity were transferred to
+     Memphis.  This is manifestly what Diodorus means when he
+     tells us (lib. i. sect. 2), that as soon as Memphis was
+     established and made a wholesome and delicious abode, kings
+     abandoned Thebes to fix themselves there.  Thus Thebes
+     continued to decline, and Memphis to flourish, till the time
+     of Alexander, who, building Alexandria on the border of the
+     sea, caused Memphis to fall in its turn; so that prosperity
+     and power seem to have descended historically step by step
+     along the Nile; whence it results, both physically and
+     historically, that the existence of Thebes was prior to that
+     of the other cities.  The testimony of writers is very
+     positive in this respect.  "The Thebans," says Diodorus,
+     "consider themselves as the most ancient people of the
+     earth, and assert, that with them originated philosophy and
+     the science of the stars.  Their situation, it is true, is
+     infinitely favorable to astronomical observation, and they
+     have a more accurate division of time into mouths and years
+     than other nations" etc.
+
+     What Diodorus says of the Thebans, every author, and himself
+     elsewhere, repeat of the Ethiopians, which tends more firmly
+     to establish the identity of this place of which I have
+     spoken.  "The Ethiopians conceive themselves," says he, lib.
+     iii., "to be of greater antiquity than any other nation: and
+     it is probable that, born under the sun's path, its warmth
+     may have ripened them earlier than other men.  They suppose
+     themselves also to be the inventors of divine worship, of
+     festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and every
+     other religious practice.  They affirm that the Egyptians
+     are one of their colonies, and that the Delta, which was
+     formerly sea, became land by the conglomeration of the earth
+     of the higher country which was washed down by the Nile.
+     They have, like the Egyptians, two species of letters,
+     hieroglyphics, and the alphabet; but among the Egyptians the
+     first was known only to the priests, and by them transmitted
+     from father to son, whereas both species were common among
+     the Ethiopians."
+
+     "The Ethiopians," says Lucian, page 985, "were the first who
+     invented the science of the stars, and gave names to the
+     planets, not at random and without meaning, but descriptive
+     of the qualities which they conceived them to possess; and
+     it was from them that this art passed, still in an imperfect
+     state, to the Egyptians."
+
+     It would be easy to multiply citations upon this subject;
+     from all which it follows, that we have the strongest
+     reasons to believe that the country neighboring to the
+     tropic was the cradle of the sciences, and of consequence
+     that the first learned nation was a nation of Blacks; for it
+     is incontrovertible, that, by the term Ethiopians, the
+     ancients meant to represent a people of black complexion,
+     thick lips, and woolly hair.  I am therefore inclined to
+     believe, that the inhabitants of Lower Egypt were originally
+     a foreign colony imported from Syria and Arabia, a medley of
+     different tribes of savages, originally shepherds and
+     fishermen, who, by degrees formed themselves into a nation,
+     and who, by nature and descent, were enemies of the Thebans,
+     by whom they were no doubt despised and treated as
+     barbarians.
+
+     I have suggested the same ideas in my Travels into Syria,
+     founded upon the black complexion of the Sphinx.  I have
+     since ascertained that the antique images of Thebias have
+     the same characteristic; and Mr. Bruce has offered a
+     multitude of analogous facts; but this traveller, of whom I
+     heard some mention at Cairo, has so interwoven these facts
+     with certain systematic opinions, that we should have
+     recourse to his narratives with caution.
+
+     It is singular that Africa, situated so near us, should be
+     the least known country on the earth.  The English are at
+     this moment making explorations, the success of which ought
+     to excite our emulation.
+
+     *** Ailah (Eloth), and Atsiom-Gaber (Hesien-Geber.)  The
+     name of the first of these towns still subsists in its
+     ruins, at the point of the gulf of the Red Sea, and in the
+     route which the pilgrims take to Mecca.  Hesion has at
+     present no trace, any more than Quolzoum and Faran: it was,
+     however, the harbor for the fleets of Solomon.  The vessels
+     of this prince conducted by the Tyrians, sailed along the
+     coast of Arabia to Ophir, in the Persian Gulf, thus opening
+     a communication with the merchants of India and Ceylon.
+     That this navigation was entirely of Tyrian invention,
+     appears both from the pilots and shipbuilders employed by
+     the Jews, and the names that were given to the trading
+     islands, viz. Tyrus and Aradus, now Barhain.  The voyage was
+     performed in two different modes, either in canoes of osier
+     and rushes, covered on the outside with skins done over with
+     pitch: (these vessels were unable to quit the Red Sea, or so
+     much as to leave the shore.)  The second mode of carrying on
+     the trade was by means of vessels with decks of the size of
+     our river boats, which were able to pass the strait and to
+     weather the dangers of time ocean; but for this purpose it
+     was necessary to bring the wood from Mount Libanus and
+     Cilicia, where it is very fine and in great abundance.  This
+     wood was first conveyed in floats from Tarsus to Phoenicia,
+     for which reason the vessels were called ships of Tarsus;
+     from whence it has been ridiculously inferred, that they
+     went round the promontory of Africa as far as Tortosa in
+     Spain.  From Phoenicia it was transported on the backs of
+     camels to the Red Sea, which practice still continues,
+     because the shores of this sea are absolutely unprovided
+     with wood even for fuel.  These vessels spent a complete
+     year in their voyage, that is, sailed one year, sojourned
+     another, and did not return till the third.  This
+     tediousness was owing first to their cruising from port to
+     port, as they do at present; secondly, to their being
+     detained by the Monsoon currents; and thirdly, because,
+     according to the calculations of Pliny and Strabo, it was
+     the ordinary practice among the ancients to spend three
+     years in a voyage of twelve hundred leagues.  Such a
+     commerce must have been very expensive, particularly as they
+     were obliged to carry with them their provisions, and even
+     fresh water.  For this reason Solomon made himself master of
+     Palmyra, which was at that time inhabited, and was already
+     the magazine and high road of merchants by the way of the
+     Euphrates.  This conquest brought Solomon much nearer to the
+     country of gold and pearls.  This alternative of a route
+     either by the Red Sea or by the river Euphrates was to the
+     ancients, what in later times has been the alternative in a
+     voyage to the Indies, either by crossing the isthmus of Suez
+     or doubling the cape of Good Hope.  It appears that till the
+     time of Moses, this trade was carried on across the desert
+     of Syria and Thebais; that afterwards it fell into the hands
+     of the Phoenicians, who fixed its site upon the Red Sea; and
+     that it was mutual jealousy that induced the kings of
+     Nineveh and Babylon to undertake the destruction of Tyre and
+     Jerusalem.  I insist the more upon these facts, because I
+     have never seen any thing reasonable upon the subject.
+
+     **** It appears that Babylon occupied on the eastern banks
+     of the Euphrates a space of ground six leagues in length.
+     Throughout this space bricks are found by means of which
+     daily additions are made to the town of Helle.  Upon many of
+     these are characters written with a nail similar to those of
+     Persepolis.  I am indebted for these facts to M. de
+     Beauchamp, grand vicar of Babylon, a traveller equally
+     distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and for his
+     veracity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CONDITION OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE.
+
+
+The Genius, after some moments of silence, resumed in these words:
+
+I have told thee already, O friend of truth! that man vainly ascribes
+his misfortunes to obscure and imaginary agents; in vain he seeks as the
+source of his evils mysterious and remote causes. In the general order
+of the universe his condition is, doubtless, subject to inconveniences,
+and his existence governed by superior powers; but those powers are
+neither the decrees of a blind fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical
+and fantastic beings. Like the world of which he forms a part, man is
+governed by natural laws, regular in their course, uniform in their
+effects, immutable in their essence; and those laws,--the common source
+of good and evil,--are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden
+in codes of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings,
+interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places,
+they are present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his
+understanding, and give to every action its reward or punishment. Let
+man then know these laws! let him comprehend the nature of the elements
+which surround him, and also his own nature, and he will know the
+regulators of his destiny; he will know the causes of his evils and the
+remedies he should apply.
+
+When the hidden power which animates the universe, formed the globe
+which man inhabits, he implanted in the beings composing it, essential
+properties which became the law of their individual motion, the bond of
+their reciprocal relations, the cause of the harmony of the whole; he
+thereby established a regular order of causes and effects, of principles
+and consequences, which, under an appearance of chance, governs the
+universe, and maintains the equilibrium of the world. Thus, he gave to
+fire, motion and activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to
+matter; he made air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood
+less cohesive than steel; he decreed flame to ascend, stones to fall,
+plants to vegetate; to man, who was to be exposed to the action of so
+many different beings, and still to preserve his frail life, he gave
+the faculty of sensation. By this faculty all action hurtful to his
+existence gives him a feeling of pain and evil, and all which is
+salutary, of pleasure and happiness. By these sensations, man, sometimes
+averted from that which wounds his senses, sometimes allured towards
+that which soothes them, has been obliged to cherish and preserve his
+own life; thus, self-love, the desire of happiness, aversion to
+pain, become the essential and primary laws imposed on man by nature
+herself--the laws which the directing power, whatever it be, has
+established for his government--and which laws, like those of motion in
+the physical world, are the simple and fruitful principle of whatever
+happens in the moral world.
+
+Such, then, is the condition of man: on one side, exposed to the action
+of the elements which surround him, he is subject to many inevitable
+evils; and if, in this decree, nature has been severe, on the other
+hand, just and even indulgent she has not only tempered the evils with
+equivalent good, she has also enabled him to increase the good and
+alleviate the evil. She seems to say:
+
+"Feeble work of my hands, I owe thee nothing, and I give thee life; the
+world wherein I placed thee was not made for thee, yet I give thee the
+use of it; thou wilt find in it a mixture of good and evil; it is for
+thee to distinguish them; for thee to guide thy footsteps in a path
+containing thorns as well as roses. Be the arbiter of thine own fate; I
+put thy destiny into thine own hands!"
+
+Yes, man is made the architect of his own destiny; he, himself, hath
+been the cause of the successes or reverses of his own fortune; and if,
+on a review of all the pains with which he has tormented his own
+life, he finds reason to weep over his own weakness or imprudence
+yet, considering the beginnings from which he sat out, and the height
+attained, he has, perhaps, still reason to presume on his strength, and
+to pride himself on his genius.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PRIMITIVE STATE OF MAN.
+
+
+Formed naked in body and in mind, man at first found himself thrown, as
+it were by chance, on a rough and savage land: an orphan, abandoned by
+the unknown power which had produced him, he saw not by his side beings
+descended from heaven to warn him of those wants which arise only from
+his senses, nor to instruct him in those duties which spring only
+from his wants. Like to other animals, without experience of the past,
+without foresight of the future, he wandered in the bosom of the forest,
+guided only and governed by the affections of his nature. By the pain of
+hunger, he was led to seek food and provide for his subsistence; by the
+inclemency of the air, he was urged to cover his body, and he made him
+clothes; by the attraction of a powerful pleasure, he approached a being
+like himself, and he perpetuated his kind.
+
+Thus the impressions which he received from every object, awakening his
+faculties, developed by degrees his understanding, and began to instruct
+his profound ignorance: his wants excited industry, dangers formed his
+courage; he learned to distinguish useful from noxious plants, to
+combat the elements, to seize his prey, to defend his life; and thus he
+alleviated its miseries.
+
+Thus self-love, aversion to pain, the desire of happiness, were the
+simple and powerful excitements which drew man from the savage and
+barbarous condition in which nature had placed him. And now, when his
+life is replete with enjoyments, when he may count each day by the
+comforts it brings, he may applaud himself and say:
+
+"It is I who have produced the comforts which surround me; it is I who
+am the author of my own happiness; a safe dwelling, convenient clothing,
+abundant and wholesome nourishment, smiling fields, fertile hills,
+populous empires, all is my work; without me this earth, given up
+to disorder, would have been but a filthy fen, a wild wood, a dreary
+desert."
+
+Yes, creative man, receive my homage! Thou hast measured the span of the
+heavens, calculated the volume of the stars, arrested the lightning in
+its clouds, subdued seas and storms, subjected all the elements. Ah! how
+are so many sublime energies allied to so many errors?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PRINCIPLES OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+Wandering in the woods and on the banks of rivers in pursuit of game and
+fish, the first men, beset with dangers, assailed by enemies, tormented
+by hunger, by reptiles, by ravenous beasts, felt their own individual
+weakness; and, urged by a common need of safety, and a reciprocal
+sentiment of like evils, they united their resources and their strength;
+and when one incurred a danger, many aided and succored him; when
+one wanted subsistence, another shared his food with him. Thus men
+associated to secure their existence, to augment their powers, to
+protect their enjoyments; and self-love thus became the principle of
+society.
+
+Instructed afterwards by the experience of various and repeated
+accidents, by the fatigues of a wandering life, by the distress of
+frequent scarcity, men reasoned with themselves and said:
+
+"Why consume our days in seeking scattered fruits from a parsimonious
+soil? why exhaust ourselves in pursuing prey which eludes us in the
+woods or waters? why not collect under our hands the animals that
+nourish us? why not apply our cares in multiplying and preserving them?
+We will feed on their increase, be clothed in their skins, and live
+exempt from the fatigues of the day and solicitude for the morrow."
+
+And men, aiding one another, seized the nimble goat, the timid sheep;
+they tamed the patient camel, the fierce bull, the impetuous horse; and,
+applauding their own industry, they sat down in the joy of their souls,
+and began to taste repose and comfort: and self-love, the principle of
+all reasoning, became the incitement to every art, and every enjoyment.
+
+When, therefore, men could pass long days in leisure, and in
+communication of their thoughts, they began to contemplate the earth,
+the heavens, and their own existence as objects of curiosity and
+reflection; they remarked the course of the seasons, the action of
+the elements, the properties of fruits and plants; and applied their
+thoughts to the multiplication of their enjoyments. And in some
+countries, having observed that certain seeds contained a wholesome
+nourishment in a small volume, convenient for transportation and
+preservation, they imitated the process of nature; they confided to the
+earth rice, barley, and corn, which multiplied to the full measure
+of their hope; and having found the means of obtaining within a small
+compass and without removal, plentiful subsistence and durable stores,
+they established themselves in fixed habitations; they built houses,
+villages, and towns; formed societies and nations; and self-love
+produced all the developments of genius and of power.
+
+Thus by the aid of his own faculties, man has raised himself to the
+astonishing height of his present fortune. Too happy if, observing
+scrupulously the law of his being, he had faithfully fulfilled its
+only and true object! But, by a fatal imprudence, sometimes mistaking,
+sometimes transgressing its limits, he has launched forth into a
+labyrinth of errors and misfortunes; and self-love, sometimes unruly,
+sometimes blind, became a principle fruitful in calamities.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SOURCES OF THE EVILS OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+In truth, scarcely were the faculties of men developed, when, inveigled
+by objects which gratify the senses, they gave themselves up to
+unbridled desires. The sweet sensations which nature had attached to
+their real wants, to endear to them their existence, no longer satisfied
+them. Not content with the abundance offered by the earth or produced
+by industry, they wished to accumulate enjoyments and coveted those
+possessed by their fellow men. The strong man rose up against the
+feeble, to take from him the fruit of his labor; the feeble invoked
+another feeble one to repel the violence. Two strong ones then said:
+
+"Why fatigue ourselves to produce enjoyments which we may find in the
+hands of the weak? Let us join and despoil them; they shall labor for
+us, and we will enjoy without labor."
+
+And the strong associating for oppression and the weak for resistance,
+men mutually afflicted each other; and a general and fatal discord
+spread over the earth, in which the passions, assuming a thousand new
+forms, have generated a continued chain of misfortunes.
+
+Thus the same self-love which, moderate and prudent, was a principle of
+happiness and perfection, becoming blind and disordered, was transformed
+into a corrupting poison; and cupidity, offspring and companion of
+ignorance, became the cause of all the evils that have desolated the
+earth.
+
+Yes, ignorance and cupidity! these are the twin sources of all the
+torments of man! Biased by these into false ideas of happiness, he has
+mistaken or broken the laws of nature in his own relation with external
+objects; and injuring his own existence, has violated individual
+morality; shutting through these his heart to compassion, and his mind
+to justice, he has injured and afflicted his equal, and violated social
+morality. From ignorance and cupidity, man has armed against man, family
+against family, tribe against tribe; and the earth is become a theatre
+of blood, of discord, and of rapine. By ignorance and cupidity, a secret
+war, fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from
+citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and
+oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation,
+sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its
+own bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism.
+Sometimes, hypocritical and cunning, they have called from heaven a
+lying power, and a sacrilegious yoke; and credulous cupidity has founded
+religious despotism. By these have been perverted the ideas of good and
+evil, just and unjust, vice and virtue; and nations have wandered in a
+labyrinth of errors and calamities.
+
+The cupidity of man and his ignorance,--these are the evil genii
+which have wasted the earth! These are the decrees of fate which have
+overthrown empires! These are the celestial anathemas which have smitten
+these walls once so glorious, and converted the splendor of a populous
+city into a solitude of mourning and of ruins! But as in the bosom of
+man have sprung all the evils which have afflicted his life, there he
+also is to seek and to find their remedies.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT AND LAWS.
+
+
+In fact, it soon happened that men, fatigued with the evils they
+reciprocally inflicted, began to sigh for peace; and reflecting on their
+misfortunes and the causes of them, they said:
+
+"We are mutually injuring each other by our passions; and, aiming to
+grasp every thing, we hold nothing. What one seizes to-day, another
+takes to-morrow, and our cupidity reacts upon ourselves. Let us
+establish judges, who shall arbitrate our rights, and settle our
+differences! When the strong shall rise against the weak, the judge
+shall restrain him, and dispose of our force to suppress violence;
+and the life and property of each shall be under the guarantee and
+protection of all; and all shall enjoy the good things of nature."
+
+Conventions were thus formed in society, sometimes express, sometimes
+tacit, which became the rule for the action of individuals, the measure
+of their rights, the law of their reciprocal relations; and persons were
+appointed to superintend their observance, to whom the people confided
+the balance to weigh rights, and the sword to punish transgressions.
+
+Thus was established among individuals a happy equilibrium of force and
+action, which constituted the common security. The name of equity and of
+justice was recognized and revered over the earth; every one, assured
+of enjoying in peace, the fruits of his toil, pursued with energy the
+objects of his attention; and industry, excited and maintained by the
+reality or the hope of enjoyment, developed, all the riches of art
+and of nature. The fields were covered with harvests, the valleys with
+flocks, the hills with fruits, the sea with vessels, and man became
+happy and powerful on the earth. Thus did his own wisdom repair the
+disorder which his imprudence had occasioned; and that wisdom was only
+the effect of his own organization. He respected the enjoyments of
+others in order to secure his own; and cupidity found its corrective in
+the enlightened love of self.
+
+Thus the love of self, the moving principle of every individual, becomes
+the necessary foundation of every association; and on the observance
+of that law of our nature has depended the fate of nations. Have the
+factitious and conventional laws tended to that object and accomplished
+that aim? Every one, urged by a powerful instinct, has displayed all
+the faculties of his being; and the sum of individual felicities has
+constituted the general felicity. Have these laws, on the contrary,
+restrained the effort of man toward his own happiness? His heart,
+deprived of its exciting principle, has languished in inactivity, and
+from the oppression of individuals has resulted the weakness of the
+state.
+
+As self-love, impetuous and improvident, is ever urging man against
+his equal, and consequently tends to dissolve society, the art of
+legislation and the merit of administrators consists in attempering
+the conflict of individual cupidities, in maintaining an equilibrium of
+powers, and securing to every one his happiness, in order that, in the
+shock of society against society, all the members may have a common
+interest in the preservation and defence of the public welfare.
+
+The internal splendor and prosperity of empires then, have had for
+their efficient cause the equity of their laws and government; and their
+respective external powers have been in proportion to the number of
+persons interested, and their degree of interest in the public welfare.
+
+On the other hand, the multiplication of men, by complicating their
+relations, having rendered the precise limitation of their rights
+difficult, the perpetual play of the passions having produced incidents
+not foreseen--their conventions having been vicious, inadequate, or
+nugatory--in fine, the authors of the laws having sometimes mistaken,
+sometimes disguised their objects; and their ministers, instead of
+restraining the cupidity of others, having given themselves up to
+their own; all these causes have introduced disorder and trouble into
+societies; and the viciousness of laws and the injustice of governments,
+flowing from cupidity and ignorance, have become the causes of the
+misfortunes of nations, and the subversion of states.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+GENERAL CAUSES OF THE PROSPERITY OF ANCIENT STATES.
+
+
+Such, O man who seekest wisdom, such have been the causes of revolution
+in the ancient states of which thou contemplatest the ruins! To whatever
+spot I direct my view, to whatever period my thoughts recur, the same
+principles of growth or destruction, of rise or fall, present themselves
+to my mind. Wherever a people is powerful, or an empire prosperous,
+there the conventional laws are conformable with the laws of nature--the
+government there procures for its citizens a free use of their
+faculties, equal security for their persons and property. If, on the
+contrary, an empire goes to ruin, or dissolves, it is because its laws
+have been vicious, or imperfect, or trodden under foot by a corrupt
+government. If the laws and government, at first wise and just, become
+afterwards depraved, it is because the alternation of good and evil is
+inherent to the heart of man, to a change in his propensities, to his
+progress in knowledge, to a combination of circumstances and events; as
+is proved by the history of the species.
+
+In the infancy of nations, when men yet lived in the forest, subject to
+the same wants, endowed with the same faculties, all were nearly equal
+in strength; and that equality was a circumstance highly advantageous
+in the composition of society: as every individual, thus feeling himself
+sufficiently independent of every other, no one was the slave, none
+thought of being the master of another. Man, then a novice, knew neither
+servitude nor tyranny; furnished with resources sufficient for his
+existence, he thought not of borrowing from others; owning nothing,
+requiring nothing, he judged the rights of others by his own, and formed
+ideas of justice sufficiently exact. Ignorant, moreover, in the art
+of enjoyments, unable to produce more than his necessaries, possessing
+nothing superfluous, cupidity remained dormant; or if excited, man,
+attacked in his real wants, resisted it with energy, and the foresight
+of such resistance ensured a happy balance.
+
+Thus original equality, in default of compact, maintained freedom of
+person, security of property, good manners, and order. Every one
+labored by himself and for himself; and the mind of man, being occupied,
+wandered not to culpable desires. He had few enjoyments, but his wants
+were satisfied; and as indulgent nature had made them less than his
+resources, the labor of his hands soon produced abundance--abundance,
+population; the arts unfolded, culture extended, and the earth, covered
+with numerous inhabitants, was divided into different dominions.
+
+The relations of man becoming complicated, the internal order of
+societies became more difficult to maintain. Time and industry having
+generated riches, cupidity became more active; and because equality,
+practicable among individuals, could not subsist among families, the
+natural equilibrium was broken; it became necessary to supply it by a
+factitious equilibrium; to set up chiefs, to establish laws; and in
+the primitive inexperience, it necessarily happened that these
+laws, occasioned by cupidity, assumed its character. But different
+circumstances concurred to correct the disorder, and oblige governments
+to be just.
+
+States, in fact, being weak at first, and having foreign enemies to
+fear, the chiefs found it their interest not to oppress their subjects;
+for, by lessening the confidence of the citizens in their government,
+they would diminish their means of resistance--they would facilitate
+foreign invasion, and by exercising arbitrary power, have endangered
+their very existence.
+
+In the interior, the firmness of the people repelled tyranny; men had
+contracted too long habits of independence; they had too few wants, and
+too much consciousness of their own strength.
+
+States being of a moderate size, it was difficult to divide their
+citizens so as to make use of some for the oppression of others. Their
+communications were too easy, their interest too clear and simple:
+besides, every one being a proprietor and cultivator, no one needed to
+sell himself, and the despot could find no mercenaries.
+
+If, then, dissensions arose, they were between family and family,
+faction and faction, and they interested a great number. The troubles,
+indeed, were warmer; but fears from abroad pacified discord at home. If
+the oppression of a party prevailed, the earth being still unoccupied,
+and man, still in a state of simplicity, finding every where the same
+advantages, the oppressed party emigrated, and carried elsewhere their
+independence.
+
+The ancient states then enjoyed within themselves numerous means of
+prosperity and power. Every one finding his own well-being in the
+constitution of his country, took a lively interest in its preservation.
+If a stranger attacked it, having to defend his own field, his own
+house, he carried into combat all the passions of a personal quarrel;
+and, devoted to his own interests, he was devoted to his country.
+
+As every action useful to the public attracted its esteem and gratitude,
+every one became eager to be useful; and self-love multiplied talents
+and civic virtues.
+
+Every citizen contributing equally by his talents and person, armies
+and funds were inexhaustible, and nations displayed formidable masses of
+power.
+
+The earth being free, and its possession secure and easy, every one
+was a proprietor; and the division of property preserved morals, and
+rendered luxury impossible.
+
+Every one cultivating for himself, culture was more active, produce more
+abundant; and individual riches became public wealth.
+
+The abundance of produce rendering subsistence easy, population was
+rapid and numerous, and states attained quickly the term of their
+plenitude.
+
+Productions increasing beyond consumption, the necessity of commerce
+arose; and exchanges took place between people and people; which
+augmented their activity and reciprocal advantages.
+
+In fine, certain countries, at certain times, uniting the advantages
+of good government with a position on the route of the most active
+circulation, they became emporiums of flourishing commerce and seats of
+powerful domination. And on the shores of the Nile and Mediterranean, of
+the Tygris and Euphrates, the accumulated riches of India and of Europe
+raised in successive splendor a hundred different cities.
+
+The people, growing rich, applied their superfluity to works of common
+and public use; and this was in every state, the epoch of those works
+whose grandeur astonishes the mind; of those wells of Tyre, of those
+dykes of the Euphrates, of those subterranean conduits of Media,* of
+those fortresses of the desert, of those aqueducts of Palmyra, of those
+temples, of those porticoes. And such labors might be immense, without
+oppressing the nations; because they were the effect of an equal and
+common contribution of the force of individuals animated and free.
+
+     * See respecting these monuments my Travels into Syria, vol.
+     ii. p. 214.
+
+From the town or village of Samouat the course of the Euphrates is
+accompanied with a double bank, which descends as far as its junction
+with the Tygris, and from thence to the sea, being a length of about a
+hundred leagues, French measure. The height of these artificial banks
+is not uniform, but increases as you advance from the sea; it may be
+estimated at from twelve to fifteen feet. But for them, the inundation
+of the river would bury the country around, which is flat, to an extent
+of twenty or twenty-five leagues and even notwithstanding these banks,
+there has been in modern times an overflow, which has covered the whole
+triangle formed by the junction of this river to the Tygris, being
+a space of country of one hundred and thirty square leagues. By the
+stagnation of these waters an epidemical disease of the most fatal
+nature was occasioned. It follows from hence, 1. That all the flat
+country bordering upon these rivers, was originally a marsh; 2. That
+this marsh could not have been inhabited previously to the construction
+of the banks in question; 3. That these banks could not have been the
+work but of a population prior as to date; and the elevation of Babylon,
+therefore, must have been posterior to that of Nineveh, as I think
+I have chronologically demonstrated in the memoir above cited. See
+Encyclopedia, vol. xiii, of Antiquities.
+
+The modern Aderbidjan, which was a part of Medea, the mountains of
+Koulderstan, and those of Diarbekr, abound with subterranean canals, by
+means of which the ancient inhabitants conveyed water to their parched
+soil in order to fertilize it. It was regarded as a meritorious act
+and a religious duty prescribed by Zoroaster, who, instead of preaching
+celibacy, mortifications, and other pretended virtues of the monkish
+sort, repeats continually in the passages that are preserved respecting
+him in the Sad-der and the Zend-avesta:
+
+"That the action most pleasing to God is to plough and cultivate the
+earth, to water it with running streams, to multiply vegetation and
+living beings, to have numerous flocks, young and fruitful virgins, a
+multitude of children," etc., etc.
+
+Among the aqueducts of Palmyra it appears certain, that, besides those
+which conducted water from the neighboring hills, there was one which
+brought it even from the mountains of Syria. It is to be traced a long
+way into the Desert where it escapes our search by going under ground.
+
+
+Thus ancient states prospered, because their social institutions
+conformed to the true laws of nature; and because men, enjoying liberty
+and security for their persons and their property, might display all the
+extent of their faculties,--all the energies of their self-love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+GENERAL CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONS AND RUIN OF ANCIENT STATES.
+
+
+Cupidity had nevertheless excited among men a constant and universal
+conflict, which incessantly prompting individuals and societies to
+reciprocal invasions, occasioned successive revolutions, and returning
+agitations.
+
+And first, in the savage and barbarous state of the first men, this
+audacious and fierce cupidity produced rapine, violence, and murder, and
+retarded for a long time the progress of civilization.
+
+When afterwards societies began to be formed, the effect of bad habits,
+communicated to laws and governments, corrupted their institutions and
+objects, and established arbitrary and factitious rights, which depraved
+the ideas of justice, and the morality of the people.
+
+Thus one man being stronger than another, their inequality--an accident
+of nature--was taken for her law;* and the strong being able to take
+the life of the weak, and yet sparing him, arrogated over his person an
+abusive right of property; and the slavery of individuals prepared the
+way for the slavery of nations.
+
+
+*Almost all the ancient philosophers and politicians have laid it down
+as a principle that men are born unequal, that nature his created some
+to be free, and others to be slaves. Expressions of this kind are to be
+found in Aristotle, and even in Plato, called the divine, doubtless in
+the same sense as the mythological reveries which he promulgated. With
+all the people of antiquity, the Gauls, the Romans, the Athenians,
+the right of the strongest was the right of nations; and from the same
+principle are derived all the political disorders and public national
+crimes that at present exist.
+
+
+Because the head of a family could be absolute in his house, he made his
+own affections and desires the rule of his conduct; he gave or resumed
+his goods without equality, without justice; and paternal despotism laid
+the foundation of despotism in government.*
+
+     * Upon this single expression it would be easy to write a
+     long and important chapter.  We might prove in it, beyond
+     contradiction, that all the abuses of national governments,
+     have sprung from those of domestic government, from that
+     government called patriarchal, which superficial minds have
+     extolled without having analyzed it. Numberless facts
+     demonstrate, that with every infant people, in every savage
+     and barbarous state, the father, the chief of the family, is
+     a despot, and a cruel and insolent despot.  The wife is his
+     slave, the children his servants.  This king sleeps or
+     smokes his pipe, while his wife and daughters perform all
+     the drudgery of the house, and even that of tillage and
+     cultivation, as far as occupations of this nature are
+     practised in such societies; and no sooner have the boys
+     acquired strength then they are allowed to beat the females
+     and make them serve and wait upon them as they do upon their
+     fathers.  Similar to this is the state of our own
+     uncivilized peasants.  In proportion as civilization
+     spreads, the manners become milder, and the condition of the
+     women improves, till, by a contrary excess, they arrive at
+     dominion, and then a nation becomes effeminate and corrupt.
+     It is remarkable that parental authority is great in
+     proportion as the government is despotic.  China, India, and
+     Turkey are striking examples of this. One would suppose that
+     tyrants gave themselves accomplices and interested subaltern
+     despots to maintain their authority.  In opposition to this
+     the Romans will be cited, but it remains to be proved that
+     the Romans were men truly free and their quick passage from
+     their republican despotism to their abject servility under
+     the emperors, gives room at least for considerable doubt as
+     to that freedom.
+
+In societies formed on such foundations, when time and labor had
+developed riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more artful,
+but not less active. Under the mask of union and civil peace, it
+fomented in the bosom of every state an intestine war, in which the
+citizens, divided into contending corps of orders, classes, families,
+unremittingly struggled to appropriate to themselves, under the name
+of supreme power, the ability to plunder every thing, and render every
+thing subservient to the dictates of their passions; and this spirit of
+encroachment, disguised under all possible forms, but always the same in
+its object and motives, has never ceased to torment the nations.
+
+Sometimes, opposing itself to all social compact, or breaking that
+which already existed, it committed the inhabitants of a country to the
+tumultuous shock of all their discords; and states thus dissolved, and
+reduced to the condition of anarchy, were tormented by the passions of
+all their members.
+
+Sometimes a nation, jealous of its liberty, having appointed agents to
+administer its government, these agents appropriated the powers of which
+they had only the guardianship: they employed the public treasures in
+corrupting elections, gaining partisans, in dividing the people among
+themselves. By these means, from being temporary they became perpetual;
+from elective, hereditary; and the state, agitated by the intrigues of
+the ambitious, by largesses from the rich and factious, by the venality
+of the poor and idle, by the influence of orators, by the boldness of
+the wicked, and the weakness of the virtuous, was convulsed with all the
+inconveniences of democracy.
+
+The chiefs of some countries, equal in strength and mutually fearing
+each other, formed impious pacts, nefarious associations; and,
+apportioning among themselves all power, rank, and honor, unjustly
+arrogated privileges and immunities; erected themselves into separate
+orders and distinct classes; reduced the people to their control; and,
+under the name of aristocracy, the state was tormented by the passions
+of the wealthy and the great.
+
+Sacred impostors, in other countries, tending by other means to the
+same object, abused the credulity of the ignorant. In the gloom of their
+temples, behind the curtain of the altar, they made their gods act and
+speak; gave forth oracles, worked miracles, ordered sacrifices, levied
+offerings, prescribed endowments; and, under the names of theocracy and
+of religion, the state became tormented by the passions of the priests.
+
+Sometimes a nation, weary of its dissensions or of its tyrants, to
+lessen the sources of evil, submitted to a single master; but if it
+limited his powers, his sole aim was to enlarge them; if it left them
+indefinite, he abused the trust confided to him; and, under the name of
+monarchy, the state was tormented by the passions of kings and princes.
+
+Then the factions, availing themselves of the general discontent,
+flattered the people with the hope of a better master; dealt out gifts
+and promises, deposed the despot to take his place; and their contests
+for the succession, or its partition, tormented the state with the
+disorders and devastations of civil war.
+
+In fine, among these rivals, one more adroit, or more fortunate, gained
+the ascendency, and concentrated all power within himself. By a strange
+phenomenon, a single individual mastered millions of his equals, against
+their will and without their consent; and the art of tyranny sprung also
+from cupidity.
+
+In fact, observing the spirit of egotism which incessantly divides
+mankind, the ambitious man fomented it with dexterity, flattered the
+vanity of one, excited the jealousy of another, favored the avarice of
+this, inflamed the resentment of that, and irritated the passions of
+all; then, placing in opposition their interests and prejudices, he
+sowed divisions and hatreds, promised to the poor the spoils of the
+rich, to the rich the subjection of the poor; threatened one man by
+another, this class by that; and insulating all by distrust, created his
+strength out of their weakness, and imposed the yoke of opinion,
+which they mutually riveted on each other. With the army he levied
+contributions, and with contributions he disposed of the army: dealing
+out wealth and office on these principles, he enchained a whole people
+in indissoluble bonds, and they languished under the slow consumption of
+despotism.
+
+Thus the same principle, varying its action under every possible form,
+was forever attenuating the consistence of states, and an eternal circle
+of vicissitudes flowed from an eternal circle of passions.
+
+And this spirit of egotism and usurpation produced two effects equally
+operative and fatal: the one a division and subdivision of societies
+into their smallest fractions, inducing a debility which facilitated
+their dissolution; the other, a preserving tendency to concentrate power
+in a single hand,* which, engulfing successively societies and states,
+was fatal to their peace and social existence.
+
+     * It is remarkable that this has in all instances been the
+     constant progress of societies; beginning with a state of
+     anarchy or democracy, that is, with a great division of
+     power they have passed to aristocracy, and from aristocracy
+     to monarchy.  Does it not hence follow that those who
+     constitute states under the democratic form, destine them to
+     undergo all the intervening troubles between that and
+     monarchy; but it should at the same time be proved that
+     social experience is already exhausted for the human race,
+     and that this spontaneous movement is not solely the effect
+     of ignorance.
+
+Thus, as in a state, a party absorbed the nation, a family the party,
+and an individual the family; so a movement of absorption took place
+between state and state, and exhibited on a larger scale in the
+political order, all the particular evils of the civil order. Thus a
+state having subdued a state, held it in subjection in the form of a
+province; and two provinces being joined together formed a kingdom; two
+kingdoms being united by conquest, gave birth to empires of gigantic
+size; and in this conglomeration, the internal strength of states,
+instead of increasing, diminished; and the condition of the people,
+instead of ameliorating, became daily more abject and wretched, for
+causes derived from the nature of things.
+
+Because, in proportion as states increased in extent, their
+administration becoming more difficult and complicated, greater energies
+of power were necessary to move such masses; and there was no longer any
+proportion between the duties of sovereigns and their ability to perform
+their duties:
+
+Because despots, feeling their weakness, feared whatever might develop
+the strength of nations, and studied only how to enfeeble them:
+
+Because nations, divided by the prejudices of ignorance and hatred,
+seconded the wickedness of their governments; and availing themselves
+reciprocally of subordinate agents, aggravated their mutual slavery:
+
+Because, the balance between states being destroyed, the strong more
+easily oppressed the weak.
+
+Finally, because in proportion as states were concentrated, the people,
+despoiled of their laws, of their usages, and of the government of
+their choice, lost that spirit of personal identification with their
+government, which had caused their energy.
+
+And despots, considering empires as their private domains and the people
+as their property, gave themselves up to depredations, and to all the
+licentiousness of the most arbitrary authority.
+
+And all the strength and wealth of nations were diverted to private
+expense and personal caprice; and kings, fatigued with gratification,
+abandoned themselves to all the extravagancies of factitious and
+depraved taste.* They must have gardens mounted on arcades, rivers
+raised over mountains, fertile fields converted into haunts for wild
+beasts; lakes scooped in dry lands, rocks erected in lakes, palaces
+built of marble and porphyry, furniture of gold and diamonds. Under
+the cloak of religion, their pride founded temples, endowed indolent
+priests, built, for vain skeletons, extravagant tombs, mausoleums and
+pyramids;** millions of hands were employed in sterile labors; and the
+luxury of princes, imitated by their parasites, and transmitted
+from grade to grade to the lowest ranks, became a general source of
+corruption and impoverishment.
+
+     * It is equally worthy of remark, that the conduct and
+     manners of princes and kings of every country and every age,
+     are found to be precisely the same at similar periods,
+     whether of the formation or dissolution of empires.  History
+     every where presents the same pictures of luxury and folly;
+     of parks, gardens, lakes, rocks, palaces, furniture, excess
+     of the table, wine, women, concluding with brutality.
+
+     The absurd rock in the garden of Versailles has alone cost
+     three millions.  I have sometimes calculated what might have
+     been done with the expense of the three pyramids of Gizah,
+     and I have found that it would easily have constructed from
+     the Red Sea to Alexandria, a canal one hundred and fifty
+     feet wide and thirty deep, completely covered in with cut
+     stones and a parapet, together with a fortified and
+     commercial town, consisting of four hundred houses,
+     furnished with cisterns.  What a difference in point of
+     utility between such a canal and these pyramids!
+
+     ** The learned Dupuis could not be persuaded that the
+     pyramids were tombs; but besides the positive testimony of
+     historians, read what Diodorus says of the religious and
+     superstitious importance every Egyptian attached to building
+     his dwelling eternal, b. 1.
+
+     During twenty years, says Herodotus, a hundred thousand men
+     labored every day to build the pyramid of the Egyptian
+     Cheops.  Supposing only three hundred days a year, on
+     account of the sabbath, there will be 30 millions of days'
+     work in a year, and 600 millions in twenty years; at 15 sous
+     a day, this makes 450 millions of francs lost, without any
+     further benefit.  With this sum, if the king had shut the
+     isthmus of Suez by a strong wall, like that of China, the
+     destinies of Egypt might have been entirely changed.
+     Foreign invasions would have been prevented, and the Arabs
+     of the desert would neither have conquered nor harassed that
+     country.  Sterile labors! how many millions lost in putting
+     one stone upon another, under the forms of temples and
+     churches!  Alchymists convert stones into gold; but
+     architects change gold into stone.  Woe to the kings (as
+     well as subjects) who trust their purse to these two classes
+     of empirics!
+
+And in the insatiable thirst of enjoyment, the ordinary revenues no
+longer sufficing, they were augmented; the cultivator, seeing his
+labors increase without compensation, lost all courage; the merchant,
+despoiled, was disgusted with industry; the multitude, condemned to
+perpetual poverty, restrained their labor to simple necessaries; and all
+productive industry vanished.
+
+The surcharge of taxes rendering lands a burdensome possession, the poor
+proprietor abandoned his field, or sold it to the powerful; and fortune
+became concentrated in a few hands. All the laws and institutions
+favoring this accumulation, the nation became divided into a group
+of wealthy drones, and a multitude of mercenary poor; the people were
+degraded with indigence, the great with satiety, and the number of those
+interested in the preservation of the state decreasing, its strength and
+existence became proportionally precarious.
+
+On the other hand, emulation finding no object, science no
+encouragement, the mind sunk into profound ignorance.
+
+The administration being secret and mysterious, there existed no means
+of reform or amelioration. The chiefs governing by force or fraud,
+the people viewed them as a faction of public enemies; and all harmony
+ceased between the governors and governed.
+
+And these vices having enervated the states of the wealthy part of Asia,
+the vagrant and indigent people of the adjacent deserts and mountains
+coveted the enjoyments of the fertile plains; and, urged by a cupidity
+common to all, attacked the polished empires, and overturned the thrones
+of their despots. These revolutions were rapid and easy; because the
+policy of tyrants had enfeebled the subjects, razed the fortresses,
+destroyed the warriors; and because the oppressed subjects remained
+without personal interest, and the mercenary soldiers without courage.
+
+And hordes of barbarians having reduced entire nations to slavery, the
+empires, formed of conquerors and conquered, united in their bosom two
+classes essentially opposite and hostile. All the principles of society
+were dissolved: there was no longer any common interest, no longer any
+public spirit; and there arose a distinction of casts and races, which
+reduced to a regular system the maintenance of disorder; and he who was
+born of this or that blood, was born a slave or a tyrant--property or
+proprietor.
+
+The oppressors being less numerous than the oppressed it was necessary
+to perfect the science of oppression, in order to support this false
+equilibrium. The art of governing became the art of subjecting the
+many to the few. To enforce an obedience so contrary to instinct, the
+severest punishments were established, and the cruelty of the laws
+rendered manners atrocious. The distinction of persons establishing in
+the state two codes, two orders of criminal justice, two sets of laws,
+the people, placed between the propensities of the heart and the oath
+uttered from the mouth, had two consciences in contradiction with
+each other; and the ideas of justice and injustice had no longer any
+foundation in the understanding.
+
+Under such a system, the people fell into dejection and despair; and the
+accidents of nature were added to the other evils which assailed them.
+Prostrated by so many calamities, they attributed their causes to
+superior and hidden powers; and, because they had tyrants on earth, they
+fancied others in heaven; and superstition aggravated the misfortunes of
+nations.
+
+Fatal doctrines and gloomy and misanthropic systems of religion arose,
+which painted their gods, like their despots, wicked and envious. To
+appease them, man offered up the sacrifice of all his enjoyments. He
+environed himself in privations, and reversed the order of nature.
+Conceiving his pleasures to be crimes, his sufferings expiations, he
+endeavored to love pain, and to abjure the love of self. He persecuted
+his senses, hated his life; and a self-denying and anti-social morality
+plunged nations into the apathy of death.
+
+But provident nature having endowed the heart of man with hope
+inexhaustible, when his desires of happiness were baffled on this earth,
+he pursued it into another world. By a sweet illusion he created for
+himself another country--an asylum where, far from tyrants, he should
+recover the rights of nature, and thence resulted new disorders. Smitten
+with an imaginary world, man despised that of nature. For chimerical
+hopes, he neglected realities. His life began to appear a troublesome
+journey--a painful dream; his body a prison, the obstacle to his
+felicity; and the earth, a place of exile and of pilgrimage, not worthy
+of culture. Then a holy indolence spread over the political world;
+the fields were deserted, empires depopulated, monuments neglected and
+deserts multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism, combining
+their operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation and ruin.
+
+Thus agitated by their own passions, men, whether collectively or
+individually taken, always greedy and improvident, passing from slavery
+to tyranny, from pride to baseness, from presumption to despondency,
+have made themselves the perpetual instruments of their own misfortunes.
+
+These, then, are the principles, simple and natural, which regulated
+the destiny of ancient states. By this regular and connected series of
+causes and effects, they rose or fell, in proportion as the physical
+laws of the human heart were respected or violated; and in the course
+of their successive changes, a hundred different nations, a hundred
+different empires, by turns humbled, elevated, conquered, overthrown,
+have repeated for the earth their instructive lessons. Yet these lessons
+were lost for the generations which have followed! The disorders in
+times past have reappeared in the present age! The chiefs of the nations
+have continued to walk in the paths of falsehood and tyranny!--the
+people to wander in the darkness of superstition and ignorance!
+
+Since then, continued the Genius, with renewed energy, since the
+experience of past ages is lost for the living--since the errors of
+progenitors have not instructed their descendants, the ancient examples
+are about to reappear; the earth will see renewed the tremendous scenes
+it has forgotten. New revolutions will agitate nations and empires;
+powerful thrones will again be overturned, and terrible catastrophes
+will again teach mankind that the laws of nature and the precepts of
+wisdom and truth cannot be infringed with impunity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+LESSONS OF TIMES PAST REPEATED ON THE PRESENT.
+
+
+Thus spoke the Genius. Struck with the justice and coherence of his
+discourse, assailed with a crowd of ideas, repugnant to my habits yet
+convincing to my reason, I remained absorbed in profound silence. At
+length, while with serious and pensive mien, I kept my eyes fixed on
+Asia, suddenly in the north, on the shores of the Black sea, and in the
+fields of the Crimea, clouds of smoke and flame attracted my attention.
+They appeared to rise at the same time from all parts of the peninsula;
+and passing by the isthmus into the continent, they ran, as if driven
+by a westerly wind, along the oozy lake of Azof, and disappeared in the
+grassy plains of Couban; and following more attentively the course of
+these clouds, I observed that they were preceded or followed by swarms
+of moving creatures, which, like ants or grasshoppers disturbed by the
+foot of a passenger, agitated themselves with vivacity. Sometimes these
+swarms appeared to advance and rush against each other; and numbers,
+after the concussion, remained motionless. While disquieted at this
+spectacle, I strained my sight to distinguish the objects.
+
+Do you see, said the Genius, those flames which spread over the earth,
+and do you comprehend their causes and effects?
+
+Oh! Genius, I answered, I see those columns of flame and smoke, and
+something like insects, accompanying them; but, when I can scarcely
+discern the great masses of cities and monuments, how should I discover,
+such little creatures? I can just perceive that these insects mimic
+battle, for they advance, retreat, attack and pursue.
+
+It is no mimicry, said the Genius, these are real battles.
+
+And what, said I, are those mad animalculae, which destroy each other?
+Beings of a day! will they not perish soon enough?
+
+Then the Genius, touching my sight and hearing, again directed my eyes
+towards the same object. Look, said he, and listen!
+
+Ah! wretches, cried I, oppressed with grief, these columns of flame!
+these insects! oh! Genius, they are men. These are the ravages of
+war! These torrents of flame rise from towns and villages! I see the
+squadrons who kindle them, and who, sword in hand overrun the country:
+they drive before them crowds of old men, women, and children, fugitive
+and desolate: I perceive other horsemen, who with shouldered lances,
+accompany and guide them. I even recognize them to be Tartars by their
+led horses,* their kalpacks, and tufts of hair: and, doubtless, they who
+pursue, in triangular hats and green uniforms, are Muscovites. Ah! I now
+comprehend, a war is kindled between the empire of the Czars and that of
+the Sultans.
+
+     * A Tartar horseman has always two horses, of which he leads
+     one in hand.  The Kalpeck is a bonnet made of the skin of a
+     sheep or other animal.  The part of the head covered by this
+     bonnet is shaved, with the exception of a tuft, about the
+     size of a crown piece, and which is suffered to grow to the
+     length of seven or eight inches, precisely where our priests
+     place their tonsure.  It is by this tuft of hair, worn by
+     the majority of Mussulmen, that the angel of the tomb is to
+     take the elect and carry them into paradise.
+
+Not yet, replied the Genius; this is only a preliminary. These Tartars
+have been, and might still he troublesome neighbors. The Muscovites are
+driving them off, finding their country would be a convenient extension
+of their own limits; and as a prelude to another revolution, the throne
+of the Guerais is destroyed.
+
+And in fact, I saw the Russian standards floating over the Crimea: and
+soon after their flag waving on the Euxine.
+
+Meanwhile, at the cry of the flying Tartars, the Mussulman empire was
+in commotion. They are driving off our brethren, cried the children
+of Mahomet: the people of the prophet are outraged! infidels occupy a
+consecrated land and profane the temples of Islamism.* Let us arm; let
+us rush to combat, to avenge the glory of God and our own cause.
+
+     * It is not in the power of the Sultan to cede to a foreign
+     power a province inhabited by true believers.  The people,
+     instigated by the lawyers, would not fail to revolt.  This
+     is one reason which has led those who know the Turks, to
+     regard as chimerical the ceding of Candia, Cyprus, and
+     Egypt, projected by certain European potentates.
+
+And a general movement of war took place in both empires. In every part
+armed men assembled. Provisions, stores, and all the murderous apparatus
+of battle were displayed. The temples of both nations, besieged by an
+immense multitude, presented a spectacle which fixed all my attention.
+
+On one side, the Mussulmen gathered before their mosques, washed
+their hands and feet, pared their nails, and combed their beards; then
+spreading carpets upon the ground, and turning towards the south,
+with their arms sometimes crossed and sometimes extended, they made
+genuflexions and prostrations, and recollecting the disasters of the
+late war, they exclaimed:
+
+God of mercy and clemency! hast thou then abandoned thy faithful people?
+Thou who hast promised to thy Prophet dominion over nations, and stamped
+his religion by so many triumphs, dost thou deliver thy true believers
+to the swords of infidels?
+
+And the Imans and the Santons said to the people:
+
+It is in chastisement of your sins. You eat pork; you drink wine; you
+touch unclean things. God hath punished you. Do penance therefore;
+purify; repeat the profession of faith;* fast from the rising to the
+setting sun; give the tenth of your goods to the mosques; go to Mecca;
+and God will render you victorious.
+
+     * There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet.
+
+And the people, recovering courage, uttered loud cries:
+
+There is but one God, said they transported with fury, and Mahomet is
+his prophet! Accursed be he who believeth not!
+
+God of goodness, grant us to exterminate these Christians; it is for
+thy glory we fight, and our death is a martyrdom for thy name. And then,
+offering victims, they prepared for battle.
+
+On the other side, the Russians, kneeling, said:
+
+We render thanks to God, and celebrate his power. He hath strengthened
+our arm to humble his enemies. Hear our prayers, thou God of mercy! To
+please thee, we will pass three days without eating either meat or eggs.
+Grant us to extirpate these impious Mahometans, and to overturn their
+empire. To thee we will consecrate the tenth of our spoil; to thee we
+will raise new temples.
+
+And the priests filled the churches with clouds of smoke, and said to
+the people:
+
+We pray for you, God accepteth our incense, and blesseth your arms.
+Continue to fast and to fight; confess to us your secret sins; give
+your wealth to the church; we will absolve you from your crimes, and you
+shall die in a state of grace.
+
+And they sprinkled water upon the people, dealt out to them, as amulets
+and charms, small relics of the dead, and the people breathed war and
+combat.
+
+Struck with this contrast of the same passions, and grieving for their
+fatal consequences, I was considering the difficulty with which the
+common judge could yield to prayers so contradictory; when the Genius,
+glowing with anger, spoke with vehemence:
+
+What accents of madness strike my ear? What blind and perverse delirium
+disorders the spirits of the nations? Sacrilegious prayers rise not from
+the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their homicidal vows and impious
+thanksgivings! Deluded mortals! is it thus you revere the Divinity?
+Say then; how should he, whom you style your common father, receive the
+homage of his children murdering one another? Ye victors! with what eye
+should he view your hands reeking in the blood he hath created? And,
+what do you expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans? Hath God
+the heart of a mortal, with passions ever changing? Is he, like you,
+agitated with vengeance or compassion, with wrath or repentance? What
+base conception of the most sublime of beings! According to them, it
+would seem, that God whimsical and capricious, is angered or appeased as
+a man: that he loves and hates alternately; that he punishes or favors;
+that, weak or wicked, he broods over his hatred; that, contradictory
+or perfidious, he lays snares to entrap; that he punishes the evils he
+permits; that he foresees but hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt
+judge, he is bribed by offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes
+laws and revokes them; that, like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes
+favors without reason, and can only be appeased by servility. Ah! now
+I know the lying spirit of man! Contemplating the picture which he hath
+drawn of the Divinity: No, said I, it is not God who hath made man after
+the image of God; but man hath made God after the image of man; he hath
+given him his own mind, clothed him with his own propensities;
+ascribed to him his own judgments. And when in this medley he finds
+the contradiction of his own principles, with hypocritical humility,
+he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the absurdities of his own
+mind the mysteries of God.
+
+He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change him;
+he hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him without
+ceasing.
+
+Imposters have arisen on the earth who have called themselves the
+confidants of God; and, erecting themselves into teachers of the people,
+have opened the ways of falsehood and iniquity; they have ascribed merit
+to practices indifferent or ridiculous; they have supposed a virtue,
+in certain postures, in pronouncing certain words, articulating certain
+names; they have transformed into a crime the eating of certain meats,
+the drinking of certain liquors, on one day rather than another. The
+Jew would rather die than labor on the sabbath; the Persian would endure
+suffocation, before he would blow the fire with his breath; the Indian
+places supreme perfection in besmearing himself with cow-dung, and
+pronouncing mysteriously the word Aum;* the Mussulman believes he has
+expiated everything in washing his head and arms; and disputes, sword
+in hand, whether the ablution should commence at the elbow, or finger
+ends;** the Christian would think himself damned, if he ate flesh
+instead of milk or butter. Oh sublime doctrines! Doctrines truly from
+heaven! Oh perfect morals, and worthy of martyrdom or the apostolate!
+I will cross the seas to teach these admirable laws to the savage
+people--to distant nations; I will say unto them:
+
+     * This word is, in the religion of the Hindoos, a sacred
+     emblem of the Divinity.  It is only to be pronounced in
+     secret, without being heard by any one.  It is formed of
+     three letters, of which the first, a, signifies the
+     principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the
+     conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who
+     puts an end to all, Chiven.  It is pronounced like the
+     monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three
+     Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega
+     mentioned in the New Testament.
+
+     ** This is one of the grand points of schism between the
+     partisans of Omar and those of Ali.  Suppose two Mahometans
+     to meet on a journey, and to accost each other with
+     brotherly affection: the hour of prayer arrives; one begins
+     his ablution at his fingers, the other at the elbow, and
+     instantly they are mortal enemies.  O sublime importance of
+     religious opinions!  O profound philosophy of the authors of
+     them!
+
+Children of nature, how long will you walk in the paths of ignorance?
+how long will you mistake the true principles of morality and religion?
+Come and learn its lessons from nations truly pious and learned, in
+civilized countries. They will inform you how, to gratify God, you must
+in certain months of the year, languish the whole day with hunger and
+thirst; how you may shed your neighbor's blood, and purify yourself from
+it by professions of faith and methodical ablutions; how you may steal
+his property and be absolved on sharing it with certain persons, who
+devote themselves to its consumption.
+
+Sovereign and invisible power of the universe! mysterious mover of
+nature! universal soul of beings! thou who art unknown, yet revered by
+mortals under so many names! being incomprehensible and infinite! God,
+who in the immensity of the heavens directest the movement of worlds,
+and peoplest the abyss of space with millions of suns! say what do these
+human insects, which my sight no longer discerns on the earth, appear in
+thy eyes? To thee, who art guiding stars in their orbits, what are
+those wormlings writhing themselves in the dust? Of what import to thy
+immensity, their distinctions of parties and sects? And of what concern
+the subtleties with which their folly torments itself?
+
+And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your practices! In so many
+centuries, during which you have been following or altering them, what
+changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of nature? Is the
+sun brighter? Is the course of the seasons varied? Is the earth more
+fruitful, or its inhabitants more happy? If God be good, can your
+penances please him? If infinite, can your homage add to his glory? If
+his decrees have been formed on foresight of every circumstance, can
+your prayers change them? Answer, O inconsistent mortals!
+
+Ye conquerors of the earth, who pretend you serve God! doth he need your
+aid? If he wishes to punish, hath he not earthquakes, volcanoes, and
+thunder? And cannot a merciful God correct without extermination?
+
+Ye Mussulmans, if God chastiseth you for violating the five precepts,
+how hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them? If he governeth
+the earth by the Koran, by what did he govern it before the days of the
+prophet, when it was covered with so many nations who drank wine, ate
+pork, and went not to Mecca, whom he nevertheless permitted to raise
+powerful empires? How did he judge the Sabeans of Nineveh and of
+Babylon; the Persian, worshipper of fire; the Greek and Roman idolators;
+the ancient kingdoms of the Nile; and your own ancestors, the Arabians
+and Tartars? How doth he yet judge so many nations who deny, or know
+not your worship--the numerous castes of Indians, the vast empire of
+the Chinese, the sable race of Africa, the islanders of the ocean, the
+tribes of America?
+
+Presumptuous and ignorant men, who arrogate the earth to yourselves! if
+God were to gather all the generations past and present, what would be,
+in their ocean, the sects calling themselves universal, of Christians
+and Mussulmans? What would be the judgments of his equal and common
+justice over the real universality of mankind? Therein it is that your
+knowledge loseth itself in incoherent systems; it is there that truth
+shines with evidence; and there are manifested the powerful and simple
+laws of nature and reason--laws of a common and general mover--of a God
+impartial and just, who sheds rain on a country without asking who is
+its prophet; who causeth his sun to shine alike on all the races of
+men, on the white as on the black, on the Jew, on the Mussulman, the
+Christian, and the Idolater; who reareth the harvest wherever cultivated
+with diligence; who multiplieth every nation where industry and order
+prevaileth; who prospereth every empire where justice is practised,
+where the powerful are restrained, and the poor protected by the laws;
+where the weak live in safety, and all enjoy the rights given by nature
+and a compact formed in justice.
+
+These are the principles by which people are judged! this the true
+religion which regulates the destiny of empires, and which, O Ottomans,
+hath governed yours! Interrogate your ancestors, ask of them by what
+means they rose to greatness; when few, poor and idolaters, they came
+from the deserts of Tartary and encamped in these fertile countries; ask
+if it was by Islamism, till then unknown to them, that they conquered
+the Greeks and the Arabs, or was it by their courage, their prudence,
+moderation, spirit of union--the true powers of the social state? Then
+the Sultan himself dispensed justice, and maintained discipline. The
+prevaricating judge, the extortionate governor, were punished, and the
+multitude lived at ease. The cultivator was protected from the rapine
+of the janissary, and the fields prospered; the highways were safe, and
+commerce caused abundance. You were a band of plunderers, but just among
+yourselves. You subdued nations, but did not oppress them. Harassed by
+their own princes, they preferred being your tributaries. What matters
+it, said the Christian, whether my ruler breaks or adores images, if
+he renders justice to me? God will judge his doctrines in the heavens
+above.
+
+You were sober and hardy; your enemies timid and enervated; you
+were expert in battle, your enemies unskillful; your leaders were
+experienced, your soldiers warlike and disciplined. Booty excited ardor,
+bravery was rewarded, cowardice and insubordination punished, and all
+the springs of the human heart were in action. Thus you vanquished
+a hundred nations, and of a mass of conquered kingdoms compounded an
+immense empire.
+
+But other customs have succeeded; and in the reverses attending them,
+the laws of nature have still exerted their force. After devouring your
+enemies, your cupidity, still insatiable, has reacted on itself, and,
+concentrated in your own bowels, has consumed you.
+
+Having become rich, you have quarrelled for partition and enjoyment, and
+disorder hath arisen in every class of society.
+
+The Sultan, intoxicated with grandeur, has mistaken the object of his
+functions; and all the vices of arbitrary power have been developed.
+Meeting no obstacle to his appetites, he has become a depraved being;
+weak and arrogant, he has kept the people at a distance; and their
+voice has no longer instructed and guided him. Ignorant, yet flattered,
+neglecting all instruction, all study, he has fallen into imbecility;
+unfit for business, he has thrown its burdens on hirelings, and they
+have deceived him. To satisfy their own passions, they have stimulated
+and nourished his; they have multiplied his wants, and his enormous
+luxury has consumed everything. The frugal table, plain clothing, simple
+dwelling of his ancestors no longer sufficed. To supply his pomp, earth
+and sea have been exhausted. The rarest furs have been brought from the
+poles; the most costly tissues from the equator. He has devoured at
+a meal the tribute of a city, and in a day that of a province. He has
+surrounded himself with an army of women, eunuchs, and satellites. They
+have instilled into him that the virtue of kings is to be liberal, and
+the munificence and treasures of the people have been delivered into
+the hands of flatterers. In imitation of their master, his servants
+must also have splendid houses, the most exquisite furniture; carpets
+embroidered at great cost, vases of gold and silver for the lowest uses,
+and all the riches of the empire have been swallowed up in the Serai.
+
+To supply this inordinate luxury, the slaves and women have sold their
+influence, and venality has introduced a general depravation. The favor
+of the sovereign has been sold to his vizier, and the vizier has sold
+the empire. The law has been sold to the cadi, and the cadi has made
+sale of justice. The altar has been sold to the priest, and the priest
+has sold the kingdom of heaven. And gold obtaining everything, they
+have sacrificed everything to obtain gold. For gold, friend has betrayed
+friend, the child his parent, the servant his master, the wife her
+honor, the merchant his conscience; and good faith, morals, concord, and
+strength were banished from the state.
+
+The pacha, who had purchased the government of his province, farmed
+it out to others, who exercised every extortion. He sold in turn the
+collection of the taxes, the command of the troops, the administration
+of the villages; and as every employ has been transient, rapine, spread
+from rank to rank, has been greedy and implacable. The revenue officer
+has fleeced the merchant, and commerce was annihilated; the aga has
+plundered the husbandman, and culture has degenerated. The laborer,
+deprived of his stock, has been unable to sow; the tax was augmented,
+and he could not pay it; the bastinado has been threatened, and he
+has borrowed. Money, from want of security, being locked up from
+circulation, interest was therefore enormous, and the usury of the rich
+has aggravated the misery of the laborer.
+
+When excessive droughts and accidents of seasons have blasted the
+harvest, the government has admitted no delay, no indulgence for the
+tax; and distress bearing hard on the village, a part of its inhabitants
+have taken refuge in the cities; and their burdens falling on those who
+remained, has completed their ruin, and depopulated the country.
+
+If driven to extremity by tyranny and outrage, the villages have
+revolted, the pacha rejoices. He wages war on them, assails their homes,
+pillages their property, carries off their stock; and when the fields
+have become a desert, he exclaims:
+
+"What care I? I leave these fields to-morrow."
+
+The earth wanting laborers, the rain of heaven and overflowing of
+torrents have stagnated in marshes; and their putrid exhalations in a
+warm climate, have caused epidemics, plagues, and maladies of all sorts,
+whence have flowed additional suffering, penury, and ruin.
+
+Oh! who can enumerate all the calamities of tyrannical government?
+
+Sometimes the pachas declare war against each other, and for their
+personal quarrels the provinces of the same state are laid waste.
+Sometimes, fearing their masters, they attempt independence, and draw
+on their subjects the chastisement of their revolt. Sometimes dreading
+their subjects, they invite and subsidize strangers, and to insure their
+fidelity set no bounds to their depredations. Here they persecute the
+rich and despoil them under false pretences; there they suborn false
+witnesses, and impose penalties for suppositious offences; everywhere
+they excite the hatred of parties, encourage informations to
+obtain amercements, extort property, seize persons; and when their
+short-sighted avarice has accumulated into one mass all the riches of
+a country, the government, by an execrable perfidy, under pretence of
+avenging its oppressed people, takes to itself all their spoils, as if
+they were the culprits, and uselessly sheds the blood of its agents for
+a crime of which it is the accomplice.
+
+Oh wretches, monarchs or ministers, who sport with the lives and
+fortunes of the people! Is it you who gave breath to man, that you dare
+take it from him? Do you give growth to the plants of the earth, that
+you may waste them? Do you toil to furrow the field? Do you endure the
+ardor of the sun, and the torment of thirst, to reap the harvest or
+thrash the grain? Do you, like the shepherd, watch through the dews of
+the night? Do you traverse deserts, like the merchant? Ah! on beholding
+the pride and cruelty of the powerful, I have been transported with
+indignation, and have said in my wrath, will there never then arise on
+the earth men who will avenge the people and punish tyrants? A handful
+of brigands devour the multitude, and the multitude submits to be
+devoured! Oh! degenerate people! Know you not your rights? All authority
+is from you, all power is yours. Unlawfully do kings command you on the
+authority of God and of their lance--Soldiers be still; if God supports
+the Sultan he needs not your aid; if his sword suffices, he needs not
+yours; let us see what he can do alone. The soldiers grounded their
+arms; and behold these masters of the world, feeble as the meanest of
+their subjects! People! know that those who govern are your chiefs, not
+your masters; your agents, not your owners; that they have no authority
+over you, but by you, and for you; that your wealth is yours and they
+accountable for it; that, kings or subjects, God has made all men equal,
+and no mortal has the right to oppress his fellow-creatures.
+
+But this nation and its chiefs have mistaken these holy truths. They
+must abide then the consequences of their blindness. The decree is past;
+the day approaches when this colossus of power shall be crushed and
+crumbled under its own mass. Yes, I swear it, by the ruins of so many
+empires destroyed. The empire of the Crescent shall follow the fate
+of the despotism it has copied. A nation of strangers shall drive the
+Sultan from his metropolis. The throne of Orkhan shall be overturned.
+The last shoot of his trunk shall be broken off; and the horde of
+Oguzians,* deprived of their chief, shall disperse like that of the
+Nagois. In this dissolution, the people of the empire, loosened from the
+yoke which united them, shall resume their ancient distinctions, and a
+general anarchy shall follow, as happened in the empire of the Sophis;**
+until there shall arise among the Arabians, Armenians, or Greeks,
+legislators who may compose new states.
+
+     * Before the Turks took the name of their chief, Othman I.,
+     they bore that of Oguzians; and it was under this
+     appellation that they were driven out of Tartary by Gengis,
+     and came from the borders of Giboun to settle themselves in
+     Anatolia.
+
+     ** In Persia, after the death of Thamas-Koulikan, each
+     province had its chief, and for forty years these chiefs
+     were in a constant state of war.  In this view the Turks do
+     not say without reason: "Ten years of a tyrant are less
+     destructive than a single night of anarchy."
+
+Oh! if there were on earth men profound and bold! what elements for
+grandeur and glory! But the hour of destiny has already come; the cry of
+war strikes my ear; and the catastrophe begins. In vain the Sultan leads
+forth his armies; his ignorant warriors are beaten and dispersed. In
+vain he calls his subjects; their hearts are ice. Is it not written? say
+they, what matters who is our master? We cannot lose by the change.
+
+In vain the true believers invoke heaven and the prophet. The prophet is
+dead; and heaven without pity answers:
+
+Cease to invoke me. You have caused your own misfortunes; cure them
+yourselves. Nature has established laws; your part is to obey them.
+Observe, reason, and profit by experience. It is the folly of man which
+ruins him; let his wisdom save him. The people are ignorant; let them
+gain instruction. Their chiefs are wicked; let them correct and amend;
+for such is Nature's decree. Since the evils of society spring from
+cupidity and ignorance, men will never cease to be persecuted, till they
+become enlightened and wise; till they practise justice, founded on a
+knowledge of their relations and of the laws of their organization.*
+
+     * A singular moral phenomenon made its appearance in Europe
+     in the year 1788.  A great nation, jealous of its liberty,
+     contracted a fondness for a nation the enemy of liberty; a
+     nation friendly to the arts, for a nation that detests them;
+     a mild and tolerant nation, for a persecuting and fanatic
+     one; a social and gay nation, for a nation whose
+     characteristics are gloom and misanthropy; in a word, the
+     French were smitten with a passion for the Turks: they were
+     desirous of engaging in a war for them, and that at a time
+     when revolution in their own country was just at its
+     commencement. A man, who perceived the true nature of the
+     situation, wrote a book to dissuade them from the war: it
+     was immediately pretended that he was paid by the
+     government, which in reality wished the war, and which was
+     upon the point of shutting him up in a state prison. Another
+     man wrote to recommend the war: he was applauded, and his
+     word taken for the science, the politeness, and importance
+     of the Turks.  It is true that he believed in his own
+     thesis, for he has found among them people who cast a
+     nativity, and alchymists who ruined his fortune; as he found
+     Martinists at Paris, who enabled him to sup with Sesostris,
+     and Magnetizers who concluded with destroying his existence.
+     Notwithstanding this, the Turks were beaten by the Russians,
+     and the man who then predicted the fall of their empire,
+     persists in the prediction.  The result of this fall will be
+     a complete change of the political system, as far as it
+     relates to the coast of the Mediterranean.  If, however, the
+     French become important in proportion as they become free,
+     and if they make use of the advantage they will obtain,
+     their progress may easily prove of the most honorable sort;
+     inasmuch as, by the wise decrees of fate, the true interest
+     of mankind evermore accords with their true morality.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+WILL THE HUMAN RACE IMPROVE?
+
+
+At these words, oppressed with the painful sentiment with which their
+severity overwhelmed me: Woe to the nations! cried I, melting in tears;
+woe to myself! Ah! now it is that I despair of the happiness of man!
+Since his miseries proceed from his heart; since the remedy is in his
+own power, woe for ever to his existence! Who, indeed will ever be
+able to restrain the lust of wealth in the strong and powerful? Who can
+enlighten the ignorance of the weak? Who can teach the multitude to know
+their rights, and force their chiefs to perform their duties? Thus the
+race of man is always doomed to suffer! Thus the individual will not
+cease to oppress the individual, a nation to attack a nation; and days
+of prosperity, of glory, for these regions, shall never return. Alas!
+conquerors will come; they will drive out the oppressors, and fix
+themselves in their place; but, inheriting their power, they will
+inherit their rapacity; and the earth will have changed tyrants, without
+changing the tyranny.
+
+Then, turning to the Genius, I exclaimed:
+
+O Genius, despair hath settled on my soul. Knowing the nature of
+man, the perversity of those who govern, and the debasement of the
+governed--this knowledge hath disgusted me with life; and since there
+is no choice but to be the accomplice or the victim of oppression, what
+remains to the man of virtue but to mingle his ashes with those of the
+tomb?
+
+The Genius then gave me a look of severity, mingled with compassion; and
+after a few moments of silence, he replied:
+
+Virtue, then, consists in dying! The wicked man is indefatigable in
+consummating his crime, and the just is discouraged from doing good at
+the first obstacle he encounters! But such is the human heart. A
+little success intoxicates man with confidence; a reverse overturns and
+confounds him. Always given up to the sensation of the moment, he seldom
+judges things from their nature, but from the impulse of his passion.
+
+Mortal, who despairest of the human race, on what profound combination
+of facts hast thou established thy conclusion? Hast thou scrutinized the
+organization of sentient beings, to determine with precision whether the
+instinctive force which moves them on to happiness is essentially weaker
+than that which repels them from it? or, embracing in one glance the
+history of the species, and judging the future by the past, hast thou
+shown that all improvement is impossible? Say! hath human society, since
+its origin, made no progress toward knowledge and a better state? Are
+men still in their forests, destitute of everything, ignorant, stupid
+and ferocious? Are all the nations still in that age when nothing was
+seen upon the globe but brutal robbers and brutal slaves? If at any
+time, in any place, individuals have ameliorated, why shall not the
+whole mass ameliorate? If partial societies have made improvements, what
+shall hinder the improvement of society in general? And if the first
+obstacles are overcome, why should the others be insurmountable?
+
+Art thou disposed to think that the human race degenerates? Guard
+against the illusion and paradoxes of the misanthrope. Man, discontented
+with the present, imagines for the past a perfection which never
+existed, and which only serves to cover his chagrin. He praises the dead
+out of hatred to the living, and beats the children with the bones of
+their ancestors.
+
+To prove this pretended retrograde progress from perfection we must
+contradict the testimony of reason and of fact; and if the facts of
+history are in any measure uncertain, we must contradict the living
+fact of the organization of man; we must prove that he is born with
+the enlightened use of his senses; that, without experience, he can
+distinguish aliment from poison; that the child is wiser than the old
+man; that the blind walks with more safety than the clear-sighted; that
+the civilized man is more miserable than the savage; and, indeed, that
+there is no ascending scale in experience and instruction.
+
+Believe, young man, the testimony of monuments, and the voice of the
+tombs. Some countries have doubtless fallen from what they were at
+certain epochs; but if we weigh the wisdom and happiness of their
+inhabitants, even in those times, we shall find more of splendor than of
+reality in their glory; we shall find, in the most celebrated of ancient
+states, enormous vices and cruel abuses, the true causes of their
+decay; we shall find in general that the principles of government
+were atrocious; that insolent robberies, barbarous wars and implacable
+hatreds were raging from nation to nation;* that natural right was
+unknown; that morality was perverted by senseless fanaticism and
+deplorable superstition; that a dream, a vision, an oracle, were
+constantly the causes of vast commotions. Perhaps the nations are not
+yet entirely cured of all these evils; but their intensity at least is
+diminished, and the experience of the past has not been wholly lost. For
+the last three centuries, especially, knowledge has increased and been
+extended; civilization, favored by happy circumstances, has made a
+sensible progress; inconveniences and abuses have even turned to its
+advantage; for if states have been too much extended by conquest,
+the people, by uniting under the same yoke, have lost the spirit of
+estrangement and division which made them all enemies one to the other.
+If the powers of government have been more concentrated, there has been
+more system and harmony in their exercise. If wars have become more
+extensive in the mass, they are less bloody in detail. If men have gone
+to battle with less personality, less energy, their struggles have been
+less sanguinary and less ferocious; they have been less free, but less
+turbulent; more effeminate, but more pacific. Despotism itself has
+rendered them some service; for if governments have been more absolute,
+they have been more quiet and less tempestuous. If thrones have become
+a property and hereditary, they have excited less dissensions, and the
+people have suffered fewer convulsions; finally, if the despots, jealous
+and mysterious, have interdicted all knowledge of their administration,
+all concurrence in the management of public affairs, the passions
+of men, drawn aside from politics, have fixed upon the arts, and the
+sciences of nature; and the sphere of ideas in every direction has been
+enlarged; man, devoted to abstract studies, has better understood his
+place in the system of nature, and his relations in society; principles
+have been better discussed, final causes better explained, knowledge
+more extended, individuals better instructed, manners more social, and
+life more happy. The species at large, especially in certain countries,
+has gained considerably; and this amelioration cannot but increase in
+future, because its two principal obstacles, those even which, till
+then, had rendered it slow and sometimes retrograde,--the difficulty of
+transmitting ideas and of communicating them rapidly,--have been at last
+removed.
+
+     * Read the history of the wars of Rome and Carthage, of
+     Sparta and Messina, of Athens and Syracuse, of the Hebrews
+     and the Phoenicians: yet these are the nations of which
+     antiquity boasts as being most polished!
+
+Indeed, among the ancients, each canton, each city, being isolated
+from all others by the difference of its language, the consequence was
+favorable to ignorance and anarchy. There was no communication of ideas,
+no participation of discoveries, no harmony of interests or of wills, no
+unity of action or design; besides, the only means of transmitting and
+of propagating ideas being that of speech, fugitive and limited,
+and that of writing, tedious of execution, expensive and scarce, the
+consequence was a hindrance of present instruction, loss of experience
+from one generation to another, instability, retrogression of knowledge,
+and a perpetuity of confusion and childhood.
+
+But in the modern world, especially in Europe, great nations having
+allied themselves in language, and established vast communities of
+opinions, the minds of men are assimilated, and their affections
+extended; there is a sympathy of opinion and a unity of action; then
+that gift of heavenly Genius, the holy art of printing, having furnished
+the means of communicating in an instant the same idea to millions of
+men, and of fixing it in a durable manner, beyond the power of tyrants
+to arrest or annihilate, there arose a mass of progressive instruction,
+an expanding atmosphere of science, which assures to future ages a solid
+amelioration. This amelioration is a necessary effect of the laws of
+nature; for, by the law of sensibility, man as invincibly tends to
+render himself happy as the flame to mount, the stone to descend, or the
+water to find its level. His obstacle is his ignorance, which misleads
+him in the means, and deceives him in causes and effects. He will
+enlighten himself by experience; he will become right by dint of errors;
+he will grow wise and good because it is his interest so to be.
+Ideas being communicated through the nation, whole classes will gain
+instruction; science will become a vulgar possession, and all men will
+know what are the principles of individual happiness and of public
+prosperity. They will know the relations they bear to society, their
+duties and their rights; they will learn to guard against the illusions
+of the lust of gain; they will perceive that the science of morals is
+a physical science, composed, indeed, of elements complicated in their
+operation, but simple and invariable in their nature, since they
+are only the elements of the organization of man. They will see the
+propriety of being moderate and just, because in that is found the
+advantage and security of each; they will perceive that the wish to
+enjoy at the expense of another is a false calculation of ignorance,
+because it gives rise to reprisal, hatred, and vengeance, and that
+dishonesty is the never-failing offspring of folly.
+
+Individuals will feel that private happiness is allied to public good:
+
+The weak, that instead of dividing their interests, they ought to unite
+them, because equality constitutes their force:
+
+The rich, that the measure of enjoyment is bounded by the constitution
+of the organs, and that lassitude follows satiety:
+
+The poor, that the employment of time, and the peace of the heart,
+compose the highest happiness of man. And public opinion, reaching kings
+on their thrones, will force them to confine themselves to the limits of
+regular authority.
+
+Even chance itself, serving the cause of nations, will sometimes give
+them feeble chiefs, who, through weakness, will suffer them to become
+free; and sometimes enlightened chiefs, who, from a principle of virtue,
+will free them.
+
+And when nations, free and enlightened, shall become like great
+individuals, the whole species will have the same facilities as
+particular portions now have; the communication of knowledge will extend
+from one to another, and thus reach the whole. By the law of imitation,
+the example of one people will be followed by others, who will adopt its
+spirit and its laws. Even despots, perceiving that they can no longer
+maintain their authority without justice and beneficence, will soften
+their sway from necessity, from rivalship; and civilization will become
+universal.
+
+There will be established among the several nations an equilibrium of
+force, which, restraining them all within the bounds of the respect due
+to their reciprocal rights, shall put an end to the barbarous practice
+of war, and submit their disputes to civil arbitration.* The human race
+will become one great society, one individual family, governed by the
+same spirit, by common laws, and enjoying all the happiness of which
+their nature is susceptible.
+
+     * What is a people?  An individual of the society at large.
+     What a war?  A duel between two individual people.  In what
+     manner ought a society to act when two of its members fight?
+     Interfere and reconcile, or repress them.  In the days of
+     the Abbe de Saint Pierre this was treated as a dream, but
+     happily for the human race it begins to be realized.
+
+Doubtless this great work will be long accomplishing; because the
+same movement must be given to an immense body; the same leaven must
+assimilate an enormous mass of heterogeneous parts. But this movement
+shall be effected; its presages are already to be seen. Already the
+great society, assuming in its course the same characters as partial
+societies have done, is evidently tending to a like result. At first
+disconnected in all its parts, it saw its members for a long time
+without cohesion; and this general solitude of nations formed its
+first age of anarchy and childhood; divided afterwards by chance into
+irregular sections, called states and kingdoms, it has experienced
+the fatal effects of an extreme inequality of wealth and rank; and the
+aristocracy of great empires has formed its second age; then, these
+lordly states disputing for preeminence, have exhibited the period of
+the shock of factions.
+
+At present the contending parties, wearied with discord, feel the want
+of laws, and sigh for the age of order and of peace. Let but a virtuous
+chief arise! a just, a powerful people appear! and the earth will raise
+them to supreme power. The world is waiting for a legislative people; it
+wishes and demands it; and my heart attends the cry.
+
+Then turning towards the west: Yes, continued he, a hollow sound already
+strikes my ear; a cry of liberty, proceeding from far distant shores,
+resounds on the ancient continent. At this cry, a secret murmur against
+oppression is raised in a powerful nation; a salutary inquietude alarms
+her respecting her situation; she enquires what she is, and what she
+ought to be; while, surprised at her own weakness, she interrogates her
+rights, her resources, and what has been the conduct of her chiefs.
+
+Yet another day--a little more reflection--and an immense agitation will
+begin; a new-born age will open! an age of astonishment to vulgar minds,
+of terror to tyrants, of freedom to a great nation, and of hope to the
+human race!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE GREAT OBSTACLE TO IMPROVEMENT.
+
+
+The Genius ceased. But preoccupied with melancholy thoughts, my mind
+resisted persuasion; fearing, however, to shock him by my resistance, I
+remained silent. After a while, turning to me with a look which pierced
+my soul, he said:
+
+Thou art silent, and thy heart is agitated with thoughts which it dares
+not utter.
+
+At last, troubled and terrified, I replied:
+
+O Genius, pardon my weakness. Doubtless thy mouth can utter nothing but
+truth; but thy celestial intelligence can seize its rays, where my gross
+faculties can discern nothing but clouds. I confess it; conviction has
+not penetrated my soul, and I feared that my doubts might offend thee.
+
+And what is doubt, replied he, that it should be a crime? Can man
+feel otherwise than as he is affected? If a truth be palpable, and
+of importance in practice, let us pity him that misconceives it.
+His punishment will arise from his blindness. If it be uncertain or
+equivocal, how is he to find in it what it has not? To believe without
+evidence or proof, is an act of ignorance and folly. The credulous
+man loses himself in a labyrinth of contradictions; the man of sense
+examines and discusses, that he may be consistent in his opinions. The
+honest man will bear contradiction; because it gives rise to evidence.
+Violence is the argument of falsehood; and to impose a creed by
+authority is the act and indication of a tyrant.
+
+O Genius, said I, encouraged by these words, since my reason is free, I
+strive in vain to entertain the flattering hope with which you endeavor
+to console me. The sensible and virtuous soul is easily caught with
+dreams of happiness; but a cruel reality constantly awakens it to
+suffering and wretchedness. The more I meditate on the nature of man,
+the more I examine the present state of societies, the less possible it
+appears to realize a world of wisdom and felicity. I cast my eye over
+the whole of our hemisphere; I perceive in no place the germ, nor do
+I foresee the instinctive energy of a happy revolution. All Asia lies
+buried in profound darkness. The Chinese, governed by an insolent
+despotism,* by strokes of the bamboo and the cast of lots, restrained
+by an immutable code of gestures, and by the radical vices of an
+ill-constructed language,** appear to be in their abortive civilization
+nothing but a race of automatons. The Indian, borne down by prejudices,
+and enchained in the sacred fetters of his castes, vegetates in an
+incurable apathy. The Tartar, wandering or fixed, always ignorant and
+ferocious, lives in the savageness of his ancestors. The Arab, endowed
+with a happy genius, loses its force and the fruits of his virtue in
+the anarchy of his tribes and the jealousy of his families. The African,
+degraded from the rank of man, seems irrevocably doomed to servitude.
+In the North I see nothing but vilified serfs, herds of men with which
+landlords stock their estates. Ignorance, tyranny, and wretchedness
+have everywhere stupified the nations; and vicious habits, depraving
+the natural senses, have destroyed the very instinct of happiness and of
+truth.
+
+     * The emperor of China calls himself the son of heaven; that
+     is, of God: for in the opinion of the Chinese, the material
+     of heaven, the arbiter of fatality, is the Deity himself.
+     "The emperor only shows himself once in ten months, lest the
+     people, accustomed to see him, might lose their respect; for
+     he holds it as a maxim that power can only be supported by
+     force, that the people have no idea of justice, and are not
+     to be governed but by coercion."  Narrative of two Mahometan
+     travellers in 851 and 877, translated by the Abbe Renaudot
+     in 1718.
+
+     Notwithstanding what is asserted by the missionaries, this
+     situation has undergone no change.  The bamboo still reigns
+     in China, and the son of heaven bastinades, for the most
+     trivial fault, the Mandarin, who in his turn bastinades the
+     people.  The Jesuits may tell us that this is the best
+     governed country in the world, and its inhabitants the
+     happiest of men: but a single letter from Amyot has
+     convinced me that China is a truly Turkish government, and
+     the account of Sonnerat confirms it.  See Vol. II. of Voyage
+     aux Indes, in 4to.
+
+     ** As long as the Chinese shall in writing make use of their
+     present characters, they can be expected to make no progress
+     in civilization.  The necessary introductory step must be
+     the giving them an alphabet like our own, or of substituting
+     in the room of their language that of the Tartars.  The
+     improvement made in the latter by M. de Lengles, is
+     calculated to introduce this change. See the Mantchou
+     alphabet, the production of a mind truly learned in the
+     formation of language.
+
+In some parts of Europe, indeed, reason has begun to dawn, but even
+there, do nations partake of the knowledge of individuals? Are the
+talents and genius of governors turned to the benefit of the people? And
+those nations which call themselves polished, are they not the same that
+for the last three centuries have filled the earth with their injustice?
+Are they not those who, under the pretext of commerce, have desolated
+India, depopulated a new continent, and, at present, subject Africa
+to the most barbarous slavery? Can liberty be born from the bosom
+of despots? and shall justice be rendered by the hands of piracy and
+avarice? O Genius, I have seen the civilized countries; and the mockery
+of their wisdom has vanished before my sight. I saw wealth accumulated
+in the hands of a few, and the multitude poor and destitute. I have seen
+all rights, all powers concentered in certain classes, and the mass of
+the people passive and dependent. I have seen families of princes, but
+no families of the nation. I have seen government interests, but
+no public interests or spirit. I have seen that all the science of
+government was to oppress prudently; and the refined servitude of
+polished nations appeared to me only the more irremediable.
+
+One obstacle above all has profoundly struck my mind. On looking over
+the world, I have seen it divided into twenty different systems of
+religion. Every nation has received, or formed, opposite opinions; and
+every one ascribing to itself the exclusive possession of the truth,
+must believe the other to be wrong. Now if, as must be the fact in this
+discordance of opinion, the greater part are in error, and are honest in
+it, then it follows that our mind embraces falsehood as it does truth;
+and if so, how is it to be enlightened? When prejudice has once seized
+the mind, how is it to be dissipated? How shall we remove the bandage
+from our eyes, when the first article in every creed, the first dogma in
+all religion, is the absolute proscription of doubt, the interdiction of
+examination, and the rejection of our own judgment? How is truth to make
+herself known?--If she resorts to arguments and proofs, the timid man
+stifles the voice of his own conscience; if she invokes the authority
+of celestial powers, he opposes it with another authority of the same
+origin, with which he is preoccupied; and he treats all innovation as
+blasphemy. Thus man in his blindness, has riveted his own chains,
+and surrendered himself forever, without defence, to the sport of his
+ignorance and his passions.
+
+To dissolve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy
+events would be necessary. A whole nation, cured of the delirium of
+superstition, must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism. Freed
+from the yoke of false doctrine, a whole people must impose upon itself
+that of true morality and reason. This people should be courageous and
+prudent, wise and docile. Each individual, knowing his rights, should
+not transgress them. The poor should know how to resist seduction,
+and the rich the allurements of avarice. There should be found leaders
+disinterested and just, and their tyrants should be seized with a spirit
+of madness and folly. This people, recovering its rights, should
+feel its inability to exercise them in person, and should name its
+representatives. Creator of its magistrates, it should know at once to
+respect them and to judge them. In the sudden reform of a whole nation,
+accustomed to live by abuses, each individual displaced should bear with
+patience his privations, and submit to a change of habits. This nation
+should have the courage to conquer its liberty; the power to defend it,
+the wisdom to establish it, and the generosity to extend it to others.
+And can we ever expect the union of so many circumstances? But suppose
+that chance in its infinite combinations should produce them, shall I
+see those fortunate days. Will not my ashes long ere then be mouldering
+in the tomb?
+
+Here, sunk in sorrow, my oppressed heart no longer found utterance. The
+Genius answered not, but I heard him whisper to himself:
+
+Let us revive the hope of this man; for if he who loves his fellow
+creatures be suffered to despair, what will become of nations? The past
+is perhaps too discouraging; I must anticipate futurity, and disclose to
+the eye of virtue the astonishing age that is ready to begin; that, on
+viewing the object she desires, she may be animated with new ardor, and
+redouble her efforts to attain it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE NEW AGE.
+
+
+Scarcely had he finished these words, when a great tumult arose in the
+west; and turning to that quarter, I perceived, at the extremity of
+the Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a prodigious
+movement--such as when a violent sedition arises in a vast city--a
+numberless people, rushing in all directions, pour through the streets
+and fluctuate like waves in the public places. My ear, struck with the
+cries which resounded to the heavens, distinguished these words:
+
+What is this new prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We
+are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and
+we are in want of subsistence? We are active and laborious, and we live
+in indigence! We pay enormous tributes, and we are told they are not
+sufficient! We are at peace without, and our persons and property are
+not safe within. Who, then, is the secret enemy that devours us?
+
+Some voices from the midst of the multitude replied:
+
+Raise a discriminating standard; and let all those who maintain and
+nourish mankind by useful labors gather round it; and you will discover
+the enemy that preys upon you.
+
+The standard being raised, this nation divided itself at once into
+two bodies of unequal magnitude and contrasted appearance. The one,
+innumerable, and almost total, exhibited in the poverty of its clothing,
+in its emaciated appearance and sun-burnt faces, the marks of misery and
+labor; the other, a little group, an insignificant faction, presented in
+its rich attire embroidered with gold and silver, and in its sleek and
+ruddy faces, the signs of leisure and abundance.
+
+Considering these men more attentively, I found that the great body was
+composed of farmers, artificers, merchants, all professions useful
+to society; and that the little group was made up of priests of every
+order, of financiers, of nobles, of men in livery, of commanders of
+armies; in a word, of the civil, military, and religious agents of
+government.
+
+These two bodies being assembled face to face, and regarding each other
+with astonishment, I saw indignation and rage arising in one side, and
+a sort of panic in the other. And the large body said to the little one:
+Why are you separated from us? Are you not of our number?
+
+No, replied the group; you are the people; we are a privileged class,
+who have our laws, customs, and rights, peculiar to ourselves.
+
+PEOPLE.--And what labor do you perform in our society?
+
+PRIVILEGED CLASS.--None; we are not made to work.
+
+PEOPLE.--How, then, have you acquired these riches?
+
+PRIVILEGED CLASS.--By taking the pains to govern you.
+
+PEOPLE.--What! is this what you call governing? We toil and you enjoy!
+we produce and you dissipate! Wealth proceeds from us, and you absorb
+it. Privileged men! class who are not the people; form a nation apart,
+and govern yourselves.*
+
+     * This dialogue between the people and the indolent classes,
+     is applicable to every society; it contains the seeds of all
+     the political vices and disorders that prevail, and which
+     may thus be defined: Men who do nothing, and who devour the
+     substance of others; and men who arrogate to themselves
+     particular rights and exclusive privileges of wealth and
+     indolence.  Compare the Mamlouks of Egypt, the nobility of
+     Europe, the Nairs of India, the Emirs of Arabia, the
+     patricians of Rome, the Christian clergy, the Imans, the
+     Bramins, the Bonzes, the Lamas, etc., etc., and you will
+     find in all the same characteristic feature:--Men living in
+     idleness at the expense of those who labor.
+
+Then the little group, deliberating on this new state of things, some of
+the most honorable among them said: We must join the people and partake
+of their labors and burdens, for they are men like us, and our riches
+come from them; but others arrogantly exclaimed: It would be a shame, an
+infamy, for us to mingle with the crowd; they are born to serve us.
+Are we not men of another race--the noble and pure descendants of the
+conquerors of this empire? This multitude must be reminded of our rights
+and its own origin.
+
+THE NOBLES.--People! know you not that our ancestors conquered this
+land, and that your race was spared only on condition of serving us?
+This is our social compact! this the government constituted by custom
+and prescribed by time.
+
+PEOPLE.--O conquerors, pure of blood! show us your genealogies! we
+shall then see if what in an individual is robbery and plunder, can be
+virtuous in a nation.
+
+And forthwith, voices were heard in every quarter calling out the nobles
+by their names; and relating their origin and parentage, they told how
+the grandfather, great-grandfather, or even father, born traders and
+mechanics, after acquiring wealth in every way, had purchased their
+nobility for money: so that but very few families were really of the
+original stock. See, said these voices, see these purse-proud commoners
+who deny their parents! see these plebian recruits who look upon
+themselves as illustrious veterans! and peals of laughter were heard.
+
+And the civil governors said: these people are mild, and naturally
+servile; speak to them of the king and of the law, and they will return
+to their duty. People! the king wills, the sovereign ordains!
+
+PEOPLE.--The king can will nothing but the good of the people; the
+sovereign can only ordain according to law.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--The law commands you to be submissive.
+
+PEOPLE.--The law is the general will; and we will a new order of things.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--You are then a rebel people.
+
+PEOPLE.--A nation cannot revolt; tyrants only are rebels.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--The king is on our side; he commands you to submit.
+
+PEOPLE.--Kings are inseparable from their nations. Our king cannot be
+with you; you possess only his phantom.
+
+And the military governors came forward. The people are timorous, said
+they; we must threaten them; they will submit only to force. Soldiers,
+chastise this insolent multitude.
+
+PEOPLE.--Soldiers, you are of our blood! Will you strike your brothers,
+your relatives? If the people perish who will nourish the army?
+
+And the soldiers, grounding their arms, said to the chiefs:
+
+We are likewise the people; show us the enemy!
+
+Then the ecclesiastical governors said: There is but one resource left.
+The people are superstitious; we must frighten them with the names of
+God and religion.
+
+Our dear brethren! our children! God has ordained us to govern you.
+
+PEOPLE.--Show us your credentials from God!
+
+PRIESTS.--You must have faith; reason leads astray.
+
+PEOPLE.--Do you govern without reason?
+
+PRIESTS.--God commands peace! Religion prescribes obedience.
+
+PEOPLE.--Peace supposes justice. Obedience implies conviction of a duty.
+
+PRIESTS.--Suffering is the business of this world.
+
+PEOPLE.--Show us the example.
+
+PRIESTS.--Would you live without gods or kings?
+
+PEOPLE.--We would live without oppressors.
+
+PRIESTS.--You must have mediators, intercessors.
+
+PEOPLE.--Mediators with God and with the king! courtiers and priests,
+your services are too expensive: we will henceforth manage our own
+affairs.
+
+And the little group said: We are lost! the multitude are enlightened.
+
+And the people answered: You are safe; since we are enlightened we will
+commit no violence; we only claim our rights. We feel resentments, but
+we will forget them. We were slaves, we might command; but we only wish
+to be free, and liberty is but justice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A FREE AND LEGISLATIVE PEOPLE.
+
+
+Considering that all public power was now suspended, and that the
+habitual restraint of the people had suddenly ceased, I shuddered with
+the apprehension that they would fall into the dissolution of anarchy.
+But, taking their affairs into immediate deliberation, they said:
+
+It is not enough that we have freed ourselves from tyrants and
+parasites; we must prevent their return. We are men, and experience
+has abundantly taught us that every man is fond of power, and wishes
+to enjoy it at the expense of others. It is necessary, then, to guard
+against a propensity which is the source of discord; we must establish
+certain rules of duty and of right. But the knowledge of our rights,
+and the estimation of our duties, are so abstract and difficult as to
+require all the time and all the faculties of a man. Occupied in our
+own affairs, we have not leisure for these studies; nor can we
+exercise these functions in our own persons. Let us choose, then, among
+ourselves, such persons as are capable of this employment. To them we
+will delegate our powers to institute our government and laws. They
+shall be the representatives of our wills and of our interests. And in
+order to attain the fairest representation possible of our wills and our
+interests, let it be numerous, and composed of men resembling ourselves.
+
+Having made the election of a numerous body of delegates, the people
+thus addressed them:
+
+We have hitherto lived in a society formed by chance, without fixed
+agreements, without free conventions, without a stipulation of rights,
+without reciprocal engagements,--and a multitude of disorders and evils
+have arisen from this precarious state. We are now determined on forming
+a regular compact; and we have chosen you to adjust the articles.
+Examine, then, with care what ought to be its basis and its conditions;
+consider what is the end and the principles of every association;
+recognize the rights which every member brings, the powers which he
+delegates, and those which he reserves to himself. Point out to us the
+rules of conduct--the basis of just and equitable laws. Prepare for us a
+new system of government; for we realize that the one which has
+hitherto guided us is corrupt. Our fathers have wandered in the paths
+of ignorance, and habit has taught us to follow in their footsteps.
+Everything has been done by fraud, violence, and delusion; and the true
+laws of morality and reason are still obscure. Clear up, then, their
+chaos; trace out their connection; publish their code, and we will adopt
+it.
+
+And the people raised a large throne, in the form of a pyramid, and
+seating on it the men they had chosen, said to them:
+
+We raise you to-day above us, that you may better discover the whole of
+our relations, and be above the reach of our passions. But remember that
+you are our fellow-citizens; that the power we confer on you is our own;
+that we deposit it with you, but not as a property or a heritage; that
+you must be the first to obey the laws you make; that to-morrow you
+redescend among us, and that you will have acquired no other right but
+that of our esteem and gratitude. And consider what a tribute of glory
+the world, which reveres so many apostles of error, will bestow on the
+first assembly of rational men, who shall have declared the unchangeable
+principles of justice, and consecrated, in the face of tyrants, the
+rights of nations.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+UNIVERSAL BASIS OF ALL RIGHT AND ALL LAW.
+
+
+The men chosen by the people to investigate the true principles of
+morals and of reason then proceeded in the sacred object of their
+mission; and, after a long examination, having discovered a fundamental
+and universal principle, a legislator arose and said to the people:
+
+Here is the primordial basis, the physical origin of all justice and of
+all right.
+
+Whatever be the active power, the moving cause, that governs the
+universe, since it has given to all men the same organs, the same
+sensations, and the same wants, it has thereby declared that it has
+given to all the same right to the use of its treasures, and that all
+men are equal in the order of nature.
+
+And, since this power has given to each man the necessary means of
+preserving his own existence, it is evident that it has constituted them
+all independent one of another; that it has created them free; that no
+one is subject to another; that each one is absolute proprietor of his
+own person.
+
+Equality and liberty are, therefore, two essential attributes of man,
+two laws of the Divinity, constitutional and unchangeable, like the
+physical properties of matter.
+
+Now, every individual being absolute master of his own person, it
+follows that a full and free consent is a condition indispensable to all
+contracts and all engagements.
+
+Again, since each individual is equal to another, it follows that the
+balance of what is received and of what is given, should be strictly in
+equilibrium; so that the idea of justice, of equity, necessarily imports
+that of equality.*
+
+     * The etymology of the words themselves trace out to us this
+     connection: equilibrium, equalitas, equitas, are all of one
+     family, and the physical idea of equality, in the scales of
+     a balance, is the source and type of all the rest.
+
+Equality and liberty are therefore the physical and unalterable basis
+of every union of men in society, and of course the necessary and
+generating principle of every law and of every system of regular
+government.*
+
+     * In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of
+     ideas in the first article, liberty being placed before
+     equality, from which it in reality springs.  This defect is
+     not to be wondered at; the science of the rights of man is a
+     new science: it was invented yesterday by the Americans,
+     to-day the French are perfecting it, but there yet remains a
+     great deal to be done.  In the ideas that constitute it
+     there is a genealogical order which, from us basis, physical
+     equality, to the minutest and most remote branches of
+     government, ought to proceed in an uninterrupted series of
+     inferences.
+
+A disregard of this basis has introduced in your nation, and in every
+other, those disorders which have finally roused you. It is by returning
+to this rule that you may reform them, and reorganize a happy order of
+society.
+
+But observe, this reorganization will occasion a violent shock in
+your habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices. Vicious contracts and
+abusive claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill founded
+property renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a state of
+nature. Consider whether you can consent to so many sacrifices.
+
+Then, reflecting on the cupidity inherent in the heart of man, I thought
+that this people would renounce all ideas of amelioration.
+
+But, in a moment, a great number of men, advancing toward the pyramid,
+made a solemn abjuration of all their distinctions and all their riches.
+
+Establish for us, said they, the laws of equality and liberty; we will
+possess nothing in future but on the title of justice.
+
+Equality, liberty, justice,--these shall be our code, and shall be
+written on our standards.
+
+And the people immediately raised a great standard, inscribed with
+these three words, in three different colors. They displayed it over the
+pyramid of the legislators, and for the first time the flag of universal
+justice floated on the face of the earth.
+
+And the people raised before the pyramid a new altar, on which they
+placed a golden balance, a sword, and a book with this inscription:
+
+
+TO EQUAL LAW, WHICH JUDGES AND PROTECTS.
+
+
+And having surrounded the pyramid and the altar with a vast
+amphitheatre, all the people took their seats to hear the publication
+of the law. And millions of men, raising at once their hands to heaven,
+took the solemn oath to live equal, free, and just; to respect their
+reciprocal properties and rights; to obey the law and its regularly
+chosen representatives.
+
+
+A spectacle so impressive and sublime, so replete with generous
+emotions, moved me to tears; and addressing myself to the Genius, I
+exclaimed: Let me now live, for in future I have everything to hope.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+CONSTERNATION AND CONSPIRACY OF TYRANTS.
+
+
+But scarcely had the solemn voice of liberty and equality resounded
+through the earth, when a movement of confusion, of astonishment, arose
+in different nations. On the one hand, the people, warmed with desire,
+but wavering between hope and fear, between the sentiment of right and
+the habit of obedience, began to be in motion. The kings, on the other
+hand, suddenly awakened from the sleep of indolence and despotism, were
+alarmed for the safety of their thrones; while, on all sides, those
+clans of civil and religious tyrants, who deceive kings and oppress the
+people, were seized with rage and consternation; and, concerting their
+perfidious plans, they said: Woe to us, if this fatal cry of liberty
+comes to the ears of the multitude! Woe to us, if this pernicious spirit
+of justice be propagated!
+
+And, pointing to the floating banner, they continued:
+
+Consider what a swarm of evils are included in these three words! If all
+men are equal, where is our exclusive right to honors and to power? If
+all men are to be free, what becomes of our slaves, our vassals, our
+property? If all are equal in the civil state, where is our prerogative
+of birth, of inheritance? and what becomes of nobility? If they are
+all equal in the sight of God, what need of mediators?--where is the
+priesthood? Let us hasten, then, to destroy a germ so prolific, and so
+contagious. We must employ all our cunning against this innovation. We
+must frighten the kings, that they may join us in the cause. We
+must divide the people by national jealousies, and occupy them with
+commotions, wars, and conquests. They must be alarmed at the power
+of this free nation. Let us form a league against the common enemy,
+demolish that sacrilegious standard, overturn that throne of rebellion,
+and stifle in its birth the flame of revolution.
+
+And, indeed, the civil and religious tyrants of nations formed a general
+combination; and, multiplying their followers by force and seduction,
+they marched in hostile array against the free nation; and, surrounding
+the altar and the pyramid of natural law, they demanded with loud cries:
+
+What is this new and heretical doctrine? what this impious altar, this
+sacrilegious worship? True believers and loyal subjects! can you suppose
+that truth has been first discovered to-day, and that hitherto you have
+been walking in error? that those men, more fortunate than you, have the
+sole privilege of wisdom? And you, rebel and misguided nation, perceive
+you not that your new leaders are misleading you? that they destroy the
+principles of your faith, and overturn the religion of your ancestors?
+Ah, tremble! lest the wrath of heaven should kindle against you; and
+hasten by speedy repentance to retrieve your error.
+
+But, inaccessible to seduction as well as to fear, the free nation kept
+silence, and rising universally in arms, assumed an imposing attitude.
+
+And the legislator said to the chiefs of nations:
+
+If while we walked with a bandage on our eyes the light guided our
+steps, why, since we are no longer blindfold, should it fly from our
+search? If guides, who teach mankind to see for themselves, mislead and
+deceive them, what can be expected from those who profess to keep them
+in darkness?
+
+But hark, ye leaders of nations! If you possess the truth, show it to
+us, and we will receive it with gratitude, for we seek it with ardor,
+and have a great interest in finding it. We are men, and liable to be
+deceived; but you are also men, and equally fallible. Aid us then in
+this labyrinth, where the human race has wandered for so many ages; help
+us to dissipate the illusion of so many prejudices and vicious habits.
+Amid the shock of so many opinions which dispute for our acceptance,
+assist us in discovering the proper and distinctive character of truth.
+Let us this day terminate the long combat with error. Let us establish
+between it and truth a solemn contest, to which we will invite the
+opinions of men of all nations. Let us convoke a general assembly of the
+nations. Let them be judges in their own cause; and in the debate of all
+systems, let no champion, no argument, be wanting, either on the side
+of prejudice or of reason; and let the sentiment of a general and common
+mass of evidence give birth to a universal concord of opinions and of
+hearts.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE NATIONS.
+
+
+Thus spoke the legislator; and the multitude, seized with those emotions
+which a reasonable proposition always inspires, expressed its applause;
+while the tyrants, left without support, were overwhelmed with
+confusion.
+
+A scene of a new and astonishing nature then opened to my view. All that
+the earth contains of people and of nations; men of every race and of
+every region, converging from their various climates, seemed to assemble
+in one allotted place; where, forming an immense congress, distinguished
+in groups by the vast variety of their dresses, features, and
+complexion, the numberless multitude presented a most unusual and
+affecting sight.
+
+On one side I saw the European, with his short close coat, pointed
+triangular hat, smooth chin, and powdered hair; on the other side the
+Asiatic, with a flowing robe, long beard, shaved head, and round turban.
+Here stood the nations of Africa, with their ebony skins, their woolly
+hair, their body girt with white and blue tissues of bark, adorned with
+bracelets and necklaces of coral, shells, and glass; there the tribes
+of the north, enveloped in their leathern bags; the Laplander, with his
+pointed bonnet and his snow-shoes; the Samoyede, with his feverish body
+and strong odor; the Tongouse, with his horned cap, and carrying his
+idols pendant from his neck; the Yakoute, with his freckled face; the
+Kalmuc, with his flat nose and little retorted eyes. Farther distant
+were the Chinese, attired in silk, with their hair hanging in tresses;
+the Japanese, of mingled race; the Malays, with wide-spreading ears,
+rings in their noses, and palm-leaf hats of vast circumference;* and the
+tattooed races of the isles of the southern ocean and of the continent
+of the antipodes.** The view of so many varieties of the same species,
+of so many extravagant inventions of the same understanding, and of so
+many modifications of the same organization, affected me with a thousand
+feelings and a thousand thoughts.*** I contemplated with astonishment
+this gradation of color, which, passing from a bright carnation to a
+light brown, a deeper brown, dusky, bronze, olive, leaden, copper, ends
+in the black of ebony and of jet. And finding the Cassimerian, with his
+rosy cheek, next to the sun-burnt Hindoo, and the Georgian by the side
+of the Tartar, I reflected on the effects of climate hot or cold, of
+soil high or low, marshy or dry, open or shaded. I compared the dwarf of
+the pole with the giant of the temperate zones, the slender body of
+the Arab with the ample chest of the Hollander; the squat figure of
+the Samoyede with the elegant form of the Greek and the Sclavonian; the
+greasy black wool of the Negro with the bright silken locks of the Dane;
+the broad face of the Kalmuc, his little angular eyes and flattened
+nose, with the oval prominent visage, large blue eyes, and aquiline nose
+of the Circassian and Abazan. I contrasted the brilliant calicoes of the
+Indian, the well-wrought stuffs of the European, the rich furs of the
+Siberian, with the tissues of bark, of osiers, leaves and feathers of
+savage nations; and the blue figures of serpents, flowers, and
+stars, with which they painted their bodies. Sometimes the variegated
+appearance of this multitude reminded me of the enamelled meadows of the
+Nile and the Euphrates, when, after rains or inundations, millions of
+flowers are rising on every side. Sometimes their murmurs and their
+motions called to mind the numberless swarms of locusts which, issuing
+from the desert, cover in the spring the plains of Hauran.
+
+     * This species of the palm-tree is called Latanier.  Its
+     leaf, similar to a fan-mount, grows upon a stalk issuing
+     directly from the earth.  A specimen may be seen in the
+     botanic garden.
+
+     ** The country of the Papons of New Guinea.
+
+     *** A hall of costumes in one of the galleries of the Louvre
+     would, in every point of view, be an interesting
+     establishment.  It would furnish an admirable treat to the
+     curiosity of a great number of persons, excellent models to
+     the artist, and useful subjects of meditation to the
+     physician, the philosopher and the legislator.
+
+     Picture to yourself a collection of the various faces and
+     figures of every country and nation, exhibiting accurately,
+     color, features and form; what a field for investigation and
+     enquiry as to the influence of climate, customs, food, etc.
+     It might truly be called the science of man!  Buffon has
+     attempted a chapter of this nature, but it only serves to
+     exhibit more strikingly our actual ignorance. Such a
+     collection is said to have been begun at St. Petersburg, but
+     it is also said at the same time to be as imperfect as the
+     vocabulary of the three hundred languages.  The enterprise
+     would be worthy of the French nation.
+
+At the sight of so many rational beings, considering on the one hand the
+immensity of thoughts and sensations assembled in this place, and on the
+other hand, reflecting on the opposition of so many opinions, and the
+shock of so many passions of men so capricious, I struggled between
+astonishment, admiration, and secret dread--when the legislator
+commanded silence, and attracted all my attention.
+
+Inhabitants of earth! a free and powerful nation addresses you with
+words of justice and peace, and she offers you the sure pledges of her
+intentions in her own conviction and experience. Long afflicted with the
+same evils as yourselves, we sought for their source, and found them
+all derived from violence and injustice, erected into law by the
+inexperience of past ages, and maintained by the prejudices of the
+present. Then abolishing our artificial and arbitrary institutions,
+and recurring to the origin of all right and reason, we have found
+that there existed in the very order of nature and in the physical
+constitution of man, eternal and immutable laws, which only waited his
+observance to render him happy.
+
+O men! cast your eyes on the heavens that give you light, and on the
+earth that gives you bread! Since they offer the same bounties to you
+all--since from the power that gives them motion you have all received
+the same life, the same organs, have you not likewise all received the
+same right to enjoy its benefits? Has it not hereby declared you all
+equal and free? What mortal shall dare refuse to his fellow that which
+nature gives him?
+
+O nations! let us banish all tyranny and all discord; let us form but
+one society, one great family; and, since human nature has but one
+constitution, let there exist in future but one law, that of nature--but
+one code, that of reason--but one throne, that of justice--but one
+altar, that of union.
+
+He ceased; and an immense acclamation resounded to the skies. Ten
+thousand benedictions announced the transports of the multitude; and
+they made the earth re-echo JUSTICE, EQUALITY and UNION.
+
+But different emotions soon succeeded; soon the doctors and the chiefs
+of nations exciting a spirit of dispute, there was heard a sullen
+murmur, which growing louder, and spreading from group to group, became
+a vast disorder; and each nation setting up exclusive pretensions,
+claimed a preference for its own code and opinion.
+
+You are in error, said the parties, pointing one to the other. We alone
+are in possession of reason and truth. We alone have the true law,
+the real rule of right and justice, the only means of happiness and
+perfection. All other men are either blind or rebellious.
+
+And great agitation prevailed.
+
+Then the legislator, after enforcing silence, loudly exclaimed:
+
+What, O people! is this passionate emotion? Whither will this quarrel
+conduct you? What can you expect from this dissension? The earth has
+been for ages a field of disputation, and you have shed torrents of
+blood in your controversies. What have you gained by so many battles
+and tears? When the strong has subjected the weak to his opinion, has he
+thereby aided the cause of truth?
+
+O nations! take counsel of your own wisdom. When among yourselves
+disputes arise between families and individuals, how do you reconcile
+them? Do you not give them arbitrators?
+
+Yes, cried the whole multitude.
+
+Do so then to the authors of your present dissensions. Order those who
+call themselves your instructors, and who force their creeds upon
+you, to discuss before you their reasons. Since they appeal to your
+interests, inform yourselves how they support them.
+
+And you, chiefs and governors of the people! before dragging the masses
+into the quarrels resulting from your diverse opinions, let the reasons
+for and against your views be given. Let us establish one solemn
+controversy, one public scrutiny of truth--not before the tribunal of a
+corruptible individual, or of a prejudiced party, but in the grand forum
+of mankind--guarded by all their information and all their interests.
+Let the natural sense of the whole human race be our arbiter and judge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE SEARCH OF TRUTH.
+
+
+The people expressed their applause, and the legislator continued: To
+proceed with order, and avoid all confusion, let a spacious semicircle
+be left vacant in front of the altar of peace and union; let each system
+of religion, and each particular sect, erect its proper distinctive
+standard on the line of this semicircle; let its chiefs and doctors
+place themselves around the standard, and their followers form a column
+behind them.
+
+The semicircle being traced, and the order published, there instantly
+rose an innumerable multitude of standards, of all colors and of every
+form, like what we see in a great commercial port, when, on a day of
+rejoicing, a thousand different flags and streamers are floating from a
+forest of masts.
+
+At the sight of this prodigious diversity, I turned towards the Genius
+and said:
+
+I thought that the earth was divided only into eight or ten systems of
+faith, and I then despaired of a reconciliation; I now behold thousands
+of different sects, and how can I hope for concord?
+
+But these, replied the Genius, are not all; and yet they will be
+intolerant!
+
+Then, as the groups advanced to take their stations, he pointed out to
+me their distinctive marks, and thus began to explain their characters:
+
+That first group, said he, with a green banner bearing a crescent, a
+bandage, and a sabre, are the followers of the Arabian prophet. To say
+there is a God, without knowing what he is; to believe the words of a
+man, without understanding his language; to go into the desert to pray
+to God, who is everywhere; to wash the hands with water, and not abstain
+from blood; to fast all day, and eat all night; to give alms of their
+own goods, and to plunder those of others; such are the means of
+perfection instituted by Mahomet--such are the symbols of his followers;
+and whoever does not bear them is a reprobate, stricken with anathema,
+and devoted to the sword.
+
+A God of clemency, the author of life, has instituted these laws of
+oppression and murder: he made them for all the world, but has revealed
+them only to one man; he established them from all eternity, though he
+made them known but yesterday. These laws are abundantly sufficient
+for all purposes, and yet a volume is added to them. This volume was
+to diffuse light, to exhibit evidence, to lead men to perfection and
+happiness; and yet every page was so full of obscurities, ambiguities,
+and contradictions, that commentaries and explanations became necessary,
+even in the life-time of its apostle. Its interpreters, differing in
+opinion, divided into opposite and hostile sects. One maintains that Ali
+is the true successor; the other contends for Omar and Aboubekre. This
+denies the eternity of the Koran; that the necessity of ablutions and
+prayers. The Carmite forbids pilgrimages, and allows the use of wine;
+the Hakemite preaches the transmigration of souls. Thus they make up
+the number of seventy-two sects, whose banners are before you.* In this
+contestation, every one attributing the evidence of truth exclusively to
+himself, and taxing all others with heresy and rebellion, turns against
+them its sanguinary zeal. And their religion, which celebrates a mild
+and merciful God, the common father of all men,--changed to a torch of
+discord, a signal for war and murder, has not ceased for twelve hundred
+years to deluge the earth in blood, and to ravage and desolate the
+ancient hemisphere from centre to circumference.**
+
+     * The Mussulmen enumerate in common seventy-two sects, but I
+     read, while I resided among them, a work which gave an
+     account of more than eighty,--all equally wise and
+     important.
+
+     ** Read the history of Islamism by its own writers, and you
+     will be convinced that one of the principal causes of the
+     wars which have desolated Asia and Africa, since the days of
+     Mahomet, has been the apostolical fanaticism of its
+     doctrine.  Caesar has been supposed to have destroyed three
+     millions of men: it would be interesting to make a similar
+     calculation respecting every founder of a religious system.
+
+Those men, distinguished by their enormous white turbans, their broad
+sleeves, and their long rosaries, are the Imans, the Mollas, and the
+Muftis; and near them are the Dervishes with pointed bonnets, and the
+Santons with dishevelled hair. Behold with what vehemence they recite
+their professions of faith! They are now beginning a dispute about
+the greater and lesser impurities--about the matter and the manner of
+ablutions,--about the attributes of God and his perfections--about the
+Chaitan, and the good and wicked angels,--about death, the resurrection,
+the interrogatory in the tomb, the judgment, the passage of the narrow
+bridge not broader than a hair, the balance of works, the pains of hell,
+and the joys of paradise.
+
+
+Next to these, that second more numerous group, with white banners
+intersected with crosses, are the followers of Jesus. Acknowledging the
+same God with the Mussulmans, founding their belief on the same books,
+admitting, like them, a first man who lost the human race by eating an
+apple, they hold them, however, in a holy abhorrence; and, out of pure
+piety, they call each other impious blasphemers.
+
+The great point of their dissension consists in this, that after
+admitting a God one and indivisible the Christian divides him into three
+persons, each of which he believes to be a complete and entire God,
+without ceasing to constitute an identical whole, by the indivisibility
+of the three. And he adds, that this being, who fills the universe,
+has reduced himself to the body of a man; and has assumed material,
+perishable, and limited organs, without ceasing to be immaterial,
+infinite, and eternal. The Mussulman who does not comprehend these
+mysteries, rejects them as follies, and the visions of a distempered
+brain; though he conceives perfectly well the eternity of the Koran, and
+the mission of the prophet: hence their implacable hatreds.
+
+Again, the Christians, divided among themselves on many points, have
+formed parties not less violent than the Mussulmans; and their quarrels
+are so much the more obstinate, as the objects of them are inaccessible
+to the senses and incapable of demonstration: their opinions, therefore,
+have no other basis but the will and caprice of the parties. Thus,
+while they agree that God is a being incomprehensible and unknown, they
+dispute, nevertheless, about his essence, his mode of acting, and his
+attributes. While they agree that his pretended transformation into man
+is an enigma above the human understanding, they dispute on the junction
+or distinction of his two wills and his two natures, on his change
+of substance, on the real or fictitious presence, on the mode of
+incarnation, etc.
+
+Hence those innumerable sects, of which two or three hundred have
+already perished, and three or four hundred others, which still subsist,
+display those numberless banners which here distract your sight.
+
+The first in order, surrounded by a group in varied and fantastic
+dress, that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black and speckled
+garments--with heads shaved, or with tonsures, or with short hair--with
+red hats, square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long beards, is the
+standard of the Roman pontiff, who, uniting the civil government to
+the priesthood, has erected the supremacy of his city into a point of
+religion, and made of his pride an article of faith.
+
+On his right you see the Greek pontiff, who, proud of the rivalship of
+his metropolis, sets up equal pretensions, and supports them against the
+Western church by the priority of that of the East. On the left are the
+standards of two recent chiefs,* who, shaking off a yoke that had become
+tyrannical, have raised altar against altar in their reform, and wrested
+half of Europe from the pope. Behind these are the subaltern sects,
+subdivided from the principal divisions, the Nestorians, the Eutycheans,
+the Jacobites, the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Presbyterians,
+the Wicliffites, the Osiandrians, the Manicheans, the Pietists, the
+Adamites, the Contemplatives, the Quakers, the Weepers, and a hundred
+others,** all of distinct parties, persecuting when strong, tolerant
+when weak, hating each other in the name of a God of peace, forming each
+an exclusive heaven in a religion of universal charity, dooming each
+other to pains without end in a future state, and realizing in this
+world the imaginary hell of the other.
+
+     * Luther and Calvin.
+
+     ** Consult upon this subject Dictionnaire des Herseies par
+     l'Abbe Pluquet, in two volumes 8vo.: a work admirably
+     calculated to inspire the mind with philosophy, in the sense
+     that the Lacedemonians taught the children temperance by
+     showing to them the drunken Helots.
+
+After this group, observing a lonely standard of the color of hyacinth,
+round which were assembled men clad in all the different dresses of
+Europe and Asia:
+
+At least, said I, to the Genius, we shall find unanimity here.
+
+Yes, said he, at first sight and by a momentary accident. Dost thou not
+know that system of worship?
+
+Then, perceiving in Hebrew letters the monogram of the name of God, and
+the palms which the Rabbins held in their hands:
+
+True, said I, these are the children of Moses, dispersed even to this
+day, abhorring every nation, and abhorred and persecuted by all.
+
+Yes, he replied, and for this reason, that, having neither the time nor
+liberty to dispute, they have the appearance of unanimity. But no sooner
+will they come together, compare their principles, and reason on
+their opinions, than they will separate as formerly, at least into two
+principal sects;* one of which, taking advantage of the silence of their
+legislator, and adhering to the literal sense of his books, will deny
+everything that is not clearly expressed therein; and on this principle
+will reject as profane inventions, the immortality of the soul, its
+transmigration to places of pain or pleasure, its resurrection, the
+final judgment, the good and bad angels, the revolt of the evil Genius,
+and all the poetical belief of a world to come. And this highly-favored
+people, whose perfection consists in a slight mutilation of their
+persons,--this atom of a people, which forms but a small wave in the
+ocean of mankind, and which insists that God has made nothing but for
+them, will by its schism reduce to one-half, its present trifling weight
+in the scale of the universe.
+
+     * The Sadducees and Pharisees.
+
+He then showed me a neighboring group, composed of men dressed in white
+robes, wearing a veil over their mouths, and ranged around a banner of
+the color of the morning sky, on which was painted a globe cleft in two
+hemispheres, black and white: The same thing will happen, said he, to
+these children of Zoroaster,* the obscure remnant of a people once so
+powerful. At present, persecuted like the Jews, and dispersed among
+all nations, they receive without discussion the precepts of the
+representative of their prophet. But as soon as the Mobed and the
+Destours** shall assemble, they will renew the controversy about the
+good and the bad principle; on the combats of Ormuzd, God of light, and
+Ahrimanes, God of darkness; on the direct and allegorical sense; on
+the good and evil Genii; on the worship of fire and the elements; on
+impurities and ablutions; on the resurrection of the soul and body, or
+only of the soul;*** on the renovation of the present world, and on that
+which is to take its place. And the Parses will divide into sects, so
+much the more numerous, as their families will have contracted, during
+their dispersion, the manners and opinions of different nations.
+
+     * They are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name
+     of Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels.  They are
+     in Asia what the Jews are in Europe.  The name of their pope
+     or high priest is Mobed.
+
+     ** That is to say, their priests.  See, respecting the rites
+     of this religion, Henry Lord Hyde, and the Zendavesta.
+     Their costume is a robe with a belt of four knots, and a
+     veil over their mouth for fear of polluting the fire with
+     their breath.
+
+     *** The Zoroastrians are divided between two opinions; one
+     party believing that both soul and body will rise, the other
+     that it will be the soul only.  The Christians and
+     Mahometans have embraced the most solid of the two.
+
+Next to these, remark those banners of an azure ground, painted with
+monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and quadruple, with
+heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of fishes and tortoises;
+these are the ensigns of the sects of India, who find their gods in
+various animals, and the souls of their fathers in reptiles and insects.
+These men support hospitals for hawks, serpents, and rats, and they
+abhor their fellow creatures! They purify themselves with the dung and
+urine of cows, and think themselves defiled by the touch of a man! They
+wear a net over the mouth, lest, in a fly, they should swallow a soul
+in a state of penance,* and they can see a Pariah** perish with hunger!
+They acknowledge the same gods, but they separate into hostile bands.
+
+     * According to the system of the Metempsychosis, a soul, to
+     undergo purification, passes into the body of some insect or
+     animal.  It is of importance not to disturb this penance, as
+     the work must in that case begin afresh.
+
+     ** This is the name of a cast or tribe reputed unclean,
+     because they eat of what has enjoyed life.
+
+The first standard, retired from the rest, bearing a figure with four
+heads, is that of Brama, who, though the creator of the universe, is
+without temples or followers; but, reduced to serve as a pedestal to the
+Lingam,* he contents himself with a little water which the Bramin throws
+every morning on his shoulder, reciting meanwhile an idle canticle in
+his praise.
+
+     * See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, vol. 1.
+
+The second, bearing a kite with a scarlet body and a white head, is that
+of Vichenou, who, though preserver of the world, has passed part of his
+life in wicked actions. You sometimes see him under the hideous form
+of a boar or a lion, tearing human entrails, or under that of a horse,*
+shortly to come armed with a sword to destroy the human race, blot out
+the stars, annihilate the planets, shake the earth, and force the great
+serpent to vomit a fire which shall consume the spheres.
+
+     * These are the incarnations of Vichenou, or metamorphoses
+     of the sun.  He is to come at the end of the world, that is,
+     at the expiration of the great period, in the form of a
+     horse, like the four horses of the Apocalypse.
+
+The third is that of Chiven, God of destruction and desolation, who has,
+however, for his emblem the symbol of generation. He is the most wicked
+of the three, and he has the most followers. These men, proud of his
+character, express in their devotions to him their contempt for
+the other gods,* his equals and brothers; and, in imitation of his
+inconsistencies, while they profess great modesty and chastity, they
+publicly crown with flowers, and sprinkle with milk and honey, the
+obscene image of the Lingam.
+
+     * When a sectary of Chiven hears the name of Vichenou
+     pronounced, he stops his ears, runs, and purifies himself.
+
+In the rear of these, approach the smaller standards of a multitude of
+gods--male, female, and hermaphrodite. These are friends and relations
+of the principal gods, who have passed their lives in wars among
+themselves, and their followers imitate them. These gods have need of
+nothing, and they are constantly receiving presents; they are omnipotent
+and omnipresent, and a priest, by muttering a few words, shuts them up
+in an idol or a pitcher, to sell their favors for his own benefit.
+
+
+Beyond these, that cloud of standards, which, on a yellow ground, common
+to them all, bear various emblems, are those of the same god, who reins
+under different names in the nations of the East. The Chinese adores him
+in Fot,* the Japanese in Budso, the Ceylonese in Bedhou, the people of
+Laos in Chekia, of Pegu in Phta, of Siam in Sommona-Kodom, of Thibet
+in Budd and in La. Agreeing in some points of his history, they all
+celebrate his life of penitence, his mortifications, his fastings, his
+functions of mediator and expiator, the enmity between him and another
+god, his adversary, their battles, and his ascendency. But as they
+disagree on the means of pleasing him, they dispute about rites and
+ceremonies, and about the dogmas of interior doctrine and of public
+doctrine. That Japanese Bonze, with a yellow robe and naked head,
+preaches the eternity of souls, and their successive transmigrations
+into various bodies; near him, the Sintoist denies that souls can exist
+separate from the senses,** and maintains that they are only the effect
+of the organs to which they belong, and with which they must perish, as
+the sound of the flute perishes with the flute. Near him, the Siamese,
+with his eyebrows shaved, and a talipat screen*** in his hand,
+recommends alms, offerings, and expiations, at the same time that he
+preaches blind necessity and inexorable fate. The Chinese vo-chung
+sacrifices to the souls of his ancestors; and next him, the follower of
+Confucius interrogates his destiny in the cast of dice and the movement
+of the stars.**** That child, surrounded by a swarm of priests in yellow
+robes and hats, is the Grand Lama, in whom the god of Thibet has just
+become incarnate.*5 But a rival has arisen who partakes this benefit
+with him; and the Kalmouc on the banks of the Baikal, has a God similar
+to the inhabitant of Lasa. And they agree, also, in one important
+point--that god can inhabit only a human body. They both laugh at
+the stupidity of the Indian who pays homage to cow-dung, though they
+themselves consecrate the excrements of their high-priest.*6
+
+     * The original name of this god is Baits, which in Hebrew
+     signifies an egg.  The Arabs pronounce it Baidh, giving to
+     the dh an emphatic sound which makes it approach to dz.
+     Kempfer, an acurate traveler, writes it Budso, which must be
+     pronounced Boudso, whence is derived the name of Budsoist
+     and of Bonze, applied to the priests.  Clement of
+     Alexandria, in his Stromata, writes it Bedou, as it is
+     pronounced also by the Chingulais; and Saint Jerome, Boudda
+     and Boutta.  At Thibet they call it Budd; and hence the name
+     of the country called Boud-tan and Ti-budd: it was in this
+     province that this system of religion was first inculcated
+     in Upper Asia; La is a corruption of Allah, the name of God
+     in the Syriac language, from which many of the eastern
+     dialects appear to be derived.  The Chinese having neither b
+     nor d, have supplied their place by f and t, and have
+     therefore said Fout.
+
+     ** See in Kempfer the doctrine of the Sintoists, which is a
+     mixture of that of Epicurus and of the Stoics.
+
+     *** It is a leaf of the Latanier species of the palm-tree.
+     Hence the bonzes of Siam take the appellation of Talapoin.
+     The use of this screen is an exclusive privilege.
+
+     **** The sectaries of Confucius are no less addicted to
+     astrology than the bonzes.  It is indeed the malady of every
+     eastern nation.
+
+     *5 The Delai-La-Ma, or immense high priest of La, is the
+     same person whom we find mentioned in our old books of
+     travels, by the name of Prester John, from a corruption of
+     the Persian word Djehan, which signifies the world, to which
+     has been prefixed the French word prestre or pretre, priest.
+     Thus the priest world, and the god world are in the Persian
+     idiom the same.
+
+     *6 In a recent expedition the English have found certain
+     idols of the Lamas filled in the inside with sacred pastils
+     from the close stool of the high priest.  Mr. Hastings, and
+     Colonel Pollier, who is now at Lausanne, are living
+     witnesses of this fact, and undoubtedly worthy of credit.
+     It will be very extraordinary to observe, that this
+     disgusting ceremony is connected with a profound
+     philosophical system, to wit, that of the metempsychosis,
+     admitted by the Lamas.  When the Tartars swallow, the sacred
+     relics, which they are accustomed to do, they imitate the
+     laws of the universe, the parts of which are incessantly
+     absorbed and pass into the substance of each other.  It is
+     upon the model of the serpent who devours his tail, and this
+     serpent is Budd and the world.
+
+After these, a crowd of other banners, which no man could number, came
+forward into sight; and the genius exclaimed:
+
+I should never finish the detail of all the systems of faith which
+divide these nations. Here the hordes of Tartars adore, in the forms
+of beasts, birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who, under a
+principal, but indolent god, govern the universe. In their idolatry
+they call to mind the ancient paganism of the West. You observe the
+fantastical dress of the Chamans; who, under a robe of leather, hung
+round with bells and rattles, idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of
+snakes and heads of owls, invoke, with frantic cries and factitious
+convulsions, the dead to deceive the living. There, the black tribes of
+Africa exhibit the same opinions in the worship of their fetiches. See
+the inhabitant of Juida worship god in a great snake, which, unluckily,
+the swine delight to eat.* The Teleutean attires his god in a coat of
+several colors, like a Russian soldier.** The Kamchadale, observing that
+everything goes wrong in his frozen country, considers god as an old
+ill-natured man, smoking his pipe and hunting foxes and martins in his
+sledge.***
+
+     * It frequently happens that the swine devour the very
+     species of serpents the negroes adore, which is a source of
+     great desolation in the country.  President de Brosses has
+     given us, in his History of the Fetiche, a curious
+     collection of absurdities of this nature.
+
+     ** The Teleuteans, a Tartar nation, paint God as wearing a
+     vesture of all colors, particularly red and green; and as
+     these constitute the uniform of the Russian dragoons, they
+     compare him to this description of soldiers.  The Egyptians
+     also dress the God World in a garment of every color.
+     Eusebius Proep. Evang. p 115.  The Teleuteans call God Bou,
+     which is only an alteration of Boudd, the God Egg and World.
+
+     *** Consult upon this subject a work entitled, Description
+     des Peuples, soumis a la Russie, and it will be found that
+     the picture is not overcharged.
+
+But you may still behold a hundred savage nations who have none of the
+ideas of civilized people respecting God, the soul, another world, and a
+future life; who have formed no system of worship; and who nevertheless
+enjoy the rich gifts of nature in the irreligion in which she has
+created them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS CONTRADICTIONS.
+
+
+The various groups having taken their places, an unbounded silence
+succeeded to the murmurs of the multitude; and the legislator said:
+
+Chiefs and doctors of mankind! You remark how the nations, living apart,
+have hitherto followed different paths, each believing its own to be
+that of truth. If, however, truth is one, and opinions are various, it
+is evident that some are in error. If, then, such vast numbers of us
+are in the wrong, who shall dare to say, "I am in the right?" Begin,
+therefore, by being indulgent in your dissensions. Let us all seek truth
+as if no one possessed it. The opinions which to this day have governed
+the world, originating from chance, propagated in obscurity, admitted
+without discussion, accredited by a love of novelty and imitation, have
+usurped their empire in a clandestine manner. It is time, if they are
+well founded, to give a solemn stamp to their certainty, and legitimize
+their existence. Let us summon them this day to a general scrutiny, let
+each propound his creed, let the whole assembly be the judge, and let
+that alone be acknowledged as true which is so for the whole human race.
+
+Then, by order of position, the representative of the first standard on
+the left was allowed to speak:
+
+"You are not permitted to doubt," said their chief, "that our doctrine
+is the only true and infallible one. FIRST, it is revealed by God
+himself--"
+
+"So is ours," cried all the other standards, "and you are not permitted
+to doubt it."
+
+"But at least," said the legislator, "you must prove it, for we cannot
+believe what we do not know."
+
+"Our doctrine is proved," replied the first standard, "by numerous
+facts, by a multitude of miracles, by resurrections of the dead, by
+rivers dried up, by mountains removed--"
+
+"And we also have numberless miracles," cried all the others, and each
+began to recount the most incredible things.
+
+"THEIR miracles," said the first standard, "are imaginary, or the
+fictions of the evil spirit, who has deluded them."
+
+"They are yours," said the others, "that are imaginary;" and each group,
+speaking of itself, cried out:
+
+"None but ours are true, all the others are false."
+
+The legislator then asked: "Have you living witnesses of the facts?"
+
+"No," replied they all; "the facts are ancient, the witnesses are dead,
+but their writings remain."
+
+"Be it so," replied the legislator; "but if they contradict each other,
+who shall reconcile them?"
+
+"Just judge!" cried one of the standards, "the proof that our witnesses
+have seen the truth is, that they died to confirm it; and our faith is
+sealed by the blood of martyrs."
+
+"And ours too," said the other standards; "we have thousands of martyrs
+who have died in the most excruciating torments, without ever denying
+the truth."
+
+Then the Christians of every sect, the Mussulmans, the Indians, the
+Japanese, recited endless legends of confessors, martyrs, penitents,
+etc.
+
+And one of these parties, having denied the martyrology of the others:
+"Well," said they, "we will then die ourselves to prove the truth of our
+belief."
+
+And instantly a crowd of men, of every religion and of every sect,
+presented themselves to suffer the torments of death. Many even began
+to tear their arms, and to beat their heads and breasts, without
+discovering any symptom of pain.
+
+But the legislator, preventing them--"O men!" said he, "hear my words
+with patience. If you die to prove that two and two make four, will your
+death add any thing to this truth?"
+
+"No!" answered all.
+
+"And if you die to prove that they make five, will that make them five?"
+
+Again they all answered, "No."
+
+"What, then, is your persuasion to prove, if it changes not the
+existence of things? Truth is one--your persuasions are various; many of
+you, therefore, are in error. Now, if man, as is evident, can persuade
+himself of error, what is the persuasion of man to prove?
+
+"If error has its martyrs, what is the sure criterion of truth?
+
+"If the evil spirit works miracles, what is the distinctive character of
+God?
+
+"Besides, why resort forever to incomplete and insufficient miracles?
+Instead of changing the course of nature, why not rather change
+opinions? Why murder and terrify men, instead of instructing and
+correcting them?
+
+"O credulous, but opinionated mortals! none of us know what was done
+yesterday, what is doing to-day even under our eyes; and we swear to
+what was done two thousand years ago!
+
+"Oh, the weakness and yet the pride of men! The laws of nature
+are unchangeable and profound--our minds are full of illusion and
+frivolity--and yet we would comprehend every thing--determine every
+thing! Forgetting that it is easier for the whole human race to be in
+error, than to change the nature of the smallest atom."
+
+"Well, then," said one of the doctors, "let us lay aside the evidence
+of fact, since it is uncertain; let us come to argument--to the proofs
+inherent in the doctrine."
+
+Then came forward, with a look of confidence, an Iman of the law of
+Mahomet; and, having advanced into the circle, turned towards Mecca, and
+recited with great fervor his confession of faith. "Praise be to God,"
+said he, with a solemn and imposing voice, "the light shines with full
+evidence, and the truth has no need of examination." Then, showing the
+Koran, he exclaimed: "Here is the light of truth in its proper essence.
+There is no doubt in this book. It conducts with safety him who walks
+in darkness, and who receives without discussion the divine word which
+descended on the prophet, to save the simple and confound the wise.
+God has established Mahomet his minister on earth; he has given him the
+world, that he may subdue with the sword whoever shall refuse to receive
+his law. Infidels dispute, and will not believe; their obduracy comes
+from God, who has hardened their hearts to deliver them to dreadful
+punishments."*
+
+     * This passage contains the sense and nearly the very words
+     of the first chapter of the Koran; and the reader will
+     observe in general, that, in the pictures that follow, the
+     writer has endeavored to give as accurately as possible the
+     letter and spirit of the opinions of each party.
+
+At these words a violent murmur arose on all sides, and silenced the
+speaker. "Who is this man," cried all the groups, "who thus insults
+us without a cause? What right has he to impose his creed on us as
+conqueror and tyrant? Has not God endowed us, as well as him, with eyes,
+understanding, and reason? And have we not an equal right to use them,
+in choosing what to believe and what to reject? If he attacks us, shall
+we not defend ourselves? If he likes to believe without examination,
+must we therefore not examine before we believe?
+
+"And what is this luminous doctrine that fears the light? What is
+this apostle of a God of clemency, who preaches nothing but murder and
+carnage? What is this God of justice, who punishes blindness which
+he himself has made? If violence and persecution are the arguments of
+truth, are gentleness and charity the signs of falsehood?"
+
+A man then advancing from a neighboring group, said to the Iman:
+
+"Admitting that Mahomet is the apostle of the best doctrine,--the
+prophet of the true religion,--have the goodness at least to tell
+us whether, in the practice of his doctrine, we are to follow his
+son-in-law Ali, or his vicars Omar and Aboubekre?"*
+
+     * These are the two grand parties into which the Mussulmans
+     are divided.  The Turks have embraced the second, the
+     Persians the first.
+
+At the sound of these names a terrible schism arose among the Mussulmans
+themselves. The partisans of Ali and those of Omar, calling out heretics
+and blasphemers, loaded each other with execrations. The quarrel became
+so violent that neighboring groups were obliged to interfere, to prevent
+their coming to blows. At length, tranquillity being somewhat restored,
+the legislator said to the Imans:
+
+"See the consequences of your principles! If you yourselves were to
+carry them into practice, you would destroy each other to the last man.
+Is it not the first law of God that man should live?"
+
+Then, addressing himself to the other groups, he continued:
+
+"Doubtless this intolerant and exclusive spirit shocks every idea of
+justice, and overturns the whole foundation of morals and society; but
+before we totally reject this code of doctrine, is it not proper to hear
+some of its dogmas? Let us not pronounce on the forms, without having
+some knowledge of the substance."
+
+The groups having consented, the Iman began to expound how God, having
+sent to the nations lost in idolatry twenty-four thousand prophets, had
+finally sent the last, the seal and perfection of all, Mahomet; on whom
+be the salvation of peace: how, to prevent the divine word from being
+any longer perverted by infidels, the supreme goodness had itself
+written the pages of the Koran. Then, explaining the particular dogmas
+of Islamism, the Iman unfolded how the Koran, partaking of the divine
+nature, was uncreated and eternal, like its author: how it had been sent
+leaf by leaf, in twenty-four thousand nocturnal apparitions of the angel
+Gabriel: how the angel announced himself by a gentle knocking, which
+threw the prophet into a cold sweat: how in the vision of one night
+he had travelled over ninety heavens, riding on the beast Borack, half
+horse and half woman: how, endowed with the gift of miracles, he walked
+in the sunshine without a shadow, turned dry trees to green, filled
+wells and cisterns with water, and split in two the body of the moon:
+how, by divine command, Mahomet had propagated, sword in hand, the
+religion the most worthy of God by its sublimity, and the most proper
+for men by the simplicity of its practice; since it consisted in only
+eight or ten points:--To profess the unity of God; to acknowledge
+Mahomet as his only prophet; to pray five times a day; to fast one month
+in the year; to go to Mecca once in our life; to pay the tenth of all
+we possess; to drink no wine; to eat no pork; and to make war upon
+the infidels.* He taught that by these means every Mussulman becoming
+himself an apostle and martyr, should enjoy in this world many
+blessings; and at his death, his soul, weighed in the balance of works,
+and absolved by the two black angels, should pass the infernal pit on
+the bridge as narrow as a hair and as sharp as the edge of a sword, and
+should finally be received to a region of delight, which is watered with
+rivers of milk and honey, and embalmed in all the perfumes of India
+and Arabia; and where the celestial Houris--virgins always chaste--are
+eternally crowning with repeated favors the elect of God, who preserve
+an eternal youth.
+
+     * Whatever the advocates for the philosophy and civilization
+     of the Turks may assert, to make war upon infidels is
+     considered by them as an obligatory precept and an act of
+     religion.  See Reland de Relig. Mahom.
+
+At these words an involuntary smile was seen on all their lips; and the
+various groups, reasoning on these articles of faith, exclaimed with one
+voice:
+
+"Is it possible that reasonable beings can admit such reveries? Would
+you not think it a chapter from The Thousand and One Nights?"
+
+A Samoyede advanced into the circle: "The paradise of Mahomet," said
+he, "appears to me very good; but one of the means of gaining it is
+embarrassing: for if we must neither eat nor drink between the rising
+and setting sun, as he has ordered, how are we to practise that fast in
+my country, where the sun continues above the horizon six months without
+setting?"
+
+"That is impossible," cried all the Mussulman doctors, to support the
+teaching of the prophet; but a hundred nations having attested the fact,
+the infallibility of Mahomet could not but receive a severe shock.
+
+"It is singular," said an European, "that God should be constantly
+revealing what takes place in heaven, without ever instructing us what
+is doing on the earth."
+
+"For my part," said an American, "I find a great difficulty in the
+pilgrimage. For suppose twenty-five years to a generation, and only a
+hundred millions of males on the globe,--each being obliged to go to
+Mecca once in his life,--there must be four millions a year on the
+journey; and as it would be impracticable for them to return the same
+year, the numbers would be doubled--that is, eight millions: where
+would you find provisions, lodgings, water, vessels, for this universal
+procession? Here must be miracles indeed!"
+
+"The proof," said a catholic doctor, "that the religion of Mahomet is
+not revealed, is that the greater part of the ideas which serve for its
+basis existed a long time before, and that it is only a confused mixture
+of truths disfigured and taken from our holy religion and from that
+of the Jews; which an ambitious man has made to serve his projects of
+domination, and his worldly views. Look through his book; you will see
+nothing there but the histories of the Bible and the Gospel travestied
+into absurd fables--into a tissue of vague and contradictory
+declamations, and ridiculous or dangerous precepts.
+
+"Analyze the spirit of these precepts, and the conduct of their apostle;
+you will find there an artful and audacious character, which, to obtain
+its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of the people it had
+to govern. It is speaking to simple men, and it entertains them with
+miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and it flatters their vanity
+by despising science; they are poor and rapacious, and it excites their
+cupidity by the hope of pillage; having nothing at first to give them on
+earth, it tells them of treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire
+death as a supreme good; it threatens cowards with hell; it rewards the
+brave with paradise; it sustains the weak with the opinion of fatality;
+in short, it produces the attachment it wants by all the allurements of
+sense, and all the power of the passions.
+
+"How different is the character of our religion! and how completely does
+its empire, founded on the counteraction of the natural temper, and the
+mortification of all our passions, prove its divine origin! How forcibly
+does its mild and compassionate morality, its affections altogether
+spiritual, attest its emanation from God! Many of its doctrines, it is
+true, soar above the reach of the understanding, and impose on reason
+a respectful silence; but this more fully demonstrates its revelation,
+since the human mind could never have imagined such mysteries."
+
+Then, holding the Bible in one hand and the four Gospels in the other,
+the doctor began to relate that, in the beginning, God, after passing an
+eternity in idleness, took the resolution, without any known cause, of
+making the world out of nothing; that having created the whole universe
+in six days, he found himself fatigued on the seventh; that having
+placed the first human pair in a garden of delights, to make them
+completely happy, he forbade their tasting a particular fruit which he
+placed within their reach; that these first parents, having yielded
+to the temptation, all their race (which were not yet born) had been
+condemned to bear the penalty of a fault which they had not committed;
+that, after having left the human race to damn themselves for four or
+five thousand years, this God of mercy ordered a well beloved son, whom
+he had engendered without a mother, and who was as old as himself, to go
+and be put to death on the earth; and this for the salvation of
+mankind; of whom much the greater portion, nevertheless, have ever since
+continued in the way of perdition; that to remedy this new difficulty,
+this same God, born of a virgin, having died and risen from the dead,
+assumes a new existence every day, and in the form of a piece of bread,
+multiplies himself by millions at the voice of one of the basest of
+men. Then, passing on to the doctrine of the sacraments, he was going to
+treat at large on the power of absolution and reprobation, of the means
+of purging all sins by a little water and a few words, when, uttering
+the words indulgence, power of the pope, sufficient grace, and
+efficacious grace, he was interrupted by a thousand cries.
+
+"It is a horrible abuse," cried the Lutherans, "to pretend to remit sins
+for money."
+
+"The notion of the real presence," cried the Calvinists, "is contrary to
+the text of the Gospel."
+
+"The pope has no right to decide anything of himself," cried the
+Jansenists; and thirty other sects rising up, and accusing each other
+of heresies and errors, it was no longer possible to hear anything
+distinctly.
+
+Silence being at last restored, the Mussulmans observed to the
+legislator:
+
+"Since you have rejected our doctrine as containing things incredible,
+can you admit that of the Christians? Is not theirs still more contrary
+to common sense and justice? A God, immaterial and infinite, to become
+a man! to have a son as old as himself! This god-man to become bread,
+to be eaten and digested! Have we any thing equal to that? Have the
+Christians an exclusive right of setting up a blind faith? And will you
+grant them privileges of belief to our detriment?"
+
+Some savage tribes then advanced: "What!" said they, "because a man
+and woman ate an apple six thousand years ago, all the human race
+are damned? And you call God just? What tyrant ever rendered children
+responsible for the faults of their fathers? What man can answer for the
+actions of another? Does not this overturn every idea of justice and of
+reason?"
+
+Others exclaimed: "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these
+pretended facts? Can we receive them without examining the evidence? The
+least action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are
+ordered to believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!"
+
+A Jewish Rabbin then addressing the assembly, said: "As to the
+fundamental facts, we are sureties; but with regard to their form and
+their application, the case is different, and the Christians are here
+condemned by their own arguments. For they cannot deny that we are the
+original source from which they are derived--the primitive stock on
+which they are grafted; and hence the reasoning is very short: Either
+our law is from God, and then theirs is a heresy, since it differs from
+ours, or our law is not from God, and then theirs falls at the same
+time."
+
+"But you must make this distinction," replied the Christian: "Your law
+is from God as typical and preparative, but not as final and absolute:
+you are the image of which we are the substance."
+
+"We know," replied the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but they
+are absolutely gratuitous and false. Your system turns altogether on
+mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical interpretations.* With
+violent distortions on the letter of our books, you substitute the most
+chimerical ideas for the true ones, and find in them whatever pleases
+you; as a roving imagination will find figures in the clouds. Thus
+you have made a spiritual Messiah of that which, in the spirit of our
+prophets, is only a temporal king. You have made a redemption of the
+human race out of the simple re-establishment of our nation. Your
+conception of the Virgin is founded on a single phrase, of which you
+have changed the meaning. Thus you make from our Scriptures whatever
+your fancy dictates; you even find there your trinity; though there is
+not a word that has the most distant allusion to such a thing; and it is
+an invention of profane writers, admitted into your system with a host
+of other opinions, of every religion and of every sect, during the
+anarchy of the first three centuries of your era."
+
+     * When we read the Fathers of the church, and see upon what
+     arguments they have built the edifice of religion, we are
+     inexpressibly astonished with their credulity or their
+     knavery: but allegory was the rage of that period; the
+     Pagans employed it to explain the actions of their gods, and
+     the Christians acted in the same spirit when they employed
+     it after their fashion.
+
+At these words, the Christian doctors, crying sacrilege and blasphemy,
+sprang forward in a transport of fury to fall upon the Jew; and a troop
+of monks, in motley dresses of black and white, advanced with a standard
+on which were painted pincers, gridirons, lighted fagots, and the words
+Justice, Charity, Mercy.* "It is necessary," said they, "to make an
+example of these impious wretches, and burn them for the glory of God."
+They began even to prepare the pile, when a Mussulman answered in a
+strain of irony:
+
+"This, then, is that religion of peace, that meek and beneficent system
+which you so much extol! This is that evangelical charity which combats
+infidelity with persuasive mildness, and repays injuries with patience!
+Ye hypocrites! It is thus that you deceive mankind--thus that you
+propagate your accursed errors! When you were weak, you preached
+liberty, toleration, peace; when you are strong, you practise
+persecution and violence--"
+
+     * This description answers exactly to the banner of the
+     Inquisition of Spanish Jacobins.
+
+And he was going to begin the history of the wars and slaughters of
+Christianity, when the legislator, demanding silence, suspended this
+scene of discord.
+
+The monks, affecting a tone of meekness and humility, exclaimed: "It is
+not ourselves that we would avenge; it is the cause of God; it is the
+glory of God that we defend."
+
+"And what right have you, more than we," said the Imans, "to constitute
+yourselves the representatives of God? Have you privileges that we have
+not? Are you not men like us?"
+
+"To defend God," said another group, "to pretend to avenge him, is to
+insult his wisdom and his power. Does he not know, better than men, what
+befits his dignity?"
+
+"Yes," replied the monks, "but his ways are secret."
+
+"And it remains for you to prove," said the Rabbins, "that you have the
+exclusive privilege of understanding them."
+
+Then, proud of finding supporters to their cause, the Jews thought that
+the books of Moses were going to be triumphant, when the Mobed (high
+priest) of the Parses obtained leave to speak.
+
+"We have heard," said he, "the account of the Jews and Christians of the
+origin of the world; and, though greatly mutilated, we find in it some
+facts which we admit. But we deny that they are to be attributed to the
+legislator of the Hebrews. It was not he who made known to men these
+sublime truths, these celestial events. It was not to him that God
+revealed them, but to our holy prophet Zoroaster: and the proof of this
+is in the very books that they refer to. Examine with attention the
+laws, the ceremonies, the precepts established by Moses in those
+books; you will not find the slightest indication, either expressed or
+understood, of what constitutes the basis of the Jewish and Christian
+theology. You nowhere find the least trace of the immortality of the
+soul, or of a future life, or of heaven, or of hell, or of the revolt of
+the principal angel, author of the evils of the human race. These ideas
+were not known to Moses, and the reason is very obvious: it was not
+till four centuries afterwards that Zoroaster first evangelized them in
+Asia.*
+
+     * See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceive
+     myself to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400
+     years before Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.
+
+"Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not till
+after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first kings, that
+these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then their appearance
+was obscure and gradual, according to the progress of the political
+relations between your ancestors and ours. It was especially when,
+having been conquered by the kings of Nineveh and Babylon and
+transported to the banks of the Tygris and the Euphrates, where they
+resided for three successive generations, that they imbibed manners and
+opinions which had been rejected as contrary to their law. When our
+king Cyrus had delivered them from slavery, their heart was won to us
+by gratitude; they became our disciples and imitators; and they admitted
+our dogmas in the revision of their books;* for your Genesis, in
+particular, was never the work of Moses, but a compilation drawn up
+after the return from the Babylonian captivity, in which are inserted
+the Chaldean opinions of the origin of the world.
+
+     * In the first periods of the Christian church, not only the
+     most learned of those who have since been denominated
+     heretics, but many of the orthodox conceived Moses to have
+     written neither the law nor the Pentateuch, but that the
+     work was a compilation made by the elders of the people and
+     the Seventy, who, after the death of Moses, collected his
+     scattered ordinances, and mixed with them things that were
+     extraneous; similar to what happened as to the Koran of
+     Mahomet.  See Les Clementines, Homel. 2. sect. 51. and
+     Homel. 3. sect. 42.
+
+     Modern critics, more enlightened or more attentive than the
+     ancients, have found in Genesis in particular, marks of its
+     having been composed on the return from the captivity; but
+     the principal proofs have escaped them.  These I mean to
+     exhibit in an analysis of the book of Genesis, in which I
+     shall demonstrate that the tenth chapter, among others,
+     which treats of the pretended generations of the man called
+     Noah, is a real geographical picture of the world, as it was
+     known to the Hebrews at the epoch of the captivity, which
+     was bounded by Greece or Hellas at the West, mount Caucasus
+     at the North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egypt
+     at the South. All the pretended personages from Adam to
+     Abraham, or his father Terah, are mythological beings,
+     stars, constellations, countries. Adam is Bootes: Noah is
+     Osiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to say Capricorn,
+     or the celestial Genius that opened the year.  The
+     Alexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrod
+     was supposed by the Persians to be their first king, as
+     having invented the art of hunting, and that he was
+     translated into heaven, where he appears under the name of
+     Orion.
+
+"At first the pure followers of the law, opposing to the emigrants the
+letter of the text and the absolute silence of the prophet, endeavored
+to repel these innovations; but they ultimately prevailed, and our
+doctrine, modified by your ideas, gave rise to a new sect.
+
+"You expected a king to restore your political independence; we
+announced a God to regenerate and save mankind. From this combination of
+ideas, your Essenians laid the foundation of Christianity: and whatever
+your pretensions may be, Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your
+system of spiritual beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster."
+
+The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting from
+the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as they are
+found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in six gahans,*
+the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a divine place, under
+the reign of perfect good; the introduction of evil into the world by
+the great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the revolt and battles of the
+Genius of evil and darkness against Ormuzd, God of good and of light;
+the division of the angels into white and black, or good and bad; their
+hierarchal orders, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end
+of the world at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the
+lamb, the regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the
+regions of happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the bridge
+of the bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of Mithras;
+the unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism of new-born
+children; the unction of the dead; the confession of sins; and, in
+a word, he recited so many things analagous to those of the three
+preceding religions, that his discourse seemed like a commentary or a
+continuation of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**
+
+     * Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods of
+     time. These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousands
+     of God or of light, meaning the six summer months.  In the
+     first, say the Persians, God created (arranged in order) the
+     heavens; in the second the waters; in the third the earth;
+     in the fourth trees; in the fifth animals; and in the sixth
+     man; corresponding with the account in Genesis.  For
+     particulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry Lord, ch. 2, on the
+     religion of the ancient Persians.  It is remarkable that the
+     same tradition is found in the sacred books of the
+     Etrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all things
+     had comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelve
+     thousand years, which period was distributed to the twelve
+     houses of the sun.  In the first thousand, God made heaven
+     and earth; in the second the firmament; in the third the sea
+     and the waters; in the fourth the sun, moon and stars; in
+     the fifth the souls of animals, birds, and reptiles; in the
+     sixth man.  See Suidas, at the word Tyrrhena; which shows
+     first the identity of their theological and astrological
+     opinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather confusion
+     of ideas, between absolute and systematical creation; that
+     is, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature,
+     which were at first the period of the year, and afterwards
+     periods of 60, of 600, of 25,000, of 36,000 and of 432,000
+     years.
+
+     ** The modern Parses and the ancient Mithriacs, who are the
+     same sect, observe all the Christian sacraments, even the
+     laying on of hands in confirmation.  The priest of Mithra,
+     says Tertullian, (de Proescriptione, ch. 40) promises
+     absolution from sin on confession and baptism; and, if I
+     rightly remember, Mithra marks his soldiers in the forehead,
+     with the chrism called in the Egyptian Kouphi; he celebrates
+     the sacrifice of bread, which is the resurrection, and
+     presents the crown to his followers, menacing them at the
+     same time with the sword, etc.
+
+     In these mysteries they tried the courage of the initiated
+     with a thousand terrors, presenting fire to his face, a
+     sword to his breast, etc.; they also offered him a crown,
+     which he refused, saying, God is my crown: and this crown is
+     to be seen in the celestial sphere by the side of Bootes.
+     The personages in these mysteries were distinguished by the
+     names of the animal constellations.  The ceremony of mass is
+     nothing more than an imitation of these mysteries and those
+     of Eleusis.  The benediction, the Lord be with you, is a
+     literal translation of the formula of admission chou-k, am,
+     p-ka.  See Beausob. Hist. Du Manicheisme, vol. ii.
+
+But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out against
+this recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and worshippers of
+fire, charged them with falsehood, interpolations, falsification of
+facts; and there arose a violent dispute as to the dates of the
+events, their order and succession, the origin of the doctrines, their
+transmission from nation to nation, the authenticity of the books on
+which they are founded, the epoch of their composition, the character
+of their compilers, and the validity of their testimony. And the various
+parties, pointing out reciprocally to each other, the contradictions,
+improbabilities, and forgeries, accused one another of having
+established their belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd
+fables, invented without discernment, and admitted without examination
+by unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown
+epochs.
+
+A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various Indian
+sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions of the Jews
+and the Parses, said:
+
+"What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly set
+themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the depositaries of
+its archives? To hear their calculations of five or six thousand years,
+it would seem that the world was of yesterday; whereas our monuments
+prove a duration of many thousands of centuries. And for what reason are
+their books to be preferred to ours? Are then the Vedes, the Chastres,
+and the Pourans inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the
+Zadders?* And is not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as
+valid as that of the fathers and the gods of the West? Ah! if it were
+permitted to reveal our mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did
+not justly conceal them from every eye!"
+
+
+These are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos; they are sometimes written
+Vedams, Pouranams, Chastrans, because the Hindoos, like the Persians,
+are accustomed to give a nasal sound to the terminations of their words,
+which we represent by the affixes on and an, and the Portuguese by the
+affixes om and am. Many of these books have been translated, thanks
+to the liberal spirit of Mr. Hastings, who has founded at Calcutta a
+literary society, and a printing press. At the same time, however,
+that we express our gratitude to this society, we must be permitted to
+complain of its exclusive spirit; the number of copies printed of each
+book being such as it is impossible to purchase them even in England;
+they are wholly in the hands of the East India proprietors. Scarcely
+even is the Asiatic Miscellany known in Europe; and a man must be very
+learned in oriental antiquity before he so much as hears of the Jones's,
+the Wilkins's, and the Halhed's, etc. As to the sacred books of the
+Hindoos, all that are yet in our hands are the Bhagvat Geeta, the
+Ezour-Vedam, the Bagavadam, and certain fragments of the Chastres
+printed at the end of the Bhagvat Geeta. These books are in Indostan
+what the Old and New Testament are in Christendom, the Koran in Turkey,
+the Zadder and the Zendavesta among the Parses, etc. When I have taken
+an extensive survey of their contents, I have sometimes asked myself,
+what would be the loss to the human race if a new Omar condemned them
+to the flames; and, unable to discover any mischief that would ensue, I
+call the imaginary chest that contains them, the box of Pandora.
+
+
+The Bramins stopping short at these words: "How can we admit your
+doctrine," said the legislator, "if you will not make it known? And how
+did its first authors propagate it, when, being alone possessed of it,
+their own people were to them profane? Did heaven reveal it to be kept a
+secret?"*
+
+     * The Vedas or Vedams are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos,
+     as the Bibles with us.  They are three in number; the Rick
+     Veda, the Yadjour Veda, and the Sama Veda; they are so
+     scarce in India, that the English could with great
+     difficulty find an original one, of which a copy is
+     deposited in the British Museum; they who reckon four Vedas,
+     include among them the Attar Veda, concerning ceremonies,
+     but which is lost.  There are besides commentaries named
+     Upanishada, one of which was published by Anquetil du Peron,
+     and entitled Oupnekhat, a curious work.  The date of these
+     books is more than twenty-five centuries prior to our era;
+     their contents prove that all the reveries of the Greek
+     metaphysicians come from India and Egypt.  Since the year
+     1788, the learned men of England are working in India a mine
+     of literature totally unknown in Europe, and which proves
+     that the civilization of India ascends to a very remote
+     antiquity.  After the Vedas come the Chastras amounting to
+     six.  They treat of theology and the Sciences. Afterwards
+     eighteen Pouranas, treating of Mythology and History. See
+     the Bahgouet-guita, the Baga Vadam, and the Ezour-Vedam,
+     etc.
+
+But the Bramins persisting in their silence: "Let them have the honor of
+the secret," said a European: "Their doctrine is now divulged; we have
+their books, and I can give you the substance of them."
+
+Then beginning with an abstract of the four Vedes, the eighteen Pourans,
+and the five or six Chastres, he recounted how a being, infinite,
+eternal, immaterial and round, after having passed an eternity in
+self-contemplation, and determining at last to manifest himself,
+separated the male and female faculties which were in him, and performed
+an act of generation, of which the Lingam remains an emblem; how that
+first act gave birth to three divine powers, Brama, Bichen or Vichenou,
+and Chib or Chiven;* whose functions were--the first to create, the
+second to preserve, and the third to destroy, or change the form of
+the universe. Then, detailing the history of their operations and
+adventures, he explained how Brama, proud of having created the world
+and the eight bobouns, or spheres of probation, thought himself superior
+to Chib, his equal; how his pride brought on a battle between them, in
+which these celestial globes were crushed like a basket of eggs; how
+Brama, vanquished in this conflict, was reduced to serve as a pedestal
+to Chib, metamorphosed into a Lingam; how Vichenou, the god mediator,
+has taken at different times to preserve the world, nine mortal forms
+of animals; how first, in shape of a fish, he saved from the universal
+deluge a family who repeopled the earth; how afterwards, in the form of
+a tortoise,** he drew from the sea of milk the mountain Mandreguiri
+(the pole); then, becoming a boar, he tore the belly of the giant
+Ereuniachessen, who was drowning the earth in the abyss of Djole, from
+whence he drew it out with his tusks; how, becoming incarnate in a black
+shepherd, and under the name of Christ-en, he delivered the world of the
+enormous serpent Calengem, and then crushed his head, after having been
+wounded by him in the heel.
+
+     * These names are differently pronounced according to the
+     different dialects; thus they say Birmah, Bremma, Brouma.
+     Bichen has been turned into Vichen by the easy exchange of a
+     B for a V, and into Vichenou by means of a grammatical
+     affix.  In the same manner Chib, which is synonymous with
+     Satan, and signifies adversary, is frequently written Chiba
+     and Chiv-en; he is called also Rouder and Routr-en, that is,
+     the destroyer.
+
+     ** This is the constellation testudo, or the lyre, which was
+     at first a tortoise, on account of its slow motion round the
+     Pole; then a lyre, because it is the shell of this reptile
+     on which the strings of the lyre are mounted.  See an
+     excellent memoir of M. Dupuis sur l'Origine des
+     Constellations.
+
+Then, passing on to the history of the secondary Genii, he related how
+the Eternal, to display his own glory, created various orders of angels,
+whose business it was to sing his praises and to direct the universe;
+how a part of these angels revolted under the guidance of an ambitious
+chief, who strove to usurp the power of God, and to govern all; how God
+plunged them into a world of darkness, there to undergo the punishment
+for their crimes; how at last, touched with compassion, he consented to
+release them, to receive them into favor, after they should undergo a
+long series of probations; how, after creating for this purpose fifteen
+orbits or regions of planets, and peopling them with bodies, he ordered
+these rebel angels to undergo in them eighty-seven transmigrations; he
+then explained how souls, thus purified, returned to the first source,
+to the ocean of life and animation from which they had proceeded; and
+since all living creatures contain portions of this universal soul,
+he taught how criminal it was to deprive them of it. He was finally
+proceeding to explain the rites and ceremonies, when, speaking of
+offerings and libations of milk and butter made to gods of copper and
+wood, and then of purifications by the dung and urine of cows,
+there arose a universal murmur, mixed with peals of laughter, which
+interrupted the orator.
+
+Each of the different groups began to reason on that religion: "They are
+idolators," said the Mussulmans; "and should be exterminated." "They are
+deranged in their intellect," said the followers of Confucius; "we
+must try to cure them." "What ridiculous gods," said others, "are these
+puppets, besmeared with grease and smoke! Are gods to be washed
+like dirty children, from whom you must brush away the flies, which,
+attracted by honey, are fouling them with their excrements!"
+
+But a Bramin exclaimed with indignation: "These are profound
+mysteries,--emblems of truth, which you are not worthy to hear."
+
+"And in what respect are you more worthy than we?" exclaimed a Lama of
+Tibet. "Is it because you pretend to have issued from the head of Brama,
+and the rest of the human race from the less noble parts of his body?
+But to support the pride of your distinctions of origin and castes,
+prove to us in the first place that you are different from other men;
+establish, in the next place, as historical facts, the allegories
+which you relate; show us, indeed, that you are the authors of all this
+doctrine; for we will demonstrate, if necessary, that you have only
+stolen and disfigured it; that you are only the imitators of the ancient
+paganism of the West; to which, by an ill assorted mixture, you have
+allied the pure and spiritual doctrine of our gods--a doctrine totally
+detached from the senses, and entirely unknown on earth till Beddou
+taught it to the nations."*
+
+     * All the ancient opinions of the Egyptian and Grecian
+     theologians are to be found in India, and they appear to
+     have been introduced, by means of the commerce of Arabia and
+     the vicinity of Persia, time immemorial.
+
+A number of groups having asked what was this doctrine, and who was this
+god, of whom the greater part had never heard the name, the Lama resumed
+and said:
+
+"In the beginning, a sole-existent and self-existent God, having passed
+an eternity in the contemplation of his own being, resolved to manifest
+his perfections out of himself, and created the matter of the world.
+The four elements being produced, but still in a state of confusion, he
+breathed on the face of the waters, which swelled like an immense bubble
+in form of an egg, which unfolding, became the vault or orb of heaven,
+enclosing the world.* Having made the earth, and the bodies of animals,
+this God, essence of motion, imparted to them a part of his own being
+to animate them; for this reason, the soul of everything that breathes
+being a portion of the universal soul, no one of them can perish; they
+only change their form and mould in passing successively into different
+bodies. Of all these forms, the one most pleasing to God is that of
+man, as most resembling his own perfections. When a man, by an absolute
+disengagement from his senses, is wholly absorbed in self-contemplation,
+he then discovers the divinity, and becomes himself God. Of all the
+incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest
+and most solemn was that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in
+Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of
+self-denial and self-annihilation."
+
+     * This cosmogony of the Lamas, the Bonzes, and even the
+     Bramins, as Henry Lord asserts, is literally that of the
+     ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians, says Porphyry, call Kneph,
+     intelligence, or efficient cause of the universe.  They
+     relate that this God vomited an egg, from which was produced
+     another God named Phtha or Vulcan, (igneous principle or the
+     sun) and they add, that this egg is the world.  Euseb.
+     Proep. Evang. p. 115.
+
+     They represent, says the same author in another place, the
+     God Kneph, or efficient cause, under the form of a man in
+     deep blue (the color of the sky) having in his hand a
+     sceptre, a belt round his body, and a small bonnet royal of
+     light feathers on his head, to denote how very subtile and
+     fugacious the idea of that being is. Upon which I shall
+     observe that Kneph in Hebrew signifies a wing, a feather,
+     and that this color of sky-blue is to be found in the
+     majority of the Indian Gods, and is, under the name of
+     Narayan, one of their most distinguishing epithets.
+
+Then, pursuing the history of Fot, the Lama continued:
+
+"He was born from the right flank of a virgin of royal blood, who did
+not cease to be a virgin for having become a mother; that the king of
+the country, uneasy at his birth, wished to destroy him, and for this
+purpose ordered a massacre of all the males born at that period, that
+being saved by shepherds, Beddou lived in the desert till the age of
+thirty years, at which time he began his mission to enlighten men and
+cast out devils; that he performed a multitude of the most astonishing
+miracles; that he spent his life in fasting and severe penitence, and at
+his death, bequeathed to his disciples a book containing his doctrines."
+
+And the Lama began to read:
+
+"He that leaveth his father and mother to follow me," says Fot, "becomes
+a perfect Samanean (a heavenly man).
+
+"He that practices my precepts to the fourth degree of perfection,
+acquires the faculty of flying in the air, of moving heaven and earth,
+of prolonging or shortening his life (rising from the dead).
+
+"The Samanean despises riches, and uses only what is strictly necessary;
+he mortifies his body, silences his passions, desires nothing, forms no
+attachments, meditates my doctrines without ceasing, endures injuries
+with patience, and bears no malice to his neighbor.
+
+"Heaven and earth shall perish," says Fot: "despise therefore your
+bodies, which are composed of the four perishable elements, and think
+only of your immortal soul.
+
+"Listen not to the flesh: fear and sorrow spring from the passions:
+stifle the passions and you destroy fear and sorrow.
+
+"Whoever dies without having embraced my religion," says Fot, "returns
+among men, until he embraces it."
+
+The Lama was going on with his reading, when the Christians interrupted
+him, crying out that this was their own religion adulterated--that Fot
+was no other than Jesus himself disfigured, and that the Lamas were the
+Nestorians and the Manicheans disguised and bastardized.*
+
+     * This is asserted by our missionaries, and among others by
+     Georgi in his unfinished work of the Thibetan alphabet: but
+     if it can be proved that the Manicheans were but
+     plagiarists, and the ignorant echo of a doctrine that
+     existed fifteen hundred years before them, what becomes of
+     the declarations of Georgi?  See upon this subject, Beausob.
+     Hist. du Manicheisme.
+
+But the Lama, supported by the Chamans, Bonzes, Gonnis, Talapoins of
+Siam, of Ceylon, of Japan, and of China, proved to the Christians, even
+from their own authors, that the doctrine of the Samaneans was known
+through the East more than a thousand years before the Christian era;
+that their name was cited before the time of Alexander, and that Boutta,
+or Beddou, was known before Jesus.*
+
+     * The eastern writers in general agree in placing the birth
+     of Beddou 1027 years before Jesus Christ, which makes him
+     the contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion,
+     they confound him.  It is certain that his doctrine
+     notoriously existed at that epoch; it is found entire in
+     that of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the Indian gymnosophists.
+     But the gymnosophists are cited at the time of Alexander as
+     an ancient sect already divided into Brachmans and
+     Samaneans.  See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien.
+     Pythagoras lived in the ninth century before Jesus Christ;
+     See chronology of the twelve ages; and Orpheus is of still
+     greater antiquity.  If, as is the case, the doctrine of
+     Pythagoras and that of Orpheus are of Egyptian origin, that
+     of Beddou goes back to the common source; and in reality the
+     Egyptian priests recite, that Hermes as he was dying said:
+     "I have hitherto lived an exile from my country, to which I
+     now return.  Weep not for me, I ascend to the celestial
+     abode where each of you will follow in his turn: there God
+     is: this life is only death."--Chalcidius in Thinaeum.
+
+     Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, the
+     sectaries of Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans.  Farther, Hermes
+     is no other than Beddou himself; for among the Indians,
+     Chinese, Lamas, etc., the planet Mercury and the
+     corresponding day of the week (Wednesday) bear the name of
+     Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rank
+     of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his
+     pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that
+     Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who,
+     placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year;
+     hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius,
+     and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius,
+     having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence his
+     serpent, which is the Hydra, emblem of the Nile (Hydor,
+     humidity); and from this serpent he seems to have derived
+     his name of Hermes, as Remes (with a schin) in the oriental
+     languages, signifies serpent.  Now Beddou and Hermes being
+     the same names, it is manifest of what antiquity is the
+     system ascribed to the former.  As to the name of Samanean,
+     it is precisely that of Chaman, still preserved in Tartary,
+     China, and India.  The interpretation given to it is, man of
+     the woods, a hermit mortifying the flesh, such being the
+     characteristic of this sect; but its literal meaning is,
+     celestial (Samaoui) and explains the system of those who are
+     called by it.--The system is the same as that of the
+     sectaries of Orpheus, of the Essenians, of the ancient
+     Anchorets of Persia, and the whole eastern country.  See
+     Porphyry, de Abstin. Animal.
+
+     These celestial and penitent men carried in India their
+     insanity to such an extreme as to wish not to touch the
+     earth, and they accordingly lived in cages suspended from
+     the trees, where the people, whose admiration was not less
+     absurd, brought them provisions.  During the night there
+     were frequent robberies, rapes and murders, and it was at
+     length discovered that they were committed by those men,
+     who, descending from their cages, thus indemnified
+     themselves for their restraint during the day.  The Bramins,
+     their rivals, embraced the opportunity of exterminating
+     them; and from that time their name in India has been
+     synonymous with hypocrite.  See Hist. de la Chine, in 5
+     vols. quarto, at the note page 30; Hist. de Huns, 2 vols.
+     and preface to the Ezour-Vedam.
+
+Then, retorting the pretensions of the Christians against themselves:
+"Prove to us," said the Lama, "that you are not Samaneans degenerated,
+and that the man you make the author of your sect is not Fot himself
+disguised. Prove to us by historical facts that he even existed at the
+epoch you pretend; for, it being destitute of authentic testimony,* we
+absolutely deny it; and we maintain that your very gospels are only the
+books of some Mithriacs of Persia, and the Essenians of Syria, who were
+a branch of reformed Samaneans."**
+
+     * There are absolutely no other monuments of the existence
+     of Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus
+     (Antiq. Jud. lib. 18, c.3,) a single phrase in Tacitus
+     (Annal. lib. 15, c. 44), and the Gospels.  But the passage
+     in Josephus is unanimously acknowledged to be apocryphal,
+     and to have been interpolated towards the close of the third
+     century, (See Trad. de joseph, par M. Gillet); and that of
+     Tacitus in so vague and so evidently taken from the
+     deposition of the Christians before the tribunals, that it
+     may be ranked in the class of evangelical records.  It
+     remains to enquire of what authority are these records.
+     "All the world knows," says Faustus, who, though a
+     Manichean, was one of the most learned men of the third
+     century, "All the world knows that the gospels were neither
+     written by Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, but by certain
+     unknown persons, who rightly judging that they should not
+     obtain belief respecting things which they had not seen,
+     placed at the head of their recitals the names of
+     contemporary apostles." See Beausob. vol. i. and Hist. des
+     Apologistes de la Relig. Chret. par Burigni, a sagacious
+     writer, who has demonstrated the absolute uncertainty of
+     those foundations of the Christian religion; so that the
+     existence of Jesus is no better proved than that of Osiris
+     and Hercules, or that of Fot or Beddou, with whom, says M.
+     de Guignes, the Chinese continually confound him, for they
+     never call Jesus by any other name than Fot.  Hist. de Huns.
+
+     ** That is to say, from the pious romances formed out of the
+     sacred legends of the mysteries of Mithra, Ceres, Isis,
+     etc., from whence are equally derived the books of the
+     Hindoos and the Bonzes.  Our missionaries have long remarked
+     a striking resemblance between those books and the gospels.
+     M. Wilkins expressly mentions it in a note in the Bhagvat
+     Geeta.  All agree that Krisna, Fot, and Jesus have the same
+     characteristic features: but religious prejudice has stood
+     in the way of drawing from this circumstance the proper and
+     natural inference.  To time and reason must it be left to
+     display the truth.
+
+
+At these words, the Christians set up a general cry, and a new dispute
+was about to begin; when a number of Chinese Chamans, and Talapoins of
+Siam, came forward and said that they would settle the whole
+controversy.  And one of them speaking for the whole exclaimed: "It is
+time to put an end to these frivolous contests by drawing aside the veil
+from the interior doctrine that Fot himself revealed to his disciples on
+his death bed.*
+
+     * The Budsoists have two doctrines, the one public and
+     ostensible, the other interior and secret, precisely like
+     the Egyptian priests. It may be asked, why this distinction?
+     It is, that as the public doctrine recommends offerings,
+     expiations, endowments, etc., the priests find their profit
+     in preaching it to the people; whereas the other, teaching
+     the vanity of worldly things, and attended with no lucre, it
+     is thought proper to make it known only to adepts. Can the
+     teachers and followers of this religion be better classed
+     than under the heads of knavery and credulity?
+
+"All these theological opinions," continued he, "are but chimeras. All
+the stories of the nature of the gods, of their actions and their lives,
+are but allegories and mythological emblems, under which are enveloped
+ingenious ideas of morals, and the knowledge of the operations of nature
+in the action of the elements and the movement of the planets.
+
+"The truth is, that all is reduced to nothing--that all is illusion,
+appearance, dream; that the moral metempsychosis is only the figurative
+sense of the physical metempsychosis, or the successive movement of
+the elements of bodies which perish not, but which, having composed one
+body, pass when that is dissolved, into other mediums and form other
+combinations. The soul is but the vital principle which results from
+the properties of matter, and from the action of the elements in those
+bodies where they create a spontaneous movement. To suppose that this
+product of the play of the organs, born with them, matured with them,
+and which sleeps with them, can subsist when they cease, is the romance
+of a wandering imagination, perhaps agreeable enough, but really
+chimerical.
+
+"God itself is nothing more than the moving principle, the occult force
+inherent in all beings--the sum of their laws and properties--the
+animating principle; in a word, the soul of the universe; which on
+account of the infinite variety of its connections and its operations,
+sometimes simple, sometimes multiple, sometimes active, sometimes
+passive, has always presented to the human mind an unsolvable enigma.
+All that man can comprehend with certainty is, that matter does not
+perish; that it possesses essentially those properties by which the
+world is held together like a living and organized being; that the
+knowledge of these laws with respect to man is what constitutes wisdom;
+that virtue and merit consist in their observance; and evil, sin, and
+vice, in the ignorance and violation of them; that happiness and misery
+result from these by the same necessity which makes heavy bodies descend
+and light ones rise, and by a fatality of causes and effects, whose
+chain extends from the smallest atom to the greatest of the heavenly
+bodies."*
+
+     * These are the very expressions of La Loubre, in his
+     description of the kingdom of Siam and the theology of the
+     Bronzes.  Their dogmas, compared with those of the ancient
+     philosophers of Greece and Italy, give a complete
+     representation of the whole system of the Stoics and
+     Epicureans, mixed with astrological superstitious, and some
+     traits of Pythagorism.
+
+At these words, a crowd of theologians of every sect cried out that this
+doctrine was materialism, and that those who profess it were impious
+atheists, enemies to God and man, who must be exterminated. "Very well,"
+replied the Chamans, "suppose we are in error, which is not impossible,
+since the first attribute of the human mind is to be subject to
+illusion; but what right have you to take away from men like yourselves,
+the life which Heaven has given them? If Heaven holds us guilty and in
+abhorrence, why does it impart to us the same blessings as to you? And
+if it treats us with forbearance, what authority have you to be less
+indulgent? Pious men! who speak of God with so much certainty and
+confidence, be so good as to tell us what it is; give us to comprehend
+what those abstract and metaphysical beings are, which you call God and
+soul, substance without matter, existence without body, life without
+organs or sensation. If you know those beings by your senses or their
+reflections, render them in like manner perceptible to us; or if you
+speak of them on testimony and tradition, show us a uniform account, and
+give a determinate basis to our creed."
+
+There now arose among the theologians a great controversy respecting God
+and his nature, his manner of acting, and of manifesting himself; on the
+nature of the soul and its union with the body; whether it exists before
+the organs, or only after they are formed; on the future life, and the
+other world. And every sect, every school, every individual, differing
+on all these points, and each assigning plausible reasons, and
+respectable though opposite authorities for his opinion, they fell into
+an inextricable labyrinth of contradictions.
+
+Then the legislator, having commanded silence and recalled the dispute
+to its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of nations; you came
+together in search of truth. At first, every one of you, thinking he
+possessed it, demanded of the others an implicit faith; but perceiving
+the contrariety of your opinions, you found it necessary to submit them
+to a common rule of evidence, and to bring them to one general term of
+comparison; and you agreed that each should exhibit the proofs of his
+doctrine. You began by alleging facts; but each religion and every sect,
+being equally furnished with miracles and martyrs, each producing an
+equal number of witnesses, and offering to support them by a voluntary
+death, the balance on this first point, by right of parity, remained
+equal.
+
+"You then passed to the trial of reasoning; but the same arguments
+applying equally to contrary positions--the same assertions, equally
+gratuitous, being advanced and repelled with equal force, and all having
+an equal right to refuse his assent, nothing was demonstrated. What
+is more, the confrontation of your systems has brought up more and
+extraordinary difficulties; for amid the apparent or adventitious
+diversities, you have discovered a fundamental resemblance, a common
+groundwork; and each of you pretending to be the inventor, and first
+depositary, have taxed each other with adulterations and plagiarisms;
+and thence arises a difficult question concerning the transmission of
+religious ideas from people to people.
+
+"Finally, to complete your embarrassment: when you endeavored to explain
+your doctrines to each other, they appeared confused and foreign, even
+to their adherents; they were founded on ideas inaccessible to your
+senses; you consequently had no means of judging of them, and you
+confessed yourselves in this respect to be only the echoes of your
+fathers. Hence follows this other question: how came they to the
+knowledge of your fathers, who themselves had no other means than you to
+conceive them? So that, on the one hand, the succession of these ideas
+being unknown, and on the other, their origin and existence being
+a mystery, all the edifice of your religious opinions becomes a
+complicated problem of metaphysics and history.
+
+"Since, however, these opinions, extraordinary as they may be, must have
+had some origin; since even the most abstract and fantastical ideas
+have some physical model, it may be useful to recur to this origin, and
+discover this model--in a word, to find out from what source the human
+understanding has drawn these ideas, at present so obscure, of God,
+of the soul, of all immaterial beings, which make the basis of so many
+systems; to unfold the filiation which they have followed, and the
+alterations which they have undergone in their transmissions and
+ramifications. If, then, there are any persons present who have made a
+study of these objects, let them come forward, and endeavor, in the face
+of nations, to dissipate the obscurity in which their opinions have so
+long remained."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ORIGIN AND FILIATION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.
+
+
+At these words, a new group, formed in an instant by men from various
+standards, but not distinguished by any, came forward into the circle;
+and one of them spoke in the name of the whole:
+
+"Delegates, friends of evidence and virtue! It is not surprising that
+the subject in question should be enveloped in so many clouds, since,
+besides its inherent difficulties, thought itself has always been
+encumbered with superadded obstacles peculiar to this study, where all
+free enquiry and discussion have been interdicted by the intolerance of
+every system. But now that our views are permitted to expand, we will
+expose to open day, and submit to the judgment of nations, that which
+unprejudiced minds, after long researches, have found to be the most
+reasonable; and we do this, not with the pretension of imposing a new
+creed, but with the hope of provoking new lights, and obtaining better
+information.
+
+"Doctors and instructors of nations! You know what thick darkness covers
+the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach.
+Imposed by authority, inculcated by education, and maintained by
+example, they pass from age to age, and strengthen their empire from
+habit and inattention. But if man, enlightened by reflection and
+experience, brings to mature examination the prejudices of his
+childhood, he soon discovers a multitude of incongruities and
+contradictions which awaken his sagacity and excite his reasoning
+powers.
+
+"At first, remarking the diversity and opposition of the creeds which
+divide the nations, he takes courage to question the infallibility
+which each of them claims, and arming himself with their reciprocal
+pretensions, he conceives that his senses and his reason, derived
+immediately from God, are a law not less holy, a guide not less sure,
+than the mediate and contradictory codes of the prophets.
+
+"If he then examines the texture of these codes themselves, he observes
+that their laws, pretended to be divine, that is, immutable and eternal,
+have arisen from circumstances of times, places, and persons; that
+they have issued one from the other, in a kind of genealogical order,
+borrowing from each other reciprocally a common and similar fund of
+ideas, which every lawgiver modifies according to his fancy.
+
+"If he ascends to the source of these ideas, he finds it involved in
+the night of time, in the infancy of nations, even to the origin of the
+world, to which they claim alliance; and there, placed in the darkness
+of chaos, in the empire of fables and traditions, they present
+themselves, accompanied with a state of things so full of prodigies,
+that it seems to forbid all access to the judgment: but this state
+itself excites a first effort of reason, which resolves the difficulty;
+for if the prodigies, found in the theological systems, have really
+existed--if, for instance, the metamorphoses, the apparitions, the
+conversations with one or many gods, recorded in the books of the
+Indians, the Hebrews, the Parses, are historical events, he must agree
+that nature in those times was totally different from what it is at
+present; that the present race of men are quite another species from
+those who then existed; and, therefore, he ought not to trouble his head
+about them.
+
+"If, on the contrary, these miraculous events have really not existed
+in the physical order of things, then he readily conceives that they are
+creatures of the human intellect; and this faculty being still capable
+of the most fantastical combinations, explains at once the phenomenon
+of these monsters in history. It only remains, then, to find how and
+wherefore they have been formed in the imagination. Now, if we examine
+with care the subjects of these intellectual creations, analyze the
+ideas which they combine and associate, and carefully weigh all the
+circumstances which they allege, we shall find that this first obscure
+and incredible state of things is explained by the laws of nature.
+We find that these stories of a fabulous kind have a figurative sense
+different from the apparent one; that these events, pretended to be
+marvellous, are simple and physical facts, which, being misconceived or
+misrepresented, have been disfigured by accidental causes dependent
+on the human mind, by the confusion of signs employed to represent
+the ideas, the want of precision in words, permanence in language,
+and perfection in writing; we find that these gods, for instance, who
+display such singular characters in every system, are only the physical
+agents of nature, the elements, the winds, the stars, and the meteors,
+which have been personified by the necessary mechanism of language
+and of the human understanding; that their lives, their manners, their
+actions, are only their mechanical operations and connections; and that
+all their pretended history is only the description of these phenomena,
+formed by the first naturalists who observed them, and misconceived by
+the vulgar who did not understand them, or by succeeding generations who
+forgot them. In a word, all the theological dogmas on the origin of the
+world, the nature of God, the revelation of his laws, the manifestation
+of his person, are known to be only the recital of astronomical facts,
+only figurative and emblematical accounts of the motion of the heavenly
+bodies. We are convinced that the very idea of a God, that idea at
+present so obscure, is, in its first origin, nothing but that of the
+physical powers of the universe, considered sometimes as a plurality by
+reason of their agencies and phenomena, sometimes as one simple and only
+being by reason of the universality of the machine and the connection of
+its parts; so that the being called God has been sometimes the wind,
+the fire, the water, all the elements; sometimes the sun, the stars, the
+planets, and their influence; sometimes the matter of the visible
+world, the totality of the universe; sometimes abstract and metaphysical
+qualities, such as space, duration, motion, intelligence; and we
+everywhere see this conclusion, that the idea of God has not been a
+miraculous revelation of invisible beings, but a natural offspring of
+the human intellect--an operation of the mind, whose progress it has
+followed and whose revolutions it has undergone, in all the progress
+that has been made in the knowledge of the physical world and its
+agents.
+
+"It is then in vain that nations attribute their religion to heavenly
+inspirations; it is in vain that their dogmas pretend to a primeval
+state of supernatural events: the original barbarity of the human race,
+attested by their own monuments,* belies these assertions at once.
+But there is one constant and indubitable fact which refutes beyond
+contradiction all these doubtful accounts of past ages. From this
+position, that man acquires and receives no ideas but through the medium
+of his senses,** it follows with certainty that every notion which
+claims to itself any other origin than that of sensation and experience,
+is the erroneous supposition of a posterior reasoning: now, it is
+sufficient to cast an eye upon the sacred systems of the origin of the
+world, and of the actions of the gods, to discover in every idea, in
+every word, the anticipation of an order of things which could not exist
+till a long time after. Reason, strengthened by these contradictions,
+rejecting everything that is not in the order of nature, and admitting
+no historical facts but those founded on probabilities, lays open its
+own system, and pronounces itself with assurance.
+
+     * It is the unanimous testimony of history, and even of
+     legends, that the first human beings were every where
+     savages, and that it was to civilize them, and teach them to
+     make bread, that the Gods manifested themselves.
+
+     ** The rock on which all the ancients have split, and which
+     has occasioned all their errors, has been their supposing
+     the idea of God to be innate and co-eternal with the soul;
+     and hence all the reveries developed in Plato and Jamblicus.
+     See the Timoeus, the Phedon, and De Mysteriis Egyptiorum,
+     sect. I, c. 3.
+
+"Before one nation had received from another nation dogmas already
+invented; before one generation had inherited ideas acquired by a
+preceding generation, none of these complicated systems could have
+existed in the world. The first men, being children of nature, anterior
+to all events, ignorant of all science, were born without any idea of
+the dogmas arising from scholastic disputes; of rites founded on
+the practice of arts not then known; of precepts framed after the
+development of passions; or of laws which suppose a language, a state
+of society not then in being; or of God, whose attributes all refer to
+physical objects, and his actions to a despotic state of government; or
+of the soul, or of any of those metaphysical beings, which we are told
+are not the objects of sense, and for which, however, there can be
+no other means of access to the understanding. To arrive at so many
+results, the necessary circle of preceding facts must have been
+observed; slow experience and repeated trials must have taught the
+rude man the use of his organs; the accumulated knowledge of successive
+generations must have invented and improved the means of living; and
+the mind, freed from the cares of the first wants of nature, must have
+raised itself to the complicated art of comparing ideas, of digesting
+arguments, and seizing abstract similitudes."
+
+
+I. Origin of the idea of God: Worship of the elements and of the
+physical powers of nature.
+
+
+"It was not till after having overcome these obstacles, and gone through
+a long career in the night of history, that man, reflecting on his
+condition, began to perceive that he was subjected to forces superior
+to his own, and independent of his will. The sun enlightened and warmed
+him, the fire burned him, the thunder terrified him, the wind beat upon
+him, the water overwhelmed him. All beings acted upon him powerfully and
+irresistibly. He sustained this action for a long time, like a machine,
+without enquiring the cause; but the moment he began his enquiries,
+he fell into astonishment; and, passing from the surprise of his first
+reflections to the reverie of curiosity, he began a chain of reasoning.
+
+"First, considering the action of the elements on him, he conceived an
+idea of weakness and subjection on his part, and of power and domination
+on theirs; and this idea of power was the primitive and fundamental type
+of every idea of God.
+
+"Secondly, the action of these natural existences excited in him
+sensations of pleasure or pain, of good or evil; and by a natural effect
+of his organization, he conceived for them love or aversion; he desired
+or dreaded their presence; and fear or hope gave rise to the first idea
+of religion.
+
+"Then, judging everything by comparison, and remarking in these beings a
+spontaneous movement like his own, he supposed this movement directed
+by a will,--an intelligence of the nature of his own; and hence, by
+induction, he formed a new reasoning. Having experienced that certain
+practices towards his fellow creatures had the effect to modify their
+affections and direct their conduct to his advantage, he resorted to
+the same practices towards these powerful beings of the universe. He
+reasoned thus with himself: When my fellow creature, stronger than I, is
+disposed to do me injury, I abase myself before him, and my prayer has
+the art to calm him. I will pray to these powerful beings who strike me.
+I will supplicate the intelligences of the winds, of the stars, of the
+waters, and they will hear me. I will conjure them to avert the evil
+and give me the good that is at their disposal; I will move them by my
+tears, I will soften them by offerings, and I shall be happy.
+
+"Thus simple man, in the infancy of his reason, spoke to the sun and to
+the moon; he animated with his own understanding and passions the great
+agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds, and vain actions, to change
+their inflexible laws. Fatal error! He prayed the stone to ascend,
+the water to mount above its level, the mountains to remove, and
+substituting a fantastical world for the real one, he peopled it with
+imaginary beings, to the terror of his mind and the torment of his race.
+
+"In this manner the ideas of God and religion have sprung, like all
+others, from physical objects; they were produced in the mind of man
+from his sensations, from his wants, from the circumstances of his life,
+and the progressive state of his knowledge.
+
+"Now, as the ideas of God had their first models in physical agents, it
+followed that God was at first varied and manifold, like the form under
+which he appeared to act. Every being was a Power, a Genius; and the
+first men conceived the universe filled with innumerable gods.
+
+"Again the ideas of God have been created by the affections of the human
+heart; they became necessarily divided into two classes, according to
+the sensations of pleasure or pain, love or hatred, which they inspired.
+
+"The forces of nature, the gods and genii, were divided into beneficent
+and malignant, good and evil powers; and hence the universality of these
+two characters in all the systems of religion.
+
+"These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were for a
+long time confused and ill-digested. Savage men, wandering in the woods,
+beset with wants and destitute of resources, had not the leisure to
+combine principles and draw conclusions; affected with more evils than
+they found pleasures, their most habitual sentiment was that of fear,
+their theology terror; their worship was confined to a few salutations
+and offerings to beings whom they conceived as greedy and ferocious as
+themselves. In their state of equality and independence, no man offered
+himself as mediator between men and gods as insubordinate and poor as
+himself. No one having superfluities to give, there existed no parasite
+by the name of priest, no tribute by the name of victim, no empire by
+the name of altar. Their dogmas and their morals were the same thing, it
+was only self-preservation; and religion, that arbitrary idea, without
+influence on the mutual relations of men, was a vain homage rendered to
+the visible powers of nature.
+
+"Such was the necessary and original idea of God."
+
+And the orator, addressing himself to the savage nations, continued:
+
+"We appeal to you, men who have received no foreign and factitious
+ideas; tell us, have you ever gone beyond what I have described? And
+you, learned doctors, we call you to witness; is not this the unanimous
+testimony of all ancient monuments?*
+
+     * It clearly results, says Plutarch, from the verses of
+     Orpheus and the sacred books of the Egyptians and Phrygians,
+     that the ancient theology, not only of the Greeks, but of
+     all nations, was nothing more than a system of physics, a
+     picture of the operations of nature, wrapped up in
+     mysterious allegories and enigmatical symbols, in a manner
+     that the ignorant multitude attended rather to their
+     apparent than to their hidden meaning, and even in what they
+     understood of the latter, supposed there to be something
+     more deep than what they perceived.  Fragment of a work of
+     Plutarch now lost, quoted by Eusebius, Proepar. Evang. lib.
+     3, ch. 1, p. 83.
+
+     The majority of philosophers, says Porphyry, and among
+     others Haeremon (who lived in Egypt in the first age of
+     Christianity), imagine there never to have been any other
+     world than the one we see, and acknowledged no other Gods of
+     all those recognized by the Egyptians, than such as are
+     commonly called planets, signs of the Zodiac, and
+     constellations; whose aspects, that is, rising and setting,
+     are supposed to influence the fortunes of men; to which they
+     add their divisions of the signs into decans and dispensers
+     of time, whom they style lords of the ascendant, whose
+     names, virtues in relieving distempers, rising, setting, and
+     presages of future events, are the subjects of almanacs (for
+     be it observed, that the Egyptian priests had almanacs the
+     exact counterpart of Matthew Lansberg's); for when the
+     priests affirmed that the sun was the architect of the
+     universe, Chaeremon presently concludes that all their
+     narratives respecting Isis and Osiris, together with their
+     other sacred fables, referred in part to the planets, the
+     phases of the moon, and the revolution of the sun, and in
+     part to the stars of the daily and nightly hemispheres and
+     the river Nile; in a word, in all cases to physical and
+     natural existences and never to such as might be immaterial
+     and incorporeal. . . .
+
+     All these philosophers believe that the acts of our will and
+     the motion of our bodies depend on those of the stars to
+     which they are subjected, and they refer every thing to the
+     laws of physical necessity, which they call destiny or
+     Fatum, supposing a chain of causes and effects which binds,
+     by I know not what connection, all beings together, from the
+     meanest atom to the supremest power and primary influence of
+     the Gods; so that, whether in their temples or in their
+     idols, the only subject of worship is the power of destiny.
+     Porphyr. Epist. ad Janebonem.
+
+II. Second system: Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism.
+
+
+"But those same monuments present us likewise a system more methodical
+and more complicated--that of the worship of all the stars; adored
+sometimes in their proper forms, sometimes under figurative emblems
+and symbols; and this worship was the effect of the knowledge men had
+acquired in physics, and was derived immediately from the first causes
+of the social state; that is, from the necessities and arts of the first
+degree, which are among the elements of society.
+
+"Indeed, as soon as men began to unite in society, it became necessary
+for them to multiply the means of subsistence, and consequently to
+attend to agriculture: agriculture, to be carried on with success,
+requires the observation and knowledge of the heavens. It was necessary
+to know the periodical return of the same operations of nature, and the
+same phenomena in the skies; indeed to go so far as to ascertain the
+duration and succession of the seasons and the months of the year. It
+was indispensable to know, in the first place, the course of the sun,
+who, in his zodiacal revolution, shows himself the supreme agent of
+the whole creation; then, of the moon, who, by her phases and periods,
+regulates and distributes time; then, of the stars, and even of the
+planets, which by their appearance and disappearance on the horizon and
+nocturnal hemisphere, marked the minutest divisions. Finally, it was
+necessary to form a whole system of astronomy,* or a calendar; and from
+these works there naturally followed a new manner of considering these
+predominant and governing powers. Having observed that the productions
+of the earth had a regular and constant relation with the heavenly
+bodies; that the rise, growth, and decline of each plant kept pace with
+the appearance, elevation, and declination of the same star or the same
+group of stars; in short, that the languor or activity of vegetation
+seemed to depend on celestial influences, men drew from thence an idea
+of action, of power, in those beings, superior to earthly bodies; and
+the stars, dispensing plenty or scarcity, became powers, genii,** gods,
+authors of good and evil.
+
+     * It continues to be repeated every day, on the indirect
+     authority of the book of Genesis, that astronomy was the
+     invention of the children of Noah.  It has been gravely
+     said, that while wandering shepherds in the plains of
+     Shinar, they employed their leisure in composing a planetary
+     system: as if shepherds had occasion to know more than the
+     polar star; and if necessity was not the sole motive of
+     every invention!  If the ancient shepherds were so studious
+     and sagacious, how does it happen that the modern ones are
+     so stupid, ignorant, and inattentive?  And it is a fact that
+     the Arabs of the desert know not so many as six
+     constellations, and understand not a word of astronomy.
+
+     ** It appears that by the word genius, the ancients denoted
+     a quality, a generative power; for the following words,
+     which are all of one family, convey this meaning: generare,
+     genos, genesis, genus, gens.
+
+"As the state of society had already introduced a regular hierarchy
+of ranks, employments and conditions, men, continuing to reason by
+comparison, carried their new notions into their theology, and formed a
+complicated system of divinities by gradation of rank, in which the sun,
+as first god,* was a military chief or a political king: the moon was
+his wife and queen; the planets were servants, bearers of commands,
+messengers; and the multitude of stars were a nation, an army of heroes,
+genii, whose office was to govern the world under the orders of their
+chiefs. All the individuals had names, functions, attributes, drawn from
+their relations and influences; and even sexes, from the gender of their
+appellations.**
+
+     * The Sabeans, ancient and modern, says Maimonides,
+     acknowledge a principal God, the maker and inhabitant of
+     heaven; but on account of his great distance they conceive
+     him to be inaccessible; and in imitation of the conduct of
+     people towards their kings, they employ as mediators with
+     him, the planets and their angels, whom they call princes
+     and potentates, and whom they suppose to reside in those
+     luminous bodies as in palaces or tabernacles, etc.  More-
+     Nebuchim.
+
+     ** According as the gender of the object was in the language
+     of the nation masculine or feminine, the Divinity who bore
+     its name was male or female.  Thus the Cappadocians called
+     the moon God, and the sun Goddess: a circumstance which
+     gives to the same beings a perpetual variety in ancient
+     mythology.
+
+"And as the social state had introduced certain usages and ceremonies,
+religion, keeping pace with the social state, adopted similar ones;
+these ceremonies, at first simple and private, became public and
+solemn; the offerings became rich and more numerous, and the rites more
+methodical; they assigned certain places for the assemblies, and began
+to have chapels and temples; they instituted officers to administer
+them, and these became priests and pontiffs: they established liturgies,
+and sanctified certain days, and religion became a civil act, a
+political tie.
+
+"But in this arrangement, religion did not change its first principles;
+the idea of God was always that of physical beings, operating good or
+evil, that is, impressing sensations of pleasure or pain: the dogma was
+the knowledge of their laws, or their manner of acting; virtue and sin,
+the observance or infraction of these laws; and morality, in its native
+simplicity, was the judicious practice of whatever contributes to the
+preservation of existence, the well-being of one's self and his fellow
+creatures.*
+
+     * We may add, says Plutarch, that these Egyptian priests
+     always regarded the preservation of health as a point of the
+     first importance, and as indispensably necessary to the
+     practice of piety and the service of the gods.  See his
+     account of Isis and Osiris, towards the end.
+
+"Should it be asked at what epoch this system took its birth, we shall
+answer on the testimony of the monuments of astronomy itself; that
+its principles appear with certainty to have been established about
+seventeen thousand years ago,* and if it be asked to what people it is
+to be attributed, we shall answer that the same monuments, supported
+by unanimous traditions, attribute it to the first tribes of Egypt; and
+when reason finds in that country all the circumstances which could lead
+to such a system; when it finds there a zone of sky, bordering on the
+tropic, equally free from the rains of the equator and the fogs of
+the North;** when it finds there a central point of the sphere of the
+ancients, a salubrious climate, a great, but manageable river, a soil
+fertile without art or labor, inundated without morbid exhalations, and
+placed between two seas which communicate with the richest countries, it
+conceives that the inhabitant of the Nile, addicted to agriculture
+from the nature of his soil, to geometry from the annual necessity of
+measuring his lands, to commerce from the facility of communications,
+to astronomy from the state of his sky, always open to observation, must
+have been the first to pass from the savage to the social state; and
+consequently to attain the physical and moral sciences necessary to
+civilized life.
+
+     * The historical orator follows here the opinion of M.
+     Dupuis, who, in his learned memoirs concerning the Origin of
+     the Constellations and Origin of all Worship, has assigned
+     many plausible reasons to prove that Libra was formerly the
+     sign of the vernal, and Aries of the autumnal equinox; that
+     is, that since the origin of the actual astronomical system,
+     the precession of the equinoxes has carried forward by seven
+     signs the primitive order of the zodiac.  Now estimating the
+     precession at about seventy years and a half to a degree,
+     that is, 2,115 years to each sign; and observing that Aries
+     was in its fifteenth degree, 1,447 years before Christ, it
+     follows that the first degree of Libra could not have
+     coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194
+     years before Christ; now, if you add 1790 years since
+     Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the
+     origin of the Zodiac.  The vernal equinox coincided with the
+     first degree of Aries, 2,504 years before Christ, and with
+     the first degree of Taurus 4,619 years before Christ.  Now
+     it is to be observed, that the worship of the Bull is the
+     principal article in the theological creed of the Egyptians,
+     Persians, Japanese, etc.; from whence it clearly follows,
+     that some general revolution took place among these nations
+     at that time. The chronology of five or six thousand years
+     in Genesis is little agreeable to this hypothesis; but as
+     the book of Genesis cannot claim to be considered as a
+     history farther back than Abraham, we are at liberty to make
+     what arrangements we please in the eternity that preceded.
+     See on this subject the analysis of Genesis, in the first
+     volume of New Researches on Ancient History; see also Origin
+     of Constellatians, by Dupuis, 1781; the Origin of Worship,
+     in 3 vols. 1794, and the Chronological Zodiac, 1806.
+
+     ** M. Balli, in placing the first astronomers at
+     Selingenakoy, near the Bailkal paid no attention to this
+     twofold circumstance: it equally argues against their being
+     placed at Axoum on account of the rains, and the Zimb fly of
+     which Mr. Bruce speaks.
+
+"It was, then, on the borders of the upper Nile, among a black race of
+men, that was organized the complicated system of the worship of the
+stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth and the
+labors of agriculture; and this first worship, characterized by their
+adoration under their own forms and natural attributes, was a simple
+proceeding of the human mind. But in a short time, the multiplicity of
+the objects of their relations, and their reciprocal influence, having
+complicated the ideas, and the signs that represented them, there
+followed a confusion as singular in its cause as pernicious in its
+effects."
+
+
+III. Third system. Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry.
+
+
+"As soon as this agricultural people began to observe the stars with
+attention, they found it necessary to individualize or group them; and
+to assign to each a proper name, in order to understand each other in
+their designation. A great difficulty must have presented itself in
+this business: First, the heavenly bodies, similar in form, offered
+no distinguishing characteristics by which to denominate them; and,
+secondly, the language in its infancy and poverty, had no expressions
+for so many new and metaphysical ideas. Necessity, the usual stimulus
+of genius, surmounted everything. Having remarked that in the annual
+revolution, the renewal and periodical appearance of terrestrial
+productions were constantly associated with the rising and setting
+of certain stars, and to their position as relative to the sun, the
+fundamental term of all comparison, the mind by a natural operation
+connected in thought these terrestrial and celestial objects, which were
+connected in fact; and applying to them a common sign, it gave to the
+stars, and their groups, the names of the terrestrial objects to which
+they answered.*
+
+     * "The ancients," says Maimonides, "directing all their
+     attention to agriculture, gave names to the stars derived
+     from their occupation during the year."  More Neb. pars 3.
+
+"Thus the Ethopian of Thebes named stars of inundation, or Aquarius,
+those stars under which the Nile began to overflow;* stars of the ox or
+the bull, those under which they began to plow; stars of the lion, those
+under which that animal, driven from the desert by thirst, appeared on
+the banks of the Nile; stars of the sheaf, or of the harvest virgin,
+those of the reaping season; stars of the lamb, stars of the two kids,
+those under which these precious animals were brought forth: and thus
+was resolved the first part of the difficulty.
+
+     * This must have been June.
+
+"Moreover, man having remarked in the beings which surrounded him
+certain qualities distinctive and proper to each species, and having
+thence derived a name by which to designate them, he found in the same
+source an ingenious mode of generalizing his ideas; and transferring
+the name already invented to every thing which bore any resemblance or
+analogy, he enriched his language with a perpetual round of metaphors.
+
+"Thus the same Ethiopian having observed that the return of the
+inundation always corresponded with the rising of a beautiful star
+which appeared towards the source of the Nile, and seemed to warn the
+husbandman against the coming waters, he compared this action to that
+of the animal who, by his barking, gives notice of danger, and he called
+this star the dog, the barker (Sirius). In the same manner he named the
+stars of the crab, those where the sun, having arrived at the tropic,
+retreated by a slow retrograde motion like the crab or cancer. He
+named stars of the wild goat, or Capricorn, those where the sun, having
+reached the highest point in his annuary tract, rests at the summit
+of the horary gnomon, and imitates the goat, who delights to climb the
+summit of the rocks. He named stars of the balance, or libra, those
+where the days and nights, being equal, seemed in equilibrium, like that
+instrument; and stars of the scorpion, those where certain periodical
+winds bring vapors, burning like the venom of the scorpion. In the same
+manner he called by the name of rings and serpents the figured traces of
+the orbits of the stars and the planets, and such was the general mode
+of naming all the stars and even the planets, taken by groups or as
+individuals, according to their relations with husbandry and terrestrial
+objects, and according to the analogies which each nation found between
+them and the objects of its particular soil and climate.*
+
+     * The ancients had verbs from the substantives crab, goat,
+     tortoise, as the French have at present the verbs serpenter,
+     coquetter.  The history of all languages is nearly the same.
+
+"From this it appeared that abject and terrestrial beings became
+associated with the superior and powerful inhabitants of heaven; and
+this association became stronger every day by the mechanism of language
+and the constitution of the human mind. Men would say by a natural
+metaphor: The bull spreads over the earth the germs of fecundity (in
+spring) he restores vegetation and plenty: the lamb (or ram) delivers
+the skies from the maleficent powers of winter; he saves the world from
+the serpent (emblem of the humid season) and restores the empire of
+goodness (summer, joyful season): the scorpion pours out his poison
+on the earth, and scatters diseases and death. The same of all similar
+effects.
+
+"This language, understood by every one, was attended at first with no
+inconvenience; but in the course of time, when the calendar had been
+regulated, the people, who had no longer any need of observing the
+heavens, lost sight of the original meaning of these expressions; and
+the allegories remaining in common use became a fatal stumbling block to
+the understanding and to reason. Habituated to associate to the symbols
+the ideas of their archetypes, the mind at last confounded them: then
+the same animals, whom fancy had transported to the skies, returned
+again to the earth; but being thus returned, clothed in the livery of
+the stars, they claimed the stellary attributes, and imposed on their
+own authors. Then it was that the people, believing that they saw their
+gods among them, could pray to them with more convenience: they demanded
+from the ram of their flock the influences which might be expected from
+the heavenly ram; they prayed the scorpion not to pour out his venom
+upon nature; they revered the crab of the sea, the scarabeus of the
+mud, the fish of the river; and by a series of corrupt but inseparable
+analogies, they lost themselves in a labyrinth of well connected
+absurdities.
+
+"Such was the origin of that ancient whimsical worship of the animals;
+such is the train of ideas by which the character of the divinity became
+common to the vilest of brutes, and by which was formed that theological
+system, extremely comprehensive, complicated, and learned, which,
+rising on the borders of the Nile, propagated from country to country by
+commerce, war, and conquest, overspread the whole of the ancient world;
+and which, modified by time, circumstances and prejudices, is still seen
+entire among a hundred nations, and remains as the essential and secret
+basis of the theology of those even who despise and reject it."
+
+Some murmurs at these words being heard from various groups: "Yes!"
+continued the orator, "hence arose, for instance, among you, nations of
+Africa, the adoration of your fetiches, plants, animals, pebbles, pieces
+of wood, before which your ancestors would not have had the folly to
+bow, if they had not seen in them talismans endowed with the virtue of
+the stars.*
+
+     * The ancient astrologers, says the most learned of the Jews
+     (Maimonides), having sacredly assigned to each planet a
+     color, an animal, a tree, a metal, a fruit, a plant, formed
+     from them all a figure or representation of the star, taking
+     care to select for the purpose a proper moment, a fortunate
+     day, such as the conjunction of the star, or some other
+     favorable aspect.  They conceived that by their magic
+     ceremonies they could introduce into those figures or idols
+     the influences of the superior beings after which they were
+     modeled.  These were the idols that the Chaldean-Sabeans
+     adored; and in the performance of their worship they were
+     obliged to be dressed in the proper color.  The astrologers,
+     by their practices, thus introduced idolatry, desirous of
+     being regarded as the dispensers of the favors of heaven;
+     and as agriculture was the sole employment of the ancients,
+     they succeeded in persuading them that the rain and other
+     blessings of the seasons were at their disposal.  Thus the
+     whole art of agriculture was exercised by rules of
+     astrology, and the priests made talismans or charms which
+     were to drive away locusts, flies, etc.  See Maimonides,
+     More Nebuchim, pars 3, c. 29.
+
+     The priests of Egypt, Persia, India, etc., pretended to bind
+     the Gods to their idols, and to make them come from heaven
+     at their pleasure.  They threatened the sun and moon, if
+     they were disobedient, to reveal the secret mysteries, to
+     shake the skies, etc., etc.  Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 198,
+     and Jamblicus de Mysteriis Aegypt.
+
+"Here, ye nations of Tartary, is the origin of your marmosets, and of
+all that train of animals with which your chamans ornament their magical
+robes. This is the origin of those figures of birds and of snakes which
+savage nations imprint upon their skins with sacred and mysterious
+ceremonies.
+
+"Ye inhabitants of India! in vain you cover yourselves with the veil
+of mystery: the hawk of your god Vichenou is but one of the thousand
+emblems of the sun in Egypt; and your incarnations of a god in the fish,
+the boar, the lion, the tortoise, and all his monstrous adventures, are
+only the metamorphoses of the sun, who, passing through the signs of the
+twelve animals (or the zodiac), was supposed to assume their figures,
+and perform their astronomical functions.*
+
+     * These are the very words of Jamblicus de Symbolis
+     Aegyptiorum, c. 2, sect. 7.  The sun was the grand Proteus,
+     the universal metamorphist.
+
+"People of Japan, your bull, which breaks the mundane egg, is only the
+bull of the zodiac, which in former times opened the seasons, the age
+of creation, the vernal equinox. It is the same bull Apis which Egypt
+adored, and which your ancestors, Jewish Rabbins, worshipped in the
+golden calf. This is still your bull, followers of Zoroaster, which,
+sacrificed in the symbolic mysteries of Mithra, poured out his blood
+which fertilized the earth. And ye Christians, your bull of the
+Apocalypse, with his wings, symbol of the air, has no other origin; and
+your lamb of God, sacrificed, like the bull of Mithra, for the salvation
+of the world, is only the same sun, in the sign of the celestial ram,
+which, in a later age, opening the equinox in his turn, was supposed to
+deliver the world from evil, that is to say, from the constellation of
+the serpent, from that great snake, the parent of winter, the emblem of
+the Ahrimanes, or Satan of the Persians, your school masters. Yes, in
+vain does your imprudent zeal consign idolaters to the torments of the
+Tartarus which they invented; the whole basis of your system is only
+the worship of the sun, with whose attributes you have decorated your
+principal personage. It is the sun which, under the name of Horus,
+was born, like your God, at the winter solstice, in the arms of the
+celestial virgin, and who passed a childhood of obscurity, indigence,
+and want, answering to the season of cold and frost. It is he that,
+under the name of Osiris, persecuted by Typhon and by the tyrants of the
+air, was put to death, shut up in a dark tomb, emblem of the hemisphere
+of winter, and afterwards, ascending from the inferior zone towards the
+zenith of heaven, arose again from the dead triumphant over the giants
+and the angels of destruction.
+
+"Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all over
+your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole is his
+zodiac;* your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets. Ye pontiffs
+and prelates! your mitre, your crozier, your mantle are those of Osiris;
+and that cross whose mystery you extol without comprehending it, is the
+cross of Serapis, traced by the hands of Egyptian priests on the plan
+of the figurative world; which, passing through the equinoxes and the
+tropics, became the emblem of the future life and of the resurrection,
+because it touched the gates of ivory and of horn, through which the
+soul passed to heaven."
+
+     * "The Arabs," says Herodotus, "shave their heads in a
+     circle and about the temples, in imitation of Bacchus (that
+     is the sun), who shaves himself is this manner."  Jeremiah
+     speaks also of this custom.  The tuft of hair which the
+     Mahometans preserve, is taken also from the sun, who was
+     painted by the Egyptians at the winter solstice, as having
+     but a single hair upon his head. . . .
+
+     The robes of the goddess of Syria and of Diana of Ephesus,
+     from whence are borrowed the dress of the priests; have the
+     twelve animals of the zodiac painted on them. . . .
+
+     Rosaries are found upon all the Indian idols, constructed
+     more than four thousand years ago, and their use in the East
+     has been universal from time immemorial. . . .
+
+     The crozier is precisely the staff of Bootes or Osiris.
+     (See plate.)
+
+     All the Lamas wear the mitre or cap in the shape of a cone,
+     which was an emblem of the sun.
+
+At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each
+other with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator
+proceeded:
+
+"Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas:
+First, the figurative expressions under which an infant language was
+obliged to describe the relations of objects; expressions which, passing
+afterwards from a limited to a general sense, and from a physical to a
+moral one, caused, by their ambiguities and synonymes, a great number of
+mistakes.
+
+"Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or finished,
+twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had killed them,
+fought them, conquered them; and of this was composed the historical
+life of Hercules.*
+
+     * See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the
+     Constellations, before cited.
+
+"It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the seed
+time and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and occupations,
+ran through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he was taken for a
+legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they framed from this the
+history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of that description.
+
+"Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this
+conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.* Having said that the
+planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and ascended to
+its exaltation, they said that it had died, risen again, was carried
+into heaven, etc.
+
+     * These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of
+     Isis and Osiris.  The Hebrews say, in speaking of the
+     generations of the Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam.
+     From this continual equivoke of ancient language, proceeds
+     every mistake.
+
+"A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves,
+by which men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of
+hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were the first invention of the
+mind. Thus, to give warning of the inundation, and of the necessity of
+guarding against it, they painted a boat, the ship Argo; to express the
+wind, they painted the wing of a bird; to designate the season, or the
+month, they painted the bird of passage, the insect, or the animal which
+made its appearance at that period; to describe the winter, they painted
+a hog or a serpent, which delight in humid places, and the combination
+of these figures carried the known sense of words and phrases.* But as
+this sense could not be fixed with precision, as the number of these
+figures and their combinations became excessive, and overburdened
+the memory, the immediate consequence was confusion and false
+interpretations. Genius afterwards having invented the more simple
+art of applying signs to sounds, of which the number is limited, and
+painting words, instead of thoughts, alphabetical writing thus threw
+into disuetude hieroglyphical painting; and its signification, falling
+daily into oblivion, gave rise to a multitude of illusions, ambiguities,
+and errors.
+
+     * The reader will doubtless see with pleasure some examples
+     of ancient hieroglyphics.
+
+     "The Egyptians (says Hor-appolo) represent eternity by the
+     figures of the sun and moon.  They designate the world by
+     the blue serpent with yellow scales (stars, it is the
+     Chinese Dragon).  If they were desirous of expressing the
+     year, they drew a picture of Isis, who is also in their
+     language called Sothis, or dog-star, one of the first
+     constellations, by the rising of which the year commences;
+     its inscription at Sais was, It is I that rise in the
+     constellation of the Dog.
+
+     "They also represent the year by a palm tree, and the month
+     by one of its branches, because it is the nature of this
+     tree to produce a branch every month.  They farther
+     represent it by the fourth part of an acre of land."  The
+     whole acre divided into four denotes the bissextile period
+     of four years.  The abbreviation of this figure of a field
+     in four divisions, is manifestly the letter ha or het, the
+     seventh in the Samaritan alphabet; and in general all the
+     letters of the alphabet are merely astronomical
+     hieroglyphics; and it is for this reason that the mode of
+     writing is from right to left, like the march of the stars.
+     --"They denote a prophet by the image of a dog, because the
+     dog star (Anoubis) by its rising gives notice of the
+     inundation.  Noubi, in Hebrew signifies prophet--They
+     represent inundation by a lion, because it takes place under
+     that sign: and hence, says Plutarch, the custom of placing
+     at the gates of temples figures of lions with water issuing
+     from their mouths.--They express the idea of God and destiny
+     by a star.  They also represent God, says Porphyry, by a
+     black stone, because his nature is dark and obscure.  All
+     white things express the celestial and luminous Gods: all
+     circular ones the world, the moon, the sun, the orbits; all
+     semicircular ones, as bows and crescents are descriptive of
+     the moon.  Fire and the Gods of Olympus they represent by
+     pyramids and obelisks (the name of the sun, Baal, is found
+     in this latter word): the sun by a cone (the mitre of
+     Osiris): the earth, by a cylinder (which revolves): the
+     generative power of the air by the phalus, and that of the
+     earth by a triangle, emblem of the female organ.  Euseb.
+     Proecep.  Evang. p. 98.
+
+     "Clay, says Jamblicus de Symbolis, sect. 7, c. 2. denotes
+     matter, the generative and nutrimental power, every thing
+     which receives the warmth and fermentation of life."
+
+     "A man sitting upon the Lotos or Nenuphar, represents the
+     moving spirit (the sun) which, in like manner as that plant
+     lives in the water without any communication with clay,
+     exists equally distinct from matter, swimming in empty
+     space, resting on itself: it is round also in all its parts,
+     like the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit of the Lotos.
+     (Brama has the eyes of the Lotos, says Chasler Nesdirsen, to
+     denote his intelligence: his eye swims over every thing,
+     like the flower of the Lotos on the waters.)  A man at the
+     helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun
+     which governs all.  And Porphyry tells us that the sun is
+     also represented by a man in a ship resting upon an
+     amphibious crocodile (emblem of air and water).
+
+     "At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a
+     sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and
+     the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which
+     represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of
+     the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at
+     the period of junction, to raise water into the clouds.
+     Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
+
+     "The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account
+     of his rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions
+     of the air where light abounds.
+
+     A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of
+     violence, because it is said to kill its father and to
+     ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical
+     inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on
+     the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A
+     fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1. Entrance, into
+     life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5.  Injustice. See
+     Isis and Osiris.
+
+     "The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus,
+     because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that
+     in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as
+     the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the
+     sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an opposite direction to its
+     own.
+
+     "They represent the world also by the number five, being
+     that of the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth,
+     water, air, fire, and ether, or spiritus.  The Indians have
+     the same number of elements, and according to Macrobius's
+     mystics, they are the supreme God, or primum mobile, the
+     intelligence, or mens, born of him, the soul of the world
+     which proceeds from him, the celestial spheres, and all
+     things terrestrial.  Hence, adds Plutarch, the analogy
+     between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
+
+     "The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because
+     like that animal he is of a reddish color.  Now Typhon
+     signifies whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in
+     Hebrew I find the three words clay, red, and ass to be
+     formed from the same root hamr).  Jamblicus has farther told
+     us that clay was the emblem of matter and he elsewhere adds,
+     that all evil and corruption proceeded from matter; which
+     compared with the phrase of Macrobius, all is perishable,
+     liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives us the
+     theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good
+     and evil of the ancients."
+
+"Finally, a third cause of confusion was the civil organization
+of ancient states. When the people began to apply themselves to
+agriculture, the formation of a rural calendar, requiring a continued
+series of astronomical observations, it became necessary to appoint
+certain individuals charged with the functions of watching the
+appearance and disappearance of certain stars, to foretell the return of
+the inundation, of certain winds, of the rainy season, the proper time
+to sow every kind of grain. These men, on account of their service,
+were exempt from common labor, and the society provided for their
+maintenance. With this provision, and wholly employed in their
+observations, they soon became acquainted with the great phenomena
+of nature, and even learned to penetrate the secret of many of her
+operations. They discovered the movement of the stars and planets, the
+coincidence of their phases and returns with the productions of
+the earth and the action of vegetation; the medicinal and nutritive
+properties of plants and fruits; the action of the elements, and
+their reciprocal affinities. Now, as there was no other method of
+communicating the knowledge of these discoveries but the laborious one
+of oral instruction, they transmitted it only to their relations and
+friends, it followed therefore that all science and instruction were
+confined to a few families, who, arrogating it to themselves as an
+exclusive privilege, assumed a professional distinction, a corporation
+spirit, fatal to the public welfare. This continued succession of the
+same researches and the same labors, hastened, it is true, the progress
+of knowledge; but by the mystery which accompanied it, the people were
+daily plunged in deeper shades, and became more superstitious and
+more enslaved. Seeing their fellow mortals produce certain phenomena,
+announce, as at pleasure, eclipses and comets, heal diseases, and handle
+venomous serpents, they thought them in alliance with celestial powers;
+and, to obtain the blessings and avert the evils which they expected
+from above, they took them for mediators and interpreters; and thus
+became established in the bosom of every state sacrilegious corporations
+of hypocritical and deceitful men, who centered all powers in
+themselves; and the priests, being at once astronomers, theologians,
+naturalists, physicians, magicians, interpreters of the gods, oracles of
+men, and rivals of kings, or their accomplices, established, under the
+name of religion, an empire of mystery and a monopoly of instruction,
+which to this day have ruined every nation. . . ."
+
+Here the priests of all the groups interrupted the orator, and with loud
+cries accused him of impiety, irreligion, blasphemy; and endeavored to
+cut short his discourse; but the legislator observing that this was only
+an exposition of historical facts, which, if false or forged, would be
+easily refuted; that hitherto the declaration of every opinion had been
+free, and without this it would be impossible to discover the truth, the
+orator proceeded:
+
+"Now, from all these causes, and from the continual associations of
+ill-assorted ideas, arose a mass of disorders in theology, in morals,
+and in traditions; first, because the animals represented the stars,
+the characters of the animals, their appetites, their sympathies,
+their aversions, passed over to the gods, and were supposed to be their
+actions; thus, the god Ichneumon made war against the god Crocodile;
+the god Wolf liked to eat the god Sheep; the god Ibis devoured the
+god Serpent; and the deity became a strange, capricious, and ferocious
+being, whose idea deranged the judgment of man, and corrupted his morals
+and his reason.
+
+"Again, because in the spirit of their worship every family, every
+nation, took for its special patron a star or a constellation, the
+affections or antipathies of the symbolic animal were transferred to its
+sectaries; and the partisans of the god Dog were enemies to those of the
+god Wolf;* those who adored the god Ox had an abhorrence to those who
+ate him; and religion became the source of hatred and hostility,--the
+senseless cause of frenzy and superstition.
+
+     * These are properly the words of Plutarch, who relates that
+     those various worships were given by a king of Egypt to the
+     different towns to disunite and enslave them, and these
+     kings had been taken from the cast of priests.  See Isis and
+     Osiris.
+
+"Besides, the names of those animal-stars having, for this same reason
+of patronage, been conferred on countries, nations, mountains, and
+rivers, these objects were taken for gods, and hence followed a mixture
+of geographical, historical, and mythological beings, which confounded
+all traditions.
+
+"Finally, by the analogy of actions which were ascribed to them, the
+god-stars, having been taken for men, for heroes, for kings, kings
+and heroes took in their turn the actions of gods for models, and by
+imitation became warriors, conquerors, proud, lascivious, indolent,
+sanguinary; and religion consecrated the crimes of despots, and
+perverted the principles of government."
+
+
+IV. Fourth system. Worship of two Principles, or Dualism.
+
+
+"In the mean time, the astronomical priests, enjoying peace and
+abundance in their temples, made every day new progress in the sciences,
+and the system of the world unfolding gradually to their view, they
+raised successively various hypotheses as to its agents and effects,
+which became so many theological systems.
+
+"The voyages of the maritime nations and the caravans of the nomads of
+Asia and Africa, having given them a knowledge of the earth from the
+Fortunate Islands to Serica, and from the Baltic to the sources of the
+Nile, the comparison of the phenomena of the various zones taught them
+the rotundity of the earth, and gave birth to a new theory. Having
+remarked that all the operations of nature during the annual period
+were reducible to two principal ones, that of producing and that of
+destroying; that on the greater part of the globe these two operations
+were performed in the intervals of the two equinoxes; that is to
+say, during the six months of summer every thing was procreating and
+multiplying, and that during winter everything languished and almost
+died; they supposed in Nature two contrary powers, which were in
+a continual state of contention and exertion; and considering the
+celestial sphere in this view, they divided the images which
+they figured upon it into two halves or hemispheres; so that the
+constellations which were on the summer heaven formed a direct and
+superior empire; and those which were on the winter heaven composed an
+antipode and inferior empire. Therefore, as the constellations of summer
+accompanied the season of long, warm, and unclouded days, and that
+of fruits and harvests, they were considered as the powers of light,
+fecundity, and creation; and, by a transition from a physical to a moral
+sense, they became genii, angels of science, of beneficence, of purity
+and virtue. And as the constellations of winter were connected with long
+nights and polar fogs, they were the genii of darkness, of destruction,
+of death; and by transition, angels of ignorance, of wickedness, of sin
+and vice. By this arrangement the heaven was divided into two domains,
+two factions; and the analogy of human ideas already opened a vast field
+to the errors of imagination; but the mistake and the illusion were
+determined, if not occasioned by a particular circumstance. (Observe
+plate Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
+
+"In the projection of the celestial sphere, as traced by the
+astronomical priests,* the zodiac and the constellations, disposed in
+circular order, presented their halves in diametrical opposition; the
+hemisphere of winter, antipode of that of summer, was adverse, contrary,
+opposed to it. By a continual metaphor, these words acquired a moral
+sense; and the adverse genii, or angels, became revolted enemies.**
+From that moment all the astronomical history of the constellations was
+changed into a political history; the heavens became a human state,
+where things happened as on the earth. Now, as the earthly states, the
+greater part despotic, had already their monarchs, and as the sun was
+apparently the monarch of the skies, the summer hemisphere (empire of
+light) and its constellations (a nation of white angels) had for king
+an enlightened God, a creator intelligent and good. And as every rebel
+faction must have its chief, the heaven of winter, the subterranean
+empire of darkness and woe, and its stars, a nation of black angels,
+giants and demons, had for their chief a malignant genius, whose
+character was applied by different people to the constellation which
+to them was the most remarkable. In Egypt it was at first the Scorpion,
+first zodiacal sign after Libra, and for a long time chief of the winter
+signs ; then it was the Bear, or the polar Ass, called Typhon, that is
+to say, deluge,** on account of the rains which deluge the earth during
+the dominion of that star. At a later period,*** in Persia,**** it was
+the Serpent, who, under the name of Abrimanes, formed the basis of the
+system of Zoroaster; and it is the same, O Christians and Jews! that
+has become your serpent of Eve (the celestial virgin,) and that of the
+cross; in both cases it is the emblem of Satan, the enemy and great
+adversary of the Ancient of Days, sung by Daniel.
+
+     * The ancient priests had three kinds of spheres, which it
+     may be useful to make known to the reader.
+
+     "We read in Eusebius," says Porphyry, "that Zoroaster was
+     the first who, having fixed upon a cavern pleasantly
+     situated in the mountains adjacent to Persia, formed the
+     idea of consecrating it to Mithra (the sun) creator and
+     father of all things: that is to say, having made in this
+     cavern several geometrical divisions, representing the
+     seasons and the elements, he imitated on a small scale the
+     order and disposition of the universe by Mithra.  After
+     Zoroaster, it became a custom to consecrate caverns for the
+     celebration of mysteries: so that in like manner as temples
+     were dedicated to the Gods, rural altars to heroes and
+     terrestrial deities, etc., subterranean abodes to infernal
+     deities, so caverns and grottoes were consecrated to the
+     world, to the universe, and to the nymphs: and from hence
+     Pythagoras and Plato borrowed the idea of calling the earth
+     a cavern, a cave, de Antro Nympharum.
+
+     Such was the first projection of the sphere in relief;
+     though the Persians give the honor of the invention to
+     Zoroaster, it is doubtless due to the Egyptians; for we may
+     suppose from this projection being the most simple that it
+     was the most ancient; the caverns of Thebes, full of similar
+     pictures, tend to strengthen this opinion.
+
+     The following was the second projection: "The prophets or
+     hierophants," says Bishop Synnesius, "who had been initiated
+     in the mysteries, do not permit the common workmen to form
+     idols or images of the Gods; but they descend themselves
+     into the sacred caves, where they have concealed coffers
+     containing certain spheres upon which they construct those
+     images secretly and without the knowledge of the people, who
+     despise simple and natural things and wish for prodigies and
+     fables."  (Syn. in Calvit.)  That is, the ancient priests
+     had armillary spheres like ours; and this passage, which so
+     well agrees with that of Chaeremon, gives us the key to all
+     their theological astrology.
+
+     Lastly, they had flat models of the nature of Plate V. with
+     the difference that they were of a very complicated nature,
+     having every fictitious division of decan and subdecan, with
+     the hieroglyphic signs of their influence.  Kircher has
+     given us a copy of one of them in his Egyptian Oedipus, and
+     Gybelin a figured fragment in his book of the calendar
+     (under the name of the Egyptian Zodiac).  The ancient
+     Egyptians, says the astrologer Julius Firmicus, (Astron.
+     lib. ii. and lib. iv., c. 16), divide each sign of the
+     Zodiac into three sections; and each section was under the
+     direction of an imaginary being whom they called decan or
+     chief of ten; so that there were three decans a month, and
+     thirty-six a year.  Now these decans, who were also called
+     Gods (Theoi), regulated the destinies of mankind--and they
+     were placed particularly in certain stars.  They afterwards
+     imagined in every ten three other Gods, whom they called
+     arbiters; so that there were nine for every month, and these
+     were farther divided into an infinite number of powers.  The
+     Persians and Indians made their spheres on similar plans;
+     and if a picture thereof were to be drawn from the
+     description given by Scaliger at the end of Manilius, we
+     should find in it a complete explanation of their
+     hieroglyphics, for every article forms one.
+
+     ** If it was for this reason the Persians always wrote the
+     name of Ahrimanes inverted thus: ['Ahrimanes' upside down
+     and backwards].
+
+     *** Typhon, pronounced Touphon by the Greeks, is precisely
+     the touphan of the Arabs, which signifies deluge; and these
+     deluges in mythology are nothing more than winter and the
+     rains, or the overflowing of the Nile: as their pretended
+     fires which are to destroy the world, are simply the summer
+     season.  And it is for this reason that Aristotle (De
+     Meteor, lib. I. c. xiv), says, that the winter of the great
+     cyclic year is a deluge; and its summer a conflagration.
+     "The Egyptians," says Porphyry, "employ every year a
+     talisman in remembrance of the world: at the summer solstice
+     they mark their houses, flocks and trees with red, supposing
+     that on that day the whole world had been set on fire.  It
+     was also at the same period that they celebrated the pyrric
+     or fire dance."  And this illustrates the origin of
+     purification by fire and by water; for having denominated
+     the tropic of Cancer the gate of heaven, and the genial heat
+     of celestial fire, and that of Capricorn the gate of deluge
+     or of water, it was imagined that the spirit or souls who
+     passed through these gates in their way to and from heaven,
+     were roasted or bathed: hence the baptism of Mithra; and the
+     passage through flames, observed throughout the East long
+     before Moses.
+
+     **** That is when the ram became the equinoctial sign, or
+     rather when the alteration of the skies showed that it was
+     no longer the bull.
+
+"In Syria, it was the hog or wild boar, enemy of Adonis; because in that
+country the functions of the Northern Bear were performed by the animal
+whose inclination for mire and dirt was emblematic of winter. And this
+is the reason, followers of Moses and Mahomet! that you hold him in
+horror, in imitation of the priests of Memphis and Balbec, who detested
+him as the murderer of their God, the sun. This likewise, O Indians!
+is the type of your Chib-en; and it has been likewise the Pluto of your
+brethren, the Romans and Greeks; in like manner, your Brama, God the
+creator, is only the Persian Ormuzd, and the Egyptian Osiris, whose
+very name expresses creative power, producer of forms. And these gods
+received a worship analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary;
+which worship was divided into two branches, according to their
+characters. The good god receives a worship of love and joy, from which
+are derived all religious acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances,
+banquets, offerings of flowers, milk, honey, perfumes; in a word,
+everything grateful to the senses and to the soul.* The evil god, on
+the contrary, received a worship of fear and pain; whence originated
+all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears, desolations, mournings,
+self-denials, bloody offerings, and cruel sacrifices.
+
+     * All the ancient festivals respecting the return and
+     exaltation of the sun were of this description: hence the
+     hilaria of the Roman calendar at the period of the passage,
+     Pascha, of the vernal equinox.  The dances were imitations
+     of the march of the planets. Those of the Dervises still
+     represent it to this day.
+
+     ** "Sacrifices of blood," says Porphyry, "were only offered
+     to Demons and evil Genii to avert their wrath.  Demons are
+     fond of blood, humidity, stench."  Apud. Euseb. Proep. Ev.,
+     p. 173.
+
+     "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "only offer bloody victims
+     to Typhon.  They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animal
+     immolated is held in execration and loaded with all the sins
+     of the people." The goat of Moses.  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+     Strabo says, speaking of Moses, and the Jews, "Circumcision
+     and the prohibition of certain kinds of meat sprung from
+     superstition." And I observe, respecting the ceremony of
+     circumcision, that its object was to take from the symbol of
+     Osiris, (Phallus) the pretended obstacle to fecundity: an
+     obstacle which bore the seal of Typhon, "whose nature," says
+     Plutarch, "is made up of all that hinders, opposes, causes
+     obstruction."
+
+"Hence arose that distinction of terrestrial beings into pure and
+impure, sacred and abominable, according as their species were of the
+number of the constellations of one of these two gods, and made part
+of his domain; and this produced, on the one hand, the superstitions
+concerning pollutions and purifications; and, on the other, the
+pretended efficacious virtues of amulets and talismans.
+
+"You conceive now," continued the orator, addressing himself to the
+Persians, the Indians, the Jews, the Christians, the Mussulmans, "you
+conceive the origin of those ideas of battles and rebellions, which
+equally abound in all your mythologies. You see what is meant by white
+and black angels, your cherubim and seraphim, with heads of eagles, of
+lions, or of bulls; your deus, devils, demons, with horns of goats and
+tails of serpents; your thrones and dominions, ranged in seven orders or
+gradations, like the seven spheres of the planets; all beings acting the
+same parts, and endowed with the same attributes in your Vedas, Bibles,
+and Zend-avestas, whether they have for chiefs Ormuzd or Brama, Typhon
+or Chiven, Michael or Satan;--whether they appear under the form
+of giants with a hundred arms and feet of serpents, or that of gods
+metamorphosed into lions, storks, bulls or cats, as they are in the
+sacred fables of the Greeks and Egyptians. You perceive the successive
+filiation of these ideas, and how, in proportion to their remoteness
+from their source, and as the minds of men became refined, their gross
+forms have been polished, and rendered less disgusting.
+
+"But in the same manner as you have seen the system of two opposite
+principles or gods arise from that of symbols, interwoven into its
+texture, your attention shall now be called to a new system which has
+grown out of this, and to which this has served in its turn as the basis
+and support.
+
+
+V. Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State.
+
+
+"Indeed, when the vulgar heard speak of a new heaven and another world,
+they soon gave a body to these fictions; they erected therein a real
+theatre of action, and their notions of astronomy and geography served
+to strengthen, if not to originate, this illusion.
+
+"On the one hand, the Phoenician navigators who passed the pillars of
+Hercules, to fetch the tin of Thule and the amber of the Baltic,
+related that at the extremity of the world, the end of the ocean (the
+Mediterranean), where the sun sets for the countries of Asia, were the
+Fortunate Islands, the abode of eternal spring; and beyond were the
+hyperborean regions, placed under the earth (relatively to the tropics)
+where reigned an eternal night.* From these stories, misunderstood, and
+no doubt confusedly related, the imagination of the people composed the
+Elysian fields,** regions of delight, placed in a world below, having
+their heaven, their sun, and their stars; and Tartarus, a place of
+darkness, humidity, mire, and frost. Now, as man, inquisitive of that
+which he knows not, and desirous of protracting his existence, had
+already interrogated himself concerning what was to become of him after
+his death, as he had early reasoned on the principle of life which
+animates his body, and which leaves it without deforming it, and as he
+had imagined airy substances, phantoms, and shades, he fondly believed
+that he should continue, in the subterranean world, that life which
+it was too painful for him to lose; and these lower regions seemed
+commodious for the reception of the beloved objects which he could not
+willingly resign.
+
+     * Nights of six months duration.
+
+     ** Aliz, in the Phoenician or Hebrew language signifies
+     dancing and joyous.
+
+"On the other hand, the astrological and geological priests told
+such stories and made such descriptions of their heavens, as accorded
+perfectly well with these fictions. Having, in their metaphorical
+language, called the equinoxes and solstices the gates of heaven, the
+entrance of the seasons, they explained these terrestrial phenomena by
+saying, that through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the
+ram) and through the gate of Cancer, descended the vivifying fires which
+give life to vegetation in the spring, and the aqueous spirits which
+bring, at the solstice, the inundation of the Nile; that through the
+gate of ivory (Libra, formerly Sagittarius, or the bowman) and that
+of Capricorn, or the urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens
+returned to their source, and reascended to their origin; and the Milky
+Way, which passed through the gates of the solstices, seemed to be
+placed there to serve them as a road or vehicle.* Besides, in their
+atlas, the celestial scene presented a river (the Nile, designated by
+the windings of the hydra), a boat, (the ship Argo) and the dog Sirius,
+both relative to this river, whose inundation they foretold. These
+circumstances, added to the preceding, and still further explaining
+them, increased their probability, and to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium,
+souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of
+the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates of horn or ivory,
+guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions were applied to a
+civil use, and thence received a further consistency.
+
+     *See Macrob. Som. Scrip. c. 12.
+
+"Having remarked that in their burning climate the putrefaction of dead
+bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in many of
+their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead beyond the
+limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the West. To go there,
+it was necessary to pass the channels of the river, and consequently
+to be received into a boat, and pay something to the ferryman, without
+which the body, deprived of sepulture, must have been the prey of wild
+beasts. This custom suggested to the civil and religious legislators the
+means of a powerful influence on manners; and, addressing uncultivated
+and ferocious men with the motives of filial piety and a reverence for
+the dead, they established, as a necessary condition, their undergoing
+a previous trial, which should decide whether the deceased merited to
+be admitted to the rank of the family in the black city. Such an idea
+accorded too well with all the others, not to be incorporated with them:
+the people soon adopted it; and hell had its Minos and its Rhadamanthus,
+with the wand, the bench, the ushers, and the urn, as in the earthly and
+civil state. It was then that God became a moral and political being,
+a lawgiver to men, and so much the more to be dreaded, as this supreme
+legislator, this final judge, was inaccessible and invisible. Then it
+was that this fabulous and mythological world, composed of such odd
+materials and disjointed parts, became a place of punishments and of
+rewards, where divine justice was supposed to correct what was vicious
+and erroneous in the judgment of men. This spiritual and mystical
+system acquired the more credit, as it took possession of man by all his
+natural inclinations. The oppressed found in it the hope of indemnity,
+and the consolation of future vengeance; the oppressor, expecting by
+rich offerings to purchase his impunity, formed out of the errors of the
+vulgar an additional weapon of oppression; the chiefs of nations, the
+kings and priests, found in this a new instrument of domination by the
+privilege which they reserved to themselves of distributing the favors
+and punishments of the great judge, according to the merit or demerit
+of actions, which they took care to characterize as best suited their
+system.
+
+"This, then, is the manner in which an invisible and imaginary world
+has been introduced into the real and visible one; this is the origin of
+those regions of pleasure and pain, of which you Persians have made your
+regenerated earth, your city of resurrection, placed under the equator,
+with this singular attribute, that in it the blessed cast no shade.* Of
+these materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have
+you formed your New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, your paradise, your
+heaven, copied in all its parts from the astrological heaven of Hermes:
+and your hell, ye Mussulmans, your bottomless pit, surmounted by a
+bridge, your balance for weighing souls and good works, your last
+judgment by the angels Monkir and Nekir, are likewise modeled from the
+mysterious ceremonies of the cave of Mithras** and your heaven differs
+not in the least from that of Osiris, of Ormuzd, and of Brama.
+
+     * There is on this subject a passage in Plutarch, so
+     interesting and explanatory of the whole of this system,
+     that we shall cite it entire.  Having observed that the
+     theory of good and evil had at all times occupied the
+     attention of philosophers and theologians, he adds: "Many
+     suppose there to be two gods of opposite inclinations, one
+     delighting in good, the other in evil; the first of these is
+     called particularly by the name of God, the second by that
+     of Genius or Demon.  Zoroaster has denominated them Oromaze
+     and Ahrimanes, and has said that of whatever falls under the
+     cognizance of our senses, light is the best representation
+     of the one, and darkness and ignorance of the other.  He
+     adds, that Mithra is an intermediate being, and it is for
+     this reason the Persians call Mithra the mediator or
+     intermediator.  Each of these Gods has distinct plants and
+     animals consecrated to him: for example, dogs, birds and
+     hedge-hogs belong to the good Genius, and all aquatic
+     animals to the evil one.
+
+     "The Persians also say, that Oromaze was born or formed out
+     of the purest light; Ahrimanes, on the contrary, out of the
+     thickest darkness: that Oromaze made six gods as good as
+     himself, and Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones: that
+     Oromaze afterwards multiplied himself threefold (Hermes
+     trismegistus) and removed to a distance as remote from the
+     sun as the sun is remote from the earth that he there formed
+     stars, and, among others, Sirius, which he placed in the
+     heavens as a guard and sentinel.  He made also twenty-four
+     other Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanes
+     created an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, and
+     from that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).
+     But Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth to
+     be made equal and smooth, that all men may live happy.
+
+     "Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one of
+     these Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years during
+     which the other is kept in subjection; that they afterwards
+     contend with equal weapons during a similar portion of time,
+     but that in the end the evil Genius will fall (never to rise
+     again).  Then men will become happy, and their bodies cast
+     no shade.  The God who mediates all these things reclines at
+     present in repose, waiting till he shall be pleased to
+     execute them."  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+     There is an apparent allegory through the whole of this
+     passage. The egg is the fixed sphere, the world: the six
+     Gods of Oromaze are the six signs of summer, those of
+     Ahrimanes the six signs of winter.  The forty-eight other
+     Gods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient
+     sphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze.  The
+     office of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that the
+     origin of these ideas was Egyptian: finally, the expression
+     that the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that the
+     bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that the
+     equator was considered as their true paradise.
+
+     ** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they
+     celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against
+     Celsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets
+     and the heavens. The initiated took the name of
+     constellations, and assumed the figures of animals.  One was
+     a lion, another a raven, and a third a ram.  Hence the use
+     of masks in the first representation of the drama.  See Ant.
+     Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244.  "In the mysteries of Ceres the
+     chief in the procession called himself the creator; the
+     bearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the person
+     nearest to the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon,
+     Mercury.  In Egypt there was a festival in which the men and
+     women represented the year, the age, the seasons, the
+     different parts of the day, and they walked in precession
+     after Bacchus.  Athen. lib. v., ch. 7.  In the cave of
+     Mithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the seven
+     spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and
+     descended.  This is precisely the ladder in Jacob's vision,
+     which shows that at that epoch a the whole system was
+     formed.  There is in the French king's library a superb
+     volume of pictures of the Indian Gods, in which the ladder
+     is represented with the souls of men mounting it."
+
+VI. Sixth System. The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe under
+diverse Emblems.
+
+
+"While the nations were wandering in the dark labyrinth of mythology and
+fables, the physical priests, pursuing their studies and enquiries into
+the order and disposition of the universe, came to new conclusions, and
+formed new systems concerning powers and first causes.
+
+"Long confined to simple appearances, they saw nothing in the movement
+of the stars but an unknown play of luminous bodies rolling round the
+earth, which they believed the central point of all the spheres; but as
+soon as they discovered the rotundity of our planet, the consequences
+of this first fact led them to new considerations; and from induction to
+induction they rose to the highest conceptions in astronomy and physics.
+
+"Indeed, after having conceived this luminous idea, that the terrestrial
+globe is a little circle inscribed in the greater circle of the heavens,
+the theory of concentric circles came naturally into their hypothesis,
+to determine the unknown circle of the terrestrial globe by certain
+known portions of the celestial circle; and the measurement of one
+or more degrees of the meridian gave with precision the whole
+circumference. Then, taking for a compass the known diameter of
+the earth, some fortunate genius applied it with a bold hand to the
+boundless orbits of the heavens; and man, the inhabitant of a grain of
+sand, embracing the infinite distances of the stars, launches into the
+immensity of space and the eternity of time: there he is presented with
+a new order of the universe of which the atom-globe which he inhabited
+appeared no longer to be the centre; this important post was reserved to
+the enormous mass of the sun; and that body became the flaming pivot of
+eight surrounding spheres, whose movements were henceforth subjected to
+precise calculations.
+
+"It was indeed a great effort for the human mind to have undertaken to
+determine the disposition and order of the great engines of nature; but
+not content with this first effort, it still endeavored to develop the
+mechanism, and discover the origin and the instinctive principle. Hence,
+engaged in the abstract and metaphysical nature of motion and its
+first cause, of the inherent or incidental properties of matter, its
+successive forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space
+unbounded, the physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of
+subtile reasoning and scholastic controversy.*
+
+     * Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you will
+     find our assertions respecting the knowledge of the priests
+     amply proved.
+
+"In the first place, the action of the sun on terrestrial bodies,
+teaching them to regard his substance as a pure and elementary fire,
+they made it the focus and reservoir of an ocean of igneous and luminous
+fluid, which, under the name of ether, filled the universe and nourished
+all beings. Afterwards, having discovered, by a physical and attentive
+analysis, this same fire, or another perfectly resembling it, in the
+composition of all bodies, and having perceived it to be the essential
+agent of that spontaneous movement which is called life in animals and
+vegetation in plants, they conceived the mechanism and harmony of the
+universe, as of a homogeneous whole, of one identical body, whose parts,
+though distant, had nevertheless an intimate relation;* and the world
+was a living being, animated by the organic circulation of an igneous
+and even electrical fluid,** which, by a term of comparison borrowed
+first from men and animals, had the sun for a heart and a focus.***
+
+     * These are the very words of Jamblicus.  De Myst. Egypt.
+
+     ** The more I consider what the ancients understood by ether
+     and spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the stronger
+     do I find the analogy between it and the electrial fluid.  A
+     luminous fluid, principle of warmth and motion, pervading
+     the universe, forming the matter of the stars, having small
+     round particles, which insinuate themselves into bodies, and
+     fill them by dilating itself, be their extent what it will.
+     What can more strongly resemble electricity?
+
+     *** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun the
+     heart of the world.  Som. Scrip. c. 20.  The Egyptians, says
+     Plutarch, call the East the face, the North the right side,
+     and the South the left side of the world, because there the
+     heart is placed.  They continually compare the universe to a
+     man; and hence the celebrated microcosm of the Alchymists.
+     We observe, by the bye, that the Alchymists, Cabalists,
+     Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and every other such
+     sort of visionaries, are but the mistaken disciples of this
+     ancient school: we say mistaken, because, in spite of their
+     pretensions, the thread of the occult science is broken.
+
+"From this time the physical theologians seem to have divided into
+several classes; one class, grounding itself on these principles
+resulting from observation; that nothing can be annihilated in the
+world; that the elements are indestructible; that they change their
+combinations but not their nature; that the life and death of beings are
+but the different modifications of the same atoms; that matter itself
+possesses properties which give rise to all its modes of existence; that
+the world is eternal,* or unlimited in space and duration; said that the
+whole universe was God; and, according to them, God was a being, effect
+and cause, agent and patient, moving principle and thing moved, having
+for laws the invariable properties that constitute fatality; and this
+class conveyed their idea by the emblem of Pan (the great whole); or of
+Jupiter, with a forehead of stars, body of planets, and feet of animals;
+or of the Orphic Egg,** whose yolk, suspended in the center of a liquid,
+surrounded by a vault, represented the globe of the sun, swimming in
+ether in the midst of the vault of heaven;*** sometimes by a great
+round serpent, representing the heavens where they placed the moving
+principle, and for that reason of an azure color, studded with spots
+of gold, (the stars) devouring his tail--that is, folding and unfolding
+himself eternally, like the revolutions of the spheres; sometimes by
+that of a man, having his feet joined together and tied, to signify
+immutable existence, wrapped in a cloak of all colors, like the face
+of nature, and bearing on his head a sphere of gold,**** emblem of the
+sphere of the stars; or by that of another man, sometimes seated on the
+flower of the lotos borne on the abyss of waters, sometimes lying on a
+pile of twelve cushions, denoting the twelve celestial signs. And here,
+Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Tibetans, and Chinese, is the theology,
+which, founded by the Egyptians and transmitted to you, is preserved in
+the pictures which you compose of Brama, of Beddou, of Somona-Kodom of
+Omito. This, ye Jews and Christians, is likewise the opinion of which
+you have preserved a part in your God moving on the face of the waters,
+by an allusion to the wind*5 which, at the beginning of the world, that
+is, the departure of the sun from the sign of Cancer, announced the
+inundation of the Nile, and seemed to prepare the creation."
+
+     * See the Pythagorean, Ocellus Lacunus.
+
+     ** Vide Oedip. Aegypt. Tome II., page 205.
+
+     *** This comparison of the sun with the yolk of an egg
+     refers: 1. To its round and yellow figure; 2. To its central
+     situation; 3. To the germ or principle of life contained in
+     the yolk.  May not the oval form of the egg allude to the
+     elipsis of the orbs?  I am inclined to this opinion.  The
+     word Orphic offers a farther observation.  Macrobius says
+     (Som. Scrip. c. 14. and c. 20), that the sun is the brain of
+     the universe, and that it is from analogy that the skull of
+     a human being is round, like the planet, the seat of
+     intelligence.  Now the word Oerph signifies in Hebrew the
+     brain and its seat (cervix): Orpheus, then, is the same as
+     Bedou or Baits; and the Bonzes are those very Orphics which
+     Plutarch represents as quacks, who ate no meat, vended
+     talismans and little stones, and deceived individuals, and
+     even governments themselves. See a learned memoir of Freret
+     sur les Orphiques, Acad. des Inscrp. vol. 25, in quarto.
+
+     **** See Porphyry in Eusebus. Proep. Evang., lib. 3, p. 115.
+
+     *5 The Northern or Etesian wind, which commences regularly
+     at the solstice, with the inundation.
+
+
+VII. Seventh System. Worship of the SOUL of the WORLD, that is to say,
+the Element of Fire, vital Principle of the Universe.
+
+
+"But others, disgusted at the idea of a being at once effect and cause,
+agent and patient, and uniting contrary natures in the same nature,
+distinguished the moving principle from the thing moved; and premising
+that matter in itself was inert they pretended that its properties were
+communicated to it by a distinct agent, of which itself was only the
+cover or the case. This agent was called by some the igneous principle,
+known to be the author of all motion; by others it was supposed to be
+the fluid called ether, which was thought more active and subtile;
+and, as in animals the vital and moving principle was called a soul, a
+spirit, and as they reasoned constantly by comparisons, especially
+those drawn from human beings, they gave to the moving principle of the
+universe the name of soul, intelligence, spirit; and God was the vital
+spirit, which extended through all beings and animated the vast body of
+the world. And this class conveyed their idea sometimes by Youpiter,*
+essence of motion and animation, principle of existence, or rather
+existence itself; sometimes by Vulcan or Phtha, elementary principle of
+fire; or by the altar of Vesta, placed in the center of her temple like
+the sun in the heavens; sometimes by Kneph, a human figure, dressed in
+dark blue, having in one hand a sceptre and a girdle (the zodiac), with
+a cap of feathers to express the fugacity of thought, and producing from
+his mouth the great egg.
+
+     * This is the true pronunciation of the Jupiter of the
+     Latins. . . . Existence itself.  This is the signification
+     of the word You.
+
+"Now, as a consequence of this system, every being containing in itself
+a portion of the igneous and etherial fluid, common and universal mover,
+and this fluid soul of the world being God, it followed that the
+souls of all beings were portions of God himself partaking of all
+his attributes, that is, being a substance indivisible, simple, and
+immortal; and hence the whole system of the immortality of the soul,
+which at first was eternity.*
+
+     * In the system of the first spiritualists, the soul was not
+     created with, or at the same time as the body, in order to
+     be inserted in it: its existence was supposed to be anterior
+     and from all eternity.  Such, in a few words, is the
+     doctrine of Macrobius on this head.  Som. Seip. passim.
+
+     "There exists a luminous, igneous, subtile fluid, which
+     under the name of ether and spiritus, fills the universe.
+     It is the essential principle and agent of motion and life,
+     it is the Deity. When an earthly body is to be animated, a
+     small round particle of this fluid gravitates through the
+     milky way towards the lunar sphere; where, when it arrives,
+     it unites with a grosser air, and becomes fit to associate
+     with matter: it then enters and entirely fills the body,
+     animates it, suffers, grows, increases, and diminishes with
+     it; lastly, when the body dies, and its gross elements
+     dissolve, this incorruptible particle takes its leave of it,
+     and returns to the grand ocean of ether, if not retained by
+     its union with the lunar air: it is this air or gas, which,
+     retaining the shape of the body, becomes a phantom or ghost,
+     the perfect representation of the deceased.  The Greeks
+     called this phantom the image or idol of the soul; the
+     Pythagoreans, its chariot, its frame; and the Rabbinical
+     school, its vessel, or boat.  When a man had conducted
+     himself well in this world, his whole soul, that is its
+     chariot and ether, ascended to the moon, where a separation
+     took place: the chariot lived in the lunar Elysium, and the
+     ether returned to the fixed sphere, that is, to God: for the
+     fixed heaven, says Macrobius, was by many called by the name
+     of God (c. 14).  If a man had not lived virtuously, the soul
+     remained on earth to undergo purification, and was to wander
+     to and fro, like the ghosts of Homer, to whom this doctrine
+     must have been known, since he wrote after the time of
+     Pherecydes and Pythagoras, who were its promulgators in
+     Greece.  Herodotus upon this occasion says, that the whole
+     romance of the soul and its transmigrations was invented by
+     the Egyptians, and propagated in Greece by men, who
+     pretended to be its authors.  I know their names, adds he,
+     but shall not mention them (lib. 2).  Cicero, however, has
+     positively informed us, that it was Pherecydes, master of
+     Pythagoras.  Tuscul. lib. 1, sect. 16. Now admitting that
+     this system was at that period a novelty, it accounts for
+     Solomon's treating it as a fable, who lived 130 years before
+     Pherecydes.  'Who knoweth,' said he, 'the spirit of a man
+     that it goeth upwards?  I said in my heart concerning the
+     estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them and
+     that they might see that they themselves are beasts.  For
+     that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even
+     one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the
+     other; yea they have all one breath, so that a man hath no
+     pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'" Eccles. c.
+     iii: v. 18.
+
+     And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator of
+     Herodotus (M. Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justly
+     observes in note 389 of the second book; where he says also
+     that the immortality of the soul was not introduced among
+     the Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians.  In
+     other respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properly
+     analysed, appears to be merely a system of physics badly
+     understood.
+
+"Hence, also its transmigrations, known by the name of metempsychosis,
+that is, the passage of the vital principle from one body to another; an
+idea which arose from the real transmigration of the material elements.
+And behold, ye Indians, ye Boudhists, ye Christians, ye Mussulmans!
+whence are derived all your opinions on the spirituality of the soul;
+behold what was the source of the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato, your
+masters, who were themselves but the echoes of another, the last sect of
+visionary philosophers, which we will proceed to examine.
+
+
+VIII. Eighth system. The WORLD-MACHINE: Worship of the Demi-Ourgos, or
+Grand Artificer.
+
+
+"Hitherto the theologians, employing themselves in examining the
+fine and subtile substances of ether or the generating fire, had not,
+however, ceased to treat of beings palpable and perceptible to the
+senses; and theology continued to be the theory of physical powers,
+placed sometimes exclusively in the stars, and sometimes disseminated
+through the universe; but at this period, certain superficial minds,
+losing the chain of ideas which had directed them in their profound
+studies, or ignorant of the facts on which they were founded, distorted
+all the conclusions that flowed from them by the introduction of a
+strange and novel chimera. They pretended that this universe, these
+heavens, these stars, this sun, differed in no respect from an ordinary
+machine; and applying to this first hypothesis a comparison drawn from
+the works of art, they raised an edifice of the most whimsical sophisms.
+A machine, said they, does not make itself; it has had an anterior
+workman; its very existence proves it. The world is a machine; therefore
+it had an artificer.*
+
+     * All the arguments of the spiritualists are founded on
+     this.  See Macrobius, at the end of the second book, and
+     Plato, with the comments of Marcilius Ficinus.
+
+"Here, then, is the Demi-Ourgos or grand artificer, constituted God
+autocratical and supreme. In vain the ancient philosophy objected to
+this by saying that the artificer himself must have had parents and
+progenitors; and that they only added another step to the ladder by
+taking eternity from the world, and giving it to its supposed author.
+The innovators, not content with this first paradox, passed on to
+a second; and, applying to their artificer the theory of the human
+understanding, they pretended that the Demi-Ourgos had framed his
+machine on a plan already existing in his understanding. Now, as their
+masters, the naturalists, had placed in the regions of the fixed stars
+the great primum mobile, under the name of intelligence and reason, so
+their mimics, the spiritualists, seizing this idea, applied it to their
+Demi-Ourgos, and making it a substance distinct and self-existent, they
+called it mens or logos (reason or word). And, as they likewise admitted
+the existence of the soul of the world, or solar principle, they found
+themselves obliged to compose three grades of divine beings, which were:
+first, the Demi-Ourgos, or working god; secondly, the logos, word
+or reason; thirdly, the spirit or soul (of the world).* And here,
+Christians! is the romance on which you have founded your trinity; here
+is the system which, born a heretic in the temples of Egypt, transported
+a pagan into the schools of Greece and Italy, is now found to be
+good, catholic, and orthodox, by the conversion of its partisans, the
+disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, to Christianity.
+
+     * These are the real types of the Christian Trinity.
+
+"It is thus that God, after having been, First, The visible and various
+action of the meteors and the elements;
+
+"Secondly, The combined powers of the stars, considered in their
+relations to terrestrial beings;
+
+Thirdly, These terrestrial beings themselves, by confounding the symbols
+with their archetypes;
+
+Fourthly, The double power of nature in its two principal operations of
+producing and destroying;
+
+"Fifthly, The animated world, with distinction of agent and patient, of
+effect and cause;
+
+"Sixthly, The solar principle, or the element of fire considered as the
+only mover;
+
+"Has thus become, finally, in the last resort, a chimerical and abstract
+being, a scholastic subtilty, of substance without form, a body without
+a figure, a very delirium of the mind, beyond the power of reason to
+comprehend. But vainly does it seek in this last transformation to elude
+the senses; the seal of its origin is imprinted upon it too deep to be
+effaced; and its attributes, all borrowed from the physical attributes
+of the universe, such as immensity, eternity, indivisibility,
+incomprehensibility; or on the moral affections of man, such as
+goodness, justice, majesty; its names* even, all derived from the
+physical beings which were its types, and especially from the sun, from
+the planets, and from the world, constantly bring to mind, in spite of
+its corrupters, indelible marks of its real nature.
+
+     * In our last analysis we found all the names of the Deity
+     to be derived from some material object in which it was
+     supposed to reside.  We have given a considerable number of
+     instances; let us add one more relative to our word God.
+     This is known to be the Deus of the Latins, and the Theos of
+     the Greeks.  Now by the confession of Plato (in Cratylo), of
+     Macrobius (Saturn, lib. 1, c. 24,) and of Plutarch (Isis and
+     Osiris) its root is thein, which signifies to wander, like
+     planein, that is to say, it is synonymous with planets;
+     because, add our authors, both the ancient Greeks and
+     Barbarians particularly worshipped the planets.  I know that
+     such enquiries into etymologies have been much decried: but
+     if, as is the case, words are the representative signs of
+     ideas, the genealogy of the one becomes that of the other,
+     and a good etymological dictionary would be the most perfect
+     history of the human understanding.  It would only be
+     necessary in this enquiry to observe certain precautions,
+     which have hitherto been neglected, and particularly to make
+     an exact comparison of the value of the letters of the
+     different alphabets.  But, to continue our subject, we shall
+     add, that in the Phoenician language, the word thah (with
+     ain) signifies also to wander, and appears to be the
+     derivation of thein.  If we suppose Deus to be derived from
+     the Greek Zeus, a proper name of You-piter, having zaw, I
+     live, for its root, its sense will be precisely that of you,
+     and will mean soul of the world, igneous principle.  (See
+     note p. 143).  Div-us, which only signifies Genius, God of
+     the second order, appears to me to come from the oriental
+     word div substituted for dib, wolf and chacal, one of the
+     emblems of the sun.  At Thebes, says Macrobius, the sun was
+     painted under the form of a wolf or chacal, for there are no
+     wolves in Egypt.  The reason of this emblem, doubtless, is
+     that the chacal, like the cock announces by its cries the
+     sun's rising; and this reason is confirmed by the analogy of
+     the words lykos, wolf, and lyke, light of the morning,
+     whence comes lux.
+
+     Dius, which is to be understood also of the sun, must be
+     derived from dih, a hawk.  "The Egyptians," says Porphyry
+     (Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 92,) "represent the sun under the
+     emblem of a hawk, because this bird soars to the highest
+     regions of air where light abounds."  And in reality we
+     continually see at Cairo large flights of these birds,
+     hovering in the air, from whence they descend not but to
+     stun us with their shrieks, which are like the monosyllable
+     dih: and here, as in the preceding example, we find an
+     analogy between the word dies, day, light, and dius, god,
+     sun.
+
+"Such is the chain of ideas which the human mind had already run
+through at an epoch previous to the records of history; and since their
+continuity proves that they were the produce of the same series of
+studies and labors, we have every reason to place their origin in Egypt,
+the cradle of their first elements. This progress there may have been
+rapid; because the physical priests had no other food, in the retirement
+of the temples, but the enigma of the universe, always present to their
+minds; and because in the political districts into which that country
+was for a long time divided, every state had its college of priests,
+who, being by turns auxiliaries or rivals, hastened by their disputes
+the progress of science and discovery.*
+
+     * One of the proofs that all these systems were invented in
+     Egypt, is that this is the only country where we see a
+     complete body of doctrine formed from the remotest
+     antiquity.
+
+     Clemens Alexandrinus has transmitted to us (Stromat. lib.
+     6,) a curious detail of the forty-two volumes which were
+     borne in the procession of Isis.  "The priest," says he, "or
+     chanter, carries one of the symbolic instruments of music,
+     and two of the books of Mercury; one containing hymns of the
+     gods, the other the list of kings.  Next to him the
+     horoscope (the regulator of time,) carries a palm and a
+     dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the four
+     books of Mercury which treat of astrology: the first on the
+     order of the planets, the second on the risings of the sun
+     and moon, and the two last on the rising and aspect of the
+     stars.  Then comes the sacred author, with feathers on his
+     head (like Kneph) and a book in his hand, together with ink,
+     and a reed to write with, (as is still the practice among
+     the Arabs).  He must be versed in hieroglyphics, must
+     understand the description of the universe, the course of
+     the sun, moon, stars, and planets, be acquainted with the
+     division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes, with the course of
+     the Nile, with instruments, measures, sacred ornaments, and
+     sacred places.  Next comes the stole bearer, who carries the
+     cubit of justice, or measure of the Nile, and a cup for the
+     libations; he bears also in the procession ten volumes on
+     the subject of sacrifices, hymns, prayers, offerings,
+     ceremonies, festivals. Lastly arrives the prophet, bearing
+     in his bosom a pitcher, so as to be exposed to view; he is
+     followed by persons carrying bread (as at the marriage of
+     Cana.) This prophet, as president of the mysteries, learns
+     ten other sacred volumes, which treat of the laws, the gods,
+     and the discipline of the priests.  Now there are in all
+     forty-two volumes, thirty-six of which are studied and got
+     by heart by these personages, and the remaining six are set
+     apart to be consulted by the pastophores; they treat of
+     medicine, the construction of the human body (anatomy),
+     diseases, remedies, instruments, etc., etc."
+
+     We leave the reader to deduce all the consequences of an
+     Encyclopedia.  It is ascribed to Mercury; but Jamblicus
+     tells us that each book, composed by priests, was dedicated
+     to that god, who, on account of his title of genius or decan
+     opening the zodiac, presided over every enterprise.  He is
+     the Janus of the Romans, and the Guianesa of the Indians,
+     and it is remarkable that Yanus and Guianes are homonymous.
+     In short it appears that these books are the source of all
+     that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and Latins in
+     every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc.  What is
+     most to be regretted in their loss is that part which
+     related to the principles of medicine and diet, in which the
+     Egyptians appear to have made a considerable progress, and
+     to have delivered many useful observations.
+
+"There happened early on the borders of the Nile, what has since been
+repeated in every country; as soon as a new system was formed
+its novelty excited quarrels and schisms; then, gaining credit by
+persecution itself, sometimes it effaced antecedent ideas, sometimes it
+modified and incorporated them; then, by the intervention of political
+revolutions, the aggregation of states and the mixture of nations
+confused all opinions; and the filiation of ideas being lost, theology
+fell into a chaos, and became a mere logogriph of old traditions no
+longer understood. Religion, having strayed from its object was now
+nothing more than a political engine to conduct the credulous vulgar;
+and it was used for this purpose, sometimes by men credulous themselves
+and dupes of their own visions, and sometimes by bold and energetic
+spirits in pursuit of great objects of ambition.
+
+
+IX. Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World (You-piter).
+
+
+"Such was the legislator of the Hebrews; who, wishing to separate his
+nation from all others, and to form a distinct and solitary empire,
+conceived the design of establishing its basis on religious prejudices,
+and of raising around it a sacred rampart of opinions and of rites. But
+in vain did he prescribe the worship of the symbols which prevailed in
+lower Egypt and in Phoenicia;* for his god was nevertheless an Egyptian
+god, invented by those priests of whom Moses had been the disciple; and
+Yahouh,** betrayed by its very name, essence (of beings), and by its
+symbol, the burning bush, is only the soul of the world, the
+moving principle which the Greeks soon after adopted under the same
+denomination in their you-piter, regenerating being, and under that of
+Ei, existence,*** which the Thebans consecrated by the name of Kneph,
+which Sais worshipped under the emblem of Isis veiled, with this
+inscription: I am al that has been, all that is, and all that is to
+come, and no mortal has raised my veil; which Pythagoras honored under
+the name of Vesta, and which the stoic philosophy defined precisely by
+calling it the principle of fire. In vain did Moses wish to blot from
+his religion every thing which had relation to the stars; many traits
+call them to mind in spite of all he has done. The seven planetary
+luminaries of the great candlestick; the twelve stones, or signs in the
+Urim of the high priests; the feast of the two equinoxes, (entrances and
+gates of the two hemispheres); the ceremony of the lamb, (the celestial
+ram then in his fifteenth degree); lastly, the name even of Osiris
+preserved in his song,**** and the ark, or coffer, an imitation of the
+tomb in which that God was laid, all remain as so many witnesses of the
+filiation of his ideas, and of their extraction from the common source.
+
+     * "At a certain period," says Plutarch (de Iside) "all the
+     Egyptians have their animal gods painted.  The Thebans are
+     the only people who do not employ painters, because they
+     worship a god whose form comes not under the senses, and
+     cannot be represented."  And this is the god whom Moses,
+     educated at Heliopolis, adopted; but the idea was not of his
+     invention.
+
+     ** Such is the true pronunciation of the Jehovah of the
+     moderns, who violate, in this respect, every rule of
+     criticism; since it is evident that the ancients,
+     particularly the eastern Syrians and Phoenicians, were
+     acquainted neither with the J nor the P which are of Tartar
+     origin.  The subsisting usage of the Arabs, which we have
+     re-established here, is confirmed by Diodorus, who calls the
+     god of Moses Iaw, (lib. 1), and Iaw and Yahouh are
+     manifestly the same word: the identity continues in that of
+     You-piter; but in order to render it more complete, we shall
+     demonstrate the signification to be the same.
+
+     In Hebrew, that is to say, in one of the dialects of the
+     common language of lower Asia, Yahouh is the participle of
+     the verb hih, to exist, to be, and signifies existing: in
+     other words, the principle of life, the mover or even motion
+     (the universal soul of beings).  Now what is Jupiter?  Let
+     us hear the Greeks and Latins explain their theology.  "The
+     Egyptians," says Diodorus, after Manatho, priest of Memphis,
+     "in giving names to the five elements, called spirit, or
+     ether, You-piter, on account of the true meaning of that
+     word: for spirit is the source of life, author of the vital
+     principle in animals; and for this reason they considered
+     him as the father, the generator of beings."  For the same
+     reason Homer says, father, and king of men and gods.  (Diod.
+     lib. 1, sect 1).
+
+     "Theologians," says Macrobius, "consider You-piter as the
+     soul of the world."  Hence the words of Virgil: " Muses let
+     us begin with You-piter; the world is full of You-piter."
+     (Somn. Scrip., ch. 17).  And in the Saturnalia, he says,
+     "Jupiter is the sun himself." It was this also which made
+     Virgil say, "The spirit nourishes the life (of beings), and
+     the soul diffused through the vast members (of the
+     universe), agitates the whole mass, and forms but one
+     immense body."
+
+     "Ioupiter," says the ancient verses of the Orphic sect,
+     which originated in Egypt; verses collected by Onomacritus
+     in the days of Pisistratus, "Ioupiter, represented with the
+     thunder in his hand, is the beginning, origin, end, and
+     middle of all things: a single and universal power, he
+     governs every thing; heaven, earth, fire, water, the
+     elements, day, and night.  These are what constitute his
+     immense body: his eyes are the sun and moon: he is space and
+     eternity: in fine," adds Porphyry.  "Jupiter is the world,
+     the universe, that which constitutes the essence and life of
+     all beings.  Now," continues the same author, "as
+     philosophers differed in opinion respecting the nature and
+     constituent parts of this god, and as they could invent no
+     figure that should represent all his attributes, they
+     painted him in the form of a man.  He is in a sitting
+     posture, in allusion to his immutable essence; the upper
+     part of his body is uncovered, because it is in the upper
+     regions of the universe (the stars) that he most
+     conspicuously displays himself.  He is covered from the
+     waist downwards, because respecting terrestrial things he is
+     more secret and concealed.  He holds a scepter in his left
+     hand, because on the left side is the heart, and the heart
+     is the seat of the understanding, which, (in human beings)
+     regulates every action."  Euseb. Proeper. Evang., p 100.
+
+     The following passage of the geographer and philosopher,
+     Strabo, removes every doubt as to the identity of the ideas
+     of Moses and those of the heathen theologians.
+
+     "Moses, who was one of the Egyptian priests, taught his
+     followers that it was an egregious error to represent the
+     Deity under the form of animals, as the Egyptians did, or in
+     the shape of man, as was the practice of the Greeks and
+     Africans.  That alone is the Deity, said he, which
+     constitutes heaven, earth, and every living thing; that
+     which we call the world, the sum of all things, nature; and
+     no reasonable person will think of representing such a being
+     by the image of any one of the objects around us.  It is for
+     this reason, that, rejecting every species of images or
+     idols, Moses wished the Deity to be worshipped without
+     emblems, and according to his proper nature; and he
+     accordingly ordered a temple worthy of him to be erected,
+     etc.  Geograph. lib. 16, p. 1104, edition of 1707.
+
+     The theology of Moses has, then, differed in no respect from
+     that of his followers, that is to say, from that of the
+     Stoics and Epicureans, who consider the Deity as the soul of
+     the world.  This philosophy appears to have taken birth, or
+     to have been disseminated when Abraham came into Egypt (200
+     years before Moses), since he quitted his system of idols
+     for that of the god Yahouh; so that we may place its
+     promulgation about the seventeenth or eighteenth century
+     before Christ; which corresponds with what we have said
+     before.
+
+     As to the history of Moses, Diodorus properly represents it
+     when he says, lib. 34 and 40, "That the Jews were driven out
+     of Egypt at a time of dearth, when the country was full of
+     foreigners, and that Moses, a man of extraordinary prudence
+     seized this opportunity of establishing his religion in the
+     mountains of Judea."  It will seem paradoxical to assert,
+     that the 600,000 armed men whom he conducted thither ought
+     to be reduced to 6,000; but I can confirm the assertion by
+     so many proofs drawn from the books themselves, that it will
+     be necessary to correct an error which appears to have
+     arisen from the mistake of the transcribers.
+
+     *** This was the monosyllable written on the gates of the
+     temple of Delphos.  Plutarch has made it the subject of a
+     dissertation.
+
+     **** These are the literal expressions of the book of
+     Deuteronomy, chap. XXXII.  "The works of Tsour are perfect."
+     Now Tsour has been translated by the word creator; its
+     proper signification is to give forms, and this is one of
+     the definitions of Osiris in Plutarch.
+
+
+X. Religion of Zoroaster.
+
+
+"Such also was Zoroaster; who, five centuries after Moses, and in the
+time of David, revived and moralized among the Medes and Bactrians, the
+whole Egyptian system of Osiris and Typhon, under the names Ormuzd and
+Ahrimanes; who called the reign of summer, virtue and good; the reign of
+winter, sin and evil; the renewal of nature in spring, creation of the
+world; the conjunction of the spheres at secular periods, resurrection;
+and the Tartarus and Elysium of the astrologers and geographers were
+named future life, hell and paradise. In a word, he did nothing but
+consecrate the existing dreams of the mystical system.
+
+
+XI. Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans.
+
+
+"Such again are the propagators of the dismal doctrine of the Samaneans;
+who, on the basis of the Metempsychosis, have erected the misanthropic
+system of self-denial, and of privations; who, laying it down as a
+principle that the body is only a prison where the soul lives in an
+impure confinement, that life is only a dream, an illusion, and the
+world only a passage to another country, to a life without end, placed
+virtue and perfection in absolute immobility, in the destruction of all
+sentiment, in the abnegation of physical organs, in the annihilation of
+all our being; whence resulted fasts, penances, macerations, solitude,
+contemplations, and all the practices of the deplorable delirium of the
+Anchorites.
+
+
+XII. Brahmism, or Indian System.
+
+
+"And such, too, were the founders of the Indian System; who, refining
+after Zoroaster on the two principles of creation and destruction,
+introduced an intermediary principle, that of preservation, and on
+their trinity in unity, of Brama, Chiven, and Vichenou, accumulated the
+allegories of their ancient traditions, and the alembicated subtilities
+of their metaphysics.
+
+"These are the materials which existed in a scattered state for
+many centuries in Asia; when a fortuitous concourse of events and
+circumstances, on the borders of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean,
+served to form them into new combinations.
+
+
+XIII. Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun, under the
+cabalistical names of Chrish-en, or Christ, and Ye-sus or Jesus.
+
+
+"In constituting a separate nation, Moses strove in vain to defend it
+against the invasion of foreign ideas. An invisible inclination, founded
+on the affinity of their origin, had constantly brought back the Hebrews
+towards the worship of the neighboring nations; and the commercial and
+political relations which necessarily existed between them, strengthened
+this propensity from day to day. As long as the constitution of the
+state remained entire, the coercive force of the government and the laws
+opposed these innovations, and retarded their progress; nevertheless
+the high places were full of idols; and the god Sun had his chariot and
+horses painted in the palaces of the kings, and even in the temples of
+Yahouh; but when the conquests of the sultans of Nineveh and Babylon had
+dissolved the bands of civil power, the people, left to themselves and
+solicited by their conquerors, restrained no longer their inclination
+for profane opinions, and they were publicly established in Judea.
+First, the Assyrian colonies, which came and occupied the lands of the
+tribes, filled the kingdom of Samaria with dogmas of the Magi, which
+very soon penetrated into the kingdom of Judea. Afterwards, Jerusalem
+being subjugated, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Arabs, entering this
+defenceless country, introduced their opinions; and the religion of
+Moses was doubly mutilated. Besides the priests and great men, being
+transported to Babylon and educated in the sciences of the Chaldeans,
+imbibed, during a residence of seventy years, the whole of their
+theology; and from that moment the dogmas of the hostile Genius (Satan),
+the archangel Michael,* the ancient of days (Ormuzd), the rebel
+angels, the battles in heaven, the immortality of the soul, and the
+resurrection, all unknown to Moses, or rejected by his total silence
+respecting them, were introduced and naturalized among the Jews.
+
+     * "The names of the angels and of the months, such as
+     Gabriel, Michael, Yar, Nisan, etc., came from Babylon with
+     the Jews:" says expressly the Talmud of Jerusalem.  See
+     Beousob. Hist. du Manich. Vol. II, p. 624, where he proves
+     that the saints of the Almanac are an imitation of the 365
+     angels of the Persians; and Jamblicus in his Egyptian
+     Mysteries, sect. 2, c. 3, speaks of angels, archangels,
+     seraphims, etc., like a true Christian.
+
+"The emigrants returned to their country with these ideas; and their
+innovation at first excited disputes between their partisans the
+Pharisees, and their opponents the Saducees, who maintained the ancient
+national worship; but the former, aided by the propensities of the
+people and their habits already contracted, and supported by the
+Persians, their deliverers and masters, gained the ascendant over the
+latter; and the Sons of Moses consecrated the theology of Zoroaster.*
+
+     * "The whole philosophy of the gymnosophists," says Diogenes
+     Laertius on the authority of an ancient writer, "is derived
+     from that of the Magi, and many assert that of the Jews to
+     have the same origin."  Lib. 1. c. 9.  Megasthenes, an
+     historian of repute in the days of Seleucus Nicanor, and who
+     wrote particularly upon India, speaking of the philosophy of
+     the ancients respecting natural things, puts the Brachmans
+     and the Jews precisely on the same footing.
+
+"A fortuitous analogy between two leading ideas was highly favorable
+to this coalition, and became the basis of a last system, not less
+surprising in the fortune it has had in the world, than in the causes of
+its formation.
+
+"After the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Samaria, some
+judicious men foresaw the same destiny for Jerusalem, which they did not
+fail to predict and publish; and their predictions had the particular
+turn of being terminated by prayers for a re-establishment and
+regeneration, uttered in the form of prophecies. The Hierophants,
+in their enthusiasm, had painted a king as a deliverer, who was to
+re-establish the nation in its ancient glory; the Hebrews were to become
+once more a powerful, a conquering nation, and Jerusalem the capital of
+an empire extended over the whole earth.
+
+"Events having realized the first part of these predictions, the ruin of
+Jerusalem, the people adhered to the second with a firmness of belief in
+proportion to their misfortunes; and the afflicted Jews expected, with
+the impatience of want and desire, this victorious king and deliverer,
+who was to come and save the nation of Moses, and restore the empire of
+David.
+
+"On the other hand, the sacred and mythological traditions of preceding
+times had spread through all Asia a dogma perfectly analogous. The cry
+there was a great mediator, a final judge, a future saviour, a king,
+god, conqueror and legislator, who was to restore the golden age upon
+earth,* to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the
+empire of good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished
+these ideas with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a
+consolation under that deplorable state of suffering into which they
+had been plunged by the devastations of successive conquests, and the
+barbarous despotism of their governments. This conformity between the
+oracles of different nations, and those of the prophets, excited the
+attention of the Jews; and doubtless the prophets had the art to compose
+their descriptions after the style and genius of the sacred books
+employed in the Pagan mysteries. There was therefore a general
+expectation in Judea of a great ambassador, a final Saviour; when a
+singular circumstance determined the epoch of his coming.
+
+     * This is the reason of the application of the many Pagan
+     oracles to Jesus, and particularly the fourth eclogue of
+     Virgil, and the Sybilline verses so celebrated among the
+     ancients.
+
+"It is found in the sacred books of the Persians and Chaldeans, that the
+world, composed of a total revolution of twelve thousand, was divided
+into two partial revolutions; one of which, the age and reign of good,
+terminated in six thousand; the other, the age and reign of evil, was to
+terminate in six thousand more.
+
+"By these records, the first authors had understood the annual
+revolution of the great celestial orb called the world, (a revolution
+composed of twelve months or signs, divided each into a thousand parts),
+and the two systematic periods, of winter and summer, composed each of
+six thousand. These expressions, wholly equivocal and badly explained,
+having received an absolute and moral, instead of a physical and
+astrological sense, it happened that the annual world was taken for the
+secular world, the thousand of the zodiacal divisions, for a thousand of
+years; and supposing, from the state of things, that they lived in
+the age of evil, they inferred that it would end with the six thousand
+pretended years.*
+
+     * We have already seen this tradition current among the
+     Tuscans; it was disseminated through most nations, and shows
+     us what we ought to think of all the pretended creations and
+     terminations of the world, which are merely the beginnings
+     and endings of astronomical periods invented by astrologers.
+     That of the year or solar revolution, being the most simple
+     and perceptible, served as a model to the rest, and its
+     comparison gave rise to the most whimsical ideas.  Of this
+     description is the idea of the four ages of the world among
+     the Indians.  Originally these four ages were merely the
+     four seasons; and as each season was under the supposed
+     influence of a planet, it bore the name of the metal
+     appropriated to that planet; thus spring was the age of the
+     sun, or of gold; summer the age of the moon, or of silver;
+     autumn the age of Venus, or of brass; and winter the age of
+     Mars, or of iron.  Afterwards when astronomers invented the
+     great year of 25 and 36 thousand common years, which had for
+     its object the bringing back all the stars to one point of
+     departure and a general conjunction, the ambiguity of the
+     terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and the
+     myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which
+     were thus measured were easily converted into so many
+     revolutions of the sun.  Thus the different periods of
+     creation which have been so great a source of difficulty and
+     misapprehension to curious enquirers, were in reality
+     nothing more than hypothetical calculations of astronomical
+     periods.  In the same manner the creation of the world has
+     been attributed to different seasons of the year, just as
+     these different seasons have served for the fictitious
+     period of these conjunctions; and of consequence has been
+     adopted by different nations for the commencement of an
+     ordinary year.  Among the Egyptians this period fell upon
+     the summer solstice, which was the commencement of their
+     year; and the departure of the spheres, according to their
+     conjectures, fell in like manner upon the period when the
+     sun enters cancer.  Among the Persians the year commenced at
+     first in the spring, or when the sun enters Aries; and from
+     thence the first Christians were led to suppose that God
+     created the world in the spring: this opinion is also
+     favored by the book of Genesis; and it is farther
+     remarkable, that the world is not there said to be created
+     by the God of Moses (Yahouh), but by the Elohim or gods in
+     the plural, that is by the angels or genii, for so the word
+     constantly means in the Hebrew books.  If we farther observe
+     that the root of the word Elohim signifies strong or
+     powerful, and that the Egyptians called their decans strong
+     and powerful leaders, attributing to them the creation of
+     the world, we shall presently perceive that the book of
+     Genesis affirms neither more nor less than that the world
+     was created by the decans, by those very genii whom,
+     according to Sanchoniathon, Mercury excited against Saturn,
+     and who were called Elohim.  It may be farther asked why the
+     plural substantive Elohim is made to agree with the singular
+     verb bara (the Elohim creates). The reason is that after the
+     Babylonish captivity the unity of the Supreme Being was the
+     prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was therefore thought
+     proper to introduce a pious solecism in language, which it
+     is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the names
+     of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a
+     plural verb, to which Elohim is the nominative case
+     understood, as Raouben (Reuben), they have looked upon me,
+     and Samaonni (Simeon), they have granted me my prayer; to
+     wit, the Elohim.  The reason of this etymology is to be
+     found in the religious creeds of the wives of Jacob, whose
+     gods were the taraphim of Laban, that is, the angels of the
+     Persians, and Egyptian decans.
+
+"Now, according to calculations admitted by the Jews, they began to
+reckon near six thousand years since the supposed creation of the
+world.* This coincidence caused a fermentation in the public mind.
+Nothing was thought of but the approaching end. They consulted the
+hierophants and the mystical books, which differed as to the term; the
+great mediator, the final judge, was expected and desired, to put an
+end to so many calamities. This being was so much spoken of, that some
+person finally was said to have seen him; and a first rumor of this sort
+was sufficient to establish a general certainty. Popular report became
+an established fact: the imaginary being was realized; and all the
+circumstances of mythological tradition, being assembled around this
+phantom, produced a regular history, of which it was no longer permitted
+to doubt.
+
+     * According to the computation of the Seventy, the period
+     elapsed consisted of about 5,600 years, and this computation
+     was principally followed.  It is well known how much, in the
+     first ages of the church, this opinion of the end of the
+     world agitated the minds of men.  In the sequel, the general
+     councils encouraged by finding that the general
+     conflagration did not come, pronounced the expectation that
+     prevailed heretical, and its believers were called
+     Millenarians; a circumstance curious enough, since it is
+     evident from the history of the gospels that Jesus Christ
+     was a Millenarian, and of consequence a heretic.
+
+"These mythological traditions recounted that, in the beginning, a woman
+and a man had by their fall introduced sin and misery into the world.
+(Consult plate of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
+
+"By this was denoted the astronomical fact, that the celestial virgin
+and the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal
+equinox, delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed,
+on falling below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of
+evil, Ahrimanes, represented by the constellation of the Serpent.*
+
+     * "The Persians," says Chardin, "call the constellation of
+     the serpent Ophiucus, serpent of Eve: and this serpent
+     Ophiucas or Ophioneus plays a similar part in the theology
+     of the Phoenicians," for Pherecydes, their disciple and the
+     master of Pythagoras, said "that Ophioneus Serpentinus had
+     been chief of the rebels against Jupiter."  See Mars. Ficin.
+     Apol. Socrat. p. m. 797, col. 2.  I shall add that ephah
+     (with ain) signifies in Hebrew, serpent.
+
+These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the
+man.*
+
+     * In a physical sense to seduce, seducere, means only to
+     attract, to draw after us.
+
+"And in fact, the virgin, setting first, seems to draw the herdsman
+after her.
+
+"That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight and
+good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil.
+
+"And in fact, the Virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit, which she
+seems to offer to the Herdsman; and the branch, emblem of autumn, placed
+in the picture of Mithra* between winter and summer, seems to open the
+door and give knowledge, the key of good and evil.
+
+     * See this picture in Hyde, page 111, edition of 1760.
+
+That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and that a
+cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to guard it.
+
+"And in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the horizon,
+Perseus rises on the other side;* and this Genius, with a sword in
+his hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the garden and
+dominion of fruits and flowers.
+
+     * Rather the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so
+     beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his
+     hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the
+     horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the
+     serpents which surround it are Orphiucus and the Polar
+     Dragon, who then occupy the zenith. This shows us in what
+     manner the ancients composed all their figures and fables.
+     They took such constellations as they found at the same time
+     on the circle of the horizon, and collecting the different
+     parts, they formed groups which served them as an almanac in
+     hieroglyphic characters.  Such is the secret of all their
+     pictures, and the solution of all their mythological
+     monsters.  The virgin is also Andromeda, delivered by
+     Perseus from the whale that pursues her (pro-sequitor).
+
+That of this virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a child,
+who should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the world from
+sin.
+
+"This denotes the son, which, at the moment of the winter solstice,
+precisely when the Persian Magi drew the horoscope of the new year,
+was placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern
+horizon; on this account he was figured in their astrological pictures
+under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin,* and became
+afterwards, at the vernal equinox, the ram, or the lamb, triumphant over
+the constellation of the Serpent, which disappeared from the skies.
+
+     * Such was the picture of the Persian sphere, cited by Aben
+     Ezra in the Coelam Poeticum of Blaeu, p. 71.  "The picture
+     of the first decan of the Virgin," says that writer.
+     "represents a beautiful virgin with flowing hair; sitting in
+     a chair, with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an
+     infant, called Jesus by some nations, and Christ in Greek."
+
+     In the library of the king of France is a manuscript in
+     Arabic, marked 1165, in which is a picture of the twelve
+     signs; and that of the Virgin represents a young woman with
+     an infant by her side: the whole scene indeed of the birth
+     of Jesus is to be found in the adjacent part of the heavens.
+     The stable is the constellation of the charioteer and the
+     goat, formerly Capricorn: a constellation called proesepe
+     Jovis Heniochi, stable of Iou; and the word Iou is found in
+     the name Iou-seph (Joseph).  At no great distance is the ass
+     of Typhon (the great she-bear), and the ox or bull, the
+     ancient attendants of the manger.  Peter the porter, is
+     Janus with his keys and bald forehead: the twelve apostles
+     are the genii of the twelve months, etc.  This Virgin has
+     acted very different parts in the various systems of
+     mythology: she has been the Isis of the Egyptians, who said
+     of her in one of their inscriptions cited by Julian, the
+     fruit I have brought forth is the sun.  The majority of
+     traits drawn by Plutarch apply to her, in the same manner as
+     those of Osiris apply to Bootes: also the seven principal
+     stars of the she-bear, called David's chariot, were called
+     the chariot of Osiris (See Kirker); and the crown that is
+     situated behind, formed of ivy, was called Chen-Osiris, the
+     tree of Osiris.  The Virgin has likewise been Ceres, whose
+     mysteries were the same with those of Isis and Mithra; she
+     has been the Diana of the Ephesians; the great goddess of
+     Syria, Cybele, drawn by lions; Minerva, the mother of
+     Bacchus; Astraea, a chaste virgin taken up into heaven at
+     the end of a golden age; Themis at whose feet is the balance
+     that was put in her hands; the Sybil of Virgil, who descends
+     into hell, or sinks below the hemisphere with a branch in
+     her hand, etc.
+
+That, in his infancy, this restorer of divine and celestial nature would
+live abased, humble, obscure and indigent.
+
+"And this, because the winter sun is abased below the horizon; and that
+this first period of his four ages or seasons, is a time of obscurity,
+scarcity, fasting, and want.
+
+"That, being put to death by the wicked, he had risen gloriously; that
+he had reascended from hell to heaven, where he would reign forever
+
+"This is a sketch of the life of the sun; who, finishing his career at
+the winter solstice, when Typhon and the rebel angels gain the dominion,
+seems to be put to death by them; but who soon after is born again, and
+rises* into the vault of heaven, where he reigns.
+
+     * Resurgere, to rise a second time, cannot signify to return
+     to life, but in a metaphorical sense; but we see continually
+     mistakes of this kind result from the ambiguous meaning of
+     the words made use of in ancient tradition.
+
+"Finally, these traditions went so far as to mention even his
+astrological and mythological names, and inform us that he was called
+sometimes Chris, that is to say, preserver,* and from that, ye Indians,
+you have made your god Chrish-en or Chrish-na; and, ye Greek and Western
+Christians, your Chris-tos, son of Mary, is the same; sometimes he is
+called Yes, by the union of three letters, which by their numerical
+value form the number 608, one of the solar periods.** And this,
+Europeans, is the name which, with the Latin termination, is become your
+Yes-us or Jesus, the ancient and cabalistic name attributed to young
+Bacchus, the clandestine son (nocturnal) of the Virgin Minerva, who, in
+the history of his whole life, and even of his death, brings to mind the
+history of the god of the Christians, that is, of the star of day, of
+which they are each of them the emblems."
+
+     * The Greeks used to express by X, or Spanish iota, the
+     aspirated ha of the Orientals, who said haris.  In Hebrew
+     heres signifies the sun, but in Arabic the meaning of the
+     radical word is, to guard, to preserve, and of haris,
+     guardian, preserver.  It is the proper epithet of Vichenou,
+     which demonstrates at once the identity of the Indian and
+     Christian Trinities, and their common origin.  It is
+     manifestly but one system, which divided into two branches,
+     one extending to the east, and the other to the west,
+     assumed two different forms: Its principal trunk is the
+     Pythagorean system of the soul of the world, or Iou-piter.
+     The epithet piter, or father, having been applied to the
+     demi-ourgos of Plato, gave rise to an ambiguity which caused
+     an enquiry to be made respecting the son of this father.  In
+     the opinion of the philosophers the son was understanding,
+     Nous and Logos, from which the Latins made their Verbum.
+     And thus we clearly perceive the origin of the eternal
+     father and of the Verbum his son, proceeding from him (Mens
+     Ex Deo nata, says Macrobius): the oenima or spiritus mundi,
+     was the Holy Ghost; and it is for this reason that Manes,
+     Pasilides, Valentinius, and other pretended heretics of the
+     first ages, who traced things to their source, said, that
+     God the Father was the supreme inaccessible light (that of
+     the heaven, the primum mobile, or the aplanes); the Son the
+     secondary light resident in the sun, and the Holy Ghost the
+     atmosphere of the earth (See Beausob. vol. II, p. 586):
+     hence, among the Syrians, the representation of the Holy
+     Ghost by a dove, the bird of Venus Urania, that is of the
+     air. The Syrians (says Nigidius de Germaico) assert that a
+     dove sat for a certain number of days on the egg of a fish,
+     and that from this incubation Venus was born: Sextus
+     Empiricus also observes (Inst. Pyrrh. lib. 3, c. 23) that
+     the Syrians abstain from eating doves; which intimates to us
+     a period commencing in the sign Pisces, in the winter
+     solstice.  We may farther observe, that if Chris comes from
+     Harisch by a chin, it will signify artificer, an epithet
+     belonging to the sun.  These variations, which must have
+     embarrassed the ancients, prove it to be the real type of
+     Jesus, as had been already remarked in the time of
+     Tertullian.  "Many, says this writer, suppose with greater
+     probability that the sun is our God, and they refer us to
+     the religion of the Persians."  Apologet. c. 16.
+
+     ** See a curious ode to the sun, by Martianus Capella,
+     translated by Gebelin.
+
+Here a great murmur having arisen among all the Christian groups, the
+Lamas, the Mussulmans and the Indians called them to order, and the
+orator went on to finish his discourse:
+
+"You know at present," said he, "how the rest of this system was
+composed in the chaos and anarchy of the three first centuries; what a
+multitude of singular opinions divided the minds of men, and armed them
+with an enthusiasm and a reciprocal obstinacy; because, being equally
+founded on ancient tradition, they were equally sacred. You know how the
+government, after three centuries, having embraced one of these sects,
+made it the orthodox, that is to say, the pre-dominant religion, to the
+exclusion of the rest; which, being less in number, became heretics; you
+know how and by what means of violence and seduction this religion was
+propagated, extended, divided, and enfeebled; how, six hundred years
+after the Christian innovation, another system was formed from it and
+from that of the Jews; and how Mahomet found the means of composing a
+political and theological empire at the expense of those of Moses and
+the vicars of Jesus.
+
+"Now, if you take a review of the whole history of the spirit of all
+religion, you will see that in its origin it has had no other author
+than the sensations and wants of man; that the idea of God has had no
+other type and model than those of physical powers, material beings,
+producing either good or evil, by impressions of pleasure or pain on
+sensitive beings; that in the formation of all these systems the spirit
+of religion has always followed the same course, and been uniform in
+its proceedings; that in all of them the dogma has never failed to
+represent, under the name of gods, the operations of nature, and
+passions and prejudices of men; that the moral of them all has had for
+its object the desire of happiness and the aversion to pain; but that
+the people, and the greater part of legislators, not knowing the route
+to be pursued, have formed false, and therefore discordant, ideas of
+virtue and vice of good and evil, that is to say, of what renders man
+happy or miserable; that in every instance, the means and the causes of
+propagating and establishing systems have exhibited the same scenes of
+passion and the same events; everywhere disputes about words, pretexts
+for zeal, revolutions and wars excited by the ambition of princes, the
+knavery of apostles, the credulity of proselytes, the ignorance of the
+vulgar, the exclusive cupidity and intolerant arrogance of all. Indeed,
+you will see that the whole history of the spirit of religion is only
+the history of the errors of the human mind, which, placed in a world
+that it does not comprehend, endeavors nevertheless to solve the enigma;
+and which, beholding with astonishment this mysterious and visible
+prodigy, imagines causes, supposes reasons, builds systems; then,
+finding one defective, destroys it for another not less so; hates the
+error that it abandons, misconceives the one that it embraces, rejects
+the truth that it is seeking, composes chimeras of discordant beings;
+and thus, while always dreaming of wisdom and happiness, wanders blindly
+in a labyrinth of illusion and doubt."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ALL RELIGIONS HAVE THE SAME OBJECT.
+
+
+Thus spoke the orator in the name of those men who had studied the
+origin and succession of religious ideas.
+
+The theologians of various systems, reasoning on this discourse: "It is
+an impious representation," said some, "whose tendency is nothing less
+than to overturn all belief, to destroy subordination in the minds of
+men, and annihilate our ministry and power." "It is a romance," said
+others, "a tissue of conjectures, composed with art, but without
+foundation." The moderate and prudent men added: "Supposing all this to
+be true, why reveal these mysteries? Doubtless our opinions are full of
+errors; but these errors are a necessary restraint on the multitude. The
+world has gone thus for two thousand years; why change it now?"
+
+A murmur of disapprobation, which never fails to rise at every
+innovation, now began to increase; when a numerous group of the common
+classes of people, and of untaught men of all countries and of every
+nation, without prophets, without doctors, and without doctrine,
+advancing in the circle, drew the attention of the whole assembly; and
+one of them, in the name of all, thus addressed the multitude:
+
+"Mediators and arbiters of nations! the strange relations which have
+occupied the present debate were unknown to us until this day. Our
+understanding, confounded and amazed at so many statements, some of them
+learned, others absurd and all incomprehensible, remains in uncertainty
+and doubt. One only reflection has struck us: on reviewing so many
+prodigious facts, so many contradictory assertions, we ask ourselves:
+What are all these discussions to us? What need have we of knowing what
+passed five or six thousand years ago, in countries we never heard
+of, and among men who will ever be unknown to us? True or false, what
+interest have we in knowing whether the world has existed six thousand,
+or twenty-five thousand years? Whether it was made of nothing, or of
+something; by itself, or by a maker, who in his turn would require
+another maker? What! we are not sure of what happens near us, and shall
+we answer for what happens in the sun, in the moon, or in imaginary
+regions of space? We have forgotten our own infancy, and shall we know
+the infancy of the world? And who will attest what no one has seen? who
+will certify what no man comprehends?
+
+"Besides, what addition or diminution will it make to our existence, to
+answer yes or no to all these chimeras? Hitherto neither our fathers nor
+ourselves have had the least knowledge or notion of them, and we do not
+perceive that we have had on this account either more or less of the
+sun, more or less of subsistence, more or less of good or of evil.
+
+"If the knowledge of these things is so necessary, why have we lived as
+well without it as those who have taken so much trouble concerning it?
+If this knowledge is superfluous, why should we burden ourselves with it
+to-day?"
+
+Then addressing himself to the doctors and theologians:
+
+"What!" said he, "is it necessary that we, poor and ignorant men, whose
+every moment is scarcely sufficient for the cares of life, and the
+labors of which you take the profit,--is it necessary for us to learn
+the numberless histories that you have recounted, to read the quantity
+of books that you have cited, and to study the various languages in
+which they are composed! A thousand years of life would not suffice--"
+
+"It is not necessary," replied the doctors, "that you should acquire all
+this science; we have it for you--"
+
+"But even you," replied the simple men, "with all your science, you are
+not agreed; of what advantage, then, is your science? Besides, how can
+you answer for us? If the faith of one man is applicable to many, what
+need have even you to believe? your fathers may have believed for you;
+and this would be reasonable, since they have seen for you.
+
+"Farther, what is believing, if believing influences no action? And what
+action is influenced by believing, for instance, that the world is or is
+not eternal?"
+
+"The latter would be offensive to God," said the doctors.
+
+"How prove you that?" replied the simple men.
+
+"In our books," answered the doctors.
+
+"We do not understand them," returned the simple men.
+
+"We understand them for you," said the doctors.
+
+"That is the difficulty," replied the simple men. "By what right do you
+constitute yourselves mediators between God and us?"
+
+"By his orders," said the doctors.
+
+"Where is the proof of these orders?" said the simple men.
+
+"In our books," said the doctors.
+
+"We understand them not," said the simple men; "and how came this just
+God to give you this privilege over us? Why did this common father
+oblige us to believe on a less degree of evidence than you? He has
+spoken to you; be it so; he is infallible, and deceives you not. But
+it is you who speak to us! And who shall assure us that you are not in
+error yourselves, or that you will not lead us into error? And if we
+should be deceived, how will that just God save us contrary to law, or
+condemn us on a law which we have not known?"
+
+"He has given you the natural law," said the doctors.
+
+"And what is the natural law?" replied the simple men. "If that law is
+sufficient, why has he given any other? If it is not sufficient, why did
+he make it imperfect?"
+
+"His judgments are mysteries," said the doctors, "and his justice is not
+like that of men."
+
+"If his justice," replied the simple men, "is not like ours, by what
+rule are we to judge of it? And, moreover, why all these laws, and what
+is the object proposed by them?"
+
+"To render you more happy," replied a doctor, "by rendering you better
+and more virtuous. It is to teach man to enjoy his benefits, and not
+injure his fellows, that God has manifested himself by so many oracles
+and prodigies."
+
+"In that case," said the simple men, "there is no necessity for so many
+studies, nor of such a variety of arguments; only tell us which is the
+religion that best answers the end which they all propose."
+
+Immediately, on this, every group, extolling its own morality above
+that of all others, there arose among the different sects a new and most
+violent dispute.
+
+"It is we," said the Mussulmans, "who possess the most excellent morals,
+who teach all the virtues useful to men and agreeable to God. We profess
+justice, disinterestedness, resignation to providence, charity to
+our brethren, alms-giving, and devotion; we torment not the soul with
+superstitious fears; we live without alarm, and die without remorse."
+
+"How dare you speak of morals," answered the Christian priests, "you,
+whose chief lived in licentiousness and preached impurity? You, whose
+first precept is homicide and war? For this we appeal to experience: for
+these twelve hundred years your fanatical zeal has not ceased to spread
+commotion and carnage among the nations. If Asia, so flourishing in
+former times, is now languishing in barbarity and depopulation, it is in
+your doctrine that we find the cause; in that doctrine, the enemy of
+all instruction, which sanctifies ignorance, which consecrates the most
+absolute despotism in the governors, imposes the most blind and passive
+obedience in the people, that has stupefied the faculties of man, and
+brutalized the nations.
+
+"It is not so with our sublime and celestial morals; it was they which
+raised the world from its primitive barbarity, from the senseless
+and cruel superstitions of idolatry, from human sacrifices,* from the
+shameful orgies of pagan mysteries; they it was that purified manners,
+proscribed incest and adultery, polished savage nations, banished
+slavery, and introduced new and unknown virtues, charity for men, their
+equality in the sight of God, forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries,
+the restraint of all the passions, the contempt of worldly greatness, a
+life completely spiritual and completely holy!"
+
+     * Read the cold declaration of Eusebius (Proep. Evang. lib.
+     I, p. 11,), who pretends that, since the coming of Christ,
+     there have been neither wars, nor tyrants, nor cannibals,
+     nor sodomites, nor persons committing incest, nor savages
+     destroying their parents, etc.  When we read these fathers
+     of the church we are astonished at their insincerity or
+     infatuation.
+
+"We admire," said the Mussulmans, "the ease with which you reconcile
+that evangelical meekness, of which you are so ostentatious, with
+the injuries and outrages with which you are constantly galling your
+neighbors. When you criminate so severely the great man whom we revere,
+we might fairly retort on the conduct of him whom you adore; but we
+scorn such advantages, and confining ourselves to the real object in
+question, we maintain that the morals of your gospel have by no means
+that perfection which you ascribe to them; it is not true that they
+have introduced into the world new and unknown virtues: for example,
+the equality of men in the sight of God,--that fraternity and that
+benevolence which follow from it, were formal doctrines of the sect
+of the Hermatics or Samaneans,* from whom you descend. As to the
+forgiveness of injuries, the Pagans themselves had taught it; but in
+the extent that you give it, far from being a virtue, it becomes an
+immorality, a vice. Your so much boasted precept of turning one cheek
+after the other, is not only contrary to every sentiment of man, but is
+opposed to all ideas of justice. It emboldens the wicked by impunity,
+debases the virtuous by servility, delivers up the world to despotism
+and tyranny, and dissolves all society. Such is the true spirit of your
+doctrines. Your gospels in their precepts and their parables, never
+represent God but as a despot without any rules of equity; a partial
+father treating a debauched and prodigal son with more favor than his
+respectful and virtuous children; a capricious master, who gives the
+same wages to workmen who had wrought but one hour, as to those who had
+labored through the whole day; one who prefers the last comers to the
+first. The moral is everywhere misanthropic and antisocial; it disgusts
+men with life and with society; and tends only to encourage hermitism
+and celibacy.
+
+     * The equality of mankind in a state of nature and in the
+     eyes of God was one of the principal tenets of the
+     Samaneans, and they appear to be the only ancients that
+     entertained this opinion.
+
+"As to the manner in which you have practised these morals, we appeal
+in our turn to the testimony of facts. We ask whether it is this
+evangelical meekness which has excited your interminable wars between
+your sects, your atrocious persecutions of pretended heretics, your
+crusades against Arianism, Manicheism, Protestantism, without speaking
+of your crusades against us, and of those sacrilegious associations,
+still subsisting, of men who take an oath to continue them?* We ask
+you whether it be gospel charity which has made you exterminate whole
+nations in America, to annihilate the empires of Mexico and Peru; which
+makes you continue to dispeople Africa and sell its inhabitants like
+cattle, notwithstanding your abolition of slavery; which makes you
+ravage India and usurp its dominions; and whether it be the same charity
+which, for three centuries past, has led you to harrass the habitations
+of the people of three continents, of whom the most prudent, the Chinese
+and Japanese, were constrained to drive you off, that they might escape
+your chains and recover their internal peace?"
+
+     * The oath taken by the knights of the Order of Malta, is to
+     kill, or make the Mahometans prisoners, for the glory of
+     God.
+
+Here the Bramins, the Rabbins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, the Priests of
+the Molucca islands, and the coasts of Guinea, loading the Christian
+doctors with reproaches: "Yes!" cried they, "these men are robbers and
+hypocrites, who preach simplicity, to surprise confidence; humility,
+to enslave with more ease; poverty, to appropriate all riches to
+themselves. They promise another world, the better to usurp the present;
+and while they speak to you of tolerance and charity, they burn, in the
+name of God, the men who do not worship him in their manner."
+
+"Lying priests," retorted the missionaries, "it is you who abuse the
+credulity of ignorant nations to subjugate them. It is you who have made
+of your ministry an art of cheating and imposture; you have converted
+religion into a traffic of cupidity and avarice. You pretend to hold
+communications with spirits, and they give for oracles nothing but
+your wills. You feign to read the stars, and destiny decrees only your
+desires. You cause idols to speak, and the gods are but the instruments
+of your passions. You have invented sacrifices and libations, to
+collect for your own profit the milk of flocks, and the flesh and fat
+of victims; and under the cloak of piety you devour the offerings of the
+gods, who cannot eat, and the substance of the people who are forced to
+labor."
+
+"And you," replied the Bramins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, "you sell to
+the credulous living, your vain prayers for the souls of the dead. With
+your indulgences and your absolutions you have usurped the power of God
+himself; and making a traffic of his favors and pardons, you have put
+heaven at auction; and by your system of expiations you have formed a
+tariff of crimes, which has perverted all consciences."*
+
+     * As long as it shall be possible to obtain purification
+     from crimes and exemption from punishment by means of money
+     or other frivolous practices; as long as kings and great men
+     shall suppose that building temples or instituting
+     foundations, will absolve them from the guilt of oppression
+     and homicide; as long as individuals shall imagine that they
+     may rob and cheat, provided they observe fast during Lent,
+     go to confession, and receive extreme unction, it is
+     impossible there should exist in society any morality or
+     virtue; and it is from a deep conviction of truth, that a
+     modern philosopher has called the doctrine of expiations la
+     verola des societes.
+
+"Add to this," said the Imans, "that these men have invented the
+most insidious of all systems of wickedness,--the absurd and impious
+obligation of recounting to them the most intimate secrets of actions
+and of thoughts (confessions); so their insolent curiosity has carried
+their inquisition even into the sanctuary of the marriage bed,* and the
+inviolable recesses of the heart."
+
+     * Confession is a very ancient invention of the priests, who
+     did not fail to avail themselves of that means of governing.
+     It was practised in the Egyptian, Greek, Phrygian, Persian
+     mysteries, etc. Plutarch has transmitted us the remarkable
+     answer of a Spartan whom a priest wanted to confess.  "Is it
+     to you or to God I am to confess?"  "To God," answered the
+     priest: "In that case," replied the Spartan, "man, begone!"
+     (Remarkable Savings of the Lacedemonians.)  The first
+     Christians confessed their faults publicly, like the
+     Essenians.  Afterwards, priests began to be established,
+     with power of absolution from the sin of idolatry.  In the
+     time of Theodosius, a woman having publicly confessed an
+     intrigue with a deacon, bishop Necterius, and his successor
+     Chrysostom, granted communion without confession.  It was
+     not until the seventh century that the abbots of convents
+     exacted from monks and nuns confession twice a year; and it
+     was at a still later period that bishops of Rome generalized
+     it.
+
+     The Mussulmen, who suppose women to have no souls, are
+     shocked at the idea of confession; and say; How can an
+     honest man think of listening to the recital of the actions
+     or the secret thoughts of a woman?  May we not also ask, on
+     the other hand, how can an honest woman consent to reveal
+     them?
+
+Thus by mutual reproaches the doctors of the different sects began to
+reveal all the crimes of their ministry--all the vices of their craft;
+and it was found that among all nations the spirit of the priesthood,
+their system of conduct, their actions their morals, were absolutely the
+same:
+
+That they had everywhere formed secret associations and corporations at
+enmity with the rest of society:*
+
+     * That we may understand the general feelings of priests
+     respecting the rest of mankind, whom they always call by the
+     name of the people, let us hear one of the doctors of the
+     church.  "The people," says Bishop Synnesius, in Calvit.
+     page 315, "are desirous of being deceived, we cannot act
+     otherwise respecting them.  The case was similar with the
+     ancient priests of Egypt, and for this reason they shut
+     themselves up in their temples, and there composed their
+     mysteries, out of the reach of the eye of the people."  And
+     forgetting what he has before just said, he adds: "for had
+     the people been in the secret they might have been offended
+     at the deception played upon them.  In the mean time how is
+     it possible to conduct one's self otherwise with the people
+     so long as they are people?  For my own part, to myself I
+     shall always be a philosopher, but in dealing with the mass
+     of mankind, I shall be a priest."
+
+     "A little jargon," says Geogory Nazianzen to St. Jerome
+     (Hieron. ad. Nep.) "is all that is necessary to impose on
+     the people.  The less they comprehend, the more they admire.
+     Our forefathers and doctors of the church have often said,
+     not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity
+     dictated to them."
+
+     "We endeavor," says Sanchoniaton, "to excite admiration by
+     means of the marvellous." (Proep. Evang. lib. 3.)
+
+     Such was the conduct of all the priests of antiquity, and is
+     still that of the Bramins and Lamas who are the exact
+     counterpart of the Egyptian priests.  Such was the practice
+     of the Jesuits, who marched with hasty strides in the same
+     career.  It is useless to point out the whole depravity of
+     such a doctrine.  In general every association which has
+     mystery for its basis, or an oath of secrecy, is a league of
+     robbers against society, a league divided in its very bosom
+     into knaves and dupes, or in other words agents and
+     instruments.  It is thus we ought to judge of those modern
+     clubs, which, under the name of Illuminatists, Martinists,
+     Cagliostronists, and Mesmerites, infest Europe.  These
+     societies are the follies and deceptions of the ancient
+     Cabalists, Magicians, Orphies, etc., "who," says Plutarch,
+     "led into errors of considerable magnitude, not only
+     individuals, but kings and nations."
+
+That they had everywhere attributed to themselves prerogatives and
+immunities, by means of which they lived exempt from the burdens of
+other classes:
+
+That they everywhere avoided the toils of the laborer, the dangers of
+the soldier, and the disappointments of the merchant:
+
+That they lived everywhere in celibacy, to shun even the cares of a
+family:
+
+That, under the cloak of poverty, they found everywhere the secret of
+procuring wealth and all sorts of enjoyments:
+
+That under the name of mendicity they raised taxes to a greater amount
+than princes:
+
+That in the form of gifts and offerings they had established fixed and
+certain revenues exempt from charges:
+
+That under pretence of retirement and devotion they lived in idleness
+and licentiousness:
+
+That they had made a virtue of alms-giving, to live quietly on the
+labors of others:
+
+That they had invented the ceremonies of worship, as a means of
+attracting the reverence of the people, while they were playing the
+parts of gods, of whom they styled themselves the interpreters and
+mediators, to assume all their powers; that, with this design, they had
+(according to the degree of ignorance or information of their people)
+assumed by turns the character of astrologers, drawers of horoscopes,
+fortune-tellers, magicians,* necromancers, quacks, physicians,
+courtiers, confessors of princes, always aiming at the great object to
+govern for their own advantage:
+
+     * What is a magician, in the sense in which people
+     understand the word?  A man who by words and gestures
+     pretends to act on supernatural beings, and compel them to
+     descend at his call and obey his orders.  Such was the
+     conduct of the ancient priests, and such is still that of
+     all priests in idolatrous nations; for which reason we have
+     given them the denomination of Magicians.
+
+     And when a Christian priest pretends to make God descend
+     from heaven, to fix him to a morsel of leaven, and render,
+     by means of this talisman, souls pure and in a state of
+     grace, what is this but a trick of magic?  And where is the
+     difference between a Chaman of Tartary who invokes the
+     Genii, or an Indian Bramin, who makes Vichenou descend in a
+     vessel of water to drive away evil spirits? Yes, the
+     identity of the spirit of priests in every age and country
+     is fully established!  Every where it is the assumption of
+     an exclusive privilege, the pretended faculty of moving at
+     will the powers of nature; and this assumption is so direct
+     a violation of the right of equality, that whenever the
+     people shall regain their importance, they will forever
+     abolish this sacrilegious kind of nobility, which has been
+     the type and parent stock of the other species of nobility.
+
+That sometimes they had exalted the power of kings and consecrated their
+persons, to monopolize their favors, or participate their sway:
+
+That sometimes they had preached up the murder of tyrants (reserving it
+to themselves to define tyranny), to avenge themselves of their contempt
+or their disobedience:
+
+And that they always stigmatised with impiety whatever crossed their
+interests; that they hindered all public instruction, to exercise the
+monopoly of science; that finally, at all times and in all places, they
+had found the secret of living in peace in the midst of the anarchy they
+created, in safety under the despotism that they favored, in idleness
+amidst the industry they preached, and in abundance while surrounded
+with scarcity; and all this by carrying on the singular trade of selling
+words and gestures to credulous people, who purchase them as commodities
+of the greatest value.*
+
+     * A curious work would be the comparative history of the
+     agnuses of the pope and the pastils of the grand Lama.  It
+     would be worth while to extend this idea to religions
+     ceremonies in general, and to confront column by column, the
+     analogous or contrasting points of faith and superstitious
+     practices in all nations.  There is one more species of
+     superstition which it would be equally salutary to cure,
+     blind veneration for the great; and for this purpose it
+     would be alone sufficient to write a minute detail of the
+     private life of kings and princes.  No work could be so
+     philosophical as this; and accordingly we have seen what a
+     general outcry was excited among kings and the panders of
+     kings, when the Anecdotes of the Court of Berlin first
+     appeared.  What would be the alarm were the public put in
+     possession of the sequel of this work?  Were the people
+     fairly acquainted with all the absurdities of this species
+     of idol, they would no longer be exposed to covet their
+     specious pleasures of which the plausible and hollow
+     appearance disturbs their peace, and hinders them from
+     enjoying the much more solid happiness of their own
+     condition.
+
+Then the different nations, in a transport of fury, were going to
+tear in pieces the men who had thus abused them; but the legislator,
+arresting this movement of violence, addressed the chiefs and doctors:
+
+"What!" said he, "instructors of nations, is it thus that you have
+deceived them?"
+
+And the terrified priests replied.
+
+"O legislator! we are men. The people are so superstitious! they have
+themselves encouraged these errors."*
+
+     * Consider in this view the Brabanters.
+
+And the kings said:
+
+"O legislator! the people are so servile and so ignorant! they
+prostrated themselves before the yoke, which we scarcely dared to show
+them."*
+
+     * The inhabitants of Vienna, for example, who harnessed
+     themselves like cattle and drew the chariot of Leopold.
+
+Then the legislator, turning to the people--"People!" said he, "remember
+what you have just heard; they are two indelible truths. Yes, you
+yourselves cause the evils of which you complain; yourselves encourage
+the tyrants, by a base adulation of their power, by an imprudent
+admiration of their false beneficence, by servility in obedience,
+by licentiousness in liberty, and by a credulous reception of every
+imposition. On whom shall you wreak vengeance for the faults committed
+by your own ignorance and cupidity?"
+
+And the people, struck with confusion, remained in mournful silence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF CONTRADICTIONS.
+
+
+The legislator then resumed his discourse: "O nations!" said he, "we
+have heard the discussion of your opinions. The different sentiments
+which divide you have given rise to many reflections, and furnished
+several questions which we shall propose to you to solve.
+
+"First, considering the diversity and opposition of the creeds to which
+you are attached, we ask on what motives you found your persuasion? Is
+it from a deliberate choice that you follow the standard of one prophet
+rather than another? Before adopting this doctrine, rather than that,
+did you first compare? did you carefully examine them? Or have you
+received them only from the chance of birth, from the empire of
+education and habit? Are you not born Christians on the borders of the
+Tiber, Mussulmans on those of the Euphrates, Idolaters on the Indus,
+just as you are born fair in cold climates, and sable under the
+scorching sun of Africa? And if your opinions are the effect of your
+fortuitous position on the earth, of consanguinity, of imitation, how is
+it that such a hazard should be a ground of conviction, an argument of
+truth?
+
+"Secondly, when we reflect on the mutual proscriptions and arbitrary
+intolerance of your pretensions, we are frightened at the consequences
+that flow from your own principles. Nations! who reciprocally devote
+each other to the bolts of heavenly wrath, suppose that the universal
+Being, whom you revere, should this moment descend from heaven on this
+multitude; and, clothed with all his power, should sit on this throne
+to judge you; suppose that he should say to you: Mortals! it is your own
+justice that I am going to exercise upon you. Yes, of all the religious
+systems that divide you, one alone shall this day be preferred; all the
+others, all this multitude of standards, of nations, of prophets, shall
+be condemned to eternal destruction. This is not enough: among the
+particular sects of the chosen system, one only can be favored; all
+the others must be condemned: neither is this enough;--from this little
+remnant of a group I must exclude all those who have not fulfilled the
+conditions enjoined by its precepts. O men! to what a small number of
+elect have you limited your race! to what a penury of beneficence do you
+reduce the immensity of my goodness! to what a solitude of beholders do
+you condemn my greatness and my glory!
+
+"But," said the legislator rising, "no matter you have willed it so.
+Nations! here is an urn in which all your names are placed: one only is
+a prize: approach, and draw this tremendous lottery!" And the nations,
+seized with terror cried: "No, no; we are all brothers, all equal; we
+cannot condemn each other."
+
+"Then," said the legislator, resuming his seat: "O men! who dispute
+on so many subjects, lend an attentive ear to one problem which you
+exhibit, and which you ought to decide yourselves."
+
+And the people, giving great attention, he lifted an arm towards heaven,
+and, pointing to the sun, said:
+
+"Nations, does that sun, which enlightens you, appear square or
+triangular?"
+
+"No," answered they with one voice, "it is round."
+
+Then, taking the golden balance that was on the altar:
+
+"This gold," said the legislator, "that you handle every day, is it
+heavier than the same volume of copper?"
+
+"Yes," answered all the people, "gold is heavier than Copper."
+
+Then, taking the sword:
+
+"Is this iron," said the legislator, "softer than lead?"
+
+"No," said the people.
+
+"Is sugar sweet, and gall bitter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you love pleasure and hate pain?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thus, then, you are agreed in these points, and many others of the same
+nature.
+
+"Now, tell us, is there a cavern in the centre of the earth, or
+inhabitants in the moon?"
+
+This question caused a universal murmur. Every one answered
+differently--some yes, others no; one said it was probable, another said
+it was an idle and ridiculous question; some, that it was worth knowing.
+And the discord was universal.
+
+After some time the legislator, having obtained silence, said:
+
+"Explain to us, O Nations! this problem: we have put to you several
+questions which you have answered with one voice, without distinction
+of race or of sect: white men, black men, followers of Mahomet and of
+Moses, worshippers of Boudha and of Jesus, all have returned the same
+answer. We then proposed another question, and you have all disagreed!
+Why this unanimity in one case, and this discordance in the other?"
+
+And the group of simple men and savages answered and said: "The reason
+of this is plain. In the first case we see and feel the objects, and we
+speak from sensation; in the second, they are beyond the reach of our
+senses--we speak of them only from conjecture."
+
+"You have resolved the problem," said the legislator; "and your own
+consent has established this first truth:
+
+"That whenever objects can be examined and judged of by your senses,
+you are agreed in opinion; and that you only differ when the objects are
+absent and beyond your reach.
+
+"From this first truth flows another equally clear and worthy of notice.
+Since you agree on things which you know with certainty, it follows that
+you disagree only on those which you know not with certainty, and about
+which you are not sure; that is to say, you dispute, you quarrel, you
+fight, for that which is uncertain, that of which you doubt. O men! is
+this wisdom?
+
+"Is it not, then, demonstrated that truth is not the object of your
+contests? that it is not her cause which you defend, but that of your
+affections, and your prejudices? that it is not the object, as it really
+is in itself, that you would verify, but the object as you would have
+it; that is to say, it is not the evidence of the thing that you would
+enforce, but your own personal opinion, your particular manner of seeing
+and judging? It is a power that you wish to exercise, an interest that
+you wish to satisfy, a prerogative that you arrogate to yourself; it is
+a contest of vanity. Now, as each of you, on comparing himself to every
+other, finds himself his equal and his fellow, he resists by a feeling
+of the same right. And your disputes, your combats, your intolerance,
+are the effect of this right which you deny each other, and of the
+intimate conviction of your equality.
+
+"Now, the only means of establishing harmony is to return to nature,
+and to take for a guide and regulator the order of things which she has
+founded; and then your accord will prove this other truth:
+
+"That real beings have in themselves an identical, constant and uniform
+mode of existence; and that there is in your organs a like mode of being
+affected by them.
+
+"But at the same time, by reason of the mobility of these organs as
+subject to your will, you may conceive different affections, and find
+yourselves in different relations with the same objects; so that you are
+to them like a mirror, capable of reflecting them truly as they are, or
+of distorting and disfiguring them.
+
+"Hence it follows, that whenever you perceive objects as they are,
+you agree among yourselves, and with the objects; and this similitude
+between your sensations and their manner of existence, is what
+constitutes their truth with respect to you; and, on the contrary,
+whenever you differ in opinion, your disagreement is a proof that you do
+not represent them such as they are,--that you change them.
+
+"Hence, also, it follows, that the causes of your disagreement exist
+not in the objects themselves, but in your minds, in your manner of
+perceiving or judging.
+
+"To establish, therefore, a uniformity of opinion, it is necessary first
+to establish the certainty, completely verified, that the portraits
+which the mind forms are perfectly like the originals; that it reflects
+the objects correctly as they exist. Now, this result cannot be obtained
+but in those cases where the objects can be brought to the test, and
+submitted to the examination of the senses. Everything which cannot
+be brought to this trial is, for that reason alone, impossible to be
+determined; there exists no rule, no term of comparison, no means of
+certainty, respecting it.
+
+"From this we conclude, that, to live in harmony and peace, we must
+agree never to decide on such subjects, and to attach to them no
+importance; in a word, we must trace a line of distinction between those
+that are capable of verification, and those that are not; and separate
+by an inviolable barrier the world of fantastical beings from the world
+of realities; that is to say, all civil effect must be taken away from
+theological and religious opinions.
+
+"This, O ye people of the earth! is the object proposed by a great
+nation freed from her fetters and her prejudices; this is the work
+which, under her eye and by her orders, we had undertaken, when your
+kings and your priests came to interrupt it. O kings and priests! you
+may suspend, yet for a while, the solemn publication of the laws of
+nature; but it is no longer in your power to annihilate or to subvert
+them."
+
+
+A general shout then arose from every part of the assembly; and the
+nations universally, and with one voice, testified their assent to the
+proposals of the delegates: "Resume," said they, "your holy and sublime
+labors, and bring them to perfection. Investigate the laws which nature,
+for our guidance, has implanted in our breasts, and collect from them
+an authentic and immutable code; nor let this code be any longer for one
+family only, but for us all without exception. Be the legislators of the
+whole human race, as you are the interpreters of nature herself. Show
+us the line of partition between the world of chimeras and that of
+realities; and teach us, after so many religions of error and delusion,
+the religion of evidence and truth!"
+
+
+Then the delegates, having resumed their enquiries into the physical and
+constituent attributes of man, and examined the motives and affections
+which govern him in his individual and social state, unfolded in these
+words the laws on which nature herself has founded his happiness.
+
+
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.
+
+OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+Q. What is the law of nature?
+
+A. It is the constant and regular order of events, by which God governs
+the universe; an order which his wisdom presents to the senses and
+reason of men, as an equal and common rule for their actions, to guide
+them, without distinction of country or sect, towards perfection and
+happiness.
+
+Q. Give a clear definition of the word law.
+
+A. The word law, taken literary, signifies lecture,* because originally,
+ordinances and regulations were the lectures, preferably to all others,
+made to the people, in order that they might observe them, and not incur
+the penalties attached to their infraction: whence follows the original
+custom explaining the true idea.
+
+The definition of law is, "An order or prohibition to act with the
+express clause of a penalty attached to the infraction, or of a
+recompense attached to the observance of that order."
+
+     * From the Latin word lex, lectio.  Alcoran likewise
+     signifies lecture and is only a literal translation of the
+     word law.
+
+Q. Do such orders exist in nature?
+
+A. Yes.
+
+Q. What does the word nature signify?
+
+A. The word nature bears three different significations.
+
+1. It signifies the universe, the material world: in this first sense
+we say the beauties of nature, the riches of nature, that is to say, the
+objects in the heavens and on the earth exposed to our sight;
+
+2. It signifies the power that animates, that moves the universe,
+considering it as a distinct being, such as the soul is to the body;
+in this second sense we say, "The intentions of nature, the
+incomprehensible secrets of nature."
+
+3. It signifies the partial operations of that power on each being, or
+on each class of beings; and in this third sense we say, "The nature of
+man is an enigma; every being acts according to its nature."
+
+Wherefore, as the actions of each being, or of each species of beings,
+are subjected to constant and general rules, which cannot be infringed
+without interrupting and troubling the general or particular order,
+those rules of action and of motion are called natural laws, or laws of
+nature.
+
+Q. Give me examples of those laws.
+
+A. It is a law of nature, that the sun illuminates successively the
+surface of the terrestrial globe;--that its presence causes both light
+and heat;--that heat acting upon water, produces vapors;--that those
+vapors rising in clouds into the regions of the air, dissolve into rain
+or snow, and renew incessantly the waters of fountains and rivers.
+
+It is a law of nature, that water flows downwards; that it endeavors
+to find its level; that it is heavier than air; that all bodies tend
+towards the earth; that flame ascends towards the heavens;--that it
+disorganizes vegetables and animals; that air is essential to the life
+of certain animals; that, in certain circumstances, water suffocates and
+kills them; that certain juices of plants, certain minerals attack
+their organs, and destroy their life, and so on in a multitude of other
+instances.
+
+Wherefore, as all those and similar facts are immutable, constant, and
+regular, so many real orders result from them for man to conform himself
+to, with the express clause of punishment attending the infraction of
+them, or of welfare attending their observance. So that if man pretends
+to see clear in darkness, if he goes in contradiction to the course of
+the seasons, or the action of the elements; if he pretends to remain
+under water without being drowned, to touch fire without burning
+himself, to deprive himself of air without being suffocated, to swallow
+poison without destroying himself, he receives from each of those
+infractions of the laws of nature a corporeal punishment proportionate
+to his fault; but if on the contrary, he observes and practises each of
+those laws according to the regular and exact relations they have to him
+he preserves his existence, and renders it as happy as it can be: and
+as the only and common end of all those laws, considered relatively to
+mankind, is to preserve, and render them happy, it has been agreed
+upon to reduce the idea to one simple expression, and to call them
+collectively the law of nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CHARACTERS OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+Q. What are the characters of the law of nature?
+
+A. There can be assigned ten principal ones.
+
+Q. Which is the first?
+
+A. To be inherent to the existence of things, and, consequently,
+primitive and anterior to every other law: so that all those which
+man has received, are only imitations of it, and their perfection is
+ascertained by the resemblance they bear to this primordial model.
+
+Q. Which is the second?
+
+A. To be derived immediately from God, and presented by him to each man,
+whereas all other laws are presented to us by men, who may be either
+deceived or deceivers.
+
+Q. Which is the third?
+
+A. To be common to all times, and to all countries, that is to say, one
+and universal.
+
+Q. Is no other law universal?
+
+A. No: for no other is agreeable or applicable to all the people of the
+earth; they are all local and accidental, originating from circumstances
+of places and of persons; so that if such a man had not existed, or such
+an event happened, such a law would never have been enacted.
+
+Q. Which is the fourth character?
+
+A. To be uniform and invariable.
+
+Q. Is no other law uniform and invariable?
+
+A. No: for what is good and virtue according to one, is evil and vice
+according to another; and what one and the same law approves of at one
+time, it often condemns at another.
+
+Q. Which is the fifth character?
+
+A. To be evident and palpable, because it consists entirely of facts
+incessantly present to the senses, and to demonstration.
+
+Q. Are not other laws evident?
+
+A. No: for they are founded on past and doubtful facts, on equivocal and
+suspicious testimonies, and on proofs inaccessible to the senses.
+
+Q. Which is the sixth character?
+
+A. To be reasonable, because its precepts and entire doctrine are
+conformable to reason, and to the human understanding.
+
+Q. Is no other law reasonable?
+
+A. No: for all are in contradiction to the reason and the understanding
+of men, and tyrannically impose on him a blind and impracticable belief.
+
+Q. Which is the seventh character?
+
+A. To be just, because in that law, the penalties are proportionate to
+the infractions.
+
+Q. Are not other laws just?
+
+A. No: for they often exceed bounds, either in rewarding deserts, or in
+punishing delinquencies, and consider as meritorious or criminal, null
+or indifferent actions.
+
+Q. Which is the eighth character?
+
+A. To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature, all men
+being brothers and equal in rights, it recommends to them only peace and
+toleration, even for errors.
+
+Q. Are not other laws pacific?
+
+A. No: for all preach dissension, discord, and war, and divide mankind
+by exclusive pretensions of truth and domination.
+
+Q. Which is the ninth character?
+
+A. To be equally beneficent to all men, in teaching them the true means
+of becoming better and happier.
+
+Q. Are not other laws beneficent likewise?
+
+A. No: for none of them teach the real means of attaining happiness; all
+are confined to pernicious or futile practices; and this is evident from
+facts, since after so many laws, so many religions, so many legislators
+and prophets, men are still as unhappy and ignorant, as they were six
+thousand years ago.
+
+Q. Which is the last character of the law of nature?
+
+A. That it is alone sufficient to render men happier and better, because
+it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws, either civil or
+religious, that is to say, it constitutes essentially the moral part of
+them; so that if other laws were divested of it, they would be reduced
+to chimerical and imaginary opinions devoid of any practical utility.
+
+Q. Recapitulate all those characters.
+
+A. We have said that the law of nature is,
+
+     1.  Primitive;     6.  Reasonable;
+     2.  Immediate;     7.  Just;
+     3.  Universal;     8.  Pacific;
+     4.  Invariable;    9.  Beneficent: and
+     5.  Evident;      10.  Alone sufficient.
+
+And such is the power of all these attributes of perfection and truth,
+that when in their disputes the theologians can agree upon no article of
+belief, they recur to the law of nature, the neglect of which, say they,
+forced God to send from time to time prophets to proclaim new laws; as
+if God enacted laws for particular circumstances, as men do; especially
+when the first subsists in such force, that we may assert it to have
+been at all times and in all countries the rule of conscience for every
+man of sense or understanding.
+
+Q. If, as you say, it emanates immediately from God, does it teach his
+existence?
+
+A. Yes, most positively: for, to any man whatever, who observes with
+reflection the astonishing spectacle of the universe, the more he
+meditates on the properties and attributes of each being, on
+the admirable order and harmony of their motions, the more it is
+demonstrated that there exists a supreme agent, a universal and identic
+mover, designated by the appellation of God; and so true it is that the
+law of nature suffices to elevate him to the knowledge of God, that all
+which men have pretended to know by supernatural means, has constantly
+turned out ridiculous and absurd, and that they have ever been obliged
+to recur to the immutable conceptions of natural reason.
+
+Q. Then it is not true that the followers of the law of nature are
+atheists?
+
+A. No; it is not true; on the contrary, they entertain stronger and
+nobler ideas of the Divinity than most other men; for they do not
+sully him with the foul ingredients of all the weaknesses and passions
+entailed on humanity.
+
+Q. What worship do they pay to him?
+
+A. A worship wholly of action; the practice and observance of all the
+rules which the supreme wisdom has imposed on the motion of each being;
+eternal and unalterable rules, by which it maintains the order
+and harmony of the universe, and which, in their relations to man,
+constitute the law of nature.
+
+Q. Was the law of nature known before this period:
+
+A. It has been at all times spoken of: most legislators pretend to adopt
+it as the basis of their laws; but they only quote some of its precepts,
+and have only vague ideas of its totality.
+
+Q. Why.
+
+A. Because, though simple in its basis, it forms in its developements
+and consequences, a complicated whole which requires an extensive
+knowledge of facts, joined to all the sagacity of reasoning.
+
+Q. Does not instinct alone teach the law of nature?
+
+A. No; for by instinct is meant nothing more than that blind sentiment
+by which we are actuated indiscriminately towards everything that
+flatters the senses.
+
+Q. Why, then, is it said that the law of nature is engraved in the
+hearts of all men.
+
+A. It is said for two reasons: first, because it has been remarked, that
+there are acts and sentiments common to all men, and this proceeds from
+their common organization; secondly, because the first philosophers
+believed that men were born with ideas already formed, which is now
+demonstrated to be erroneous.
+
+Q. Philosophers, then, are fallible?
+
+A. Yes, sometimes.
+
+Q. Why so?
+
+A. First, because they are men; secondly, because the ignorant call all
+those who reason, right or wrong, philosophers; thirdly, because those
+who reason on many subjects, and who are the first to reason on them,
+are liable to be deceived.
+
+Q. If the law of nature be not written, must it not become arbitrary and
+ideal?
+
+A. No: because it consists entirely in facts, the demonstration of which
+can be incessantly renewed to the senses, and constitutes a science as
+accurate and precise as geometry and mathematics; and it is because the
+law of nature forms an exact science, that men, born ignorant and living
+inattentive and heedless, have had hitherto only a superficial knowledge
+of it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF NATURE RELATING TO MAN.
+
+
+Q. Explain the principles of the law of nature with relation to man.
+
+A. They are simple; all of them are comprised in one fundamental and
+single precept.
+
+Q. What is that precept?
+
+A. It is self-preservation.
+
+Q. Is not happiness also a precept of the law of nature?
+
+A. Yes: but as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only from
+the development of man's faculties and his social system, it is not
+the immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some measure,
+a superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental object of
+preservation.
+
+Q. How does nature order man to preserve himself?
+
+A. By two powerful and involuntary sensations, which it has attached,
+as two guides, two guardian Geniuses to all his actions: the one a
+sensation of pain, by which it admonishes him of, and deters him
+from, everything that tends to destroy him; the other, a sensation of
+pleasure, by which it attracts and carries him towards everything that
+tends to his preservation and the development of his existence.
+
+Q. Pleasure, then, is not an evil, a sin, as casuists pretend?
+
+A. No, only inasmuch as it tends to destroy life and health which, by
+the avowal of those same casuists, we derive from God himself.
+
+Q. Is pleasure the principal object of our existence, as some
+philosophers have asserted?
+
+A. No; not more than pain; pleasure is an incitement to live as pain is
+a repulsion from death.
+
+Q. How do you prove this assertion?
+
+A. By two palpable facts: One, that pleasure, when taken immoderately,
+leads to destruction; for instance, a man who abuses the pleasure of
+eating or drinking, attacks his health, and injures his life. The other,
+that pain sometimes leads to self-preservation; for instance, a man who
+permits a mortified member to be cut off, suffers pain in order not to
+perish totally.
+
+Q. But does not even this prove that our sensations can deceive us
+respecting the end of our preservation?
+
+A. Yes; they can momentarily.
+
+Q. How do our sensations deceive us?
+
+A. In two ways: by ignorance, and by passion.
+
+Q. When do they deceive us by ignorance?
+
+A. When we act without knowing the action and effect of objects on our
+senses: for example, when a man touches nettles without knowing
+their stinging quality, or when he swallows opium without knowing its
+soporiferous effects.
+
+Q. When do they deceive us by passion?
+
+A. When, conscious of the pernicious action of objects, we abandon
+ourselves, nevertheless, to the impetuosity of our desires and
+appetites: for example, when a man who knows that wine intoxicates, does
+nevertheless drink it to excess.
+
+Q. What is the result?
+
+A. That the ignorance in which we are born, and the unbridled appetites
+to which we abandon ourselves, are contrary to our preservation; that,
+therefore, the instruction of our minds and the moderation of our
+passions are two obligations, two laws, which spring directly from the
+first law of preservation.
+
+Q. But being born ignorant, is not ignorance a law of nature?
+
+A. No more than to remain in the naked and feeble state of infancy. Far
+from being a law of nature, ignorance is an obstacle to the practice of
+all its laws. It is the real original sin.
+
+Q. Why, then, have there been moralists who have looked upon it as a
+virtue and perfection?
+
+A. Because, from a strange or perverted disposition, they confounded the
+abuse of knowledge with knowledge itself; as if, because men abuse the
+power of speech, their tongues should be cut out; as if perfection and
+virtue consisted in the nullity, and not in the proper development of
+our faculties.
+
+Q. Instruction, then, is indispensable to man's existence?
+
+A. Yes, so indispensable, that without it he is every instant assailed
+and wounded by all that surrounds him; for if he does not know the
+effects of fire, he burns himself; those of water he drowns himself;
+those of opium, he poisons himself; if, in the savage state, he does
+not know the wiles of animals, and the art of seizing game, he perishes
+through hunger; if in the social state, he does not know the course
+of the seasons, he can neither cultivate the ground, nor procure
+nourishment; and so on, of all his actions, respecting all his wants.
+
+Q. But can man individually acquire this knowledge necessary to his
+existence, and to the development of his faculties?
+
+A. No; not without the assistance of his fellow men, and by living in
+society.
+
+Q. But is not society to man a state against nature?
+
+A. No: it is on the contrary a necessity, a law that nature imposed
+on him by the very act of his organization; for, first, nature has so
+constituted man, that he cannot see his species of another sex without
+feeling emotions and an attraction which induce him to live in a family,
+which is already a state of society; secondly, by endowing him with
+sensibility, she organized him so that the sensations of others reflect
+within him, and excite reciprocal sentiments of pleasure and of grief,
+which are attractions, and indissoluble ties of society; thirdly, and
+finally, the state of society, founded on the wants of man, is only a
+further means of fulfilling the law of preservation: and to pretend that
+this state is out of nature, because it is more perfect, is the same
+as to say, that a bitter and wild fruit of the forest, is no longer the
+production of nature, when rendered sweet and delicious by cultivation
+in our gardens.
+
+Q. Why, then, have philosophers called the savage state the state of
+perfection?
+
+A. Because, as I have told you, the vulgar have often given the name of
+philosophers to whimsical geniuses, who, from moroseness, from wounded
+vanity, or from a disgust to the vices of society, have conceived
+chimerical ideas of the savage state, in contradiction with their own
+system of a perfect man.
+
+Q. What is the true meaning of the word philosopher?
+
+A. The word philosopher signifies a lover of wisdom; and as wisdom
+consists in the practice of the laws of nature, the true philosopher is
+he who knows those laws, and conforms the whole tenor of his conduct to
+them.
+
+Q. What is man in the savage state?
+
+A. A brutal, ignorant animal, a wicked and ferocious beast.
+
+Q. Is he happy in that state?
+
+A. No; for he only feels momentary sensations, which are habitually of
+violent wants which he cannot satisfy, since he is ignorant by nature,
+and weak by being isolated from his race.
+
+Q. Is he free?
+
+A. No; he is the most abject slave that exists; for his life depends
+on everything that surrounds him: he is not free to eat when hungry,
+to rest when tired, to warm himself when cold; he is every instant in
+danger of perishing; wherefore nature offers but fortuitous examples of
+such beings; and we see that all the efforts of the human species,
+since its origin, sorely tends to emerge from that violent state by the
+pressing necessity of self-preservation.
+
+Q. But does not this necessity of preservation engender in individuals
+egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary to the
+social state?
+
+A. No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our neighbor, it
+is no longer self-love, but the hatred of others. Self-love, taken in
+its true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest
+support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in
+return they should injure us.
+
+Thus mans preservation, and the unfolding of his faculties, directed
+towards this end, teach the true law of nature in the production of the
+human being; and it is from this essential principle that are derived,
+are referred, and in its scale are weighed, all ideas of good and evil,
+of vice and virtue, of just and unjust, of truth or error, of lawful or
+forbidden, on which is founded the morality of individual, or of social
+man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+BASIS OF MORALITY; OF GOOD, OF EVIL, OF SIN, OF CRIME, OF VICE AND OF
+VIRTUE.
+
+
+Q. What is good, according to the law of nature?
+
+A. It is everything that tends to preserve and perfect man.
+
+Q. What is evil?
+
+A. That which tends to man's destruction or deterioration.
+
+Q. What is meant by physical good and evil, and by moral good and evil?
+
+A. By the word physical is understood, whatever acts immediately on the
+body. Health is a physical good; and sickness a physical evil. By moral,
+is meant what acts by consequences more or less remote. Calumny is a
+moral evil; a fair reputation is a moral good, because both one and the
+other occasion towards us, on the part of other men, dispositions and
+habitudes,* which are useful or hurtful to our preservation, and which
+attack or favor our means of existence.
+
+     * It is from this word habitudes, (reiterated actions,) in
+     Latin mores, that the word moral, and all its family, are
+     derived.
+
+Q. Everything that tends to preserve, or to produce is therefore a good?
+
+A. Yes; and it is for that reason that certain legislators have classed
+among the works agreeable to the divinity, the cultivation of a field
+and the fecundity of a woman.
+
+Q. Whatever tends to cause death is, therefore, an evil?
+
+A. Yes; and it is for that reason some legislators have extended the
+idea of evil and of sin even to the killing of animals.
+
+Q. The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of nature?
+
+A. Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other evil can
+be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.
+
+Q. What is a sin in the law of nature?
+
+A. Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for the
+preservation and perfection of man and of society.
+
+Q. Can intention be a merit or a crime?
+
+A. No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a commencement
+of sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.
+
+Q. What is virtue according to the law of nature?
+
+A. It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to
+society.
+
+Q. What is meant by the word individual?
+
+A. It means a man considered separately from every other.
+
+Q. What is vice according to the law of nature?
+
+A. It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to
+society.
+
+Q. Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and abstracted
+from the senses?
+
+A. No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate, and that
+end is always to destroy or preserve the body.
+
+Q. Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?
+
+A. Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they attack
+or which they favor; and according to the number of persons in whom
+those faculties are favored or injured.
+
+Q. Give me some examples?
+
+A. The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of
+saving his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men, than
+that of saving only the life of one, and an action useful to the whole
+human race is more virtuous than an action that is only useful to one
+single nation.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue,
+and forbid that of evil and vice?
+
+A. By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue
+for the preservation of our body, and by the losses which result to our
+existence from the practice of evil and vice.
+
+Q. Its precepts are then in action?
+
+A. Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect and in
+its future consequences.
+
+Q. How do you divide the virtues?
+
+A. We divide them in three classes, first, individual virtues, as
+relative to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relative to a
+family; thirdly, social virtues, as relative to society.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+OF INDIVIDUAL VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q. Which are the individual virtues?
+
+A. There are five principal ones, to wit: first, science, which
+comprises prudence and wisdom; secondly, temperance, comprising sobriety
+and chastity; thirdly, courage, or strength of body and mind; fourthly,
+activity, that is to say, love of labor and employment of time; fifthly,
+and finally, cleanliness, or purity of body, as well in dress as in
+habitation.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe science?
+
+A. Because the man acquainted with the causes and effects of things
+attends in a careful and sure manner to his preservation, and to the
+development of his faculties. Science is to him the eye and the light,
+which enable him to discern clearly and accurately all the objects
+with which he is conversant, and hence by an enlightened man is meant a
+learned and well-informed man. With science and instruction a man never
+wants for resources and means of subsistence; and upon this principle a
+philosopher, who had been shipwrecked, said to his companions, that were
+inconsolable for the loss of their wealth: "For my part, I carry all my
+wealth within me."
+
+Q. Which is the vice contrary to science?
+
+A. It is ignorance.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature forbid ignorance?
+
+A. By the grievous detriments resulting from it to our existence; for
+the ignorant man who knows neither causes nor effects, commits every
+instant errors most pernicious to himself and to others; he resembles a
+blind man groping his way at random, and who, at every step, jostles or
+is jostled by every one he meets.
+
+Q. What difference is there between an ignorant and a silly man?
+
+A. The same difference as between him who frankly avows his blindness
+and the blind man who pretends to sight; silliness is the reality of
+ignorance, to which is superadded the vanity of knowledge.
+
+Q. Are ignorance and silliness common?
+
+A. Yes, very common; they are the usual and general distempers of
+mankind: more than three thousand years ago the wisest of men said: "The
+number of fools is infinite;" and the world has not changed.
+
+Q. What is the reason of it?
+
+A. Because much labor and time are necessary to acquire instruction,
+and because men, born ignorant and indolent, find it more convenient to
+remain blind, and pretend to see clear.
+
+Q. What difference is there between a learned and a wise man?
+
+A. The learned knows, and the wise man practices.
+
+Q. What is prudence?
+
+A. It is the anticipated perception, the foresight of the effects and
+consequences of every action; by means of which foresight, man
+avoids the dangers which threaten him, while he seizes on and creates
+opportunities favorable to him: he thereby provides for his present and
+future safety in a certain and secure manner, whereas the imprudent
+man, who calculates neither his steps nor his conduct, nor efforts, nor
+resistance, falls every instant into difficulties and dangers, which
+sooner or later impair his faculties and destroy his existence.
+
+Q. When the Gospel says, "Happy are the poor of spirit," does it mean
+the ignorant and imprudent?
+
+A. No; for, at the same time that it recommends the simplicity of doves,
+it adds the prudent cunning of serpents. By simplicity of mind is meant
+uprightness, and the precept of the Gospel is that of nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ON TEMPERANCE.
+
+
+Q. What is temperance?
+
+A. It is a regular use of our faculties, which makes us never exceed in
+our sensations the end of nature to preserve us; it is the moderation of
+the passions.
+
+Q. Which is the vice contrary to temperance?
+
+A. The disorder of the passions, the avidity of all kind of enjoyments,
+in a word, cupidity.
+
+Q. Which are the principal branches of temperance?
+
+A. Sobriety, and continence or chastity.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe sobriety?
+
+A. By its powerful influence over our health. The sober man digests with
+comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are
+clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his
+business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity;
+he does not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and
+gladness, the wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured
+him. Thus, from one virtue alone, generous nature derives innumerable
+recompenses.
+
+Q. How does it prohibit gluttony?
+
+A. By the numerous evils that are attached to it. The glutton, oppressed
+with aliments, digests with anxiety; his head, troubled by the fumes
+of indigestion, is incapable of conceiving clear and distinct ideas;
+he abandons himself with violence to the disorderly impulse of lust and
+anger, which impair his health; his body becomes bloated, heavy, and
+unfit for labor; he endures painful and expensive distempers; he seldom
+lives to be old; and his age is replete with infirmities and sorrow.
+
+Q. Should abstinence and fasting be considered as virtuous actions?
+
+A. Yes, when one has eaten too much; for then abstinence and fasting
+are simple and efficacious remedies; but when the body is in want of
+aliment, to refuse it any, and let it suffer from hunger or thirst, is
+delirium and a real sin against the law of nature.
+
+Q. How is drunkenness considered in the law of nature?
+
+A. As a most vile and pernicious vice. The drunkard, deprived of
+the sense and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the
+divinity: he debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable even to
+guide his steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts
+and even risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him
+to the ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes
+in his drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous bargains, and injures his
+fortune; he makes use of opprobrious language, which creates him enemies
+and repentance; he fills his house with trouble and sorrow, and ends by
+a premature death or by a cacochymical old age.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature interdict absolutely the use of wine?
+
+A. No; it only forbids the abuse; but as the transition from the use to
+the abuse is easy and prompt among the generality of men, perhaps
+the legislators, who have proscribed the use of wine, have rendered a
+service to humanity.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature forbid the use of certain kinds of meat, or of
+certain vegetables, on particular days, during certain seasons?
+
+A. No; it absolutely forbids only whatever is injurious to health;
+its precepts, in this respect, vary according to persons, and even
+constitute a very delicate and important science for the quality, the
+quantity, and the combination of aliments have the greatest influence,
+not only over the momentary affections of the soul, but even over its
+habitual disposition. A man is not the same when fasting as after a
+meal, even if he were sober. A glass of spirituous liquor, or a dish of
+coffee, gives degrees of vivacity, of mobility, of disposition to anger,
+sadness, or gaiety; such a meat, because it lies heavy on the
+stomach, engenders moroseness and melancholy; such another, because
+it facilitates digestion, creates sprightliness, and an inclination
+to oblige and to love. The use of vegetables, because they have little
+nourishment, enfeebles the body, and gives a disposition to repose,
+indolence, and ease; the use of meat, because it is full of nourishment,
+and of spirituous liquors, because they stimulate the nerves, creates
+vivacity, uneasiness, and audacity. Now from those habitudes of aliment
+result habits of constitution and of the organs, which form afterwards
+different kinds of temperaments, each of which is distinguished by
+a peculiar characteristic. And it is for this reason that, in hot
+countries especially, legislators have made laws respecting regimen
+or food. The ancients were taught by long experience that the dietetic
+science constituted a considerable part of morality; among the
+Egyptians, the ancient Persians, and even among the Greeks, at the
+Areopagus, important affairs were examined fasting; and it has been
+remarked that, among those people, where public affairs were discussed
+during the heat of meals, and the fumes of digestion, deliberations were
+hasty and violent, and the results of them frequently unreasonable, and
+productive of turbulence and confusion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ON CONTINENCE.
+
+
+Q. Does the law of nature prescribe continence?
+
+A. Yes: because a moderate use of the most lively of pleasures is not
+only useful, but indispensable, to the support of strength and health:
+and because a simple calculation proves that, for some minutes of
+privation, you increase the number of your days, both in vigor of body
+and of mind.
+
+Q. How does it forbid libertinism?
+
+A. By the numerous evils which result from it to the physical and the
+moral existence. He who carries it to an excess enervates and pines
+away; he can no longer attend to study or labor; he contracts idle
+and expensive habits, which destroy his means of existence, his
+public consideration, and his credit; his intrigues occasion continual
+embarrassment, cares, quarrels and lawsuits, without mentioning the
+grievous deep-rooted distempers, and the loss of his strength by
+an inward and slow poison; the stupid dullness of his mind, by the
+exhaustion of the nervous system; and, in fine, a premature and infirm
+old age.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature look on that absolute chastity so recommended
+in monastical institutions, as a virtue?
+
+A. No: for that chastity is of no use either to the society that
+witnesses, or the individual who practises it; it is even prejudicial to
+both. First, it injures society by depriving it of population, which
+is one of its principal sources of wealth and power; and as bachelors
+confine all their views and affections to the term of their lives, they
+have in general an egotism unfavorable to the interests of society.
+
+In the second place, it injures the individuals who practise it, because
+it deprives them of a number of affections and relations which are
+the springs of most domestic and social virtues; and besides, it often
+happens, from circumstances of age, regimen, or temperament, that
+absolute continence injures the constitution and causes severe diseases,
+because it is contrary to the physical laws on which nature has founded
+the system of the reproduction of beings; and they who recommend
+so strongly chastity, even supposing them to be sincere, are in
+contradiction with their own doctrine, which consecrates the law of
+nature by the well known commandment: increase and multiply.
+
+Q. Why is chastity considered a greater virtue in women than in men?
+
+A. Because a want of chastity in women is attended with inconveniences
+much more serious and dangerous for them and for society; for, without
+taking into account the pains and diseases they have in common with
+men, they are further exposed to all the disadvantages and perils that
+precede, attend, and follow child-birth. When pregnant contrary to law,
+they become an object of public scandal and contempt, and spend the
+remainder of their lives in bitterness and misery. Moreover, all the
+expense of maintaining and educating their fatherless children falls on
+them: which expense impoverishes them, and is every way prejudicial to
+their physical and moral existence. In this situation, deprived of the
+freshness and health that constitute their charm, carrying with them an
+extraneous and expensive burden, they are less prized by men, they
+find no solid establishment, they fall into poverty, misery, and
+wretchedness, and thus drag on in sorrow their unhappy existence.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature extend so far as the scruples of desires and
+thoughts.
+
+A. Yes; because, in the physical laws of the human body, thoughts and
+desires inflame the senses, and soon provoke to action: now, by another
+law of nature in the organization of our body, those actions become
+mechanical wants which recur at certain periods of days or of weeks, so
+that, at such a time, the want is renewed of such an action and such a
+secretion; if this action and this secretion be injurious to health, the
+habitude of them becomes destructive of life itself. Thus thoughts and
+desires have a true and natural importance.
+
+Q. Should modesty be considered as a virtue?
+
+A. Yes; because modesty, inasmuch as it is a shame of certain actions,
+maintains the soul and body in all those habits useful to good order,
+and to self-preservation. The modest woman is esteemed, courted, and
+established, with advantages of fortune which ensure her existence,
+and render it agreeable to her, while the immodest and prostitute are
+despised, repulsed, and abandoned to misery and infamy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ON COURAGE AND ACTIVITY.
+
+
+Q. Are courage and strength of body and mind virtues in the law of
+nature?
+
+A. Yes, and most important virtues; for they are the efficacious and
+indispensable means of attending to our preservation and welfare. The
+courageous and strong man repulses oppression, defends his life, his
+liberty, and his property; by his labor he procures himself an abundant
+subsistence, which he enjoys in tranquillity and peace of mind. If he
+falls into misfortunes, from which his prudence could not protect him,
+he supports them with fortitude and resignation; and it is for this
+reason that the ancient moralists have reckoned strength and courage
+among the four principal virtues.
+
+Q. Should weakness and cowardice be considered as vices?
+
+A. Yes, since it is certain that they produce innumerable calamities.
+The weak or cowardly man lives in perpetual cares and agonies; he
+undermines his health by the dread, oftentimes ill founded, of attacks
+and dangers: and this dread which is an evil, is not a remedy; it
+renders him, on the contrary, the slave of him who wishes to oppress
+him; and by the servitude and debasement of all his faculties, it
+degrades and diminishes his means of existence, so far as the seeing his
+life depend on the will and caprice of another man.
+
+Q. But, after what you have said on the influence of aliments, are not
+courage and force, as well as many other virtues, in a great measure the
+effect of our physical constitution and temperament?
+
+A. Yes, it is true; and so far, that those qualities are transmitted by
+generation and blood, with the elements on which they depend: the most
+reiterated and constant facts prove that in the breed of animals of
+every kind, we see certain physical and moral qualities, attached to
+the individuals of those species, increase or decay according to the
+combinations and mixtures they make with other breeds.
+
+Q. But, then, as our will is not sufficient to procure us those
+qualities, is it a crime to be destitute of them?
+
+A. No, it is not a crime, but a misfortune; it is what the ancients
+call an unlucky fatality; but even then we have it yet in our power to
+acquire them; for, as soon as we know on what physical elements such
+or such a quality is founded, we can promote its growth, and hasten its
+developments, by a skillful management of those elements; and in this
+consists the science of education, which, according as it is directed,
+meliorates or degrades individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch
+as totally to change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it
+is of the greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature
+by which those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily
+effected.
+
+Q. Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of
+nature?
+
+A. Because the man who works and employs his time usefully, derives from
+it a thousand precious advantages to his existence. If he is born poor,
+his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and still more so, if he is
+sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon acquires a competency, and
+enjoys the sweets of life; his very labor gives him virtues; for, while
+he occupies his body and mind, he is not affected with unruly desires,
+time does not lie heavy on him, he contracts mild habits, he augments
+his strength and health, and attains a peaceful and happy old age.
+
+Q. Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?
+
+A. Yes, and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the
+others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even
+the science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which
+accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured
+with disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the
+desires of his senses, which, becoming every day more inordinate, render
+him intemperate, gluttonous, lascivious, enervated, cowardly, vile, and
+contemptible. By the certain effect of all those vices, he ruins his
+fortune, consumes his health, and terminates his life in all the agonies
+of sickness and of poverty.
+
+Q. From what you say, one would think that poverty was a vice?
+
+A. No, it is not a vice; but it is still less a virtue, for it is by far
+more ready to injure than to be useful; it is even commonly the result,
+or the beginning of vice, for the effect of all individual vices is to
+lead to indigence, and to the privation of the necessaries of life; and
+when a man is in want of necessaries, he is tempted to procure them by
+vicious means, that is to say, by means injurious to society. All
+the individual virtues tend, on the contrary, to procure to a man an
+abundant subsistence; and when he has more than he can consume, it
+is much easier for him to give to others, and to practice the actions
+useful to society.
+
+Q. Do you look upon opulence as a virtue?
+
+A. No; but still less as a vice: it is the use alone of wealth that
+can be called virtuous or vicious, according as it is serviceable or
+prejudicial to man and to society. Wealth is an instrument, the use and
+employment alone of which determine its virtue or vice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ON CLEANLINESS.
+
+
+Q. Why is cleanliness included among the virtues?
+
+A. Because it is, in reality, one of the most important among them, on
+account of its powerful influence over the health and preservation of
+the body. Cleanliness, as well in dress as in residence, obviates
+the pernicious effects of the humidity, baneful odors, and contagious
+exhalations, proceeding from all things abandoned to putrefaction.
+Cleanliness, maintains free transpiration; it renews the air, refreshes
+the blood, and disposes even the mind to cheerfulness.
+
+From this it appears that persons attentive to the cleanliness of their
+bodies and habitations are, in general, more healthy, and less subject
+to disease, than those who live in filth and nastiness; and it is
+further remarked, that cleanliness carries with it, throughout all the
+branches of domestic administration, habits of order and arrangement,
+which are the chief means and first elements of happiness.
+
+Q. Uncleanliness or filthiness is, then, a real vice?
+
+A. Yes, as real a one as drunkenness, or as idleness, from which in a
+great measure it is derived. Uncleanliness is the second, and often the
+first, cause of many inconveniences, and even of grievous disorders; it
+is a fact in medicine, that it brings on the itch, the scurf, tetters,
+leprosies, as much as the use of tainted or sour aliments; that it
+favors the contagious influence of the plague and malignant fevers,
+that it even produces them in hospitals and prisons; that it occasions
+rheumatisms, by incrusting the skin with dirt, and thereby preventing
+transpiration; without reckoning the shameful inconvenience of being
+devoured by vermin--the foul appendage of misery and depravity.
+
+Most ancient legislators, therefore, considered cleanliness, which they
+called purity, as one of the essential dogmas of their religions. It
+was for this reason that they expelled from society, and even punished
+corporeally those who were infected with distempers produced by
+uncleanliness; that they instituted and consecrated ceremonies of
+ablutions baths, baptisms, and of purifications, even by fire and the
+aromatic fumes of incense, myrrh, benjamin, etc., so that the entire
+system of pollutions, all those rites of clean and unclean things,
+degenerated since into abuses and prejudices, were only founded
+originally on the judicious observation, which wise and learned men
+had made, of the extreme influence that cleanliness in dress and abode
+exercises over the health of the body, and by an immediate consequence
+over that of the mind and moral faculties.
+
+Thus all the individual virtues have for their object, more or less
+direct, more or less near, the preservation of the man who practises
+them and by the preservation of each man, they lead to that of families
+and society, which are composed of the united sum of individuals.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ON DOMESTIC VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q. What do you mean be domestic virtues?
+
+A. I mean the practice of actions useful to a family, supposed to live
+in the same house.*
+
+     * Domestic is derived from the Latin word domus, a house.
+
+Q. What are those virtues?
+
+A. They are economy, paternal love, filial love, conjugal love,
+fraternal love, and the accomplishment of the duties of master and
+servant.
+
+Q. What is economy?
+
+A. It is, according to the most extensive meaning of the word, the
+proper administration of every thing that concerns the existence of
+the family or house; and as subsistence holds the first rank, the word
+economy in confined to the employment of money for the wants of life.
+
+Q. Why is economy a virtue?
+
+A. Because a man who makes no useless expenses acquires a
+superabundancy, which is true wealth, and by means of which he procures
+for himself and his family everything that is really convenient and
+useful; without mentioning his securing thereby resources against
+accidental and unforeseen losses, so that he and his family enjoy
+an agreeable and undisturbed competency, which is the basis of human
+felicity.
+
+Q. Dissipation and prodigality, therefore, are vices?
+
+A. Yes, for by them man, in the end, is deprived of the necessaries
+of life; he falls into poverty and wretchedness; and his very friends,
+fearing to be obliged to restore to him what he has spent with or for
+them, avoid him as a debtor does his creditor, and he remains abandoned
+by the whole world.
+
+Q. What is paternal love?
+
+A. It is the assiduous care taken by parents to make their children
+contract the habit of every action useful to themselves and to society.
+
+Q. Why is paternal tenderness a virtue in parents?
+
+A. Because parents, who rear their children in those habits, procure for
+themselves, during the course of their lives, enjoyments and helps that
+give a sensible satisfaction at every instant, and which assure to them,
+when advanced in years, supports and consolations against the wants and
+calamities of all kinds with which old age is beset.
+
+Q. Is paternal love a common virtue?
+
+A. No; notwithstanding the ostentation made of it by parents, it is
+a rare virtue. They do not love their children, they caress and spoil
+them. In them they love only the agents of their will, the instruments
+of their power, the trophies of their vanity, the pastime of their
+idleness. It is not so much the welfare of their children that they
+propose to themselves, as their submission and obedience; and if among
+children so many are seen ungrateful for benefits received, it
+is because there are among parents as many despotic and ignorant
+benefactors.
+
+Q. Why do you say that conjugal love is a virtue?
+
+A. Because the concord and union resulting from the love of the married,
+establish in the heart of the family a multitude of habits useful to its
+prosperity and preservation. The united pair are attached to, and seldom
+quit their home; they superintend each particular direction of it; they
+attend to the education of their children; they maintain the respect and
+fidelity of domestics; they prevent all disorder and dissipation;
+and from the whole of their good conduct, they live in ease and
+consideration; while married persons who do not love one another, fill
+their house with quarrels and troubles, create dissension between their
+children and the servants, leaving both indiscriminately to all kinds of
+vicious habits; every one in turn spoils, robs, and plunders the house;
+the revenues are absorbed without profit; debts accumulate; the married
+pair avoid each other, or contend in lawsuits; and the whole family
+falls into disorder, ruin, disgrace and want.
+
+Q. Is adultery an offence in the law of nature?
+
+A. Yes; for it is attended with a number of habits injurious to the
+married and to their families. The wife or husband, whose affections
+are estranged, neglect their house, avoid it, and deprive it, as much as
+they can, of its revenues or income, to expend them with the object of
+their affections; hence arise quarrels, scandal, lawsuits, the neglect
+of their children and servants, and at last the plundering and ruin of
+the whole family; without reckoning that the adulterous woman commits
+a most grievous theft, in giving to her husband heirs of foreign blood,
+who deprive his real children of their legitimate portion.
+
+Q. What is filial love?
+
+A. It is, on the side of children, the practice of those actions useful
+to themselves and to their parents.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe filial love?
+
+A. By three principal motives:
+
+1. By sentiment; for the affectionate care of parents inspires, from the
+most tender age, mild habits of attachment.
+
+2. By justice; for children owe to their parents a return and indemnity
+for the cares, and even for the expenses, they have caused them.
+
+3. By personal interest; for, if they use them ill, they give to their
+own children examples of revolt and ingratitude, which authorize them,
+at a future day, to behave to themselves in a similar manner.
+
+Q. Are we to understand by filial love a passive and blind submission?
+
+A. No; but a reasonable submission, founded on the knowledge of the
+mutual rights and duties of parents and children; rights and duties,
+without the observance of which their mutual conduct is nothing but
+disorder.
+
+Q. Why is fraternal love a virtue?
+
+A. Because the concord and union, which result from the love of
+brothers, establish the strength, security, and conservation of the
+family: brothers united defend themselves against all oppression,
+they aid one another in their wants, they help one another in their
+misfortunes, and thus secure their common existence; while brothers
+disunited, abandoned each to his own personal strength, fall into
+all the inconveniences attendant on an insulated state and individual
+weakness. This is what a certain Scythian king ingeniously expressed
+when, on his death-bed, calling his children to him, he ordered them to
+break a bundle of arrows. The young men, though strong, being unable to
+effect it, he took them in his turn, and untieing them, broke each of
+the arrows separately with his fingers. "Behold," said he, "the effects
+of union; united together, you will be invincible; taken separately, you
+will be broken like reeds."
+
+Q. What are the reciprocal duties of masters and of servants?
+
+A. They consist in the practice of the actions which are respectively
+and justly useful to them; and here begin the relations of society; for
+the rule and measure of those respective actions is the equilibrium or
+equality between the service and the recompense, between what the one
+returns and the other gives; which is the fundamental basis of all
+society.
+
+Thus all the domestic and individual virtues refer, more or less
+mediately, but always with certitude, to the physical object of the
+amelioration and preservation of man, and are thereby precepts resulting
+from the fundamental law of nature in his formation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE SOCIAL VIRTUES; JUSTICE.
+
+
+Q. What is society?
+
+A. It is every reunion of men living together under the clauses of
+an expressed or tacit contract, which has for its end their common
+preservation.
+
+Q. Are the social virtues numerous?
+
+A. Yes; they are in as great number as the kinds of actions useful to
+society; but all may be reduced to one principle.
+
+Q. What is that fundamental principle?
+
+A. It is justice, which alone comprises all the virtues of society.
+
+Q. Why do you say that justice is the fundamental and almost only virtue
+of society?
+
+A. Because it alone embraces the practice of all the actions useful
+to it; and because all the other virtues, under the denominations
+of charity, humanity, probity, love of one's country, sincerity,
+generosity, simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only varied forms
+and diversified applications of the axiom, "Do not to another what you
+do not wish to be done to yourself," which is the definition of justice.
+
+Q. How does the law of nature prescribe justice?
+
+A. By three physical attributes, inherent in the organization of man.
+
+Q. What are those attributes?
+
+A. They are equality, liberty, and property.
+
+Q. How is equality a physical attribute of man?
+
+A. Because all men, having equally eyes, hands, mouths, ears, and the
+necessity of making use of them, in order to live, have, by this reason
+alone, an equal right to life, and to the use of the aliments which
+maintain it; they are all equal before God.
+
+Q. Do you suppose that all men hear equally, see equally, feel equally,
+have equal wants, and equal passions?
+
+A. No; for it is evident, and daily demonstrated, that one is short, and
+another long-sighted; that one eats much, another little; that one has
+mild, another violent passions; in a word, that one is weak in body and
+mind, while another is strong in both.
+
+Q. They are, therefore, really unequal?
+
+A. Yes, in the development of their means, but not in the nature and
+essence of those means. They are made of the same stuff, but not in
+the same dimensions; nor are the weight and value equal. Our language
+possesses no one word capable of expressing the identity of nature, and
+the diversity of its form and employment. It is a proportional equality;
+and it is for this reason I have said, equal before God, and in the
+order of nature.
+
+Q. How is liberty a physical attribute of man?
+
+A. Because all men having senses sufficient for their preservation--no
+one wanting the eye of another to see, his ear to hear, his mouth to
+eat, his feet to walk--they are all, by this very reason, constituted
+naturally independent and free; no man is necessarily subjected to
+another, nor has he a right to dominate over him.
+
+Q. But if a man is born strong, has he a natural right to master the
+weak man?
+
+A. No; for it is neither a necessity for him, nor a convention between
+them; it is an abusive extension of his strength; and here an abuse is
+made of the word right, which in its true meaning implies, justice or
+reciprocal faculty.
+
+Q. How is property a physical attribute of man?
+
+A. Inasmuch as all men being constituted equal or similar to one
+another, and consequently independent and free, each is the absolute
+master, the full proprietor of his body and of the produce of his labor.
+
+Q. How is justice derived from these three attributes?
+
+A. In this, that men being equal and free, owing nothing to each other,
+have no right to require anything from one another only inasmuch as
+they return an equal value for it; or inasmuch as the balance of what is
+given is in equilibrium with what is returned: and it is this equality,
+this equilibrium which is called justice, equity;* that is to say that
+equality and justice are but one and the same word, the same law
+of nature, of which the social virtues are only applications and
+derivatives.
+
+     * Aequitas, aequilibrium, aequalitas, are all of the same
+     family.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q. Explain how the social virtues are derived from the law of nature.
+How is charity or the love of one's neighbor a precept and application
+of it?
+
+A. By reason of equality and reciprocity; for when we injure another,
+we give him a right to injure us in return; thus, by attacking the
+existence of our neighbor, we endanger our own, from the effect of
+reciprocity; on the other hand, by doing good to others, we have room
+and right to expect an equivalent exchange; and such is the character of
+all social virtues, that they are useful to the man who practises them,
+by the right of reciprocity which they give him over those who are
+benefited by them.
+
+Q. Charity is then nothing but justice?
+
+A. No: it is only justice; with this slight difference, that strict
+justice confines itself to saying, "Do not to another the harm you would
+not wish he should do to you;" and that charity, or the love of one's
+neighbor, extends so far as to say, "Do to another the good which you
+would wish to receive from him." Thus when the gospel said, that this
+precept contained the whole of the law and the prophets, it announced
+nothing more than the precept of the law of nature.
+
+Q. Does it enjoin forgiveness of injuries?
+
+A. Yes, when that forgiveness implies self-preservation.
+
+Q. Does it prescribe to us, after having received a blow on one cheek,
+to hold out the other?
+
+A. No; for it is, in the first place, contrary to the precept of loving
+our neighbor as ourselves, since thereby we should love, more than
+ourselves, him who makes an attack on our preservation. Secondly, such
+a precept in its literal sense, encourages the wicked to oppression
+and injustice. The law of nature has been more wise in prescribing a
+calculated proportion of courage and moderation, which induces us to
+forget a first or unpremediated injury, but which punishes every act
+tending to oppression.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature prescribe to do good to others beyond the
+bounds of reason and measure?
+
+A. No; for it is a sure way of leading them to ingratitude. Such is the
+force of sentiment and justice implanted in the heart of man, that he
+is not even grateful for benefits conferred without discretion. There is
+only one measure with them, and that is to be just.
+
+Q. Is alms-giving a virtuous action?
+
+A. Yes, when it is practised according to the rule first mentioned;
+without which it degenerates into imprudence and vice, inasmuch as it
+encourages laziness, which is hurtful to the beggar and to society;
+no one has a right to partake of the property and fruits of another's
+labor, without rendering an equivalent of his own industry.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature consider as virtues faith and hope, which are
+often joined with charity?
+
+A. No; for they are ideas without reality; and if any effects result
+from them, they turn rather to the profit of those who have not those
+ideas, than of those who have them; so that faith and hope may be called
+the virtues of dupes for the benefit of knaves.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature prescribe probity?
+
+A. Yes, for probity is nothing more than respect for one's own rights
+in those of another; a respect founded on a prudent and well combined
+calculation of our interests compared to those of others.
+
+Q. But does not this calculation, which embraces the complicated
+interests and rights of the social state, require an enlightened
+understanding and knowledge, which make it a difficult science?
+
+A. Yes, and a science so much the more delicate as the honest man
+pronounces in his own cause.
+
+Q. Probity, then, shows an extension and justice in the mind?
+
+A. Yes, for an honest man almost always neglects a present interest, in
+order not to destroy a future one; whereas the knave does the contrary,
+and loses a great future interest for a present smaller one.
+
+Q. Improbity, therefore, is a sign of false judgment and a narrow mind?
+
+A. Yes, and rogues may be defined ignorant and silly calculators; for
+they do not understand their true interest, and they pretend to cunning:
+nevertheless, their cunning only ends in making known what they are--in
+losing all confidence and esteem, and the good services resulting from
+them for their physical and social existence. They neither live in
+peace with others, nor with themselves; and incessantly menaced by their
+conscience and their enemies, they enjoy no other real happiness but
+that of not being hanged.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature forbid robbery?
+
+A. Yes, for the man who robs another gives him a right to rob him; from
+that moment there is no security in his property, nor in his means of
+preservation: thus in injuring others, he, by a counterblow, injures
+himself.
+
+Q. Does it interdict even an inclination to rob?
+
+A. Yes; for that inclination leads naturally to action, and it is for
+this reason that envy is considered a sin?
+
+Q. How does it forbid murder?
+
+A. By the most powerful motives of self-preservation; for, first, the
+man who attacks exposes himself to the risk of being killed, by the
+right of defence; secondly, if he kills, he gives to the relations and
+friends of the deceased, and to society at large, an equal right of
+killing him; so that his life is no longer in safety.
+
+Q. How can we, by the law of nature, repair the evil we have done?
+
+A. By rendering a proportionate good to those whom we have injured.
+
+Q. Does it allow us to repair it by prayers, vows, offerings to God,
+fasting and mortifications?
+
+A. No: for all those things are foreign to the action we wish to repair:
+they neither restore the ox to him from whom it has been stolen, honor
+to him whom we have deprived of it, nor life to him from whom it has
+been taken away; consequently they miss the end of justice; they are
+only perverse contracts by which a man sells to another goods which do
+not belong to him; they are a real depravation of morality, inasmuch
+as they embolden to commit crimes through the hope of expiating them;
+wherefore, they have been the real cause of all the evils by which
+the people among whom those expiatory practices were used, have been
+continually tormented.
+
+Q. Does the law of nature order sincerity?
+
+A. Yes; for lying, perfidy, and perjury create distrust, quarrels,
+hatred, revenge, and a crowd of evils among men, which tend to their
+common destruction; while sincerity and fidelity establish confidence,
+concord, and peace, besides the infinite good resulting from such a
+state of things to society.
+
+Q. Does it prescribe mildness and modesty?
+
+A. Yes; for harshness and obduracy, by alienating from us the hearts of
+other men, give them an inclination to hurt us; ostentation and vanity,
+by wounding their self-love and jealousy, occasion us to miss the end of
+a real utility.
+
+Q. Does it prescribe humility as a virtue?
+
+A. No; for it is a propensity in the human heart to despise secretly
+everything that presents to it the idea of weakness; and self-debasement
+encourages pride and oppression in others; the balance must be kept in
+equipoise.
+
+Q. You have reckoned simplicity of manners among the social virtues;
+what do you understand by that word?
+
+A. I mean the restricting our wants and desires to what is truly useful
+to the existence of the citizen and his family; that is to say, the man
+of simple manners has but few wants, and lives content with a little.
+
+Q. How is this virtue prescribed to us?
+
+A. By the numerous advantages which the practice of it procures to the
+individual and to society; for the man whose wants are few, is free at
+once from a crowd of cares, perplexities, and labors; he avoids many
+quarrels and contests arising from avidity and a desire of gain; he
+spares himself the anxiety of ambition, the inquietudes of possession,
+and the uneasiness of losses; finding superfluity everywhere, he is the
+real rich man; always content with what he has, he is happy at little
+expense; and other men, not fearing any competition from him, leave him
+in quiet, and are disposed to render him the services he should stand
+in need of. And if this virtue of simplicity extends to a whole people,
+they insure to themselves abundance; rich in everything they do not
+consume, they acquire immense means of exchange and commerce; they work,
+fabricate, and sell at a lower price than others, and attain to all
+kinds of prosperity, both at home and abroad.
+
+Q. What is the vice contrary to this virtue?
+
+A. It is cupidity and luxury.
+
+Q. Is luxury a vice in the individual and in society?
+
+A. Yes, and to that degree, that it may be said to include all the
+others; for the man who stands in need of many things, imposes thereby
+on himself all the anxiety, and submits to all the means just or unjust
+of acquiring them. Does he possess an enjoyment, he covets another; and
+in the bosom of superfluity, he is never rich; a commodious dwelling is
+not sufficient for him, he must have a beautiful hotel; not content with
+a plenteous table, he must have rare and costly viands: he must have
+splendid furniture, expensive clothes, a train of attendants, horses,
+carriages, women, theatrical representations and games. Now, to supply
+so many expenses, much money must be had; and he looks on every method
+of procuring it as good and even necessary; at first he borrows,
+afterwards he steals, robs, plunders, turns bankrupt, is at war with
+every one, ruins and is ruined.
+
+Should a nation be involved in luxury, it occasions on a larger scale
+the same devastations; by reason that it consumes its entire produce,
+it finds itself poor even with abundance; it has nothing to sell to
+foreigners; its manufactures are carried on at a great expense, and
+are sold too dear; it becomes tributary for everything it imports; it
+attacks externally its consideration, power, strength, and means of
+defence and preservation, while internally it undermines and falls
+into the dissolution of its members. All its citizens being covetous
+of enjoyments, are engaged in a perpetual struggle to obtain them; all
+injure or are near injuring themselves; and hence arise those habits
+and actions of usurpation, which constitute what is denominated moral
+corruption, intestine war between citizen and citizen. From luxury
+arises avidity, from avidity, invasion by violence and perfidy; from
+luxury arises the iniquity of the judge, the venality of the witness,
+the improbity of the husband, the prostitution of the wife, the obduracy
+of parents, the ingratitude of children, the avarice of the master, the
+dishonesty of the servant, the dilapidation of the administrator, the
+perversity of the legislator, lying, perfidy, perjury, assassination,
+and all the disorders of the social state; so that it was with a
+profound sense of truth, that ancient moralists have laid the basis of
+the social virtues on simplicity of manners, restriction of wants, and
+contentment with a little; and a sure way of knowing the extent of
+a man's virtues and vices is, to find out if his expenses are
+proportionate to his fortune, and calculate, from his want of money, his
+probity, his integrity in fulfilling his engagements, his devotion to
+the public weal, and his sincere or pretended love of his country.
+
+Q. What do you mean by the word country?
+
+A. I mean the community of citizens who, united by fraternal sentiments,
+and reciprocal wants, make of their respective strength one common
+force, the reaction of which on each of them assumes the noble and
+beneficent character of paternity. In society, citizens form a bank of
+interest; in our country we form a family of endearing attachments; it
+is charity, the love of one's neighbor extended to a whole nation. Now
+as charity cannot be separated from justice, no member of the family can
+pretend to the enjoyment of its advantages, except in proportion to his
+labor; if he consumes more than it produces, he necessarily encroaches
+on his fellow-citizens; and it is only by consuming less than what
+he produces or possesses, that he can acquire the means of making
+sacrifices and being generous.
+
+Q. What do you conclude from all this?
+
+A. I conclude from it that all the social virtues are only the habitude
+of actions useful to society and to the individual who practices them;
+That they refer to the physical object of man's preservation; That
+nature having implanted in us the want of that preservation, has made
+a law to us of all its consequences, and a crime of everything that
+deviates from it; That we carry in us the seed of every virtue, and of
+every perfection; That it only requires to be developed; That we are
+only happy inasmuch as we observe the rules established by nature for
+the end of our preservation; And that all wisdom, all perfection, all
+law, all virtue, all philosophy, consist in the practice of these axioms
+founded on our own organization:
+
+
+Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself; Live for thy
+fellow citizens, that they may live for thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY.*
+
+     * In 1797, Dr. Priestly published a pamphlet, entitled,
+     "Observation on the increase of infidelity, with
+     animadversions upon the writings of several modern
+     unbelievers, and especially the Ruins of Mr. Volney." The
+     motto to this tract was:
+
+"Minds of little penetration rest naturally on the surface of things.
+They do not like to pierce deep into them, for fear of labor and
+trouble; sometimes still more for fear of truth."
+
+This Letter is an answer from Volney, taken from the Anti-Jacobin Review
+of March and April, 1799.
+
+
+SIR.--I received in due time your pamphlet on the increase of
+infidelity, together with the note without date which accompanied it.*
+My answer has been delayed by the incidents of business, and even by
+ill health, which you will surely excuse: this delay has, besides, no
+inconvenience in it. The question between us is not of a very urgent
+nature: the world would not go on less well with or without my answer
+as with or without your book. I might, indeed, have dispensed with
+returning you any answer at all; and I should have been warranted in
+so doing, by the manner in which you have stated the debate, and by the
+opinion pretty generally received that, on certain occasions, and with
+certain persons, the most noble reply is silence. You seem to have been
+aware of this yourself, considering the extreme precautions you have
+taken to deprive me of this resource; but as according to our French
+customs, any answer is an act of civility, I am not willing to concede
+the advantage of politeness--besides, although silence is sometimes
+very significant, its eloquence is not understood by every one, and
+the public which has not leisure to analyze disputes (often of little
+interest) has a reasonable right to require at least some preliminary
+explanations; reserving to itself, should the discussion degenerate into
+the recriminative clamors of an irritated self-love, to allow the right
+of silence to him in whom it becomes the virtue of moderation.
+
+     * Dr. Priestly sent his pamphlet to Volney, desiring his
+     answer to the strictures on his opinions in his Ruins of
+     Empires.
+
+I have read, therefore, your animadversions on my Ruins, which you are
+pleased to class among the writings of modern unbelievers, and since you
+absolutely insist on my expressing my opinion before the public, I shall
+now fulfill this rather disagreeable task with all possible brevity,
+for the sake of economizing the time of our readers. In the first place,
+sir, it appears evidently, from your pamphlet, that your design is less
+to attack my book than my personal and moral character; and in order
+that the public may pronounce with accuracy on this point, I submit
+several passages fitted to throw light on the subject.
+
+You say, in the preface of your discourses, p. 12, "There are, however,
+unbelievers more ignorant than Mr. Paine, Mr. Volney, Lequino, and
+others in France say," &c.
+
+Also in the preface of your present observations, p. 20. "I can
+truly say that in the writings of Hume, Mr. Gibbon, Voltaire, Mr.
+Volney--there is nothing of solid argument: all abound in gross mistakes
+and misrepresentations." Idem, p. 38--"Whereas had he (Mr. Volney)
+given attention to the history of the times in which Christianity was
+promulgated . . . he could have no more doubt . . . &c., it is as much
+in vain to argue with such a person as this, as with a Chinese or even a
+Hottentot."
+
+Idem, p. 119--"Mr. Volney, if we may judge from his numerous quotations
+of ancient writers in all the learned languages, oriental as well as
+occidental, must be acquainted with all; for he makes no mention of any
+translation, and yet if we judge from this specimen of his knowledge of
+them, he cannot have the smallest tincture of that of the Hebrew or even
+of the Greek."
+
+And, at last, after having published and posted me in your very title
+page, as an unbeliever and an infidel; after having pointed me out in
+your motto as one of those superficial spirits who know not how to find
+out, and are unwilling to encounter, truth; you add, p. 124,
+immediately after an article in which you speak of me under all these
+denominations--
+
+"The progress of infidelity, in the present age, is attended with a
+circumstance which did not so frequently accompany it in any former
+period, at least, in England, which is, that unbelievers in revelation
+generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God
+so as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a
+Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of
+no sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and
+misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the
+main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can
+you hold any converse with a man of such bad connexions? In the second
+place, your invitation, or rather, your summons to me, to point out
+the mistakes which I think you have made with respect to my opinions,
+suggest to me several observations.
+
+First. You suppose that the public attaches a high importance to your
+mistakes and to my opinions: but I cannot act upon a supposition. Am I
+not an unbeliever?
+
+Secondly. You say, p. 18, that the public will expect it from me: Where
+are the powers by which you make the public speak and act? Is this also
+a revelation?
+
+Thirdly. You require me to point out your mistakes. I do not know that I
+am under any such obligation: I have not reproached you with them; it
+is not, indeed, very correct to ascribe to me, by selection or
+indiscriminately, as you have done, all the opinions scattered through
+my book, since, having introduced many different persons, I was under
+the necessity of making them deliver different sentiments, according to
+their different characters. The part which belongs to me is that of a
+traveler, resting upon the ruins and meditating on the causes of the
+misfortunes of the human race. To be consistent with yourself you ought
+to have assigned to me that of the Hottentot or Samoyde savage, who
+argues with the Doctors, chap. xxiii, and I should have accepted it; you
+have preferred that of the erudite historian, chap. xxii, nor do I look
+upon this as a mistake; I discover on the contrary, an insidious design
+to engage me in a duel of self-love before the public, wherein you would
+excite the exclusive interest of the spectators by supporting the cause
+which they approve; while the task which you would impose on me,
+would only, in the event of success, be attended with sentiments of
+disapprobation. Such is your artful purpose, that, in attacking me
+as doubting the existence of Jesus, you might secure to yourself,
+by surprise, the favor of every Christian sect, although your own
+incredulity in his divine nature is not less subversive of Christianity
+than the profane opinion, which does not find in history the proof
+required by the English law to establish a fact: to say nothing of
+the extraordinary kind of pride assumed in the silent, but palpable,
+comparison of yourself to Paul and to Christ, by likening your labors to
+theirs as tending to the same object, p. 10, preface. Nevertheless, as
+the first impression of an attack always confers an advantage, you
+have some ground for expecting you may obtain the apostolic crown;
+unfortunately for your purpose I entertain no disposition to that of
+martrydom: and however glorious it might be to me to fall under the arm
+of him who has overcome Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire and even Frederick II., I
+find myself under the necessity of declining your theological challenge,
+for a number of substantial reasons.
+
+1. Because, to religious quarrels there is no end, since the prejudices
+of infancy and education almost unavoidably exclude impartial reasoning,
+and besides, the vanity of the champions becomes committed by the very
+publicity of the contest, never to give up a first assertion, whence
+result a spirit of sectarism and faction.
+
+2. Because no one has a right to ask of me an account of my religious
+opinions. Every inquisition of this kind is a pretension to sovereignty,
+a first step towards persecution; and the tolerant spirit of this
+country, which you invoke, has much less in view to engage men to speak,
+than to invite them to be silent.
+
+3. Because, supposing I do hold the opinions you attribute to me, I wish
+not to engage my vanity so as never to retract, nor to deprive myself
+of the resource of a conversion on some future day after more ample
+information.
+
+4. And because, reverend sir, if, in the support of your own thesis, you
+should happen to be discomfited before the Christian audience, it would
+be a dreadful scandal; and I will not be a cause for scandal, even for
+the sake of good.
+
+5. Because in this metaphysical contest our arms are too unequal; you
+speaking in your mother tongue, which I scarcely lisp, might bring forth
+huge volumes, while I could hardly oppose pages; and the public, who
+would read neither production, might take the weight of the books for
+that of reasoning.
+
+6. And because, being endowed with the gift of faith in a pretty
+sufficient quantity, you might swallow in a quarter of an hour more
+articles than my logic would digest in a week.
+
+7. Because again, if you were to oblige me to attend your sermons, as
+you have compelled me to read your pamphlet, the congregation would
+never believe that a man powdered and adorned like any worldling, could
+be in the right against a man dressed out in a large hat, with straight
+hair,* and a mortified countenance, although the gospel, speaking of the
+pharisees of other times, who were unpowdered, says that when one fasts
+he must anoint his head and wash his face.**
+
+     * Dr. Priestly has discarded his wig since he went to
+     America, and wears his own hair.  Editor A. J. Reveiw.
+
+     ** St. Matthew, Chapter VI. verses 16 and 17.
+
+8. Because, finally, a dispute to one having nothing else to do would be
+a gratification, while to me, who can employ my time better, it would be
+an absolute loss.
+
+I shall not then, reverend sir, make you my confessor in matters of
+religion, but I will disclose to you my opinion, as a man of letters, on
+the composition of your book. Having in former days, read many works of
+theology, I was curious to learn whether by any chemical process you had
+discovered real beings in that world of invisibles. Unfortunately, I am
+obliged to declare to the public, which, according to your expression,
+p. 19, "hopes to be instructed, to be led into truth, and not into error
+by me," that I have not found in your book a single new argument,
+but the mere repetition of what is told over and over in thousands of
+volumes, the whole fruit of which has been to procure for their authors
+a cursory mention in the dictionary of heresies. You everywhere lay down
+that as proved which remains to be proved; with this peculiarity,
+that, as Gibbon says, firing away your double battery against those who
+believe too much, and those who believe too little, you hold out your
+own peculiar sensations, as to the precise criterion of truth; so that
+we must all be just of your size in order to pass the gate of that
+New Jerusalem which you are building. After this, your reputation as
+a divine might have become problematical with me; but recollecting the
+principle of the association of ideas so well developed by Locke, whom
+you hold in estimation, and whom, for that reason I am happy to cite to
+you, although to him I owe that pernicious use of my understanding which
+makes me disbelieve what I do not comprehend--I perceive why the public
+having originally attached the idea of talents to the name of Mr.
+Priestly, doctor in chemistry, continued by habit to associate it with
+the name of Mr. Priestly, doctor in divinity; which, however, is not the
+same thing: an association of ideas the more vicious as it is liable
+to be moved inversely.* Happily you have yourself raised a bar of
+separation between your admirers, by advising us in the first page
+of your preface, that your present book is especially destined for
+believers. To cooperate, however, with you, sir, in this judicious
+design, I must observe that it is necessary to retrench two passages,
+seeing they afford the greatest support to the arguments of unbelievers.
+
+     * Mr. Blair, doctor of divinity, and Mr. Black, doctor in
+     chemistry, met at the coffee house in Edinburg: a new
+     theological pamphlet written by doctor Priestly was thrown
+     upon the table, "Really," said Dr. Blair, "this man had
+     better confine himself to chemistry, for he is absolutely
+     ignorant in theology:"--"I beg your pardon," answered Dr.
+     Black, "he is in the right, he is a minister of the gospel,
+     he ought to adhere to his profession, for in truth he knows
+     nothing of chemistry."
+
+You say, p. 15, "What is manifestly contrary to natural reason cannot be
+received by it;"--and p. 62, "With respect to intellect, men and brute
+animals are born in the same state, having the same external senses,
+which are the only inlets to all ideas, and consequently the source of
+all the knowledge and of all the mental habits they ever acquire."
+
+Now if you admit, with Locke, and with us infidels, that every one has
+the right of rejecting whatever is contrary to his natural reason, and
+that all our ideas and all our knowledge are acquired only by the inlets
+of our external senses; What becomes of the system of revelation, and of
+that order of things in times past, which is so contradictory to that
+of the time present? unless we consider it as a dream of the human brain
+during the state of superstitious ignorance.
+
+With these two single phrases, I could overturn the whole edifice of
+your faith. Dread not, however, sir, in me such overflowing zeal. For
+the same reason that I have not the frenzy of martyrdom, I have not that
+of making proselytes. It becomes those ardent, or rather acrimonious
+tempers, who mistake the violence of their sentiments for the enthusiasm
+of truth; the ambition of noise and rumor, for the love of glory; and
+for the love of their neighbor, the detestation of his opinions, and the
+secret desire of dominion.
+
+As for me, who have not received from nature the turbulent qualities of
+an apostle, and never sustained in Europe the character of a dissenter,
+I am come to America neither to agitate the conscience of men, nor to
+form a sect, nor to establish a colony, in which, under the pretext of
+religion, I might erect a little empire to myself. I have never been
+seen evangelizing my ideas, either in temples or in public meetings. I
+have never likewise practiced that quackery of beneficence, by which
+a certain divine, imposing a tax upon the generosity of the public,
+procures for himself the honors of a more numerous audience, and the
+merit of distributing at his pleasure a bounty which costs him nothing,
+and for which he receives grateful thanks dexterously stolen from the
+original donors.
+
+Either in the capacity of a stranger, or in that of a citizen, a sincere
+friend to peace, I carry into society neither the spirit of dissension,
+nor the desire of commotion; and because I respect in every one what
+I wish him to respect in me, the name of liberty is in my mind nothing
+else but the synonyma of justice.
+
+As a man, whether from moderation or indolence, a spectator of the world
+rather than an actor in it, I am every day less tempted to take on me
+the management of the minds or bodies of men: it is sufficient for an
+individual to govern his own passions and caprices.
+
+If by one of these caprices, I am induced to think it may be useful,
+sometimes, to publish my reflections, I do it without obstinacy or
+pretension to that implicit faith, the ridicule of which you desire
+to impart to me, p. 123. My whole book of the Ruins which you treat so
+ungratefully, since you thought it amusing, p. 122, evidently bears this
+character. By means of the contrasted opinions I have scattered through
+it, it breathes that spirit of doubt and uncertainty which appears to me
+the best suited to the weakness of the human mind, and the most adapted
+to its improvement, inasmuch as it always leaves a door open to new
+truths; while the spirit of dogmatism and immovable belief, limiting our
+progress to a first received opinion, binds us at hazard, and without
+resource, to the yoke of error or falsehood, and occasions the most
+serious mischiefs to society; since by combining with the passions, it
+engenders fanaticism, which, sometimes misled and sometimes misleading,
+though always intolerant and despotic, attacks whatever is not of
+its own nature; drawing upon itself persecution when it is weak, and
+practising persecution when it is powerful; establishing a religion of
+terror, which annihilates the faculties, and vitiates the conscience:
+so that, whether under a political or a religious aspect, the spirit
+of doubt is friendly to all ideas of liberty, truth, or genius, while a
+spirit of confidence is connected with the ideas of tyranny, servility,
+and ignorance.
+
+If, as is the fact, our own experience and that of others daily teaches
+us that what at one time appeared true, afterwards appeared demonstrably
+false, how can we connect with our judgments that blind and presumptuous
+confidence which pursues those of others with so much hatred?
+
+No doubt it is reasonable, and even honest, to act according to our
+present feelings and conviction: but if these feelings and their causes
+do vary by the very nature of things, how dare we impose upon ourselves
+or others an invariable conviction? How, above all, dare we require this
+conviction in cases where there is really no sensation, as happens
+in purely speculative questions, in which no palpable fact can be
+presented?
+
+Therefore, when opening the book of nature, (a more authentic one and
+more easy to be read than leaves of paper blackened over with Greek or
+Hebrew,) and when I reflected that the slightest change in the material
+world has not been in times past, nor is at present effected by the
+difference of so many religions and sects which have appeared and still
+exist on the globe, and that the course of the seasons, the path of the
+sun, the return of rain and drought, are the same for the inhabitants
+of each country, whether Christians, Mussulmans, Idolaters, Catholics,
+Protestants, etc., I am induced to believe that the universe is governed
+by laws of wisdom and justice, very different from those which human
+ignorance and intolerance would enact.
+
+And as in living with men of very opposite religious persuasions, I
+have had occasion to remark that their manners were, nevertheless, very
+analogous; that is to say, among the different Christian sects, among
+the Mahometans, and even among those people who were of no sect, I have
+found men who practise all the virtues, public and private, and that too
+without affectation; while others, who were incessantly declaiming of
+God and religion, abandoned themselves to every vicious habit which
+their belief condemned, I thereby became convinced that Ethics,
+the doctrines of morality, are the only essential, as they are only
+demonstrable, part of religion. And as, by your own avowal, the only end
+of religion is to render men better, in order to add to their happiness,
+p. 62, I have concluded that there are but two great systems of religion
+in the world, that of good sense and beneficence, and that of malice and
+hypocrisy.
+
+In closing this letter, I find myself embarrassed by the nature of the
+sentiment which I ought to express to you, for in declaring as you
+have done, p. 123, that you do not care for the contempt of such as me*
+(ignorant as you were of my opinion), you tell me plainly that you do
+not care for their esteem. I leave, therefore, to your discernment and
+taste to determine the sentiment most congenial to my situation and your
+desert.
+
+     * "And what does it do for me here, except, perhaps, expose
+     me to the contempt of such men as Mr. Volney, which,
+     however, I feel myself pretty well able to bear?" p. 124.
+     This language is the more surprising, as Dr. Priestly never
+     received anything from me but civilities.  In the year 1791
+     I sent him a dissertation of mine on the Chronology of the
+     Ancients, in consequence of some charts which he had himself
+     published.  His only answer was to abuse me in a pamphlet in
+     1792.  After this first abuse, on meeting me here last
+     winter, he procured me an invitation to dine with his friend
+     Mr. Russell, at whose house he lodged; after having shown me
+     polite attention at that dinner, he abuses me in his new
+     pamphlet.  After this second abuse he meets me in Spruce
+     Street, and takes me by the hand as a friend, and speaks of
+     me in a large company under that denomination.  Now I ask
+     the public, what kind of a man is Dr. Priestly?
+
+C. F. VOLNEY.
+
+Philadelphia, March 10, 1797.
+
+P. S. I do not accompany this public letter with a private note to Dr.
+Priestly, because communications of that nature carry an appearance of
+bravado, which, even in exercising the right of a necessary defence,
+appear to me imcompatible with decency and politeness.
+
+
+
+THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+(Compiled by the publisher from recognized authorities.)
+
+
+The Zodiac is an imaginary girdle or belt in the celestial sphere, which
+extends about eight degrees on each side of the Ecliptic. It is divided
+into twelve portions, called the signs of the Zodiac, within which all
+the planets make their revolutions. The Zodiac is so called from the
+animals represented upon it, and is supposed to have originated
+in remote ages and in latitudes where the camel and elephant were
+comparatively unknown. This pictorial representation of the zodiac was
+probably the origin, as M. Dupuis suggests, of the Arabian and Egyptian
+adoration of animals and birds, and has led in the natural progress of
+events to the adoration of images by both Christians and pagans.
+
+"The Signs of the Zodiac, (says Godfrey Higgins in The Anacalypsis) with
+the exception of the Scorpion, which was exchanged by Dan for the
+Eagle, were carried by the different tribes of the Israelites on their
+standards; and Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio or the Eagle--the
+four signs of Reuben, Judah, Ephriam, and Dan--were placed at the four
+corners, (the four cardinal points), of their encampment, evidently
+in allusion to the cardinal points of the sphere, the equinoxes and
+solstices, when the equinox was in Taurus. (See Parkhurst's Lexicon.)
+These coincidences prove that this religious system had its origin
+before the bull ceased to be an equinoctial sign, and prove also, that
+the religion of Moses was originally the same in its secret mysteries as
+that of the Heathen, or, if my reader likes it better, that the Heathen
+secret mysteries were the same as those of Moses."
+
+The Ecliptic, a great circle of the sphere, (shown on the preceding map
+by two parallel lines), is supposed to be drawn through the middle of
+the Zodiac, cutting the Equator at two points, (called the Equinoctial
+points), at an angle with the equinoctial of 23 degrees 28 minutes, (the
+sun's greatest declination), and is the path which the earth is supposed
+to describe amidst the fixed stars in performing its annual circuit
+around the sun. It is called the Ecliptic because the eclipses of the
+sun and moon always occur under it.
+
+The Signs are each the twelfth part of the Ecliptic or Zodiac, (30
+degrees,) and are reckoned from the point of intersection of the
+ecliptic and equator at the vernal equinox. They are named respectively
+Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
+Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces. These names are borrowed from
+the constellations of the zodiac of the same denomination, which
+corresponded when these divisions were originally made; but in
+consequence of the precession, recession, or retrocession of the
+equinoxes, (about 50 1/10" yearly, at the rate of about 72 years to a
+degree, displacing an entire sign in about 2152 years, and making
+an entire revolution of the equinoctial in about 25,868 years), the
+positions of these constellations in the heavens no longer correspond
+with the divisions of the ecliptic of the same name, but are in advance
+of them. Thus, the constellation Aries is now in that part of the
+ecliptic called Taurus, and the stars of Taurus are in Gemini, those of
+Gemini in Cancer, and so on throughout the ecliptic.
+
+The relative positions of the signs and constellations in the zodiac and
+ecliptic seem thus to have gradually changed with the revolving years;
+and the worship of the three constellations, Taurus, Aries, and Pisces,
+with which Christianity is so intimately connected, seems to have
+changed in a corresponding degree. The worship of the bull of Egypt--the
+celestial Taurus--has given place to that of the lamb of Palestine--the
+celestial Aries; and under the astronomical emblem Pisces--the twelfth
+sign of the zodiac--the dominant faith of to-day was appropriately
+taught by the twelve apostolic fishermen.
+
+It is from one of these chosen fishermen, St. Peter, that the Pope of
+Rome claims to have derived his arbitrary power for binding and loosing
+on earth those who are to be bound and loosed in heaven. (Matt. xvi,
+19.) The grave responsibility of wielding with justice and equity this
+tremendous power over the future destiny of mankind, seems never to have
+disconcerted any of the successors of St. Peter. They have all proved
+to be equally arrogant and intolerant, zealous for both temporal and
+spiritual domination, and merciless to those who have opposed their
+pretensions. The present incumbent of the papal chair, who modestly
+claims the attribute of infallibility, seems proud of his inherited
+title, The Great Fisherman! and hopes in the progress of time, with the
+assistance of his monks, bishops, and cardinals, to entangle all nations
+in his net of faith, and to dictate with unquestioned authority the
+religious worship of the entire human race.
+
+As the precession of the equinoxes still continues as of yore, and as
+the masses still continue credulous and devout, they may in succeeding
+ages be again called upon to worship the god Apis, when the sign of
+Taurus shall again coincide in the zodiac and the ecliptic; and Aries,
+"the lamb of God," may again be offered in the "fullness of time" as a
+sacrifice for mankind, again be crucified, and again shed his redeeming
+blood to wash away the sins of a believing world.
+
+M. Dupuis has satisfactorily shown in The History of all Religions that
+the twelve labors of the god and saviour Hercules were astronomical
+allegories--the history of the passage of the sun through the twelve
+signs of the zodiac--and these labors are so similar to the sufferings
+of Jesus, that the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst has been obliged, much against
+his inclination, to acknowledge that they "were types of what the
+real Saviour was to do and suffer." (Parkhurst, p.47.) An intimate
+connection, if not identity, is thus shown between ancient and modern
+belief--between the paganism of the past and the orthodoxy of the
+present.
+
+
+
+THE ZODIACAL SIGNS.
+
+
+ARIES, the Ram: (marked [symbol for ARIES])--A northern constellation,
+usually named as the first sign in the zodiac, into which, when the sun
+enters at the vernal equinox in March, the days and nights are of equal
+length. Aries has been regarded by the devout during many ages as the
+celestial representative, visible in the heavens, of "the Lamb of God
+that taketh away the sins of the world."
+
+TAURUS, the Bull:(marked thus, [symbol for TAURUS])--The second sign in
+the zodiac, which by the Arabians is called Ataur. This constellation
+was worshipped for ages by the idolatrous Egyptians as the heavenly
+representative of their god Osiris; and derives its name, according to
+Grecian fable, from the bull into which Jupiter transformed himself
+in order to carry Europa over into Crete; but the constellation was
+probably so named by the Egyptians to designate that period of the year,
+(April), in which cows mostly bring forth their young.
+
+"The Rev. Mr. Maurice in his work on the antiquities of India, has shown
+that the May-day festival and the May-pole of Great Britain with its
+garlands, etc., are the remains of an ancient festival of Egypt and
+India, and probably of Phoenicia, when these nations, in countries
+very distant, and from times very remote, have all, with one consent,
+celebrated the entrance of the sun into the sign of Taurus at the vernal
+equinox."
+
+GEMINI, the Twins: (marked thus, [symbol for GEMINI])--A zodiacal
+constellation, visible in May, containing the two bright stars Castor
+and Pollux, the fabled sons of Leda and Jupiter, who during their lives
+had cleared the Hellespont and neighboring seas of pirates, and were
+therefore deemed the protectors of navigators and sailors.
+
+CANCER, the Crab: (marked thus, [symbol for CANCER])--Is the fourth
+sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters on the 21st day of June, and is
+thence called the summer solstice. According to Grecian fable, the crab
+was transported to heaven at the request of Juno, after it had been
+slain by Hercules during his battle with the serpent Python, but the
+evident design of the name is to represent the apparent backward motion
+of the sun in June, which is said to resemble the motions of a crab.
+
+LEO, the Lion: ([symbol for LEO]).--Is the fifth sign in the zodiac,
+and contains one star of the first magnitude, called Regulus, or Cor
+Leonis--the Lion's Heart. The fervid heat of July, when the sun has
+attained its greatest power, is now symbolized in our almanacs by
+the figure of an enraged lion; and the feasts or sacrifices formerly
+celebrated among the ancients during this month, in honor of the sun,
+(which they also represented under the form of a lion,) were called
+Leonitica. The priests who performed the sacred rites were called
+Leones. This feast was sometimes called Mithriaca, because Mithra was
+the name of the sun among the Persians. The sacred writings abound with
+references to the "king of beasts;" among the most interesting of which
+is the story of the battle between the lion and Samson, the Jewish
+Herculus; while the most wonderful example of animal evolution on record
+is found in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where we are gravely
+informed that "the lion shall eat straw like the bullock."
+
+VIRGO, Virgin Mother, Venus, Eve, Isis, &c.--([symbol for VIRGO]).--Is
+the sixth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of
+August. The myths and fables regarding the virgin which abound among all
+nations and all religions, are both various and voluminous, and we may
+add somewhat improbable. They all agree, however, in this, that the
+female, shown on the preceding diagram, holding in her right hand a
+branch of ripened fruit,--the apples of Paradise,--was intended
+to represent the reproductive powers of nature,--the abundance,
+satisfaction and contentment which mortals enjoy during the happy period
+of harvest.
+
+LIBRA, the Balance.--The seventh sign of the zodiac, directly opposite
+to Aries, from which it is distant 180 degrees. It is marked thus
+[symbol for LIBRA], after the manner of a pair of scales; to denote,
+probably, that when the sun arrives at this part of the ecliptic, the
+days and nights are equal, as if weighed in a balance. Hence the
+period when the sun enters Libra, (about September 21st,) is called the
+Autumnal equinox. On the 25th of September was born John the Baptist,
+the forerunner of his cousin Jesus, who came to his exaltation of glory
+on the 25th of March, the Vernal equinox. "The equinoxes and solstices,"
+says Higgins, "equally marked the births and deaths of John and Jesus."
+The one preceded and prepared the way for the other, who receded.
+One advanced, the other declined. Jesus ascended, John descended.
+Astrologically speaking, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John
+iii, 30.)
+
+SCORPIO, the Scorpion.--The eighth sign of the zodiac, which the sun
+enters on the 23d of October, is marked thus [symbol for SCORPIO].
+Scorpio is fabled to have killed the great hunter Orion, and for that
+exploit to have been placed among the constellations. For this reason it
+is also said that when Scorpio rises Orion sets.
+
+SAGITTARIUS, the Archer: (marked thus, [symbol for SAGITTARIUS]) is the
+ninth zodiacal sign, and corresponds with the month of November. This
+sign is represented like a centaur and was fabled to be Crotus, the son
+of Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses.
+
+CAPRICORNUS, the Goat.([symbol for CAPRICORNUS])--The tenth sign of the
+zodiac, which the sun enters the 21st of December, (the longest night in
+the year,) called the winter solstice. This sign is drawn to represent
+the horns of a goat, and is fabled to have been Pan, who in the war of
+the giants was taken to heaven in the shape of a goat. Others claim
+that it was the goat of Amalthaea, which fed Jupiter with her milk.
+Macrobius, who calls Cancer and Capricorn the gates of the sun, makes
+the latter sign to represent his motion, after the manner of a goat
+climbing the mountains.
+
+AQUARIUS, the Water Bearer.--A constellation in the heavens so called,
+because during its rising there is usually an abundance of rain. It
+is the eleventh sign in the zodiac, reckoned from Aries, and is marked
+thus, [symbol for AQUARIUS]. It rises in January and sets in February,
+and is supposed by the poets to be Ganymede.
+
+PISCES, the Fishes, [symbol for PISCES].--The twelfth sign of the
+zodiac, rises in February and is represented by two fishes tied together
+by the tails. These fishes are fabled by the Greeks to be those into
+which Venus and Cupid were changed to escape from the giant Typhon. This
+fable may not be true, but that wonderful miracles were once performed
+with two small fishes is stated in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of
+St. Luke, where it is said that 5000 hungry mortals were cheaply, if
+not sumptuously regaled with two small fishes and five loaves of bread;
+while a large surplus of this piscatory diet, larger indeed than the
+original stock, still remained intact.
+
+In the vestibule or approaches to catholic churches is usually found a
+vase filled with water, (called Piscina,) and this water is considered
+holy. The Fish-days are observed as holy days, or fast days, in which
+Fish may be eaten and meat is forbidden; and learned writers have
+asserted that in the worship of Pisces may be found the true secret of
+the origin of the rite of baptism. The Fish-god Oannes, is said to have
+come out of the Erythraean Sea and taught the Babylonians all kinds of
+useful knowledge. Ionnes or Jonas went headlong into the sea and into
+a fish, and has kindly recorded for our instruction his remarkable
+adventures. The miraculous draughts of fishes in the apostolic age still
+excite the emulation of modern fishermen, who cannot even hope to rival
+the wonders that have been recorded. St. Peter is said to have secured
+ready money from the mouth of a fish that he caught with a hook and
+line in the sea of Galilee. (Matthew xvii, 27.) His success was justly
+rewarded, and to him was delegated the power of ruling the infant
+church. Pisces thus displaced Aries. The fisherman succeeded the
+shepherd. The precession of the equinoxes produced a new avatar; a new
+sign arose in the heavens; and a new saviour was born to save mankind.
+
+
+THE CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+
+SIRIUS, the Dog Star.--A bright star of the first magnitude in the
+mouth of the constellation Canis Major. This is the brightest star that
+appears in our firmament, and is supposed by some to be the nearest.
+
+LEPUS.--One of the southern constellations, placed near Orion, according
+to Grecian fable, because it was one of the animals which he hunted.
+
+ERIDANUS.--A winding southern constellation, near the Cetus, containing
+the bright star Achemar.
+
+CETUS, the Whale.--A southern constellation, and one of the forty-eight
+old asterisms. It is fabled to have been the sea monster sent by Neptune
+to devour Andromeda, which was killed by Perseus.
+
+CRATER, the Cup.--A southern constellation, near Hydra. This is supposed
+by Hyainus to be the cup which Apollo gave to the Corvus, or Raven.
+
+CORVUS.--One of the old constellations in the southern hemisphere, near
+Sagittarius. This bird is fabled to have been translated to heaven by
+Apollo for discovering to him the infidelity of the nymph Coronis.
+
+ARGO NAVIS, the Ship.--A constellation near to the Canis Major, and the
+name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four companions
+to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece, and was said to have been
+translated into the heavens.
+
+CANOPUS.--The name formerly given to a star in the second bend of
+Eridanus. A bright star of the first magnitude in the rudder of the ship
+Argo, which, according to Pliny, was visible at Alexandria in Egypt.
+
+CENTAURUS.--One of the forty-eight old constellations in the southern
+hemisphere, represented in the form of half man and half horse, who was
+fabled by the Greeks to have been Chiron, the tutor of Achilles.
+
+AVA, or ALTAR.--One of the old constellations, and fabled to have been
+that at which the giants entered into their conspiracy against the gods;
+wherefore Jupiter, in commemoration of the event, transplanted the altar
+into the heavens.
+
+PEGASUS.--One of the forty-eight old constellations of the northern
+hemisphere, figured in the form of a flying horse.
+
+DELPHINUS, or DOLPHIN.--A northern constellation, near Pegasus. The
+Dolphin is fabled to have been translated to heaven by Neptune.
+
+AQUILA, the Eagle.--In the Arabic Altair, but in the Persian tables the
+Flying Vulture. This is one of the old constellations, situated near
+Delphinus in the northern hemisphere. According to Grecian fable, Aquila
+represented Ganymede or Hebe, who was transported to heaven and made
+cup-bearer to Jupiter.
+
+SAGITTA--the Dart or Arrow, called by the Arabians Schahan. One of
+the old constellations in the northern hemisphere, near Aquila and
+Delphinus. It is fabled to have been the arrow with which Hercules slew
+the vulture that was devouring the liver of Prometheus who was, like
+Jesus, crucified for loving mankind.
+
+CYGNUS, the Swan.--An old constellation in the milky-way, between
+Equus and the Dragon. This is fabled to be the swan into which Jupiter
+transformed himself in order to deceive the virtuous Leda, wife of
+Tyndareus, king of Sparta. The Grecian matron, like the Jewish virgin,
+thus became the mother of a God.
+
+LYRA.--A northern constellation between Hercules and Cygnus, containing
+a white star of the first magnitude.
+
+MILKY-WAY.--Galaxy, or Via Lactia.--A broad luminous path or circle
+encompassing the heavens, which is easily discernible by its white
+appearance, from which it derives its name. It is supposed to be the
+blended light of innumerable fixed stars, which are not distinguishable
+with ordinary telescopes.
+
+HYDRA, the Serpent.--A southern constellation of great length, which is
+drawn to represent a serpent. The Hydra is fabled to have been placed in
+the heavens by Apollo, to frighten the Raven from drinking.
+
+ORION, the hunter.--A constellation of the southern hemisphere with
+respect to the ecliptic, but half southern and half northern with
+respect to the equinoctial. It is placed near the feet of the bull, and
+is composed of seventeen stars in the form of a sword, which has given
+occasion to the poets to speak of Orion's sword. He was described by
+the Greeks as a "mighty hunter," who for his exploits was placed in the
+heavens by Jupiter, between the Canis and the Lepus. He is believed by
+many to have been the "mighty hunter" spoken of in the bible, under the
+name of Nimrod. (See Gen. x: 8, 9; 1 Chron. i: 10; Micha v: 6, Job ix,
+9; Amos v, 8.)
+
+PERSEUS.--This constellation is named from Perseus, the son of Jupiter
+by Danae, who was translated into the heavens by the assistance of
+Minerva, for having released Andromeda from her confinement on the
+rock to which she was chained. He is represented in the preceding
+illustration holding a drawn sword in his right hand and in his left the
+head of Medusa, the Gorgon, whose terrifying appearance changed all who
+beheld her into stone, and whom he had destroyed with the assistance of
+the wings he had borrowed from Mercury, the helmet from Pluto, the sword
+from Vulcan, and the shield from Minerva.
+
+JOSEPH'S STABLE; AURIGA, the Wagoner:--A northern constellation between
+Perseus and Gemini, represented by the figure of an old man supporting
+a goat. He is said to have been taken to heaven by Jupiter after the
+invention of wagons.
+
+URSA MAJOR, the Bear.--One of the prominent northern constellations,
+situated near the north pole. It contains the stars called the Dipper.
+Ursa Minor contains the pole-star, which is shown in the extremity of
+the tail of the bear.
+
+ANDROMEDA.--A northern constellation, represented by a woman chained;
+as, according to Grecian fable, Andromeda, the daughter of Cassiopia,
+was bound to a rock by the Nereides, and afterwards released by Perseus.
+Minerva changed her into a constellation after her death, and placed her
+in the heavens.
+
+DRACO OR DRAGON.--A northern constellation, supposed to represent the
+Dragon that guarded the Hesperian fruit, and was killed by Hercules.
+It is said that Juno took it up to heaven and placed it among the
+constellations.
+
+BOOTIS, the Ox driver: so called because this constellation seems
+to follow the Great Bear as the driver follows his oxen. Bootis is
+represented as grasping in his right hand a sickle and in his left a
+club, and is fabled to have been Icarius, who was transported to heaven
+because he was a great cultivator of the vine; for when Bootes rises the
+works of ploughing and cultivation go forward.
+
+CORONA BOREALIS. Northern Crown.--One of the old northern
+constellations, between Hercules and Bootes.
+
+CORONA AUSTRALIS--Southern Crown.--One of the old constellations in the
+southern hemisphere, between Sagittarius and Scorpio. The Corona
+were fabled to be Menippe and Metioche, two daughters of Orion, who
+sacrificed themselves at the suggestion of an oracle, to protect
+Boeotia, their native country, from the ravages of a pestilence: it
+being the belief of idolatrous nations that an angry god could be
+propitiated by human sacrifices, and that the death of the innocent
+might atone for the sins of the guilty. The deities of Hades were
+astonished, it is said, at the patriotism and devotion of these Grecian
+maidens, who had so generously and uselessly sacrificed their lives.
+After their death two stars were seen to issue from the altars that
+still smoked with their blood, and these stars were placed in the
+heavens in the form of a crown or coronet.
+
+CEPHEUS AND CASSIOPIA.--One of the old asterism in the northern
+hemisphere, near the pole. According to Grecian fables, Cassiopia
+and her husband Cepheus, king of Etheopia, were placed among the
+constellations to witness the punishment inflicted on their daughter,
+Andromeda.
+
+TRIANGULARIUM.--A name for both one of the old and new constellations in
+the northern hemisphere, between Andromeda and Aries.
+
+SERPENTARIUS, called Ophiucus, is a constellation in the northern
+hemisphere, between Scorpio and Hercules.
+
+HERCULES, one of the old northern constellations. In Grecian mythology
+it was taught and believed that Hercules, the Theban, was born of a
+human mother and an immortal father, like other so-called saviours of
+mankind. His mother, the fair Alcmena, wife of Amphitryon, having found
+favor in the eyes of the god Jupiter, soon fell an unwilling victim
+to his celestial wiles. The life of the infant Hercules, born of this
+unnatural union, was threatened by the jealous Juno, the same as the
+life of the infant Jesus was threatened by the tyrant Herod. Like Jesus,
+Hercules devoted his life to the benefit of the human race, and like
+Jesus he was also worshipped after his death as a God in heaven. He is
+shown in the astrological chart, enveloped in the skin of the lion he
+has slain, with his club upraised, and his foot placed threateningly
+above the head of the Dragon, as if about to fulfill the scriptural
+prophecy, that "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Ruins, by C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RUINS ***
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+****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Ruins by C. F. Volney****
+
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+The Ruins
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+by C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney 
+
+July, 1998  [Etext #1397]
+
+
+****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Ruins by C. F. Volney****
+******This file should be named ruins10.txt or ruins10.zip******
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RUINS,
+
+OR, MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES:
+
+AND
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE,
+
+by
+
+C. F. VOLNEY,
+
+COMTE ET PAIR DE FRANCE.  COMMANDEUR DE LA LEGION D'HONNEUR, MEMBRE
+DE L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE, ET DE PLUSIEURS AUTRES SOCIETES SAVANTES.
+
+DEPUTY TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF 1789, AND AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN
+EGYPT AND SYRIA," "NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY," ETC.
+
+TO WHICH IS ADDED
+
+VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE BY COUNT
+DARU, AND THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS BY THE EDITOR.
+
+
+I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will employ myself
+on the means of effecting good for him, and build my own happiness
+on the promotion of his.--Volney.
+
+
+NEW YORK,
+TWENTIETH CENTURY PUB. CO., 4 WARREN ST.
+1890.
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
+
+
+Having recently purchased a set of stereotyped plates of Volney's
+Ruins, with a view of reprinting the same, I found, on examination,
+that they were considerably worn by the many editions that had been
+printed from them and that they greatly needed both repairs and
+corrections.  A careful estimate showed that the amount necessary
+for this purpose would go far towards reproducing this standard
+work in modern type and in an improved form.  After due reflection
+this course was at length decided upon, and all the more readily,
+as by discarding the old plates and resetting the entire work, the
+publisher was enabled to greatly enhance its value, by inserting
+the translator's preface as it appeared in the original edition,
+and also to restore many notes and other valuable material which
+had been carelessly omitted in the American reprint.
+
+An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on
+the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume,
+which may be appropriately referred to, in this connection.  It is
+there stated, in describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and
+the ruins of Thebes, her opulent metropolis, that "There a people,
+now forgotten, discovered, while others were yet barbarians, the
+elements of the arts and sciences.  A race of men, now rejected
+from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the
+study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems
+which still govern the universe."
+
+A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems
+to prove that this statement is substantially correct, and that we
+are in reality indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid
+imagination of the persecuted and despised negro, for the various
+religious systems now so highly revered by the different branches
+of both the Semitic and Aryan races.  This fact, which is so
+frequently referred to in Mr. Volney's writings, may perhaps solve
+the question as to the origin of all religions, and may even
+suggest a solution to the secret so long concealed beneath the flat
+nose, thick lips, and negro features of the Egyptian Sphinx.  It
+may also confirm the statement of Dioderus, that "the Ethiopians
+conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship, of
+festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other
+religious practice."
+
+That an imaginative and superstitious race of black men should have
+invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system
+of religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the
+intellects of the leading representatives of modern theology,--that
+still clings to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential
+influence the literature and faith of the civilized and cultured
+nations of Europe and America, is indeed a strange illustration of
+the mad caprice of destiny, of the insignificant and apparently
+trivial causes that oft produce the most grave and momentous
+results.
+
+
+The translation here given closely follows that published in Paris
+by Levrault, Quai Malaquais, in 1802, which was under the direction
+and careful supervision of the talented author; and whatever notes
+Count Volney then thought necessary to insert in his work, are here
+carefully reproduced without abridgment or modification.
+
+
+The portrait, maps and illustrations are from a French edition of
+Volney's complete works, published by Bossange Freres at No. 12 Rue
+de Seine, Paris, in 1821,--one year after the death of Mr. Volney.
+It is a presentation copy "on the part of Madame, the Countess de
+Volney, and of the nephew of the author," and it may therefore be
+taken for granted that Mr. Volney's portrait, as here given, is
+correct, and was satisfactory to his family.
+
+
+An explanation of the figures and diagrams shown on the map of the
+Astrological Heaven of the Ancients has been added in the appendix
+by the publisher.
+
+PETER ECKLER.
+
+New York, January 3, 1890.
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
+
+OF THE ENGLISH EDITION PUBLISHED IN PARIS.
+
+
+To offer the public a new translation of Volney's Ruins may require
+some apology in the view of those who are acquainted with the work
+only in the English version which already exists, and which has had
+a general circulation.  But those who are conversant with the book
+in the author's own language, and have taken pains to compare it
+with that version, must have been struck with the errors with which
+the English performance abounds.  They must have regretted the loss
+of many original beauties, some of which go far in composing the
+essential merits of the work.
+
+The energy and dignity of the author's manner, the unaffected
+elevation of his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity
+of his diction, are everywhere suited to his subject, which is
+solemn, novel, luminous, affecting,--a subject perhaps the most
+universally interesting to the human race that has ever been
+presented to their contemplation.  It takes the most liberal and
+comprehensive view of the social state of man, develops the sources
+of his errors in the most perspicuous and convincing manner,
+overturns his prejudices with the greatest delicacy and moderation,
+sets the wrongs he has suffered, and the rights he ought to
+cherish, in the clearest point of view, and lays before him the
+true foundation of morals--his only means of happiness.
+
+As the work has already become a classical one, even in English,
+and as it must become and continue to be so regarded in all
+languages in which it shall be faithfully rendered, we wish it to
+suffer as little as possible from a change of country;--that as
+much of the spirit of the original be transfused and preserved as
+is consistent with the nature of translation.
+
+How far we have succeeded in performing this service for the
+English reader we must not pretend to determine.  We believe,
+however, that we have made an improved translation, and this
+without claiming any particular merit on our part, since we have
+had advantages which our predecessor had not.  We have been aided
+by his labors; and, what is of still more importance, our work has
+been done under the inspection of the author, whose critical
+knowledge of both languages has given us a great facility in
+avoiding such errors as might arise from hurry or mistake.
+
+Paris, November 1, 1802.
+
+
+
+PREFACE OF THE LONDON EDITION.*
+
+* Published by T. Allman, 42 Holborn Hill, London, 1851.
+
+
+The plan of this publication was formed nearly ten years ago; and
+allusions to it may be seen in the preface to Travels in Syria and
+Egypt, as well as at the end of that work, (published in 1787).
+The performance was in some forwardness when the events of 1788 in
+France interrupted it.  Persuaded that a development of the theory
+of political truth could not sufficiently acquit a citizen of his
+debt to society, the author wished to add practice; and that
+particularly at a time when a single arm was of consequence in the
+defence of the general cause.
+
+The same desire of public benefit which induced him to suspend his
+work, has since engaged him to resume it, and though it may not
+possess the same merit as if it had appeared under the
+circumstances that gave rise to it, yet he imagines that at a time
+when new passions are bursting forth,--passions that must
+communicate their activity to the religious opinions of men,--it is
+of importance to disseminate such moral truths as are calculated to
+operate as a curb and restraint.  It is with this view he has
+endeavored to give to these truths, hitherto treated as abstract, a
+form likely to gain them a reception.
+
+It was found impossible not to shock the violent prejudices of some
+readers; but the work, so far from being the fruit of a disorderly
+and perturbed spirit, has been dictated by a sincere love of order
+and humanity.
+
+After reading this performance it will be asked, how it was
+possible in 1784 to have had an idea of what did not take place
+till the year 1790?  The solution is simple.  In the original plan
+the legislator was a fictitious and hypothetical being: in the
+present, the author has substituted an existing legislator; and the
+reality has only made the subject additionally interesting.
+
+
+
+PREFACE OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.*
+
+
+* The copy from which this preface is reprinted was published in
+Boston by Charles Gaylord, in 1833.  It was given to the writer,
+when a mere lad, by a lady--almost a stranger--who was traveling
+through the little hamlet on the banks of the Hudson where he then
+resided.  This lady assured me that the book was of great value,
+containing noble and sublime truths; and the only condition she
+attached to the gift was, that I should read it carefully and
+endeavor to understand its meaning.  This I willingly promised and
+faithfully performed; and all who have "climbed the heights," and
+escaped from the thraldom of superstitious faith, will concede the
+inestimable value of such a gift--rich with the peace and
+consolation that the truth imparts.--Pub.
+
+
+If books were to be judged of by their volume, the following would
+have but little value; if appraised by their contents, it will
+perhaps be reckoned among the most instructive.
+
+In general, nothing is more important than a good elementary book;
+but, also, nothing is more difficult to compose and even to read:
+and why?  Because, as every thing in it should be analysis and
+definition, all should be expressed with truth and precision.  If
+truth and precision are wanting, the object has not been attained;
+if they exist, its very force renders it abstract.
+
+The first of these defects has been hitherto evident in all books
+of morality.  We find in them only a chaos of incoherent maxims,
+precepts without causes, and actions without a motive.  The pedants
+of the human race have treated it like a little child: they have
+prescribed to it good behavior by frightening it with spirits and
+hobgoblins.  Now that the growth of the human race is rapid, it is
+time to speak reason to it; it is time to prove to men that the
+springs of their improvement are to be found in their very
+organization, in the interest of their passions, and in all that
+composes their existence.  It is time to demonstrate that morality
+is a physical and geometrical science, subject to the rules and
+calculations of the other mathematical sciences: and such is the
+advantage of the system expounded in this book, that the basis of
+morality being laid in it on the very nature of things, it is both
+constant and immutable; whereas, in all other theological systems,
+morality being built upon arbritary opinions, not demonstrable and
+often absurd, it changes, decays, expires with them, and leaves men
+in an absolute depravation.  It is true that because our system is
+founded on facts and not on reveries, it will with much greater
+difficulty be extended and adopted: but it will derive strength
+from this very struggle, and sooner or later the eternal religion
+of Nature must overturn the transient religions of the human mind.
+
+
+This book was published for the first time in 1793, under the title
+of The French Citizen's Catechism.  It was at first intended for a
+national work, but as it may be equally well entitled the Catechism
+of men of sense and honor, it is to be hoped that it will become a
+book common to all Europe.  It is possible that its brevity may
+prevent it from attaining the object of a popular classical work,
+but the author will be satisfied if he has at least the merit of
+pointing out the way to make a better.
+
+
+
+Advertisement of the American Edition.
+
+
+VOLNEY'S RUINS;
+
+OR MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES.
+
+
+The superior merits of this work are too well known to require
+commendation; but as it is not generally known that there are in
+circulation three English translations of it, varying materially in
+regard to faithfulness and elegance of diction, the publisher of
+the present edition inserts the following extracts for the
+information of purchasers and readers:
+
+
+PARIS TRANSLATION,
+
+First published in this Country by Dixon and Sickels.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail, solitary ruins! holy sepulchres, and silent walls! you I
+invoke; to you I address my prayer.  While your aspect averts, with
+secret terror, the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm
+of delicious sentiments--sublime contemplations.  What useful
+lessons! what affecting and profound reflections you suggest to him
+who knows how to consult you.  When the whole earth, in chains and
+silence, bowed the neck before its tyrants, you had already
+proclaimed the truths which they abhor, and confounding the dust of
+the king with that of the meanest slave, had announced to man the
+sacred dogma of Equality!  Within your pale, in solitary adoration
+of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions of the dead;
+not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude, armed with
+fire and sword, but under the august aspect of justice, poising in
+her hand the sacred balance, wherein are weighed the actions of men
+at the gates of eternity.
+
+O Tombs! what virtues are yours! you appal the tyrant's heart, and
+poison with secret alarm his impious joys; he flies, with coward
+step, your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of
+insolence.
+
+
+
+LONDON TRANSLATION.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Solitary ruins, sacred tombs, ye mouldering and silent walls, all
+hail!  To you I address my invocation.  While the vulgar shrink
+from your aspect with secret terror, my heart finds in the
+contemplation a thousand delicious sentiments, a thousand admirable
+recollections.  Pregnant, I may truly call you, with useful
+lessons, with pathetic and irresistible advice to the man who knows
+how to consult you.  A while ago the whole world bowed the neck in
+silence before the tyrants that oppressed it; and yet in that
+hopeless moment you already proclaimed the truths that tyrants hold
+in abhorrence: mixing the dust of the proudest kings with that of
+the meanest slaves, you called upon us to contemplate this example
+of Equality.  From your caverns, whither the musing and anxious
+love of Liberty led me, I saw escape its venerable shade, and with
+unexpected felicity, direct its flight and marshal my steps the way
+to renovated France.
+
+Tombs! what virtues and potency do you exhibit!  Tyrants tremble at
+your aspect--you poison with secret alarm their impious pleasures--
+they turn from you with impatience, and, coward like, endeavor to
+forget you amid the sumptuousness of their palaces.
+
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA TRANSLATION.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail, ye solitary ruins, ye sacred tombs, and silent walls!  'Tis
+your auspicious aid that I invoke; 'tis to you my soul, wrapt in
+meditation, pours forth its prayers!  What though the profane and
+vulgar mind shrinks with dismay from your august and awe-inspiring
+aspect; to me you unfold the sublimest charms of contemplation and
+sentiment, and offer to my senses the luxury of a thousand
+delicious and enchanting thoughts!  How sumptuous the feast to a
+being that has a taste to relish, and an understanding to consult
+you!  What rich and noble admonitions; what exquisite and pathetic
+lessons do you read to a heart that is susceptible of exalted
+feelings!  When oppressed humanity bent in timid silence throughout
+the globe beneath the galling yoke of slavery, it was you that
+proclaimed aloud the birthright of those truths which tyrants
+tremble at while they detect, and which, by sinking the loftiest
+head of the proudest potentate, with all his boasted pageantry, to
+the level of mortality with his meanest slave, confirmed and
+ratified by your unerring testimony the sacred and immortal
+doctrine of Equality.
+
+Musing within the precincts of your inviting scenes of philosophic
+solitude, whither the insatiate love of true-born Liberty had led
+me, I beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character
+and habit of a blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and
+instruments of murder, and followed by a frantic and intoxicated
+multitude, but under the placid and chaste aspect of Justice,
+holding with a pure and unsullied hand the sacred scales in which
+the actions of mortals are weighed on the brink of eternity.
+
+
+The first translation was made and published in London soon after
+the appearance of the work in French, and, by a late edition, is
+still adopted without alteration.  Mr. Volney, when in this country
+in 1797, expressed his disapprobation of this translation, alleging
+that the translator must have been overawed by the government or
+clergy from rendering his ideas faithfully; and, accordingly, an
+English gentleman, then in Philadelphia, volunteered to correct
+this edition.  But by his endeavors to give the true and full
+meaning of the author with great precision, he has so overloaded
+his composition with an exuberance of words, as in a great measure
+to dissipate the simple elegance and sublimity of the original.
+Mr. Volney, when he became better acquainted with the English
+language, perceived this defect; and with the aid of our
+countryman, Joel Barlow, made and published in Paris a new,
+correct, and elegant translation, of which the present edition is a
+faithful and correct copy.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Publisher's Preface
+Translator's Preface
+Preface of London Edition
+Preface of the American Edition
+Advertisement of the American Edition
+The Life of Volney
+A List of Volney's Works
+Invocation
+Chap. I.  The Journey
+     II.  The Reverie
+    III.  The Apparition
+     IV.  The Exposition
+      V.  Condition of Man in the Universe
+     VI.  The Primitive State of Man
+    VII.  Principles of Society
+   VIII.  Sources of the Evils of Societies
+     IX.  Origin of Governments and Laws
+      X.  General Causes of the Prosperity of Ancient States
+     XI.  General Causes of the Revolutions and Ruin of Ancient States
+    XII.  Lessons of Times Past repeated on the Present
+   XIII.  Will the Human Race Improve
+    XIV.  The Great Obstacle to Improvement
+     XV.  The New Age
+    XVI.  A Free and Legislative People
+   XVII.  Universal Basis of all Right and all Law
+  XVIII.  Consternation and Conspiracy of Tyrants
+    XIX.  General Assembly of the Nations
+     XX.  The Search of Truth
+    XXI.  Problem of Religious Contradictions
+   XXII.  Origin and Filiation of Religious Ideas
+          I.  Origin of the Idea of God: Worship of the Elements
+		       and of the Physical Powers of Nature
+         II.  Second System.  Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism
+        III.  Third System.  Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry
+         IV.  Fourth System.  Worship of two Principles, or Dualism
+          V.  Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State
+         VI.  Sixth System.  The Animated World, or Worship of the
+               Universe under diverse Emblems
+        VII.  Seventh System.  Worship of the Soul of the World, that
+               is to say, the Element of Fire, Vital Principle
+			   of the Universe
+       VIII.  Eighth System.  The World Machine: Worship of the Demi-
+               Ourgos, or Grand Artificer
+         IX.  Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World
+               (You-piter)
+          X.  Religion of Zoroaster
+         XI.  Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans
+        XII.  Brahmism, or Indian System
+       XIII.  Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun
+	           under the cabalistic names of Chrish-en or Christ
+			   and Yesus or Jesus
+  XXIII.  All Religions have the same Object
+   XXIV.  Solution of the Problem of Contradictions
+
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+Chap. I.  Of the Law of Nature
+     II.  Characters of the Law of Nature
+    III.  Principles of the Law of Nature relating to Man
+     IV.  Basis of Morality: of Good, of Evil, of Sin, of Crime,
+	       of Vice, and of Virtue
+      V.  Of Individual Virtues
+     VI.  On Temperance
+    VII.  On Continence
+   VIII.  On Courage and Activity
+     IX.  On Cleanliness
+      X.  On Domestic Virtues
+     XI.  The Social Virtues; Justice
+    XII.  Development of the Social Virtues
+
+Volney's Answer to Dr. Priestly.
+
+Appendix: The Zodiacal Signs and Constellations
+
+
+
+LIFE OF VOLNEY.
+
+BY COUNT DARU.
+
+
+Constantine Francis Chassebeuf De Volney was born in 1757 at Craon,
+in that intermediate condition of life, which is of all the
+happiest, since it is deprived only of fortune's too dangerous
+favors, and can aspire to the social and intellectual advantages
+reserved for a laudable ambition.
+
+From his earliest youth, he devoted himself to the search after
+truth, without being disheartened by the serious studies which
+alone can initiate us into her secrets.  After having become
+acquainted with the ancient languages, the natural sciences and
+history, and being admitted into the society of the most eminent
+literary characters, he submitted, at the age of twenty, to an
+illustrious academy, the solution of one of the most difficult
+problems that the history of antiquity has left open for
+discussion.  This attempt received no encouragement from the
+learned men who were appointed his judges; and the author's only
+appeal from their sentence was to his courage and his efforts.
+
+Soon after, a small inheritance having fallen to his lot, the
+difficulty was how to spend it (these are his own words.)  He
+resolved to employ it in acquiring, by a long voyage, a new fund of
+information, and determined to visit Egypt and Syria.  But these
+countries could not be explored to advantage without a knowledge of
+the language.  Our young traveller was not to be discouraged by
+this difficulty.  Instead of learning Arabic in Europe, he withdrew
+to a convent of Copts, until he had made himself master of an idiom
+that is spoken by so many nations of the East.  This resolution
+showed one of those undaunted spirits that remain unshaken amid the
+trials of life.
+
+Although, like other travellers, he might have amused us with an
+account of his hardships and the perils surmounted by his courage,
+he overcame the temptation of interrupting his narrative by
+personal adventures.  He disdained the beaten track.  He does not
+tell us the road he took, the accidents he met with, or the
+impressions he received.  He carefully avoids appearing upon the
+stage; he is an inhabitant of the country, who has long and well
+observed it, and who describes its physical, political, and moral
+state.  The allusion would be entire if an old Arab could be
+supposed to possess all the erudition, all the European philosophy,
+which are found united and in their maturity in a traveller of
+twenty-five.
+
+But though a master in all those artifices by which a narration is
+rendered interesting, the young man is not to be discerned in the
+pomp of labored descriptions.  Although possessed of a lively and
+brilliant imagination, he is never found unwarily explaining by
+conjectural systems the physical or moral phenomena he describes.
+In his observations he unites prudence with science.  With these
+two guides he judges with circumspection, and sometimes confesses
+himself unable to account for the effects he has made known to us.
+
+Thus his account has all the qualities that persuade--accuracy and
+candor.  And when, ten years later, a vast military enterprise
+transported forty thousand travellers to the classic ground, which
+he had trod unattended, unarmed and unprotected, they all
+recognized a sure guide and an enlightened observer in the writer
+who had, as it seemed, only preceded them to remove or point out a
+part of the difficulties of the way.
+
+The unanimous testimony of all parties proved the accuracy of his
+account and the justness of his observations; and his Travels in
+Egypt and Syria were, by universal suffrage, recommended to the
+gratitude and the confidence of the public.
+
+Before the work had undergone this trial it had obtained in the
+learned world such a rapid and general success, that it found its
+way into Russia.  The empress, then (in 1787) upon the throne, sent
+the author a medal, which he received with respect, as a mark of
+esteem for his talents, and with gratitude, as a proof of the
+approbation given to his principles.  But when the empress declared
+against France, Volney sent back the honorable present, saying: "If
+I obtained it from her esteem, I can only preserve her esteem by
+returning it."
+
+The revolution of 1789, which had drawn upon France the menaces of
+Catharine, had opened to Volney a political career.  As deputy in
+the assembly of the states-general, the first words he uttered
+there were in favor of the publicity of their deliberations.  He
+also supported the organization of the national guards, and that of
+the communes and departments.
+
+At the period when the question of the sale of the domain lands was
+agitated (in 1790), he published an essay in which he lays down the
+following principles: "The force of a State is in proportion to its
+population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in
+proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate
+interest, that is to the spirit of property.  Whence it follows,
+that the nearer the cultivator approaches the passive condition of
+a mercenary, the less industry and activity are to be expected from
+him; and, on the other hand, the nearer he is to the condition of a
+free and entire proprietor, the more extension he gives to his own
+forces, to the produce of his lands, and the general prosperity of
+the State."
+
+The author draws this conclusion, that a State is so much the more
+powerful as it includes a greater number of proprietors,--that is,
+a greater division of property.
+
+Conducted into Corsica by that spirit of observation which belongs
+only to men whose information is varied and extensive, he perceived
+at the first glance all that could be done for the improvement of
+agriculture in that country: but he knew that, for a people firmly
+attached to ancient customs, there can exist no other demonstration
+or means of persuasion than example.  He purchased a considerable
+estate, and made experiments on those kinds of tillage that he
+hoped to naturalize in that climate.  The sugar-cane, cotton,
+indigo and coffee soon demonstrated the success of his efforts.
+This success drew upon him the notice of the government.  He was
+appointed director of agriculture and commerce in that island,
+where, through ignorance, all new methods are introduced with such
+difficulty.
+
+It is impossible to calculate all the good that might have resulted
+from this peaceable magistracy; and we know that neither
+instruction, zeal, nor a persevering courage was wanting to him who
+had undertaken it.  Of this he had given convincing proofs.  It was
+in obedience to another sentiment, no less respectable, that he
+voluntarily interrupted the course of his labors.  When his fellow
+citizens of Angers appointed him their deputy in the constituent
+assembly, he resigned the employment he held under government, upon
+the principle that no man can represent the nation and be dependent
+for a salary upon those by whom it is administered.
+
+Through respect for the independence of his legislative functions,
+he had ceased to occupy the place he possessed in Corsica before
+his election, but he had not ceased to be a benefactor of that
+country.  He returned thither after the session of the constituent
+assembly.  Invited into that island by the principal inhabitants,
+who were anxious to put into practice his lessons, he spent there a
+part of the years 1792 and 1793.
+
+On his return he published a work entitled: An Account of the
+Present State of Corsica.  This was an act of courage; for it was
+not a physical description, but a political review of the condition
+of a population divided into several factions and distracted by
+violent animosities.  Volney unreservedly revealed the abuses,
+solicited the interest of France in favor of the Corsicans, without
+flattering them, and boldly denounced their defects and vices; so
+that the philosopher obtained the only recompense he could expect
+from his sincerity--he was accused by the Corsicans of heresy.
+
+To prove that he had not merited this reproach, he published soon
+after a short treatise entitled: The Law of Nature, or Physical
+Principles of Morality.
+
+He was soon exposed to a much more dangerous charge, and this, it
+must be confessed, he did merit.  This philosopher, this worthy
+citizen, who in our first National assembly had seconded with his
+wishes and his talents the establishment of an order of things
+which he considered favorable to the happiness of his country, was
+accused of not being sincerely attached to that liberty for which
+he had contended; that is to say, of being averse to anarchy.  An
+imprisonment of ten months, which only ended after the 9th of
+Thermidor, was a new trial reserved for his courage.
+
+The moment at which he recovered his liberty, was when the horror
+inspired by criminal excesses had recalled men to those noble
+sentiments which fortunately are one of the first necessaries of
+civilized life.  They sought for consolations in study and
+literature after so many misfortunes, and organized a plan of
+public instruction.
+
+It was in the first place necessary to insure the aptitude of those
+to whom education should be confided; but as the systems were
+various, the best methods and a unity of doctrine were to be
+determined.  It was not enough to interrogate the masters, they
+were to be formed, new ones were to be created, and for that
+purpose a school was opened in 1794, wherein the celebrity of the
+professors promised new instruction even to the best informed.
+This was not, as was objected, beginning the edifice at the roof,
+but creating architects, who were to superintend all the arts
+requisite for constructing the building.
+
+The more difficult their functions were, the greater care was to be
+taken in the choice of the professors; but France, though then
+accused of being plunged in barbarism, possessed men of
+transcendent talents, already enjoying the esteem of all Europe,
+and we may be bold to say, that by their labors, our literary glory
+had likewise extended its conquests.  Their names were proclaimed
+by the public voice, and Volney's was associated with those of the
+men most illustrious in science and in literature.*
+
+
+* Lagrange, Laplace, Berthollet, Garat, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,
+Daubenton, Hauy, Volney, Sicard, Monge, Thouin, La Harpe, Buache
+Mentelle.
+
+
+This institution, however, did not answer the expectations that had
+been formed of it, because the two thousand students that assembled
+from all parts of France were not equally prepared to receive these
+transcendent lessons, and because it had not been sufficiently
+ascertained how far the theory of education should be kept distinct
+from education itself.
+
+Volney's Lectures on History, which were attended by an immense
+concourse of auditors, became one of his chief claims to literary
+glory.  When forced to interrupt them, by the suppression of the
+Normal school, he might have reasonably expected to enjoy in his
+retirement that consideration which his recent functions had added
+to his name.  But, disgusted with the scenes he had witnessed in
+his native land, he felt that passion revive within him which, in
+his youth, had led him to visit Africa and Asia.  America,
+civilized within a century, and free only within a few years, fixed
+his attention.  There every thing was new,--the inhabitants, the
+constitution, the earth itself.  These were objects worthy of his
+observation.  When embarking for this voyage, however, he felt
+emotions very different from those which formerly accompanied him
+into Turkey.  Then in the prime of life, he joyfully bid adieu to a
+land where peace and plenty reigned, to travel amongst barbarians;
+now, mature in years, but dismayed at the spectacle and experience
+of injustice and persecution, it was with diffidence, as we learn
+from himself, that he went to implore from a free people an asylum
+for a sincere friend of that liberty that had been so profaned.
+
+Our traveller had gone to seek for repose beyond the seas.  He
+there found himself exposed to aggression from a celebrated
+philosopher, Dr. Priestley.  Although the subject of this
+discussion was confined to the investigation of some speculative
+opinions, published by the French writer in his work entitled The
+Ruins, the naturalist in this attack employed a degree of violence
+which added nothing to the force of his arguments, and an acrimony
+of expression not to be expected from a philosopher.  M. Volney,
+though accused of Hottentotism and ignorance, preserved in his
+defence, all the advantages that the scurrility of his adversary
+gave over him.  He replied in English, and Priestley's countrymen
+could only recognize the Frenchman in the refinement and politeness
+of his answer.
+
+Whilst M. Volney was travelling in America, there had been formed
+in France a literary body which, under the name of Institute, had
+attained in a very few years a distinguished rank amongst the
+learned societies of Europe.  The name of the illustrious traveller
+was inscribed in it at its formation, and he acquired new rights to
+the academical honors conferred on him during his absence, by the
+publication of his observations On the Climate and Soil of the
+United States.
+
+These rights were further augmented by the historical and
+physiological labors of the Academician.  An examination and
+justification of The Chronology of Herodotus, with numerous and
+profound researches on The History of the most Ancient Nations,
+occupied for a long time him who had observed their monuments and
+traces in the countries they inhabited.  The trial he had made of
+the utility of the Oriental languages inspired him with an ardent
+desire to propagate the knowledge of them; and to be propagated, he
+felt how necessary it was to render it less difficult.  In this
+view he conceived the project of applying to the study of the
+idioms of Asia, a part of the grammatical notions we possess
+concerning the languages of Europe.  It only appertains to those
+conversant with their relations of dissimilitude or conformity to
+appreciate the possibility of realizing this system.  The author
+has, however, already received the most flattering encouragement
+and the most unequivocal appreciation, by the inscription of his
+name amongst the members of the learned and illustrious society
+founded by English commerce in the Indian peninsula.
+
+M. Volney developed his system in three works,* which prove that
+this idea of uniting nations separated by immense distances and
+such various idioms, had never ceased to occupy him for twenty-five
+years.  Lest those essays, of the utility of which he was
+persuaded, should be interrupted by his death, with the clay-cold
+hand that corrected his last work, he drew up a will which
+institutes a premium for the prosecution of his labors.  Thus he
+prolonged, beyond the term of a life entirely devoted to letters,
+the glorious services he had rendered to them.
+
+
+* On the Simplification of Oriental Languages, 1795.
+The European Alphabet Applied to the Languages of Asia, 1819.
+Hebrew Simplified, 1820.
+
+
+This is not the place, nor does it belong to me to appreciate the
+merit of the writings which render Volney's name illustrious.  His
+name had been inscribed in the list of the Senate, and afterwards
+of the House of Peers.  The philosopher who had travelled in the
+four quarters of the world, and observed their social state, had
+other titles to his admission into this body, than his literary
+glory.  His public life, his conduct in the constituent assembly,
+his independent principles, the nobleness of his sentiments, the
+wisdom and fixity of his opinions, had gained him the esteem of
+those who can be depended upon, and with whom it is so agreeable to
+discuss political interests.
+
+Although no man had a better right to have an opinion, no one was
+more tolerant for the opinions of others.  In State assemblies as
+well as in Academical meetings, the man whose counsels were so
+wise, voted according to his conscience, which nothing could bias;
+but the philosopher forgot his superiority to hear, to oppose with
+moderation, and sometimes to doubt.  The extent and variety of his
+information, the force of his reason, the austerity of his manners,
+and the noble simplicity of his character, had procured him
+illustrious friends in both hemispheres; and now that this
+erudition is extinct in the tomb,* we may be allowed at least to
+predict that he was one of the very few whose memory shall never
+die.
+
+
+* He died in Paris on the 20th of April, 1820.
+
+
+
+A list of the Works Published by Count Volney.
+
+
+TRAVELS IN EGYPT AND SYRIA during the years 1783, 1784, and 1785: 2
+vols. 8vo.--1787.
+
+CHRONOLOGY OF THE TWELVE CENTURIES that preceded the entrance of
+Xerxes into Greece.
+
+CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TURKISH WAR, in 1788.
+
+THE RUINS, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires--1791.
+
+ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT STATE OF CORSICA--1793.
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE, or Physical Principles of Morality--1793.
+
+ON THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES--1795.
+
+A LETTER TO DR. PRIESTLEY--1797.
+
+LECTURES ON HISTORY, delivered at the Normal School in the year 3--
+1800.
+
+ON THE CLIMATE AND SOIL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, to which
+is added an account of Florida, of the French colony of Scioto, of
+some Canadian Colonies, and of the Savages--1803.
+
+REPORT MADE TO THE CELTIC ACADEMY ON THE RUSSIAN WORK OF PROFESSOR
+PALLAS, entitled "A Comparative Vocabulary of all the Languages in
+the World."
+
+THE CHRONOLOGY OF HERODOTUS conformable with his Text--1808 and
+1809.
+
+NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY, 3 vols. 8vo.--1814
+
+THE EUROPEAN ALPHABET Applied to the Languages of Asia--1819.
+
+A HISTORY OF SAMUEL--1819.
+
+HEBREW SIMPLIFIED--1820.
+
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+Hail solitary ruins, holy sepulchres and silent walls! you I
+invoke; to you I address my prayer.  While your aspect averts, with
+secret terror, the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm
+of delicious sentiments--sublime contemplations.  What useful
+lessons, what affecting and profound reflections you suggest to him
+who knows how to consult you!  When the whole earth, in chains and
+silence bowed the neck before its tyrants, you had already
+proclaimed the truths which they abhor; and confounding the dust of
+the king with that of the meanest slave, had announced to man the
+sacred dogma of Equality.  Within your pale, in solitary adoration
+of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions of the dead;
+not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude, armed with
+fire and sword, but under the august aspect of Justice, poising in
+her hand the sacred balance wherein are weighed the actions of men
+at the gates of eternity!
+
+O Tombs! what virtues are yours!  You appal the tyrant's heart, and
+poison with secret alarm his impious joys.  He flies, with coward
+step, your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of
+insolence.*  You punish the powerful oppressor; you wrest from
+avarice and extortion their ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the
+feeble whom they have despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the
+poor by the anxieties of the rich; you console the wretched, by
+opening to him a last asylum from distress; and you give to the
+soul that just equipoise of strength and sensibility which
+constitutes wisdom--the true science of life.  Aware that all must
+return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the burdens of
+grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires within the
+limits of justice; yet, knowing that he must run his destined
+course of life, he fills with employment all its hours, and enjoys
+the comforts that fortune has allotted him.  You thus impose on the
+impetuous sallies of cupidity a salutary rein! you calm the
+feverish ardor of enjoyments which disturb the senses; you free the
+soul from the fatiguing conflict of the passions; elevate it above
+the paltry interests which torment the crowd; and surveying, from
+your commanding position, the expanse of ages and nations, the mind
+is only accessible to the great affections--to the solid ideas of
+virtue and of glory.
+
+
+* The cathedral of St. Denis is the tomb of the kings of France;
+and it was because the towers of that edifice are seen from the
+Castle of St. Germain, that Louis XIV. quitted that admirable
+residence, and established a new one in the savage forests of
+Versailles.
+
+(This note, like many others, has been omitted from the American
+editions.  It seems pertinent to the subject, and is explanatory of
+the text.--Pub.)
+
+
+Ah! when the dream of life is over, what will then avail all its
+agitations, if not one trace of utility remains behind?
+
+
+O Ruins! to your school I will return!  I will seek again the calm
+of your solitudes; and there, far from the afflicting spectacle of
+the passions, I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will
+employ myself on the means of effecting good for him, and build my
+own happiness on the promotion of his.
+
+
+
+THE RUINS OF EMPIRES.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE JOURNEY.
+
+
+In the eleventh year of the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid, son of Ahmid,
+emperor of the Turks; when the Nogais-Tartars were driven from the
+Crimea, and a Mussulman prince of the blood of Gengis-Kahn became
+the vassal and guard of a Christian woman and queen,* I was
+travelling in the Ottoman dominions, and through those provinces
+which were anciently the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria.
+
+
+* In the eleventh year of Abd-ul-Hamid, that is 1784 of the
+Christian era, and 1198 of the Hegira.  The emigration of the
+Tartars took place in March, immediately on the manifesto of the
+empress, declaring the Crimea to be incorporated with Russia.  The
+Mussulman prince of the blood of Gengis-khan was Chahin-Guerai.
+Gengis-Khan was borne and served by the kings whom he conquered:
+Chahin, on the contrary, after selling his country for a pension of
+eighty thousand roubles, accepted the commission of captain of
+guards to Catherine II.  He afterwards returned home, and according
+to custom was strangled by the Turks.
+
+
+My whole attention bent on whatever concerns the happiness of man
+in a social state, I visited cities, and studied the manners of
+their inhabitants; entered palaces, and observed the conduct of
+those who govern; wandered over fields, and examined the condition
+of those who cultivated them: and nowhere perceiving aught but
+robbery and devastation, tyranny and wretchedness, my heart was
+oppressed with sorrow and indignation.
+
+I saw daily on my road fields abandoned, villages deserted, and
+cities in ruin.  Often I met with ancient monuments, wrecks of
+temples, palaces and fortresses, columns, aqueducts and tombs.
+This spectacle led me to meditate on times past, and filled my mind
+with contemplations the most serious and profound.
+
+Arrived at the city of Hems, on the border of the Orontes, and
+being in the neighborhood of Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to
+visit its celebrated ruins.  After three days journeying through
+arid deserts, having traversed the Valley of Caves and Sepulchres,
+on issuing into the plain, I was suddenly struck with a scene of
+the most stupendous ruins--a countless multitude of superb columns,
+stretching in avenues beyond the reach of sight.  Among them were
+magnificent edifices, some entire, others in ruins; the earth every
+where strewed with fragments of cornices, capitals, shafts,
+entablatures, pilasters, all of white marble, and of the most
+exquisite workmanship.  After a walk of three-quarters of an hour
+along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of a vast edifice,
+formerly a temple dedicated to the Sun; and accepting the
+hospitality of some poor Arabian peasants, who had built their
+hovels on the area of the temple, I determined to devote some days
+to contemplate at leisure the beauty of these stupendous ruins.
+
+Daily I visited the monuments which covered the plain; and one
+evening, absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the Valley of
+Sepulchres.  I ascended the heights which surround it from whence
+the eye commands the whole group of ruins and the immensity of the
+desert.  The sun had sunk below the horizon: a red border of light
+still marked his track behind the distant mountains of Syria; the
+full-orbed moon was rising in the east, on a blue ground, over the
+plains of the Euphrates; the sky was clear, the air calm and
+serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the horrors of
+approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered the
+sultry emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given
+their camels to repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky
+and uniform plain; profound silence rested on the desert; the
+howlings only of the jackal,* and the solemn notes of the bird of
+night, were heard at distant intervals.  Darkness now increased,
+and through the dusk could only be discerned the pale phantasms of
+columns and walls.  The solitude of the place, the tranquillity of
+the hour, the majesty of the scene, impressed on my mind a
+religious pensiveness.  The aspect of a great city deserted, the
+memory of times past, compared with its present state, all elevated
+my mind to high contemplations.  I sat on the shaft of a column, my
+elbow reposing on my knee, and head reclining on my hand, my eyes
+fixed, sometimes on the desert, sometimes on the ruins, and fell
+into a profound reverie.
+
+
+* An animal resembling a dog and a fox.  It preys on other small
+animals, and upon the bodies of the dead on the field of battle.
+It is the Canis aureus of Linnaeus.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE REVERIE.
+
+
+Here, said I, once flourished an opulent city; here was the seat of
+a powerful empire.  Yes! these places now so wild and desolate,
+were once animated by a living multitude; a busy crowd thronged in
+these streets, now so solitary.  Within these walls, where now
+reigns the silence of death, the noise of the arts, and the shouts
+of joy and festivity incessantly resounded; these piles of marble
+were regular palaces; these fallen columns adorned the majesty of
+temples; these ruined galleries surrounded public places.  Here
+assembled a numerous people for the sacred duties of their
+religion, and the anxious cares of their subsistence; here
+industry, parent of enjoyments, collected the riches of all climes,
+and the purple of Tyre was exchanged for the precious thread of
+Serica;* the soft tissues of Cassimere for the sumptuous tapestry
+of Lydia; the amber of the Baltic for the pearls and perfumes of
+Arabia; the gold of Ophir for the tin of Thule.
+
+
+* The precious thread of Serica.--That is, the silk originally
+derived from the mountainous country where the great wall
+terminates, and which appears to have been the cradle of the
+Chinese empire.  The tissues of Cassimere.--The shawls which
+Ezekiel seems to have described under the appellation of Choud-
+choud.  The gold of Ophir.-- This country, which was one of the
+twelve Arab cantons, and which has so much and so unsuccessfully
+been sought for by the antiquarians, has left, however, some trace
+of itself in Ofor, in the province of Oman, upon the Persian Gulf,
+neighboring on one side to the Sabeans, who are celebrated by
+Strabo for their abundance of gold, and on the other to Aula or
+Hevila, where the pearl fishery was carried on.  See the 27th
+chapter of Ezekiel, which gives a very curious and extensive
+picture of the commerce of Asia at that period.
+
+
+And now behold what remains of this powerful city: a miserable
+skeleton!  What of its vast domination: a doubtful and obscure
+remembrance!  To the noisy concourse which thronged under these
+porticoes, succeeds the solitude of death.  The silence of the
+grave is substituted for the busy hum of public places; the
+affluence of a commercial city is changed into wretched poverty;
+the palaces of kings have become a den of wild beasts; flocks
+repose in the area of temples, and savage reptiles inhabit the
+sanctuary of the gods.  Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed?
+how have so many labors been annihilated?  Do thus perish then the
+works of men--thus vanish empires and nations?
+
+And the history of former times revived in my mind; I remembered
+those ancient ages when many illustrious nations inhabited these
+countries; I figured to myself the Assyrian on the banks of the
+Tygris, the Chaldean on the banks of the Euphrates, the Persian
+reigning from the Indus to the Mediterranean.  I enumerated the
+kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria, the
+warlike states of the Philistines, and the commercial republics of
+Phoenicia.  This Syria, said I, now so depopulated, then contained
+a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages,
+and hamlets.*  In all parts were seen cultivated fields, frequented
+roads, and crowded habitations.  Ah! whither have flown those ages
+of life and abundance?--whither vanished those brilliant creations
+of human industry?  Where are those ramparts of Nineveh, those
+walls of Babylon, those palaces of Persepolis, those temples of
+Balbec and of Jerusalem?  Where are those fleets of Tyre, those
+dock-yards of Arad, those work-shops of Sidon, and that multitude
+of sailors, of pilots, of merchants, and of soldiers?  Where those
+husbandmen, harvests, flocks, and all the creation of living beings
+in which the face of the earth rejoiced?  Alas! I have passed over
+this desolate land!  I have visited the palaces, once the scene of
+so much splendor, and I beheld nothing but solitude and desolation.
+I sought the ancient inhabitants and their works, and found nothing
+but a trace, like the foot-prints of a traveller over the sand.
+The temples are fallen, the palaces overthrown, the ports filled
+up, the cities destroyed; and the earth, stripped of inhabitants,
+has become a place of sepulchres.  Great God! whence proceed such
+fatal revolutions?  What causes have so changed the fortunes of
+these countries?  Wherefore are so many cities destroyed?  Why has
+not this ancient population been reproduced and perpetuated?
+
+
+* According to Josephus and Strabo, there were in Syria twelve
+millions of souls, and the traces that remain of culture and
+habitation confirm the calculation.
+
+
+Thus absorbed in meditation, a crowd of new reflections continually
+poured in upon my mind.  Every thing, continued I, bewilders my
+judgment, and fills my heart with trouble and uncertainty.  When
+these countries enjoyed what constitutes the glory and happiness of
+man, they were inhabited by infidel nations: It was the Phoenician,
+offering human sacrifices to Moloch, who gathered into his stores
+the riches of all climates; it was the Chaldean, prostrate before
+his serpent-god,* who subjugated opulent cities, laid waste the
+palaces of kings, and despoiled the temples of the gods; it was the
+Persian, worshipper of fire, who received the tribute of a hundred
+nations; they were the inhabitants of this very city, adorers of
+the sun and stars, who erected so many monuments of prosperity and
+luxury.  Numerous herds, fertile fields, abundant harvests--
+whatsoever should be the reward of piety--was in the hands of these
+idolaters.  And now, when a people of saints and believers occupy
+these fields, all is become sterility and solitude.  The earth,
+under these holy hands, produces only thorns and briers.  Man
+soweth in anguish, and reapeth tears and cares.  War, famine,
+pestilence, assail him by turns.  And yet, are not these the
+children of the prophets?  The Mussulman, Christian, Jew, are they
+not the elect children of God, loaded with favors and miracles?
+Why, then, do these privileged races no longer enjoy the same
+advantages?  Why are these fields, sanctified by the blood of
+martyrs, deprived of their ancient fertility?  Why have those
+blessings been banished hence, and transferred for so many ages to
+other nations and different climes?
+
+
+* The dragon Bell.
+
+
+At these words, revolving in my mind the vicissitudes which have
+transmitted the sceptre of the world to people so different in
+religion and manners from those in ancient Asia to the most recent
+of Europe, this name of a natal land revived in me the sentiment of
+my country; and turning my eyes towards France, I began to reflect
+on the situation in which I had left her.*
+
+
+* In the year 1782, at the close of the American war.
+
+
+I recalled her fields so richly cultivated, her roads so admirably
+constructed, her cities inhabited by a countless people, her fleets
+spread over every sea, her ports filled with the produce of both
+the Indies: and then comparing the activity of her commerce, the
+extent of her navigation, the magnificence of her buildings, the
+arts and industry of her inhabitants, with what Egypt and Syria had
+once possessed, I was gratified to find in modern Europe the
+departed splendor of Asia; but the charm of my reverie was soon
+dissolved by a last term of comparison.  Reflecting that such had
+once been the activity of the places I was then contemplating, who
+knows, said I, but such may one day be the abandonment of our
+countries?  Who knows if on the banks of the Seine, the Thames, the
+Zuyder-Zee, where now, in the tumult of so many enjoyments, the
+heart and the eye suffice not for the multitude of sensations,--who
+knows if some traveller, like myself, shall not one day sit on
+their silent ruins, and weep in solitude over the ashes of their
+inhabitants, and the memory of their former greatness.
+
+At these words, my eyes filled with tears: and covering my head
+with the fold of my mantle, I sank into gloomy meditations on all
+human affairs.  Ah! hapless man, said I in my grief, a blind
+fatality sports with thy destiny!*  A fatal necessity rules with
+the hand of chance the lot of mortals!  But no: it is the justice
+of heaven fulfilling its decrees!--a God of mystery exercising his
+incomprehensible judgments!  Doubtless he has pronounced a secret
+anathema against this land: blasting with maledictions the present,
+for the sins of past generations.  Oh! who shall dare to fathom the
+depths of the Omnipotent?
+
+
+* Fatality is the universal and rooted prejudice of the East.  "It
+was written," is there the answer to every thing.  Hence result an
+unconcern and apathy, the most powerful impediments to instruction
+and civilization.
+
+
+And sunk in profound melancholy, I remained motionless.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE APPARITION.
+
+
+While thus absorbed, a sound struck my ear, like the agitation of a
+flowing robe, or that of slow footsteps on dry and rustling grass.
+Startled, I opened my mantle, and looking about with fear and
+trembling, suddenly, on my left, by the glimmering light of the
+moon, through the columns and ruins of a neighboring temple, I
+thought I saw an apparition, pale, clothed in large and flowing
+robes, such as spectres are painted rising from their tombs.  I
+shuddered: and while agitated and hesitating whether to fly or to
+advance toward the object, a distinct voice, in solemn tones,
+pronounced these words:
+
+How long will man importune heaven with unjust complaint?  How
+long, with vain clamors, will he accuse Fate as the author of his
+calamities?  Will he forever shut his eyes to the light, and his
+heart to the admonitions of truth and reason?  The light of truth
+meets him everywhere; yet he sees it not!  The voice of reason
+strikes his ear; and he hears it not!  Unjust man! if for a moment
+thou canst suspend the delusion which fascinates thy senses, if thy
+heart can comprehend the language of reason, interrogate these
+ruins!  Read the lessons which they present to thee!  And you,
+evidences of twenty centuries, holy temples! venerable tombs! walls
+once so glorious, appear in the cause of nature herself!  Approach
+the tribunal of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust
+accusations!  Come and confound the declamations of a false wisdom
+or hypocritical piety, and avenge the heavens and the earth of man
+who calumniates them both!
+
+What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law,
+sports with the destiny of mortals?  What is that unjust necessity,
+which confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of
+folly?  In what consist the anathemas of heaven over this land?
+Where is that divine malediction which perpetuates the abandonment
+of these fields?  Say, monuments of past ages!  have the heavens
+changed their laws and the earth its motion?  Are the fires of the
+sun extinct in the regions of space?  Do the seas no longer emit
+their vapors?  Are the rains and the dews suspended in the air?  Do
+the mountains withhold their springs?  Are the streams dried up?
+And do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed?  Answer,
+generation of falsehood and iniquity, hath God deranged the
+primitive and settled order of things which he himself assigned to
+nature?  Hath heaven denied to earth, and earth to its inhabitants,
+the blessings they formerly dispensed?  If nothing hath changed in
+the creation, if the same means now exist which before existed, why
+then are not the present what former generations were?  Ah! it is
+falsely that you accuse fate and heaven! it is unjustly that you
+accuse God as the cause of your evils!  Say, perverse and
+hypocritical race! if these places are desolate, if these powerful
+cities are reduced to solitude, is it God who has caused their
+ruin?  Is it his hand which has overthrown these walls, destroyed
+these temples, mutilated these columns, or is it the hand of man?
+Is it the arm of God which has carried the sword into your cities,
+and fire into your fields, which has slaughtered the people, burned
+the harvests, rooted up trees, and ravaged the pastures, or is it
+the hand of man?  And when, after the destruction of crops, famine
+has ensued, is it the vengeance of God which has produced it, or
+the mad fury of mortals?  When, sinking under famine, the people
+have fed on impure aliments, if pestilence ensues, is it the wrath
+of God which sends it, or the folly of man?  When war, famine and
+pestilence, have swept away the inhabitants, if the earth remains a
+desert, is it God who has depopulated it?  Is it his rapacity which
+robs the husbandman, ravages the fruitful fields, and wastes the
+earth, or is it the rapacity of those who govern?  Is it his pride
+which excites murderous wars, or the pride of kings and their
+ministers?  Is it the venality of his decisions which overthrows
+the fortunes of families, or the corruption of the organs of the
+law?  Are they his passions which, under a thousand forms, torment
+individuals and nations, or are they the passions of man?  And if,
+in the anguish of their miseries, they see not the remedies, is it
+the ignorance of God which is to blame, or their ignorance?  Cease
+then, mortals, to accuse the decrees of Fate, or the judgments of
+the Divinity!  If God is good, will he be the author of your
+misery?  If he is just, will he be the accomplice of your crimes?
+No, the caprice of which man complains is not the caprice of fate;
+the darkness that misleads his reason is not the darkness of God;
+the source of his calamities is not in the distant heavens, it is
+beside him on the earth; it is not concealed in the bosom of the
+divinity; it dwells within himself, he bears it in his own heart.
+
+Thou murmurest and sayest: What! have an infidel people then
+enjoyed the blessings of heaven and earth?  Are the holy people of
+God less fortunate than the races of impiety?  Deluded man! where
+then is the contradiction which offends thee?  Where is the
+inconsistency which thou imputest to the justice of heaven?  Take
+into thine own hands the balance of rewards and punishments, of
+causes and effects.  Say: when these infidels observed the laws of
+the heavens and the earth, when they regulated well-planned labors
+by the order of the seasons and the course of the stars, should the
+Almighty have disturbed the equilibrium of the universe to defeat
+their prudence?  When their hands cultivated these fields with toil
+and care, should he have diverted the course of the rains,
+suspended the refreshing dews, and planted crops of thorns?  When,
+to render these arid fields productive, their industry constructed
+aqueducts, dug canals, and led the distant waters across the
+desert, should he have dried up their sources in the mountains?
+Should he have blasted the harvests which art had nourished, wasted
+the plains which peace had peopled, overthrown cities which labor
+had created, or disturbed the order established by the wisdom of
+man?  And what is that infidelity which founded empires by its
+prudence, defended them by its valor, and strengthened them by its
+justice--which built powerful cities, formed capacious ports,
+drained pestilential marshes, covered the ocean with ships, the
+earth with inhabitants; and, like the creative spirit, spread life
+and motion throughout the world?  If such be infidelity, what then
+is the true faith?  Doth sanctity consist in destruction?  The God
+who peoples the air with birds, the earth with animals, the waters
+with fishes--the God who animates all nature--is he then a God of
+ruins and tombs?  Demands he devastation for homage, and
+conflagration for sacrifice?  Requires he groans for hymns,
+murderers for votaries, a ravaged and desolate earth for his
+temple?  Behold then, holy and believing people, what are your
+works! behold the fruits of your piety!  You have massacred the
+people, burned their cities, destroyed cultivation, reduced the
+earth to a solitude; and you ask the reward of your works!
+Miracles then must be performed!  The people whom you extirpated
+must be recalled to life, the walls rebuilt which you have
+overthrown, the harvests reproduced which you have destroyed, the
+waters regathered which you have dispersed; the laws, in fine, of
+heaven and earth reversed; those laws, established by God himself,
+in demonstration of his magnificence and wisdom; those eternal
+laws, anterior to all codes, to all the prophets those immutable
+laws, which neither the passions nor the ignorance of man can
+pervert.  But that passion which mistaketh, that ignorance which
+observeth neither causes nor effects, hath said in its folly: "All
+things flow from chance; a blind fatality poureth out good and evil
+upon the earth; success is not to the prudent, nor felicity to the
+wise;" or, assuming the language of hypocrisy, she hath said, "all
+things are from God; he taketh pleasure in deceiving wisdom and
+confounding reason."  And Ignorance, applauding herself in her
+malice, hath said, "thus will I place myself on a par with that
+science which confounds me--thus will I excel that prudence which
+fatigues and torments me."  And Avarice hath added: "I will oppress
+the weak, and devour the fruits of his labors; and I will say, it
+is fate which hath so ordained."  But I! I swear by the laws of
+heaven and earth, and by the law which is written in the heart of
+man, that the hypocrite shall be deceived in his cunning--the
+oppressor in his rapacity!  The sun shall change his course, before
+folly shall prevail over wisdom and knowledge, or ignorance surpass
+prudence, in the noble and sublime art of procuring to man his true
+enjoyments, and of building his happiness on an enduring
+foundation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EXPOSITION
+
+
+Thus spoke the Phantom.  Confused with this discourse, and my heart
+agitated with different reflections, I remained long in silence.
+At length, taking courage, I thus addressed him: Oh, Genius of
+tombs and ruins!  Thy presence, thy severity, hath disordered my
+senses; but the justice of thy discourse restoreth confidence to my
+soul.  Pardon my ignorance.  Alas, if man is blind, shall his
+misfortune be also his crime?  I may have mistaken the voice of
+reason; but never, knowingly, have I rejected its authority.  Ah!
+if thou readest my heart, thou knowest with what enthusiasm it
+seeketh truth.  Is it not in its pursuit that thou seest me in this
+sequestered spot?  Alas! I have wandered over the earth, I have
+visited cities and countries; and seeing everywhere misery and
+desolation, a sense of the evils which afflict my fellow men hath
+deeply oppressed my soul.  I have said, with a sigh: is man then
+born but for sorrow and anguish?  And I have meditated upon human
+misery that I might discover a remedy.  I have said, I will
+separate myself from the corruption of society; I will retire far
+from palaces where the mind is depraved by satiety and from the
+hovel where it is debased by misery.  I will go into the desert and
+dwell among ruins; I will interrogate ancient monuments on the
+wisdom of past ages; I will invoke from the bosom of the tombs the
+spirit which once in Asia gave splendor to states, and glory to
+nations; I will ask of the ashes of legislators, by what secret
+causes do empires rise and fall; from what sources spring the
+Prosperity and misfortunes of nations, on what principles can the
+Peace of Society, and the happiness of man be established?
+
+I ceased, and with submissive look awaited the answer of the
+Genius.
+
+Peace and happiness, said he, attend those who practice justice!
+Since thy heart, O mortal, with sincerity seeketh truth; since
+thine eyes can still recognize her through the mist of prejudice,
+thy prayer shall not be in vain.  I will unfold to thy view that
+truth thou invokest; I will teach thy reason that knowledge thou
+seekest; I will reveal to thee the science of ages and the wisdom
+of the tombs.
+
+Then approaching and laying his hand on my head, he said:
+
+Rise, mortal, and extricate thy senses from the dust in which thou
+movest.
+
+Suddenly a celestial flame seemed to dissolve the bands which held
+us to the earth; and, like a light vapor, borne on the wings of the
+Genius, I felt myself wafted to the regions above.  Thence, from
+the aerial heights, looking down upon the earth, I perceived a
+scene altogether new.  Under my feet, floating in the void, a globe
+like that of the moon, but smaller and less luminous, presented to
+me one of its phases; and that phase* had the aspect of a disk
+varigated with large spots, some white and nebulous, others brown,
+green or gray, and while I strained my sight to distinguish what
+they were, the Genius exclaimed:
+
+
+* See Plate representing half the terrestrial globe, opposite page
+10.
+
+
+Disciple of Truth, knowest thou that object?
+
+O Genius, answered I, if I did not see the moon in another quarter
+of the heavens, I should have supposed that to be her globe.  It
+has the appearance of that planet seen through the telescope during
+the obscuration of an eclipse.  These varigated spots might be
+mistaken for seas and continents.
+
+They are seas and continents, said he, and those of the very
+hemisphere which you inhabit.
+
+What! said I, is that the earth--the habitation of man?
+
+Yes, replied he, that brown space which occupies irregularly a
+great portion of the disk, and envelops it almost on every side, is
+what you call the great ocean, which advancing from the south pole
+towards the equator, forms first the great gulf of India and
+Africa, then extends eastward across the Malay islands to the
+confines of Tartary, while towards the west it encircles the
+continents of Africa and of Europe, even to the north of Asia.
+
+That square peninsula under our feet is the arid country of the
+Arabs; the great continent on its left, almost as naked in its
+interior, with a little verdure only towards its borders, is the
+parched soil inhabited by black-men.*  To the north, beyond a long,
+narrow and irregular sea,** are the countries of Europe, rich in
+meadows and cultivated fields.  On its right, from the Caspian Sea,
+extend the snowy and naked plains of Tartary.  Returning in this
+direction that white space is the vast and barren desert of Cobi,
+which separates China from the rest of the world.  You see that
+empire in the furrowed plain which obliquely rounds itself off from
+our sight.  On yonder coasts, those ragged tongues of land and
+scattered points are the peninsulas and islands of the Malays, the
+wretched possessors of the spices and perfumes.  That triangle
+which advances so far into the sea, is the too famous peninsula of
+India.***  You see the winding course of the Ganges, the rough
+mountains of Thibet, the lovely valley of Cachemere, the briny
+deserts of Persia, the banks of the Euphrates and Tygris, the deep
+bed of the Jordan and the canals of the solitary Nile.
+
+
+* Africa.
+
+** The Mediterranean.
+
+*** Of what real good has been the commerce of India to the mass of
+the people?  On the contrary, how great the evil occasioned by the
+superstition of this country having been added the general
+superstition!
+
+
+O Genius, said I, interrupting him, the sight of a mortal reaches
+not to objects at such a distance.  He touched my eyes, and
+immediately they became piercing as those of an eagle; nevertheless
+the rivers still appeared like waving lines, the mountains winding
+furrows, and the cities little compartments like the squares of a
+chess-board.
+
+And the Genius proceeded to enumerate and point out the objects to
+me: Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow
+valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the
+pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia.*  Behold the wrecks of
+her metropolis, of Thebes with her hundred palaces,** the parent of
+cities, and monument of the caprice of destiny.  There a people,
+now forgotten, discovered, while others were yet barbarians, the
+elements of the arts and sciences.  A race of men now rejected from
+society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the
+study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems
+which still govern the universe.  Lower down, those dusky points
+are the pyramids whose masses have astonished you.  Beyond that,
+the coast, hemmed in between the sea and a narrow ridge of
+mountains, was the habitation of the Phoenicians.  These were the
+famous cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon, of Gaza, and of
+Berytus.  That thread of water with no outlet, is the river Jordan;
+and those naked rocks were once the theatre of events that have
+resounded throughout the world.  Behold that desert of Horeb, and
+that Mount Sinai; where, by means beyond vulgar reach, a genius,
+profound and bold, established institutions which have weighed on
+the whole human race.  On that dry shore which borders it, you
+perceive no longer any trace of splendor; yet there was an emporium
+of riches.  There were those famous Ports of Idumea, whence the
+fleets of Phoenicia and Judea, coasting the Arabian peninsula, went
+into the Persian gulf, to seek there the pearls of Hevila, the gold
+of Saba and of Ophir.  Yes, there on that coast of Oman and of
+Barhain was the seat of that commerce of luxuries, which, by its
+movements and revolutions, fixed the destinies of ancient
+nations.***  Thither came the spices and precious stones of Ceylon,
+the shawls of Cassimere, the diamonds of Golconda, the amber of
+Maldivia, the musk of Thibet, the aloes of Cochin, the apes and
+peacocks of the continent of India, the incense of Hadramaut, the
+myrrh, the silver, the gold dust and ivory of Africa; thence
+passing, sometimes by the Red Sea on the vessels of Egypt and
+Syria, these luxuries nourished successively the wealth of Thebes,
+of Sidon, of Memphis and of Jerusalem; sometimes, ascending the
+Tygris and Euphrates, they awakened the activity of the Assyrians,
+Medes, Chaldeans, and Persians; and that wealth, according to the
+use or abuse of it, raised or reversed by turns their domination.
+Hence sprung the magnificence of Persepolis, whose columns you
+still perceive; of Ecbatana, whose sevenfold wall is destroyed; of
+Babylon,**** now leveled with the earth; of Nineveh, of which
+scarce the name remains; of Thapsacus, of Anatho, of Gerra, and of
+desolated Palmyra.  O names for ever glorious! fields of renown!
+countries of never-dying memory! what sublime lessons doth your
+aspect offer! what profound truths are written on the surface of
+your soil! remembrances of times past, return into my mind! places,
+witnesses of the life of man in so many different ages, retrace for
+me the revolutions of his fortune! say, what were their springs and
+secret causes! say, from what sources he derived success and
+disgrace! unveil to himself the causes of his evils! correct him by
+the spectacle of his errors! teach him the wisdom which belongeth
+to him, and let the experience of past ages become a means of
+instruction, and a germ of happiness to present and future
+generations.
+
+
+* In the new Encyclopedia 3rd vol. Antiquities is published a
+memoir, respecting the chronology of the twelve ages anterior to
+the passing of Xerxes into Greece, in which I conceive myself to
+have proved that upper Egypt formerly composed a distinct kingdom
+known to the Hebrews by the name of Kous and to which the
+appellation of Ethiopia was specially given.  This kingdom
+preserved its independence to the time of Psammeticus; at which
+period, being united to the Lower Egypt, it lost its name of
+Ethiopia, which thenceforth was bestowed upon the nations of Nubia
+and upon the different tribes of blacks, including Thebes, their
+metropolis.
+
+** The idea of a city with a hundred gates, in the common
+acceptation of the word, is so absurd, that I am astonished the
+equivoque has not before been felt.
+
+It has ever been the custom of the East to call palaces and houses
+of the great by the name of gates, because the principal luxury of
+these buildings consists in the singular gate leading from the
+street into the court, at the farthest extremity of which the
+palace is situated.  It is under the vestibule of this gate that
+conversation is held with passengers, and a sort of audience and
+hospitality given.  All this was doubtless known to Homer; but
+poets make no commentaries, and readers love the marvellous.
+
+This city of Thebes, now Lougsor, reduced to the condition of a
+miserable village, has left astonishing monuments of its
+magnificence.  Particulars of this may be seen in the plates of
+Norden, in Pocock, and in the recent travels of Bruce.  These
+monuments give credibility to all that Homer has related of its
+splendor, and lead us to infer its political power and external
+commerce.
+
+Its geographical position was favorable to this twofold object.
+For, on one side, the valley of the Nile, singularly fertile, must
+have early occasioned a numerous population; and, on the other, the
+Red Sea, giving communication with Arabia and India, and the Nile
+with Abyssinia and the Mediterranean, Thebes was thus naturally
+allied to the richest countries on the globe; an alliance that
+procured it an activity so much the greater, as Lower Egypt, at
+first a swamp, was nearly, if not totally, uninhabited.  But when
+at length this country had been drained by the canals and dikes
+which Sesostris constructed, population was introduced there, and
+wars arose which proved fatal to the power of Thebes.  Commerce
+then took another route, and descended to the point of the Red Sea,
+to the canals of Sesostris (see Strabo), and wealth and activity
+were transferred to Memphis.  This is manifestly what Diodorus
+means when he tells us (lib. i. sect. 2), that as soon as Memphis
+was established and made a wholesome and delicious abode, kings
+abandoned Thebes to fix themselves there.  Thus Thebes continued to
+decline, and Memphis to flourish, till the time of Alexander, who,
+building Alexandria on the border of the sea, caused Memphis to
+fall in its turn; so that prosperity and power seem to have
+descended historically step by step along the Nile; whence it
+results, both physically and historically, that the existence of
+Thebes was prior to that of the other cities.  The testimony of
+writers is very positive in this respect.  "The Thebans," says
+Diodorus, "consider themselves as the most ancient people of the
+earth, and assert, that with them originated philosophy and the
+science of the stars.  Their situation, it is true, is infinitely
+favorable to astronomical observation, and they have a more
+accurate division of time into mouths and years than other nations"
+etc.
+
+What Diodorus says of the Thebans, every author, and himself
+elsewhere, repeat of the Ethiopians, which tends more firmly to
+establish the identity of this place of which I have spoken.  "The
+Ethiopians conceive themselves," says he, lib. iii., "to be of
+greater antiquity than any other nation: and it is probable that,
+born under the sun's path, its warmth may have ripened them earlier
+than other men.  They suppose themselves also to be the inventors
+of divine worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of
+sacrifices, and every other religious practice.  They affirm that
+the Egyptians are one of their colonies, and that the Delta, which
+was formerly sea, became land by the conglomeration of the earth of
+the higher country which was washed down by the Nile.  They have,
+like the Egyptians, two species of letters, hieroglyphics, and the
+alphabet; but among the Egyptians the first was known only to the
+priests, and by them transmitted from father to son, whereas both
+species were common among the Ethiopians."
+
+"The Ethiopians," says Lucian, page 985, "were the first who
+invented the science of the stars, and gave names to the planets,
+not at random and without meaning, but descriptive of the qualities
+which they conceived them to possess; and it was from them that
+this art passed, still in an imperfect state, to the Egyptians."
+
+It would be easy to multiply citations upon this subject; from all
+which it follows, that we have the strongest reasons to believe
+that the country neighboring to the tropic was the cradle of the
+sciences, and of consequence that the first learned nation was a
+nation of Blacks; for it is incontrovertible, that, by the term
+Ethiopians, the ancients meant to represent a people of black
+complexion, thick lips, and woolly hair.  I am therefore inclined
+to believe, that the inhabitants of Lower Egypt were originally a
+foreign colony imported from Syria and Arabia, a medley of
+different tribes of savages, originally shepherds and fishermen,
+who, by degrees formed themselves into a nation, and who, by nature
+and descent, were enemies of the Thebans, by whom they were no
+doubt despised and treated as barbarians.
+
+I have suggested the same ideas in my Travels into Syria, founded
+upon the black complexion of the Sphinx.  I have since ascertained
+that the antique images of Thebias have the same characteristic;
+and Mr. Bruce has offered a multitude of analogous facts; but this
+traveller, of whom I heard some mention at Cairo, has so interwoven
+these facts with certain systematic opinions, that we should have
+recourse to his narratives with caution.
+
+It is singular that Africa, situated so near us, should be the
+least known country on the earth.  The English are at this moment
+making explorations, the success of which ought to excite our
+emulation.
+
+*** Ailah (Eloth), and Atsiom-Gaber (Hesien-Geber.)  The name of
+the first of these towns still subsists in its ruins, at the point
+of the gulf of the Red Sea, and in the route which the pilgrims
+take to Mecca.  Hesion has at present no trace, any more than
+Quolzoum and Faran: it was, however, the harbor for the fleets of
+Solomon.  The vessels of this prince conducted by the Tyrians,
+sailed along the coast of Arabia to Ophir, in the Persian Gulf,
+thus opening a communication with the merchants of India and
+Ceylon.  That this navigation was entirely of Tyrian invention,
+appears both from the pilots and shipbuilders employed by the Jews,
+and the names that were given to the trading islands, viz. Tyrus
+and Aradus, now Barhain.  The voyage was performed in two different
+modes, either in canoes of osier and rushes, covered on the outside
+with skins done over with pitch: (these vessels were unable to quit
+the Red Sea, or so much as to leave the shore.)  The second mode of
+carrying on the trade was by means of vessels with decks of the
+size of our river boats, which were able to pass the strait and to
+weather the dangers of time ocean; but for this purpose it was
+necessary to bring the wood from Mount Libanus and Cilicia, where
+it is very fine and in great abundance.  This wood was first
+conveyed in floats from Tarsus to Phoenicia, for which reason the
+vessels were called ships of Tarsus; from whence it has been
+ridiculously inferred, that they went round the promontory of
+Africa as far as Tortosa in Spain.  From Phoenicia it was
+transported on the backs of camels to the Red Sea, which practice
+still continues, because the shores of this sea are absolutely
+unprovided with wood even for fuel.  These vessels spent a complete
+year in their voyage, that is, sailed one year, sojourned another,
+and did not return till the third.  This tediousness was owing
+first to their cruising from port to port, as they do at present;
+secondly, to their being detained by the Monsoon currents; and
+thirdly, because, according to the calculations of Pliny and
+Strabo, it was the ordinary practice among the ancients to spend
+three years in a voyage of twelve hundred leagues.  Such a commerce
+must have been very expensive, particularly as they were obliged to
+carry with them their provisions, and even fresh water.  For this
+reason Solomon made himself master of Palmyra, which was at that
+time inhabited, and was already the magazine and high road of
+merchants by the way of the Euphrates.  This conquest brought
+Solomon much nearer to the country of gold and pearls.  This
+alternative of a route either by the Red Sea or by the river
+Euphrates was to the ancients, what in later times has been the
+alternative in a voyage to the Indies, either by crossing the
+isthmus of Suez or doubling the cape of Good Hope.  It appears that
+till the time of Moses, this trade was carried on across the desert
+of Syria and Thebais; that afterwards it fell into the hands of the
+Phoenicians, who fixed its site upon the Red Sea; and that it was
+mutual jealousy that induced the kings of Nineveh and Babylon to
+undertake the destruction of Tyre and Jerusalem.  I insist the more
+upon these facts, because I have never seen any thing reasonable
+upon the subject.
+
+**** It appears that Babylon occupied on the eastern banks of the
+Euphrates a space of ground six leagues in length.  Throughout this
+space bricks are found by means of which daily additions are made
+to the town of Helle.  Upon many of these are characters written
+with a nail similar to those of Persepolis.  I am indebted for
+these facts to M. de Beauchamp, grand vicar of Babylon, a traveller
+equally distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and for his
+veracity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CONDITION OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE.
+
+
+The Genius, after some moments of silence, resumed in these words:
+
+I have told thee already, O friend of truth! that man vainly
+ascribes his misfortunes to obscure and imaginary agents; in vain
+he seeks as the source of his evils mysterious and remote causes.
+In the general order of the universe his condition is, doubtless,
+subject to inconveniences, and his existence governed by superior
+powers; but those powers are neither the decrees of a blind
+fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical and fantastic beings.  Like
+the world of which he forms a part, man is governed by natural
+laws, regular in their course, uniform in their effects, immutable
+in their essence; and those laws,--the common source of good and
+evil,--are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden in codes
+of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings,
+interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places,
+they are present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his
+understanding, and give to every action its reward or punishment.
+Let man then know these laws! let him comprehend the nature of the
+elements which surround him, and also his own nature, and he will
+know the regulators of his destiny; he will know the causes of his
+evils and the remedies he should apply.
+
+When the hidden power which animates the universe, formed the globe
+which man inhabits, he implanted in the beings composing it,
+essential properties which became the law of their individual
+motion, the bond of their reciprocal relations, the cause of the
+harmony of the whole; he thereby established a regular order of
+causes and effects, of principles and consequences, which, under an
+appearance of chance, governs the universe, and maintains the
+equilibrium of the world.  Thus, he gave to fire, motion and
+activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to matter; he made
+air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood less
+cohesive than steel; he decreed flame to ascend, stones to fall,
+plants to vegetate; to man, who was to be exposed to the action of
+so many different beings, and still to preserve his frail life, he
+gave the faculty of sensation.  By this faculty all action hurtful
+to his existence gives him a feeling of pain and evil, and all
+which is salutary, of pleasure and happiness.  By these sensations,
+man, sometimes averted from that which wounds his senses, sometimes
+allured towards that which soothes them, has been obliged to
+cherish and preserve his own life; thus, self-love, the desire of
+happiness, aversion to pain, become the essential and primary laws
+imposed on man by nature herself--the laws which the directing
+power, whatever it be, has established for his government--and
+which laws, like those of motion in the physical world, are the
+simple and fruitful principle of whatever happens in the moral
+world.
+
+Such, then, is the condition of man: on one side, exposed to the
+action of the elements which surround him, he is subject to many
+inevitable evils; and if, in this decree, nature has been severe,
+on the other hand, just and even indulgent she has not only
+tempered the evils with equivalent good, she has also enabled him
+to increase the good and alleviate the evil.  She seems to say:
+
+"Feeble work of my hands, I owe thee nothing, and I give thee life;
+the world wherein I placed thee was not made for thee, yet I give
+thee the use of it; thou wilt find in it a mixture of good and
+evil; it is for thee to distinguish them; for thee to guide thy
+footsteps in a path containing thorns as well as roses.  Be the
+arbiter of thine own fate; I put thy destiny into thine own hands!"
+
+Yes, man is made the architect of his own destiny; he, himself,
+hath been the cause of the successes or reverses of his own
+fortune; and if, on a review of all the pains with which he has
+tormented his own life, he finds reason to weep over his own
+weakness or imprudence yet, considering the beginnings from which
+he sat out, and the height attained, he has, perhaps, still reason
+to presume on his strength, and to pride himself on his genius.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PRIMITIVE STATE OF MAN.
+
+
+Formed naked in body and in mind, man at first found himself
+thrown, as it were by chance, on a rough and savage land: an
+orphan, abandoned by the unknown power which had produced him, he
+saw not by his side beings descended from heaven to warn him of
+those wants which arise only from his senses, nor to instruct him
+in those duties which spring only from his wants.  Like to other
+animals, without experience of the past, without foresight of the
+future, he wandered in the bosom of the forest, guided only and
+governed by the affections of his nature.  By the pain of hunger,
+he was led to seek food and provide for his subsistence; by the
+inclemency of the air, he was urged to cover his body, and he made
+him clothes; by the attraction of a powerful pleasure, he
+approached a being like himself, and he perpetuated his kind.
+
+Thus the impressions which he received from every object, awakening
+his faculties, developed by degrees his understanding, and began to
+instruct his profound ignorance: his wants excited industry,
+dangers formed his courage; he learned to distinguish useful from
+noxious plants, to combat the elements, to seize his prey, to
+defend his life; and thus he alleviated its miseries.
+
+Thus self-love, aversion to pain, the desire of happiness, were the
+simple and powerful excitements which drew man from the savage and
+barbarous condition in which nature had placed him.  And now, when
+his life is replete with enjoyments, when he may count each day by
+the comforts it brings, he may applaud himself and say:
+
+"It is I who have produced the comforts which surround me; it is I
+who am the author of my own happiness; a safe dwelling, convenient
+clothing, abundant and wholesome nourishment, smiling fields,
+fertile hills, populous empires, all is my work; without me this
+earth, given up to disorder, would have been but a filthy fen, a
+wild wood, a dreary desert."
+
+Yes, creative man, receive my homage!  Thou hast measured the span
+of the heavens, calculated the volume of the stars, arrested the
+lightning in its clouds, subdued seas and storms, subjected all the
+elements.  Ah! how are so many sublime energies allied to so many
+errors?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PRINCIPLES OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+Wandering in the woods and on the banks of rivers in pursuit of
+game and fish, the first men, beset with dangers, assailed by
+enemies, tormented by hunger, by reptiles, by ravenous beasts, felt
+their own individual weakness; and, urged by a common need of
+safety, and a reciprocal sentiment of like evils, they united their
+resources and their strength; and when one incurred a danger, many
+aided and succored him; when one wanted subsistence, another shared
+his food with him.  Thus men associated to secure their existence,
+to augment their powers, to protect their enjoyments; and self-love
+thus became the principle of society.
+
+Instructed afterwards by the experience of various and repeated
+accidents, by the fatigues of a wandering life, by the distress of
+frequent scarcity, men reasoned with themselves and said:
+
+"Why consume our days in seeking scattered fruits from a
+parsimonious soil? why exhaust ourselves in pursuing prey which
+eludes us in the woods or waters? why not collect under our hands
+the animals that nourish us? why not apply our cares in multiplying
+and preserving them?  We will feed on their increase, be clothed in
+their skins, and live exempt from the fatigues of the day and
+solicitude for the morrow."
+
+And men, aiding one another, seized the nimble goat, the timid
+sheep; they tamed the patient camel, the fierce bull, the impetuous
+horse; and, applauding their own industry, they sat down in the joy
+of their souls, and began to taste repose and comfort: and self-
+love, the principle of all reasoning, became the incitement to
+every art, and every enjoyment.
+
+When, therefore, men could pass long days in leisure, and in
+communication of their thoughts, they began to contemplate the
+earth, the heavens, and their own existence as objects of curiosity
+and reflection; they remarked the course of the seasons, the action
+of the elements, the properties of fruits and plants; and applied
+their thoughts to the multiplication of their enjoyments.  And in
+some countries, having observed that certain seeds contained a
+wholesome nourishment in a small volume, convenient for
+transportation and preservation, they imitated the process of
+nature; they confided to the earth rice, barley, and corn, which
+multiplied to the full measure of their hope; and having found the
+means of obtaining within a small compass and without removal,
+plentiful subsistence and durable stores, they established
+themselves in fixed habitations; they built houses, villages, and
+towns; formed societies and nations; and self-love produced all the
+developments of genius and of power.
+
+Thus by the aid of his own faculties, man has raised himself to the
+astonishing height of his present fortune.  Too happy if, observing
+scrupulously the law of his being, he had faithfully fulfilled its
+only and true object!  But, by a fatal imprudence, sometimes
+mistaking, sometimes transgressing its limits, he has launched
+forth into a labyrinth of errors and misfortunes; and self-love,
+sometimes unruly, sometimes blind, became a principle fruitful in
+calamities.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SOURCES OF THE EVILS OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+In truth, scarcely were the faculties of men developed, when,
+inveigled by objects which gratify the senses, they gave themselves
+up to unbridled desires.  The sweet sensations which nature had
+attached to their real wants, to endear to them their existence, no
+longer satisfied them.  Not content with the abundance offered by
+the earth or produced by industry, they wished to accumulate
+enjoyments and coveted those possessed by their fellow men.  The
+strong man rose up against the feeble, to take from him the fruit
+of his labor; the feeble invoked another feeble one to repel the
+violence.  Two strong ones then said:
+
+"Why fatigue ourselves to produce enjoyments which we may find in
+the hands of the weak?  Let us join and despoil them; they shall
+labor for us, and we will enjoy without labor."
+
+And the strong associating for oppression and the weak for
+resistance, men mutually afflicted each other; and a general and
+fatal discord spread over the earth, in which the passions,
+assuming a thousand new forms, have generated a continued chain of
+misfortunes.
+
+Thus the same self-love which, moderate and prudent, was a
+principle of happiness and perfection, becoming blind and
+disordered, was transformed into a corrupting poison; and cupidity,
+offspring and companion of ignorance, became the cause of all the
+evils that have desolated the earth.
+
+Yes, ignorance and cupidity! these are the twin sources of all the
+torments of man!  Biased by these into false ideas of happiness, he
+has mistaken or broken the laws of nature in his own relation with
+external objects; and injuring his own existence, has violated
+individual morality; shutting through these his heart to
+compassion, and his mind to justice, he has injured and afflicted
+his equal, and violated social morality.  From ignorance and
+cupidity, man has armed against man, family against family, tribe
+against tribe; and the earth is become a theatre of blood, of
+discord, and of rapine.  By ignorance and cupidity, a secret war,
+fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from
+citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors
+and oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a
+nation, sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains
+within its own bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political
+despotism.  Sometimes, hypocritical and cunning, they have called
+from heaven a lying power, and a sacrilegious yoke; and credulous
+cupidity has founded religious despotism.  By these have been
+perverted the ideas of good and evil, just and unjust, vice and
+virtue; and nations have wandered in a labyrinth of errors and
+calamities.
+
+The cupidity of man and his ignorance,--these are the evil genii
+which have wasted the earth!  These are the decrees of fate which
+have overthrown empires!  These are the celestial anathemas which
+have smitten these walls once so glorious, and converted the
+splendor of a populous city into a solitude of mourning and of
+ruins!  But as in the bosom of man have sprung all the evils which
+have afflicted his life, there he also is to seek and to find their
+remedies.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT AND LAWS.
+
+
+In fact, it soon happened that men, fatigued with the evils they
+reciprocally inflicted, began to sigh for peace; and reflecting on
+their misfortunes and the causes of them, they said:
+
+"We are mutually injuring each other by our passions; and, aiming
+to grasp every thing, we hold nothing.  What one seizes to-day,
+another takes to-morrow, and our cupidity reacts upon ourselves.
+Let us establish judges, who shall arbitrate our rights, and settle
+our differences!  When the strong shall rise against the weak, the
+judge shall restrain him, and dispose of our force to suppress
+violence; and the life and property of each shall be under the
+guarantee and protection of all; and all shall enjoy the good
+things of nature."
+
+Conventions were thus formed in society, sometimes express,
+sometimes tacit, which became the rule for the action of
+individuals, the measure of their rights, the law of their
+reciprocal relations; and persons were appointed to superintend
+their observance, to whom the people confided the balance to weigh
+rights, and the sword to punish transgressions.
+
+Thus was established among individuals a happy equilibrium of force
+and action, which constituted the common security.  The name of
+equity and of justice was recognized and revered over the earth;
+every one, assured of enjoying in peace, the fruits of his toil,
+pursued with energy the objects of his attention; and industry,
+excited and maintained by the reality or the hope of enjoyment,
+developed, all the riches of art and of nature.  The fields were
+covered with harvests, the valleys with flocks, the hills with
+fruits, the sea with vessels, and man became happy and powerful on
+the earth.  Thus did his own wisdom repair the disorder which his
+imprudence had occasioned; and that wisdom was only the effect of
+his own organization.  He respected the enjoyments of others in
+order to secure his own; and cupidity found its corrective in the
+enlightened love of self.
+
+Thus the love of self, the moving principle of every individual,
+becomes the necessary foundation of every association; and on the
+observance of that law of our nature has depended the fate of
+nations.  Have the factitious and conventional laws tended to that
+object and accomplished that aim?  Every one, urged by a powerful
+instinct, has displayed all the faculties of his being; and the sum
+of individual felicities has constituted the general felicity.
+Have these laws, on the contrary, restrained the effort of man
+toward his own happiness?  His heart, deprived of its exciting
+principle, has languished in inactivity, and from the oppression of
+individuals has resulted the weakness of the state.
+
+As self-love, impetuous and improvident, is ever urging man against
+his equal, and consequently tends to dissolve society, the art of
+legislation and the merit of administrators consists in attempering
+the conflict of individual cupidities, in maintaining an
+equilibrium of powers, and securing to every one his happiness, in
+order that, in the shock of society against society, all the
+members may have a common interest in the preservation and defence
+of the public welfare.
+
+The internal splendor and prosperity of empires then, have had for
+their efficient cause the equity of their laws and government; and
+their respective external powers have been in proportion to the
+number of persons interested, and their degree of interest in the
+public welfare.
+
+On the other hand, the multiplication of men, by complicating their
+relations, having rendered the precise limitation of their rights
+difficult, the perpetual play of the passions having produced
+incidents not foreseen--their conventions having been vicious,
+inadequate, or nugatory--in fine, the authors of the laws having
+sometimes mistaken, sometimes disguised their objects; and their
+ministers, instead of restraining the cupidity of others, having
+given themselves up to their own; all these causes have introduced
+disorder and trouble into societies; and the viciousness of laws
+and the injustice of governments, flowing from cupidity and
+ignorance, have become the causes of the misfortunes of nations,
+and the subversion of states.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+GENERAL CAUSES OF THE PROSPERITY OF ANCIENT STATES.
+
+
+Such, O man who seekest wisdom, such have been the causes of
+revolution in the ancient states of which thou contemplatest the
+ruins!  To whatever spot I direct my view, to whatever period my
+thoughts recur, the same principles of growth or destruction, of
+rise or fall, present themselves to my mind.  Wherever a people is
+powerful, or an empire prosperous, there the conventional laws are
+conformable with the laws of nature--the government there procures
+for its citizens a free use of their faculties, equal security for
+their persons and property.  If, on the contrary, an empire goes to
+ruin, or dissolves, it is because its laws have been vicious, or
+imperfect, or trodden under foot by a corrupt government.  If the
+laws and government, at first wise and just, become afterwards
+depraved, it is because the alternation of good and evil is
+inherent to the heart of man, to a change in his propensities, to
+his progress in knowledge, to a combination of circumstances and
+events; as is proved by the history of the species.
+
+In the infancy of nations, when men yet lived in the forest,
+subject to the same wants, endowed with the same faculties, all
+were nearly equal in strength; and that equality was a circumstance
+highly advantageous in the composition of society: as every
+individual, thus feeling himself sufficiently independent of every
+other, no one was the slave, none thought of being the master of
+another.  Man, then a novice, knew neither servitude nor tyranny;
+furnished with resources sufficient for his existence, he thought
+not of borrowing from others; owning nothing, requiring nothing, he
+judged the rights of others by his own, and formed ideas of justice
+sufficiently exact.  Ignorant, moreover, in the art of enjoyments,
+unable to produce more than his necessaries, possessing nothing
+superfluous, cupidity remained dormant; or if excited, man,
+attacked in his real wants, resisted it with energy, and the
+foresight of such resistance ensured a happy balance.
+
+Thus original equality, in default of compact, maintained freedom
+of person, security of property, good manners, and order.  Every
+one labored by himself and for himself; and the mind of man, being
+occupied, wandered not to culpable desires.  He had few enjoyments,
+but his wants were satisfied; and as indulgent nature had made them
+less than his resources, the labor of his hands soon produced
+abundance--abundance, population; the arts unfolded, culture
+extended, and the earth, covered with numerous inhabitants, was
+divided into different dominions.
+
+The relations of man becoming complicated, the internal order of
+societies became more difficult to maintain.  Time and industry
+having generated riches, cupidity became more active; and because
+equality, practicable among individuals, could not subsist among
+families, the natural equilibrium was broken; it became necessary
+to supply it by a factitious equilibrium; to set up chiefs, to
+establish laws; and in the primitive inexperience, it necessarily
+happened that these laws, occasioned by cupidity, assumed its
+character.  But different circumstances concurred to correct the
+disorder, and oblige governments to be just.
+
+States, in fact, being weak at first, and having foreign enemies to
+fear, the chiefs found it their interest not to oppress their
+subjects; for, by lessening the confidence of the citizens in their
+government, they would diminish their means of resistance--they
+would facilitate foreign invasion, and by exercising arbitrary
+power, have endangered their very existence.
+
+In the interior, the firmness of the people repelled tyranny; men
+had contracted too long habits of independence; they had too few
+wants, and too much consciousness of their own strength.
+
+States being of a moderate size, it was difficult to divide their
+citizens so as to make use of some for the oppression of others.
+Their communications were too easy, their interest too clear and
+simple: besides, every one being a proprietor and cultivator, no
+one needed to sell himself, and the despot could find no
+mercenaries.
+
+If, then, dissensions arose, they were between family and family,
+faction and faction, and they interested a great number.  The
+troubles, indeed, were warmer; but fears from abroad pacified
+discord at home.  If the oppression of a party prevailed, the earth
+being still unoccupied, and man, still in a state of simplicity,
+finding every where the same advantages, the oppressed party
+emigrated, and carried elsewhere their independence.
+
+The ancient states then enjoyed within themselves numerous means of
+prosperity and power.  Every one finding his own well-being in the
+constitution of his country, took a lively interest in its
+preservation.  If a stranger attacked it, having to defend his own
+field, his own house, he carried into combat all the passions of a
+personal quarrel; and, devoted to his own interests, he was devoted
+to his country.
+
+As every action useful to the public attracted its esteem and
+gratitude, every one became eager to be useful; and self-love
+multiplied talents and civic virtues.
+
+Every citizen contributing equally by his talents and person,
+armies and funds were inexhaustible, and nations displayed
+formidable masses of power.
+
+The earth being free, and its possession secure and easy, every one
+was a proprietor; and the division of property preserved morals,
+and rendered luxury impossible.
+
+Every one cultivating for himself, culture was more active, produce
+more abundant; and individual riches became public wealth.
+
+The abundance of produce rendering subsistence easy, population was
+rapid and numerous, and states attained quickly the term of their
+plenitude.
+
+Productions increasing beyond consumption, the necessity of
+commerce arose; and exchanges took place between people and people;
+which augmented their activity and reciprocal advantages.
+
+In fine, certain countries, at certain times, uniting the
+advantages of good government with a position on the route of the
+most active circulation, they became emporiums of flourishing
+commerce and seats of powerful domination.  And on the shores of
+the Nile and Mediterranean, of the Tygris and Euphrates, the
+accumulated riches of India and of Europe raised in successive
+splendor a hundred different cities.
+
+The people, growing rich, applied their superfluity to works of
+common and public use; and this was in every state, the epoch of
+those works whose grandeur astonishes the mind; of those wells of
+Tyre, of those dykes of the Euphrates, of those subterranean
+conduits of Media,* of those fortresses of the desert, of those
+aqueducts of Palmyra, of those temples, of those porticoes.  And
+such labors might be immense, without oppressing the nations;
+because they were the effect of an equal and common contribution of
+the force of individuals animated and free.
+
+
+* See respecting these monuments my Travels into Syria, vol. ii. p.
+214.
+
+From the town or village of Samouat the course of the Euphrates is
+accompanied with a double bank, which descends as far as its
+junction with the Tygris, and from thence to the sea, being a
+length of about a hundred leagues, French measure.  The height of
+these artificial banks is not uniform, but increases as you advance
+from the sea; it may be estimated at from twelve to fifteen feet.
+But for them, the inundation of the river would bury the country
+around, which is flat, to an extent of twenty or twenty-five
+leagues and even notwithstanding these banks, there has been in
+modern times an overflow, which has covered the whole triangle
+formed by the junction of this river to the Tygris, being a space
+of country of one hundred and thirty square leagues.  By the
+stagnation of these waters an epidemical disease of the most fatal
+nature was occasioned.  It follows from hence, 1.  That all the
+flat country bordering upon these rivers, was originally a marsh;
+2.  That this marsh could not have been inhabited previously to the
+construction of the banks in question; 3.  That these banks could
+not have been the work but of a population prior as to date; and
+the elevation of Babylon, therefore, must have been posterior to
+that of Nineveh, as I think I have chronologically demonstrated in
+the memoir above cited.  See Encyclopedia, vol. xiii, of
+Antiquities.
+
+The modern Aderbidjan, which was a part of Medea, the mountains of
+Koulderstan, and those of Diarbekr, abound with subterranean
+canals, by means of which the ancient inhabitants conveyed water to
+their parched soil in order to fertilize it.  It was regarded as a
+meritorious act and a religious duty prescribed by Zoroaster, who,
+instead of preaching celibacy, mortifications, and other pretended
+virtues of the monkish sort, repeats continually in the passages
+that are preserved respecting him in the Sad-der and the Zend-
+avesta:
+
+"That the action most pleasing to God is to plough and cultivate
+the earth, to water it with running streams, to multiply vegetation
+and living beings, to have numerous flocks, young and fruitful
+virgins, a multitude of children," etc., etc.
+
+Among the aqueducts of Palmyra it appears certain, that, besides
+those which conducted water from the neighboring hills, there was
+one which brought it even from the mountains of Syria.  It is to be
+traced a long way into the Desert where it escapes our search by
+going under ground.
+
+
+Thus ancient states prospered, because their social institutions
+conformed to the true laws of nature; and because men, enjoying
+liberty and security for their persons and their property, might
+display all the extent of their faculties,--all the energies of
+their self-love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+GENERAL CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONS AND RUIN OF ANCIENT STATES.
+
+
+Cupidity had nevertheless excited among men a constant and
+universal conflict, which incessantly prompting individuals and
+societies to reciprocal invasions, occasioned successive
+revolutions, and returning agitations.
+
+And first, in the savage and barbarous state of the first men, this
+audacious and fierce cupidity produced rapine, violence, and
+murder, and retarded for a long time the progress of civilization.
+
+When afterwards societies began to be formed, the effect of bad
+habits, communicated to laws and governments, corrupted their
+institutions and objects, and established arbitrary and factitious
+rights, which depraved the ideas of justice, and the morality of
+the people.
+
+Thus one man being stronger than another, their inequality--an
+accident of nature--was taken for her law;* and the strong being
+able to take the life of the weak, and yet sparing him, arrogated
+over his person an abusive right of property; and the slavery of
+individuals prepared the way for the slavery of nations.
+
+
+*Almost all the ancient philosophers and politicians have laid it
+down as a principle that men are born unequal, that nature his
+created some to be free, and others to be slaves.  Expressions of
+this kind are to be found in Aristotle, and even in Plato, called
+the divine, doubtless in the same sense as the mythological
+reveries which he promulgated.  With all the people of antiquity,
+the Gauls, the Romans, the Athenians, the right of the strongest
+was the right of nations; and from the same principle are derived
+all the political disorders and public national crimes that at
+present exist.
+
+
+Because the head of a family could be absolute in his house, he
+made his own affections and desires the rule of his conduct; he
+gave or resumed his goods without equality, without justice; and
+paternal despotism laid the foundation of despotism in government.*
+
+
+* Upon this single expression it would be easy to write a long and
+important chapter.  We might prove in it, beyond contradiction,
+that all the abuses of national governments, have sprung from those
+of domestic government, from that government called patriarchal,
+which superficial minds have extolled without having analyzed it.
+Numberless facts demonstrate, that with every infant people, in
+every savage and barbarous state, the father, the chief of the
+family, is a despot, and a cruel and insolent despot.  The wife is
+his slave, the children his servants.  This king sleeps or smokes
+his pipe, while his wife and daughters perform all the drudgery of
+the house, and even that of tillage and cultivation, as far as
+occupations of this nature are practised in such societies; and no
+sooner have the boys acquired strength then they are allowed to
+beat the females and make them serve and wait upon them as they do
+upon their fathers.  Similar to this is the state of our own
+uncivilized peasants.  In proportion as civilization spreads, the
+manners become milder, and the condition of the women improves,
+till, by a contrary excess, they arrive at dominion, and then a
+nation becomes effeminate and corrupt.  It is remarkable that
+parental authority is great in proportion as the government is
+despotic.  China, India, and Turkey are striking examples of this.
+One would suppose that tyrants gave themselves accomplices and
+interested subaltern despots to maintain their authority.  In
+opposition to this the Romans will be cited, but it remains to be
+proved that the Romans were men truly free and their quick passage
+from their republican despotism to their abject servility under the
+emperors, gives room at least for considerable doubt as to that
+freedom.
+
+
+In societies formed on such foundations, when time and labor had
+developed riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more
+artful, but not less active.  Under the mask of union and civil
+peace, it fomented in the bosom of every state an intestine war, in
+which the citizens, divided into contending corps of orders,
+classes, families, unremittingly struggled to appropriate to
+themselves, under the name of supreme power, the ability to plunder
+every thing, and render every thing subservient to the dictates of
+their passions; and this spirit of encroachment, disguised under
+all possible forms, but always the same in its object and motives,
+has never ceased to torment the nations.
+
+Sometimes, opposing itself to all social compact, or breaking that
+which already existed, it committed the inhabitants of a country to
+the tumultuous shock of all their discords; and states thus
+dissolved, and reduced to the condition of anarchy, were tormented
+by the passions of all their members.
+
+Sometimes a nation, jealous of its liberty, having appointed agents
+to administer its government, these agents appropriated the powers
+of which they had only the guardianship: they employed the public
+treasures in corrupting elections, gaining partisans, in dividing
+the people among themselves.  By these means, from being temporary
+they became perpetual; from elective, hereditary; and the state,
+agitated by the intrigues of the ambitious, by largesses from the
+rich and factious, by the venality of the poor and idle, by the
+influence of orators, by the boldness of the wicked, and the
+weakness of the virtuous, was convulsed with all the inconveniences
+of democracy.
+
+The chiefs of some countries, equal in strength and mutually
+fearing each other, formed impious pacts, nefarious associations;
+and, apportioning among themselves all power, rank, and honor,
+unjustly arrogated privileges and immunities; erected themselves
+into separate orders and distinct classes; reduced the people to
+their control; and, under the name of aristocracy, the state was
+tormented by the passions of the wealthy and the great.
+
+Sacred impostors, in other countries, tending by other means to the
+same object, abused the credulity of the ignorant.  In the gloom of
+their temples, behind the curtain of the altar, they made their
+gods act and speak; gave forth oracles, worked miracles, ordered
+sacrifices, levied offerings, prescribed endowments; and, under the
+names of theocracy and of religion, the state became tormented by
+the passions of the priests.
+
+Sometimes a nation, weary of its dissensions or of its tyrants, to
+lessen the sources of evil, submitted to a single master; but if it
+limited his powers, his sole aim was to enlarge them; if it left
+them indefinite, he abused the trust confided to him; and, under
+the name of monarchy, the state was tormented by the passions of
+kings and princes.
+
+Then the factions, availing themselves of the general discontent,
+flattered the people with the hope of a better master; dealt out
+gifts and promises, deposed the despot to take his place; and their
+contests for the succession, or its partition, tormented the state
+with the disorders and devastations of civil war.
+
+In fine, among these rivals, one more adroit, or more fortunate,
+gained the ascendency, and concentrated all power within himself.
+By a strange phenomenon, a single individual mastered millions of
+his equals, against their will and without their consent; and the
+art of tyranny sprung also from cupidity.
+
+In fact, observing the spirit of egotism which incessantly divides
+mankind, the ambitious man fomented it with dexterity, flattered
+the vanity of one, excited the jealousy of another, favored the
+avarice of this, inflamed the resentment of that, and irritated the
+passions of all; then, placing in opposition their interests and
+prejudices, he sowed divisions and hatreds, promised to the poor
+the spoils of the rich, to the rich the subjection of the poor;
+threatened one man by another, this class by that; and insulating
+all by distrust, created his strength out of their weakness, and
+imposed the yoke of opinion, which they mutually riveted on each
+other.  With the army he levied contributions, and with
+contributions he disposed of the army: dealing out wealth and
+office on these principles, he enchained a whole people in
+indissoluble bonds, and they languished under the slow consumption
+of despotism.
+
+Thus the same principle, varying its action under every possible
+form, was forever attenuating the consistence of states, and an
+eternal circle of vicissitudes flowed from an eternal circle of
+passions.
+
+And this spirit of egotism and usurpation produced two effects
+equally operative and fatal: the one a division and subdivision of
+societies into their smallest fractions, inducing a debility which
+facilitated their dissolution; the other, a preserving tendency to
+concentrate power in a single hand,* which, engulfing successively
+societies and states, was fatal to their peace and social
+existence.
+
+
+* It is remarkable that this has in all instances been the constant
+progress of societies; beginning with a state of anarchy or
+democracy, that is, with a great division of power they have passed
+to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to monarchy.  Does it not
+hence follow that those who constitute states under the democratic
+form, destine them to undergo all the intervening troubles between
+that and monarchy; but it should at the same time be proved that
+social experience is already exhausted for the human race, and that
+this spontaneous movement is not solely the effect of ignorance.
+
+
+Thus, as in a state, a party absorbed the nation, a family the
+party, and an individual the family; so a movement of absorption
+took place between state and state, and exhibited on a larger scale
+in the political order, all the particular evils of the civil
+order.  Thus a state having subdued a state, held it in subjection
+in the form of a province; and two provinces being joined together
+formed a kingdom; two kingdoms being united by conquest, gave birth
+to empires of gigantic size; and in this conglomeration, the
+internal strength of states, instead of increasing, diminished; and
+the condition of the people, instead of ameliorating, became daily
+more abject and wretched, for causes derived from the nature of
+things.
+
+Because, in proportion as states increased in extent, their
+administration becoming more difficult and complicated, greater
+energies of power were necessary to move such masses; and there was
+no longer any proportion between the duties of sovereigns and their
+ability to perform their duties:
+
+Because despots, feeling their weakness, feared whatever might
+develop the strength of nations, and studied only how to enfeeble
+them:
+
+Because nations, divided by the prejudices of ignorance and hatred,
+seconded the wickedness of their governments; and availing
+themselves reciprocally of subordinate agents, aggravated their
+mutual slavery:
+
+Because, the balance between states being destroyed, the strong
+more easily oppressed the weak.
+
+Finally, because in proportion as states were concentrated, the
+people, despoiled of their laws, of their usages, and of the
+government of their choice, lost that spirit of personal
+identification with their government, which had caused their
+energy.
+
+And despots, considering empires as their private domains and the
+people as their property, gave themselves up to depredations, and
+to all the licentiousness of the most arbitrary authority.
+
+And all the strength and wealth of nations were diverted to private
+expense and personal caprice; and kings, fatigued with
+gratification, abandoned themselves to all the extravagancies of
+factitious and depraved taste.*  They must have gardens mounted on
+arcades, rivers raised over mountains, fertile fields converted
+into haunts for wild beasts; lakes scooped in dry lands, rocks
+erected in lakes, palaces built of marble and porphyry, furniture
+of gold and diamonds.  Under the cloak of religion, their pride
+founded temples, endowed indolent priests, built, for vain
+skeletons, extravagant tombs, mausoleums and pyramids;** millions
+of hands were employed in sterile labors; and the luxury of
+princes, imitated by their parasites, and transmitted from grade to
+grade to the lowest ranks, became a general source of corruption
+and impoverishment.
+
+
+* It is equally worthy of remark, that the conduct and manners of
+princes and kings of every country and every age, are found to be
+precisely the same at similar periods, whether of the formation or
+dissolution of empires.  History every where presents the same
+pictures of luxury and folly; of parks, gardens, lakes, rocks,
+palaces, furniture, excess of the table, wine, women, concluding
+with brutality.
+
+The absurd rock in the garden of Versailles has alone cost three
+millions.  I have sometimes calculated what might have been done
+with the expense of the three pyramids of Gizah, and I have found
+that it would easily have constructed from the Red Sea to
+Alexandria, a canal one hundred and fifty feet wide and thirty
+deep, completely covered in with cut stones and a parapet, together
+with a fortified and commercial town, consisting of four hundred
+houses, furnished with cisterns.  What a difference in point of
+utility between such a canal and these pyramids!
+
+** The learned Dupuis could not be persuaded that the pyramids were
+tombs; but besides the positive testimony of historians, read what
+Diodorus says of the religious and superstitious importance every
+Egyptian attached to building his dwelling eternal, b. 1.
+
+During twenty years, says Herodotus, a hundred thousand men labored
+every day to build the pyramid of the Egyptian Cheops.  Supposing
+only three hundred days a year, on account of the sabbath, there
+will be 30 millions of days' work in a year, and 600 millions in
+twenty years; at 15 sous a day, this makes 450 millions of francs
+lost, without any further benefit.  With this sum, if the king had
+shut the isthmus of Suez by a strong wall, like that of China, the
+destinies of Egypt might have been entirely changed.  Foreign
+invasions would have been prevented, and the Arabs of the desert
+would neither have conquered nor harassed that country.  Sterile
+labors! how many millions lost in putting one stone upon another,
+under the forms of temples and churches!  Alchymists convert stones
+into gold; but architects change gold into stone.  Woe to the kings
+(as well as subjects) who trust their purse to these two classes of
+empirics!
+
+
+And in the insatiable thirst of enjoyment, the ordinary revenues no
+longer sufficing, they were augmented; the cultivator, seeing his
+labors increase without compensation, lost all courage; the
+merchant, despoiled, was disgusted with industry; the multitude,
+condemned to perpetual poverty, restrained their labor to simple
+necessaries; and all productive industry vanished.
+
+The surcharge of taxes rendering lands a burdensome possession, the
+poor proprietor abandoned his field, or sold it to the powerful;
+and fortune became concentrated in a few hands.  All the laws and
+institutions favoring this accumulation, the nation became divided
+into a group of wealthy drones, and a multitude of mercenary poor;
+the people were degraded with indigence, the great with satiety,
+and the number of those interested in the preservation of the state
+decreasing, its strength and existence became proportionally
+precarious.
+
+On the other hand, emulation finding no object, science no
+encouragement, the mind sunk into profound ignorance.
+
+The administration being secret and mysterious, there existed no
+means of reform or amelioration.  The chiefs governing by force or
+fraud, the people viewed them as a faction of public enemies; and
+all harmony ceased between the governors and governed.
+
+And these vices having enervated the states of the wealthy part of
+Asia, the vagrant and indigent people of the adjacent deserts and
+mountains coveted the enjoyments of the fertile plains; and, urged
+by a cupidity common to all, attacked the polished empires, and
+overturned the thrones of their despots.  These revolutions were
+rapid and easy; because the policy of tyrants had enfeebled the
+subjects, razed the fortresses, destroyed the warriors; and because
+the oppressed subjects remained without personal interest, and the
+mercenary soldiers without courage.
+
+And hordes of barbarians having reduced entire nations to slavery,
+the empires, formed of conquerors and conquered, united in their
+bosom two classes essentially opposite and hostile.  All the
+principles of society were dissolved: there was no longer any
+common interest, no longer any public spirit; and there arose a
+distinction of casts and races, which reduced to a regular system
+the maintenance of disorder; and he who was born of this or that
+blood, was born a slave or a tyrant--property or proprietor.
+
+The oppressors being less numerous than the oppressed it was
+necessary to perfect the science of oppression, in order to support
+this false equilibrium.  The art of governing became the art of
+subjecting the many to the few.  To enforce an obedience so
+contrary to instinct, the severest punishments were established,
+and the cruelty of the laws rendered manners atrocious.  The
+distinction of persons establishing in the state two codes, two
+orders of criminal justice, two sets of laws, the people, placed
+between the propensities of the heart and the oath uttered from the
+mouth, had two consciences in contradiction with each other; and
+the ideas of justice and injustice had no longer any foundation in
+the understanding.
+
+Under such a system, the people fell into dejection and despair;
+and the accidents of nature were added to the other evils which
+assailed them.  Prostrated by so many calamities, they attributed
+their causes to superior and hidden powers; and, because they had
+tyrants on earth, they fancied others in heaven; and superstition
+aggravated the misfortunes of nations.
+
+Fatal doctrines and gloomy and misanthropic systems of religion
+arose, which painted their gods, like their despots, wicked and
+envious.  To appease them, man offered up the sacrifice of all his
+enjoyments.  He environed himself in privations, and reversed the
+order of nature.  Conceiving his pleasures to be crimes, his
+sufferings expiations, he endeavored to love pain, and to abjure
+the love of self.  He persecuted his senses, hated his life; and a
+self-denying and anti-social morality plunged nations into the
+apathy of death.
+
+But provident nature having endowed the heart of man with hope
+inexhaustible, when his desires of happiness were baffled on this
+earth, he pursued it into another world.  By a sweet illusion he
+created for himself another country--an asylum where, far from
+tyrants, he should recover the rights of nature, and thence
+resulted new disorders.  Smitten with an imaginary world, man
+despised that of nature.  For chimerical hopes, he neglected
+realities.  His life began to appear a troublesome journey--a
+painful dream; his body a prison, the obstacle to his felicity; and
+the earth, a place of exile and of pilgrimage, not worthy of
+culture.  Then a holy indolence spread over the political world;
+the fields were deserted, empires depopulated, monuments neglected
+and deserts multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism,
+combining their operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation
+and ruin.
+
+Thus agitated by their own passions, men, whether collectively or
+individually taken, always greedy and improvident, passing from
+slavery to tyranny, from pride to baseness, from presumption to
+despondency, have made themselves the perpetual instruments of
+their own misfortunes.
+
+These, then, are the principles, simple and natural, which
+regulated the destiny of ancient states.  By this regular and
+connected series of causes and effects, they rose or fell, in
+proportion as the physical laws of the human heart were respected
+or violated; and in the course of their successive changes, a
+hundred different nations, a hundred different empires, by turns
+humbled, elevated, conquered, overthrown, have repeated for the
+earth their instructive lessons.  Yet these lessons were lost for
+the generations which have followed!  The disorders in times past
+have reappeared in the present age!  The chiefs of the nations have
+continued to walk in the paths of falsehood and tyranny!--the
+people to wander in the darkness of superstition and ignorance!
+
+Since then, continued the Genius, with renewed energy, since the
+experience of past ages is lost for the living--since the errors of
+progenitors have not instructed their descendants, the ancient
+examples are about to reappear; the earth will see renewed the
+tremendous scenes it has forgotten.  New revolutions will agitate
+nations and empires; powerful thrones will again be overturned, and
+terrible catastrophes will again teach mankind that the laws of
+nature and the precepts of wisdom and truth cannot be infringed
+with impunity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+LESSONS OF TIMES PAST REPEATED ON THE PRESENT.
+
+
+Thus spoke the Genius.  Struck with the justice and coherence of
+his discourse, assailed with a crowd of ideas, repugnant to my
+habits yet convincing to my reason, I remained absorbed in profound
+silence.  At length, while with serious and pensive mien, I kept my
+eyes fixed on Asia, suddenly in the north, on the shores of the
+Black sea, and in the fields of the Crimea, clouds of smoke and
+flame attracted my attention.  They appeared to rise at the same
+time from all parts of the peninsula; and passing by the isthmus
+into the continent, they ran, as if driven by a westerly wind,
+along the oozy lake of Azof, and disappeared in the grassy plains
+of Couban; and following more attentively the course of these
+clouds, I observed that they were preceded or followed by swarms of
+moving creatures, which, like ants or grasshoppers disturbed by the
+foot of a passenger, agitated themselves with vivacity.  Sometimes
+these swarms appeared to advance and rush against each other; and
+numbers, after the concussion, remained motionless.  While
+disquieted at this spectacle, I strained my sight to distinguish
+the objects.
+
+Do you see, said the Genius, those flames which spread over the
+earth, and do you comprehend their causes and effects?
+
+Oh! Genius, I answered, I see those columns of flame and smoke, and
+something like insects, accompanying them; but, when I can scarcely
+discern the great masses of cities and monuments, how should I
+discover, such little creatures?  I can just perceive that these
+insects mimic battle, for they advance, retreat, attack and pursue.
+
+It is no mimicry, said the Genius, these are real battles.
+
+And what, said I, are those mad animalculae, which destroy each
+other?  Beings of a day! will they not perish soon enough?
+
+Then the Genius, touching my sight and hearing, again directed my
+eyes towards the same object.  Look, said he, and listen!
+
+Ah! wretches, cried I, oppressed with grief, these columns of
+flame! these insects! oh! Genius, they are men.  These are the
+ravages of war!  These torrents of flame rise from towns and
+villages!  I see the squadrons who kindle them, and who, sword in
+hand overrun the country: they drive before them crowds of old men,
+women, and children, fugitive and desolate: I perceive other
+horsemen, who with shouldered lances, accompany and guide them.  I
+even recognize them to be Tartars by their led horses,* their
+kalpacks, and tufts of hair: and, doubtless, they who pursue, in
+triangular hats and green uniforms, are Muscovites.  Ah! I now
+comprehend, a war is kindled between the empire of the Czars and
+that of the Sultans.
+
+
+* A Tartar horseman has always two horses, of which he leads one in
+hand.  The Kalpeck is a bonnet made of the skin of a sheep or other
+animal.  The part of the head covered by this bonnet is shaved,
+with the exception of a tuft, about the size of a crown piece, and
+which is suffered to grow to the length of seven or eight inches,
+precisely where our priests place their tonsure.  It is by this
+tuft of hair, worn by the majority of Mussulmen, that the angel of
+the tomb is to take the elect and carry them into paradise.
+
+
+Not yet, replied the Genius; this is only a preliminary.  These
+Tartars have been, and might still he troublesome neighbors.  The
+Muscovites are driving them off, finding their country would be a
+convenient extension of their own limits; and as a prelude to
+another revolution, the throne of the Guerais is destroyed.
+
+And in fact, I saw the Russian standards floating over the Crimea:
+and soon after their flag waving on the Euxine.
+
+Meanwhile, at the cry of the flying Tartars, the Mussulman empire
+was in commotion.  They are driving off our brethren, cried the
+children of Mahomet: the people of the prophet are outraged!
+infidels occupy a consecrated land and profane the temples of
+Islamism.*  Let us arm; let us rush to combat, to avenge the glory
+of God and our own cause.
+
+
+* It is not in the power of the Sultan to cede to a foreign power a
+province inhabited by true believers.  The people, instigated by
+the lawyers, would not fail to revolt.  This is one reason which
+has led those who know the Turks, to regard as chimerical the
+ceding of Candia, Cyprus, and Egypt, projected by certain European
+potentates.
+
+
+And a general movement of war took place in both empires.  In every
+part armed men assembled.  Provisions, stores, and all the
+murderous apparatus of battle were displayed.  The temples of both
+nations, besieged by an immense multitude, presented a spectacle
+which fixed all my attention.
+
+On one side, the Mussulmen gathered before their mosques, washed
+their hands and feet, pared their nails, and combed their beards;
+then spreading carpets upon the ground, and turning towards the
+south, with their arms sometimes crossed and sometimes extended,
+they made genuflexions and prostrations, and recollecting the
+disasters of the late war, they exclaimed:
+
+God of mercy and clemency! hast thou then abandoned thy faithful
+people?  Thou who hast promised to thy Prophet dominion over
+nations, and stamped his religion by so many triumphs, dost thou
+deliver thy true believers to the swords of infidels?
+
+And the Imans and the Santons said to the people:
+
+It is in chastisement of your sins.  You eat pork; you drink wine;
+you touch unclean things.  God hath punished you.  Do penance
+therefore; purify; repeat the profession of faith;* fast from the
+rising to the setting sun; give the tenth of your goods to the
+mosques; go to Mecca; and God will render you victorious.
+
+
+* There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet.
+
+
+And the people, recovering courage, uttered loud cries:
+
+There is but one God, said they transported with fury, and Mahomet
+is his prophet!  Accursed be he who believeth not!
+
+God of goodness, grant us to exterminate these Christians; it is
+for thy glory we fight, and our death is a martyrdom for thy name.
+And then, offering victims, they prepared for battle.
+
+On the other side, the Russians, kneeling, said:
+
+We render thanks to God, and celebrate his power.  He hath
+strengthened our arm to humble his enemies.  Hear our prayers, thou
+God of mercy!  To please thee, we will pass three days without
+eating either meat or eggs.  Grant us to extirpate these impious
+Mahometans, and to overturn their empire.  To thee we will
+consecrate the tenth of our spoil; to thee we will raise new
+temples.
+
+And the priests filled the churches with clouds of smoke, and said
+to the people:
+
+We pray for you, God accepteth our incense, and blesseth your arms.
+Continue to fast and to fight; confess to us your secret sins; give
+your wealth to the church; we will absolve you from your crimes,
+and you shall die in a state of grace.
+
+And they sprinkled water upon the people, dealt out to them, as
+amulets and charms, small relics of the dead, and the people
+breathed war and combat.
+
+Struck with this contrast of the same passions, and grieving for
+their fatal consequences, I was considering the difficulty with
+which the common judge could yield to prayers so contradictory;
+when the Genius, glowing with anger, spoke with vehemence:
+
+What accents of madness strike my ear?  What blind and perverse
+delirium disorders the spirits of the nations?  Sacrilegious
+prayers rise not from the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their
+homicidal vows and impious thanksgivings!  Deluded mortals! is it
+thus you revere the Divinity?  Say then; how should he, whom you
+style your common father, receive the homage of his children
+murdering one another?  Ye victors! with what eye should he view
+your hands reeking in the blood he hath created?  And, what do you
+expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans?  Hath God the heart of
+a mortal, with passions ever changing?  Is he, like you, agitated
+with vengeance or compassion, with wrath or repentance?  What base
+conception of the most sublime of beings!  According to them, it
+would seem, that God whimsical and capricious, is angered or
+appeased as a man: that he loves and hates alternately; that he
+punishes or favors; that, weak or wicked, he broods over his
+hatred; that, contradictory or perfidious, he lays snares to
+entrap; that he punishes the evils he permits; that he foresees but
+hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt judge, he is bribed by
+offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes laws and revokes them;
+that, like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes favors without
+reason, and can only be appeased by servility.  Ah! now I know the
+lying spirit of man!  Contemplating the picture which he hath drawn
+of the Divinity: No, said I, it is not God who hath made man after
+the image of God; but man hath made God after the image of man; he
+hath given him his own mind, clothed him with his own propensities;
+ascribed to him his own judgments.  And when in this medley he
+finds the contradiction of his own principles, with hypocritical
+humility, he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the
+absurdities of his own mind the mysteries of God.
+
+He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change
+him; he hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him
+without ceasing.
+
+Imposters have arisen on the earth who have called themselves the
+confidants of God; and, erecting themselves into teachers of the
+people, have opened the ways of falsehood and iniquity; they have
+ascribed merit to practices indifferent or ridiculous; they have
+supposed a virtue, in certain postures, in pronouncing certain
+words, articulating certain names; they have transformed into a
+crime the eating of certain meats, the drinking of certain liquors,
+on one day rather than another.  The Jew would rather die than
+labor on the sabbath; the Persian would endure suffocation, before
+he would blow the fire with his breath; the Indian places supreme
+perfection in besmearing himself with cow-dung, and pronouncing
+mysteriously the word Aum;* the Mussulman believes he has expiated
+everything in washing his head and arms; and disputes, sword in
+hand, whether the ablution should commence at the elbow, or finger
+ends;** the Christian would think himself damned, if he ate flesh
+instead of milk or butter.  Oh sublime doctrines!  Doctrines truly
+from heaven!  Oh perfect morals, and worthy of martyrdom or the
+apostolate!  I will cross the seas to teach these admirable laws to
+the savage people--to distant nations; I will say unto them:
+
+
+* This word is, in the religion of the Hindoos, a sacred emblem of
+the Divinity.  It is only to be pronounced in secret, without being
+heard by any one.  It is formed of three letters, of which the
+first, a, signifies the principal of all, the creator, Brama; the
+second, u, the conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the
+destroyer, who puts an end to all, Chiven.  It is pronounced like
+the monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three Gods.
+The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega mentioned in the
+New Testament.
+
+** This is one of the grand points of schism between the partisans
+of Omar and those of Ali.  Suppose two Mahometans to meet on a
+journey, and to accost each other with brotherly affection: the
+hour of prayer arrives; one begins his ablution at his fingers, the
+other at the elbow, and instantly they are mortal enemies.  O
+sublime importance of religious opinions!  O profound philosophy of
+the authors of them!
+
+
+Children of nature, how long will you walk in the paths of
+ignorance? how long will you mistake the true principles of
+morality and religion?  Come and learn its lessons from nations
+truly pious and learned, in civilized countries.  They will inform
+you how, to gratify God, you must in certain months of the year,
+languish the whole day with hunger and thirst; how you may shed
+your neighbor's blood, and purify yourself from it by professions
+of faith and methodical ablutions; how you may steal his property
+and be absolved on sharing it with certain persons, who devote
+themselves to its consumption.
+
+Sovereign and invisible power of the universe! mysterious mover of
+nature! universal soul of beings! thou who art unknown, yet revered
+by mortals under so many names! being incomprehensible and
+infinite!  God, who in the immensity of the heavens directest the
+movement of worlds, and peoplest the abyss of space with millions
+of suns! say what do these human insects, which my sight no longer
+discerns on the earth, appear in thy eyes?  To thee, who art
+guiding stars in their orbits, what are those wormlings writhing
+themselves in the dust?  Of what import to thy immensity, their
+distinctions of parties and sects?  And of what concern the
+subtleties with which their folly torments itself?
+
+And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your practices!  In
+so many centuries, during which you have been following or altering
+them, what changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of
+nature?  Is the sun brighter?  Is the course of the seasons varied?
+Is the earth more fruitful, or its inhabitants more happy?  If God
+be good, can your penances please him?  If infinite, can your
+homage add to his glory?  If his decrees have been formed on
+foresight of every circumstance, can your prayers change them?
+Answer, O inconsistent mortals!
+
+Ye conquerors of the earth, who pretend you serve God! doth he need
+your aid?  If he wishes to punish, hath he not earthquakes,
+volcanoes, and thunder?  And cannot a merciful God correct without
+extermination?
+
+Ye Mussulmans, if God chastiseth you for violating the five
+precepts, how hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them?  If
+he governeth the earth by the Koran, by what did he govern it
+before the days of the prophet, when it was covered with so many
+nations who drank wine, ate pork, and went not to Mecca, whom he
+nevertheless permitted to raise powerful empires?  How did he judge
+the Sabeans of Nineveh and of Babylon; the Persian, worshipper of
+fire; the Greek and Roman idolators; the ancient kingdoms of the
+Nile; and your own ancestors, the Arabians and Tartars?  How doth
+he yet judge so many nations who deny, or know not your worship--
+the numerous castes of Indians, the vast empire of the Chinese, the
+sable race of Africa, the islanders of the ocean, the tribes of
+America?
+
+Presumptuous and ignorant men, who arrogate the earth to
+yourselves! if God were to gather all the generations past and
+present, what would be, in their ocean, the sects calling
+themselves universal, of Christians and Mussulmans?  What would be
+the judgments of his equal and common justice over the real
+universality of mankind?  Therein it is that your knowledge loseth
+itself in incoherent systems; it is there that truth shines with
+evidence; and there are manifested the powerful and simple laws of
+nature and reason--laws of a common and general mover--of a God
+impartial and just, who sheds rain on a country without asking who
+is its prophet; who causeth his sun to shine alike on all the races
+of men, on the white as on the black, on the Jew, on the Mussulman,
+the Christian, and the Idolater; who reareth the harvest wherever
+cultivated with diligence; who multiplieth every nation where
+industry and order prevaileth; who prospereth every empire where
+justice is practised, where the powerful are restrained, and the
+poor protected by the laws; where the weak live in safety, and all
+enjoy the rights given by nature and a compact formed in justice.
+
+These are the principles by which people are judged! this the true
+religion which regulates the destiny of empires, and which, O
+Ottomans, hath governed yours!  Interrogate your ancestors, ask of
+them by what means they rose to greatness; when few, poor and
+idolaters, they came from the deserts of Tartary and encamped in
+these fertile countries; ask if it was by Islamism, till then
+unknown to them, that they conquered the Greeks and the Arabs, or
+was it by their courage, their prudence, moderation, spirit of
+union--the true powers of the social state?  Then the Sultan
+himself dispensed justice, and maintained discipline.  The
+prevaricating judge, the extortionate governor, were punished, and
+the multitude lived at ease.  The cultivator was protected from the
+rapine of the janissary, and the fields prospered; the highways
+were safe, and commerce caused abundance.  You were a band of
+plunderers, but just among yourselves.  You subdued nations, but
+did not oppress them.  Harassed by their own princes, they
+preferred being your tributaries.  What matters it, said the
+Christian, whether my ruler breaks or adores images, if he renders
+justice to me?  God will judge his doctrines in the heavens above.
+
+You were sober and hardy; your enemies timid and enervated; you
+were expert in battle, your enemies unskillful; your leaders were
+experienced, your soldiers warlike and disciplined.  Booty excited
+ardor, bravery was rewarded, cowardice and insubordination
+punished, and all the springs of the human heart were in action.
+Thus you vanquished a hundred nations, and of a mass of conquered
+kingdoms compounded an immense empire.
+
+But other customs have succeeded; and in the reverses attending
+them, the laws of nature have still exerted their force.  After
+devouring your enemies, your cupidity, still insatiable, has
+reacted on itself, and, concentrated in your own bowels, has
+consumed you.
+
+Having become rich, you have quarrelled for partition and
+enjoyment, and disorder hath arisen in every class of society.
+
+The Sultan, intoxicated with grandeur, has mistaken the object of
+his functions; and all the vices of arbitrary power have been
+developed.  Meeting no obstacle to his appetites, he has become a
+depraved being; weak and arrogant, he has kept the people at a
+distance; and their voice has no longer instructed and guided him.
+Ignorant, yet flattered, neglecting all instruction, all study, he
+has fallen into imbecility; unfit for business, he has thrown its
+burdens on hirelings, and they have deceived him.  To satisfy their
+own passions, they have stimulated and nourished his; they have
+multiplied his wants, and his enormous luxury has consumed
+everything.  The frugal table, plain clothing, simple dwelling of
+his ancestors no longer sufficed.  To supply his pomp, earth and
+sea have been exhausted.  The rarest furs have been brought from
+the poles; the most costly tissues from the equator.  He has
+devoured at a meal the tribute of a city, and in a day that of a
+province.  He has surrounded himself with an army of women,
+eunuchs, and satellites.  They have instilled into him that the
+virtue of kings is to be liberal, and the munificence and treasures
+of the people have been delivered into the hands of flatterers.  In
+imitation of their master, his servants must also have splendid
+houses, the most exquisite furniture; carpets embroidered at great
+cost, vases of gold and silver for the lowest uses, and all the
+riches of the empire have been swallowed up in the Serai.
+
+To supply this inordinate luxury, the slaves and women have sold
+their influence, and venality has introduced a general depravation.
+The favor of the sovereign has been sold to his vizier, and the
+vizier has sold the empire.  The law has been sold to the cadi, and
+the cadi has made sale of justice.  The altar has been sold to the
+priest, and the priest has sold the kingdom of heaven.  And gold
+obtaining everything, they have sacrificed everything to obtain
+gold.  For gold, friend has betrayed friend, the child his parent,
+the servant his master, the wife her honor, the merchant his
+conscience; and good faith, morals, concord, and strength were
+banished from the state.
+
+The pacha, who had purchased the government of his province, farmed
+it out to others, who exercised every extortion.  He sold in turn
+the collection of the taxes, the command of the troops, the
+administration of the villages; and as every employ has been
+transient, rapine, spread from rank to rank, has been greedy and
+implacable.  The revenue officer has fleeced the merchant, and
+commerce was annihilated; the aga has plundered the husbandman, and
+culture has degenerated.  The laborer, deprived of his stock, has
+been unable to sow; the tax was augmented, and he could not pay it;
+the bastinado has been threatened, and he has borrowed.  Money,
+from want of security, being locked up from circulation, interest
+was therefore enormous, and the usury of the rich has aggravated
+the misery of the laborer.
+
+When excessive droughts and accidents of seasons have blasted the
+harvest, the government has admitted no delay, no indulgence for
+the tax; and distress bearing hard on the village, a part of its
+inhabitants have taken refuge in the cities; and their burdens
+falling on those who remained, has completed their ruin, and
+depopulated the country.
+
+If driven to extremity by tyranny and outrage, the villages have
+revolted, the pacha rejoices.  He wages war on them, assails their
+homes, pillages their property, carries off their stock; and when
+the fields have become a desert, he exclaims:
+
+"What care I?  I leave these fields to-morrow."
+
+The earth wanting laborers, the rain of heaven and overflowing of
+torrents have stagnated in marshes; and their putrid exhalations in
+a warm climate, have caused epidemics, plagues, and maladies of all
+sorts, whence have flowed additional suffering, penury, and ruin.
+
+Oh! who can enumerate all the calamities of tyrannical government?
+
+Sometimes the pachas declare war against each other, and for their
+personal quarrels the provinces of the same state are laid waste.
+Sometimes, fearing their masters, they attempt independence, and
+draw on their subjects the chastisement of their revolt.  Sometimes
+dreading their subjects, they invite and subsidize strangers, and
+to insure their fidelity set no bounds to their depredations.  Here
+they persecute the rich and despoil them under false pretences;
+there they suborn false witnesses, and impose penalties for
+suppositious offences; everywhere they excite the hatred of
+parties, encourage informations to obtain amercements, extort
+property, seize persons; and when their short-sighted avarice has
+accumulated into one mass all the riches of a country, the
+government, by an execrable perfidy, under pretence of avenging its
+oppressed people, takes to itself all their spoils, as if they were
+the culprits, and uselessly sheds the blood of its agents for a
+crime of which it is the accomplice.
+
+Oh wretches, monarchs or ministers, who sport with the lives and
+fortunes of the people!  Is it you who gave breath to man, that you
+dare take it from him?  Do you give growth to the plants of the
+earth, that you may waste them?  Do you toil to furrow the field?
+Do you endure the ardor of the sun, and the torment of thirst, to
+reap the harvest or thrash the grain?  Do you, like the shepherd,
+watch through the dews of the night?  Do you traverse deserts, like
+the merchant?  Ah! on beholding the pride and cruelty of the
+powerful, I have been transported with indignation, and have said
+in my wrath, will there never then arise on the earth men who will
+avenge the people and punish tyrants?  A handful of brigands devour
+the multitude, and the multitude submits to be devoured!  Oh!
+degenerate people!  Know you not your rights?  All authority is
+from you, all power is yours.  Unlawfully do kings command you on
+the authority of God and of their lance--Soldiers be still; if God
+supports the Sultan he needs not your aid; if his sword suffices,
+he needs not yours; let us see what he can do alone.  The soldiers
+grounded their arms; and behold these masters of the world, feeble
+as the meanest of their subjects!  People! know that those who
+govern are your chiefs, not your masters; your agents, not your
+owners; that they have no authority over you, but by you, and for
+you; that your wealth is yours and they accountable for it; that,
+kings or subjects, God has made all men equal, and no mortal has
+the right to oppress his fellow-creatures.
+
+But this nation and its chiefs have mistaken these holy truths.
+They must abide then the consequences of their blindness.  The
+decree is past; the day approaches when this colossus of power
+shall be crushed and crumbled under its own mass.  Yes, I swear it,
+by the ruins of so many empires destroyed.  The empire of the
+Crescent shall follow the fate of the despotism it has copied.  A
+nation of strangers shall drive the Sultan from his metropolis.
+The throne of Orkhan shall be overturned.  The last shoot of his
+trunk shall be broken off; and the horde of Oguzians,* deprived of
+their chief, shall disperse like that of the Nagois.  In this
+dissolution, the people of the empire, loosened from the yoke which
+united them, shall resume their ancient distinctions, and a general
+anarchy shall follow, as happened in the empire of the Sophis;**
+until there shall arise among the Arabians, Armenians, or Greeks,
+legislators who may compose new states.
+
+
+* Before the Turks took the name of their chief, Othman I., they
+bore that of Oguzians; and it was under this appellation that they
+were driven out of Tartary by Gengis, and came from the borders of
+Giboun to settle themselves in Anatolia.
+
+** In Persia, after the death of Thamas-Koulikan, each province had
+its chief, and for forty years these chiefs were in a constant
+state of war.  In this view the Turks do not say without reason:
+"Ten years of a tyrant are less destructive than a single night of
+anarchy."
+
+
+Oh! if there were on earth men profound and bold! what elements for
+grandeur and glory!  But the hour of destiny has already come; the
+cry of war strikes my ear; and the catastrophe begins.  In vain the
+Sultan leads forth his armies; his ignorant warriors are beaten and
+dispersed.  In vain he calls his subjects; their hearts are ice.
+Is it not written? say they, what matters who is our master?  We
+cannot lose by the change.
+
+In vain the true believers invoke heaven and the prophet.  The
+prophet is dead; and heaven without pity answers:
+
+Cease to invoke me.  You have caused your own misfortunes; cure
+them yourselves.  Nature has established laws; your part is to obey
+them.  Observe, reason, and profit by experience.  It is the folly
+of man which ruins him; let his wisdom save him.  The people are
+ignorant; let them gain instruction.  Their chiefs are wicked; let
+them correct and amend; for such is Nature's decree.  Since the
+evils of society spring from cupidity and ignorance, men will never
+cease to be persecuted, till they become enlightened and wise; till
+they practise justice, founded on a knowledge of their relations
+and of the laws of their organization.*
+
+
+* A singular moral phenomenon made its appearance in Europe in the
+year 1788.  A great nation, jealous of its liberty, contracted a
+fondness for a nation the enemy of liberty; a nation friendly to
+the arts, for a nation that detests them; a mild and tolerant
+nation, for a persecuting and fanatic one; a social and gay nation,
+for a nation whose characteristics are gloom and misanthropy; in a
+word, the French were smitten with a passion for the Turks: they
+were desirous of engaging in a war for them, and that at a time
+when revolution in their own country was just at its commencement.
+A man, who perceived the true nature of the situation, wrote a book
+to dissuade them from the war: it was immediately pretended that he
+was paid by the government, which in reality wished the war, and
+which was upon the point of shutting him up in a state prison.
+Another man wrote to recommend the war: he was applauded, and his
+word taken for the science, the politeness, and importance of the
+Turks.  It is true that he believed in his own thesis, for he has
+found among them people who cast a nativity, and alchymists who
+ruined his fortune; as he found Martinists at Paris, who enabled
+him to sup with Sesostris, and Magnetizers who concluded with
+destroying his existence.  Notwithstanding this, the Turks were
+beaten by the Russians, and the man who then predicted the fall of
+their empire, persists in the prediction.  The result of this fall
+will be a complete change of the political system, as far as it
+relates to the coast of the Mediterranean.  If, however, the French
+become important in proportion as they become free, and if they
+make use of the advantage they will obtain, their progress may
+easily prove of the most honorable sort; inasmuch as, by the wise
+decrees of fate, the true interest of mankind evermore accords with
+their true morality.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+WILL THE HUMAN RACE IMPROVE?
+
+
+At these words, oppressed with the painful sentiment with which
+their severity overwhelmed me: Woe to the nations! cried I, melting
+in tears; woe to myself!  Ah! now it is that I despair of the
+happiness of man!  Since his miseries proceed from his heart; since
+the remedy is in his own power, woe for ever to his existence!
+Who, indeed will ever be able to restrain the lust of wealth in the
+strong and powerful?  Who can enlighten the ignorance of the weak?
+Who can teach the multitude to know their rights, and force their
+chiefs to perform their duties?  Thus the race of man is always
+doomed to suffer!  Thus the individual will not cease to oppress
+the individual, a nation to attack a nation; and days of
+prosperity, of glory, for these regions, shall never return.  Alas!
+conquerors will come; they will drive out the oppressors, and fix
+themselves in their place; but, inheriting their power, they will
+inherit their rapacity; and the earth will have changed tyrants,
+without changing the tyranny.
+
+Then, turning to the Genius, I exclaimed:
+
+O Genius, despair hath settled on my soul.  Knowing the nature of
+man, the perversity of those who govern, and the debasement of the
+governed--this knowledge hath disgusted me with life; and since
+there is no choice but to be the accomplice or the victim of
+oppression, what remains to the man of virtue but to mingle his
+ashes with those of the tomb?
+
+The Genius then gave me a look of severity, mingled with
+compassion; and after a few moments of silence, he replied:
+
+Virtue, then, consists in dying!  The wicked man is indefatigable
+in consummating his crime, and the just is discouraged from doing
+good at the first obstacle he encounters!  But such is the human
+heart.  A little success intoxicates man with confidence; a reverse
+overturns and confounds him.  Always given up to the sensation of
+the moment, he seldom judges things from their nature, but from the
+impulse of his passion.
+
+Mortal, who despairest of the human race, on what profound
+combination of facts hast thou established thy conclusion?  Hast
+thou scrutinized the organization of sentient beings, to determine
+with precision whether the instinctive force which moves them on to
+happiness is essentially weaker than that which repels them from
+it? or, embracing in one glance the history of the species, and
+judging the future by the past, hast thou shown that all
+improvement is impossible?  Say! hath human society, since its
+origin, made no progress toward knowledge and a better state?  Are
+men still in their forests, destitute of everything, ignorant,
+stupid and ferocious?  Are all the nations still in that age when
+nothing was seen upon the globe but brutal robbers and brutal
+slaves?  If at any time, in any place, individuals have
+ameliorated, why shall not the whole mass ameliorate?  If partial
+societies have made improvements, what shall hinder the improvement
+of society in general?  And if the first obstacles are overcome,
+why should the others be insurmountable?
+
+Art thou disposed to think that the human race degenerates?  Guard
+against the illusion and paradoxes of the misanthrope.  Man,
+discontented with the present, imagines for the past a perfection
+which never existed, and which only serves to cover his chagrin.
+He praises the dead out of hatred to the living, and beats the
+children with the bones of their ancestors.
+
+To prove this pretended retrograde progress from perfection we must
+contradict the testimony of reason and of fact; and if the facts of
+history are in any measure uncertain, we must contradict the living
+fact of the organization of man; we must prove that he is born with
+the enlightened use of his senses; that, without experience, he can
+distinguish aliment from poison; that the child is wiser than the
+old man; that the blind walks with more safety than the clear-
+sighted; that the civilized man is more miserable than the savage;
+and, indeed, that there is no ascending scale in experience and
+instruction.
+
+Believe, young man, the testimony of monuments, and the voice of
+the tombs.  Some countries have doubtless fallen from what they
+were at certain epochs; but if we weigh the wisdom and happiness of
+their inhabitants, even in those times, we shall find more of
+splendor than of reality in their glory; we shall find, in the most
+celebrated of ancient states, enormous vices and cruel abuses, the
+true causes of their decay; we shall find in general that the
+principles of government were atrocious; that insolent robberies,
+barbarous wars and implacable hatreds were raging from nation to
+nation;* that natural right was unknown; that morality was
+perverted by senseless fanaticism and deplorable superstition; that
+a dream, a vision, an oracle, were constantly the causes of vast
+commotions.  Perhaps the nations are not yet entirely cured of all
+these evils; but their intensity at least is diminished, and the
+experience of the past has not been wholly lost.  For the last
+three centuries, especially, knowledge has increased and been
+extended; civilization, favored by happy circumstances, has made a
+sensible progress; inconveniences and abuses have even turned to
+its advantage; for if states have been too much extended by
+conquest, the people, by uniting under the same yoke, have lost the
+spirit of estrangement and division which made them all enemies one
+to the other.  If the powers of government have been more
+concentrated, there has been more system and harmony in their
+exercise.  If wars have become more extensive in the mass, they are
+less bloody in detail.  If men have gone to battle with less
+personality, less energy, their struggles have been less sanguinary
+and less ferocious; they have been less free, but less turbulent;
+more effeminate, but more pacific.  Despotism itself has rendered
+them some service; for if governments have been more absolute, they
+have been more quiet and less tempestuous.  If thrones have become
+a property and hereditary, they have excited less dissensions, and
+the people have suffered fewer convulsions; finally, if the
+despots, jealous and mysterious, have interdicted all knowledge of
+their administration, all concurrence in the management of public
+affairs, the passions of men, drawn aside from politics, have fixed
+upon the arts, and the sciences of nature; and the sphere of ideas
+in every direction has been enlarged; man, devoted to abstract
+studies, has better understood his place in the system of nature,
+and his relations in society; principles have been better
+discussed, final causes better explained, knowledge more extended,
+individuals better instructed, manners more social, and life more
+happy.  The species at large, especially in certain countries, has
+gained considerably; and this amelioration cannot but increase in
+future, because its two principal obstacles, those even which, till
+then, had rendered it slow and sometimes retrograde,--the
+difficulty of transmitting ideas and of communicating them
+rapidly,--have been at last removed.
+
+
+* Read the history of the wars of Rome and Carthage, of Sparta and
+Messina, of Athens and Syracuse, of the Hebrews and the
+Phoenicians: yet these are the nations of which antiquity boasts as
+being most polished!
+
+
+Indeed, among the ancients, each canton, each city, being isolated
+from all others by the difference of its language, the consequence
+was favorable to ignorance and anarchy.  There was no communication
+of ideas, no participation of discoveries, no harmony of interests
+or of wills, no unity of action or design; besides, the only means
+of transmitting and of propagating ideas being that of speech,
+fugitive and limited, and that of writing, tedious of execution,
+expensive and scarce, the consequence was a hindrance of present
+instruction, loss of experience from one generation to another,
+instability, retrogression of knowledge, and a perpetuity of
+confusion and childhood.
+
+But in the modern world, especially in Europe, great nations having
+allied themselves in language, and established vast communities of
+opinions, the minds of men are assimilated, and their affections
+extended; there is a sympathy of opinion and a unity of action;
+then that gift of heavenly Genius, the holy art of printing, having
+furnished the means of communicating in an instant the same idea to
+millions of men, and of fixing it in a durable manner, beyond the
+power of tyrants to arrest or annihilate, there arose a mass of
+progressive instruction, an expanding atmosphere of science, which
+assures to future ages a solid amelioration.  This amelioration is
+a necessary effect of the laws of nature; for, by the law of
+sensibility, man as invincibly tends to render himself happy as the
+flame to mount, the stone to descend, or the water to find its
+level.  His obstacle is his ignorance, which misleads him in the
+means, and deceives him in causes and effects.  He will enlighten
+himself by experience; he will become right by dint of errors; he
+will grow wise and good because it is his interest so to be.  Ideas
+being communicated through the nation, whole classes will gain
+instruction; science will become a vulgar possession, and all men
+will know what are the principles of individual happiness and of
+public prosperity.  They will know the relations they bear to
+society, their duties and their rights; they will learn to guard
+against the illusions of the lust of gain; they will perceive that
+the science of morals is a physical science, composed, indeed, of
+elements complicated in their operation, but simple and invariable
+in their nature, since they are only the elements of the
+organization of man.  They will see the propriety of being moderate
+and just, because in that is found the advantage and security of
+each; they will perceive that the wish to enjoy at the expense of
+another is a false calculation of ignorance, because it gives rise
+to reprisal, hatred, and vengeance, and that dishonesty is the
+never-failing offspring of folly.
+
+Individuals will feel that private happiness is allied to public
+good:
+
+The weak, that instead of dividing their interests, they ought to
+unite them, because equality constitutes their force:
+
+The rich, that the measure of enjoyment is bounded by the
+constitution of the organs, and that lassitude follows satiety:
+
+The poor, that the employment of time, and the peace of the heart,
+compose the highest happiness of man.  And public opinion, reaching
+kings on their thrones, will force them to confine themselves to
+the limits of regular authority.
+
+Even chance itself, serving the cause of nations, will sometimes
+give them feeble chiefs, who, through weakness, will suffer them to
+become free; and sometimes enlightened chiefs, who, from a
+principle of virtue, will free them.
+
+And when nations, free and enlightened, shall become like great
+individuals, the whole species will have the same facilities as
+particular portions now have; the communication of knowledge will
+extend from one to another, and thus reach the whole.  By the law
+of imitation, the example of one people will be followed by others,
+who will adopt its spirit and its laws.  Even despots, perceiving
+that they can no longer maintain their authority without justice
+and beneficence, will soften their sway from necessity, from
+rivalship; and civilization will become universal.
+
+There will be established among the several nations an equilibrium
+of force, which, restraining them all within the bounds of the
+respect due to their reciprocal rights, shall put an end to the
+barbarous practice of war, and submit their disputes to civil
+arbitration.*  The human race will become one great society, one
+individual family, governed by the same spirit, by common laws, and
+enjoying all the happiness of which their nature is susceptible.
+
+
+* What is a people?  An individual of the society at large.  What a
+war?  A duel between two individual people.  In what manner ought a
+society to act when two of its members fight?  Interfere and
+reconcile, or repress them.  In the days of the Abbe de Saint
+Pierre this was treated as a dream, but happily for the human race
+it begins to be realized.
+
+
+Doubtless this great work will be long accomplishing; because the
+same movement must be given to an immense body; the same leaven
+must assimilate an enormous mass of heterogeneous parts.  But this
+movement shall be effected; its presages are already to be seen.
+Already the great society, assuming in its course the same
+characters as partial societies have done, is evidently tending to
+a like result.  At first disconnected in all its parts, it saw its
+members for a long time without cohesion; and this general solitude
+of nations formed its first age of anarchy and childhood; divided
+afterwards by chance into irregular sections, called states and
+kingdoms, it has experienced the fatal effects of an extreme
+inequality of wealth and rank; and the aristocracy of great empires
+has formed its second age; then, these lordly states disputing for
+preeminence, have exhibited the period of the shock of factions.
+
+At present the contending parties, wearied with discord, feel the
+want of laws, and sigh for the age of order and of peace.  Let but
+a virtuous chief arise! a just, a powerful people appear! and the
+earth will raise them to supreme power.  The world is waiting for a
+legislative people; it wishes and demands it; and my heart attends
+the cry.
+
+Then turning towards the west: Yes, continued he, a hollow sound
+already strikes my ear; a cry of liberty, proceeding from far
+distant shores, resounds on the ancient continent.  At this cry, a
+secret murmur against oppression is raised in a powerful nation; a
+salutary inquietude alarms her respecting her situation; she
+enquires what she is, and what she ought to be; while, surprised at
+her own weakness, she interrogates her rights, her resources, and
+what has been the conduct of her chiefs.
+
+Yet another day--a little more reflection--and an immense agitation
+will begin; a new-born age will open! an age of astonishment to
+vulgar minds, of terror to tyrants, of freedom to a great nation,
+and of hope to the human race!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE GREAT OBSTACLE TO IMPROVEMENT.
+
+
+The Genius ceased.  But preoccupied with melancholy thoughts, my
+mind resisted persuasion; fearing, however, to shock him by my
+resistance, I remained silent.  After a while, turning to me with a
+look which pierced my soul, he said:
+
+Thou art silent, and thy heart is agitated with thoughts which it
+dares not utter.
+
+At last, troubled and terrified, I replied:
+
+O Genius, pardon my weakness.  Doubtless thy mouth can utter
+nothing but truth; but thy celestial intelligence can seize its
+rays, where my gross faculties can discern nothing but clouds.  I
+confess it; conviction has not penetrated my soul, and I feared
+that my doubts might offend thee.
+
+And what is doubt, replied he, that it should be a crime?  Can man
+feel otherwise than as he is affected?  If a truth be palpable, and
+of importance in practice, let us pity him that misconceives it.
+His punishment will arise from his blindness.  If it be uncertain
+or equivocal, how is he to find in it what it has not?  To believe
+without evidence or proof, is an act of ignorance and folly.  The
+credulous man loses himself in a labyrinth of contradictions; the
+man of sense examines and discusses, that he may be consistent in
+his opinions.  The honest man will bear contradiction; because it
+gives rise to evidence.  Violence is the argument of falsehood; and
+to impose a creed by authority is the act and indication of a
+tyrant.
+
+O Genius, said I, encouraged by these words, since my reason is
+free, I strive in vain to entertain the flattering hope with which
+you endeavor to console me.  The sensible and virtuous soul is
+easily caught with dreams of happiness; but a cruel reality
+constantly awakens it to suffering and wretchedness.  The more I
+meditate on the nature of man, the more I examine the present state
+of societies, the less possible it appears to realize a world of
+wisdom and felicity.  I cast my eye over the whole of our
+hemisphere; I perceive in no place the germ, nor do I foresee the
+instinctive energy of a happy revolution.  All Asia lies buried in
+profound darkness.  The Chinese, governed by an insolent
+despotism,* by strokes of the bamboo and the cast of lots,
+restrained by an immutable code of gestures, and by the radical
+vices of an ill-constructed language,** appear to be in their
+abortive civilization nothing but a race of automatons.  The
+Indian, borne down by prejudices, and enchained in the sacred
+fetters of his castes, vegetates in an incurable apathy.  The
+Tartar, wandering or fixed, always ignorant and ferocious, lives in
+the savageness of his ancestors.  The Arab, endowed with a happy
+genius, loses its force and the fruits of his virtue in the anarchy
+of his tribes and the jealousy of his families.  The African,
+degraded from the rank of man, seems irrevocably doomed to
+servitude.  In the North I see nothing but vilified serfs, herds of
+men with which landlords stock their estates.  Ignorance, tyranny,
+and wretchedness have everywhere stupified the nations; and vicious
+habits, depraving the natural senses, have destroyed the very
+instinct of happiness and of truth.
+
+
+* The emperor of China calls himself the son of heaven; that is, of
+God: for in the opinion of the Chinese, the material of heaven, the
+arbiter of fatality, is the Deity himself.  "The emperor only shows
+himself once in ten months, lest the people, accustomed to see him,
+might lose their respect; for he holds it as a maxim that power can
+only be supported by force, that the people have no idea of
+justice, and are not to be governed but by coercion."  Narrative of
+two Mahometan travellers in 851 and 877, translated by the Abbe
+Renaudot in 1718.
+
+Notwithstanding what is asserted by the missionaries, this
+situation has undergone no change.  The bamboo still reigns in
+China, and the son of heaven bastinades, for the most trivial
+fault, the Mandarin, who in his turn bastinades the people.  The
+Jesuits may tell us that this is the best governed country in the
+world, and its inhabitants the happiest of men: but a single letter
+from Amyot has convinced me that China is a truly Turkish
+government, and the account of Sonnerat confirms it.  See Vol. II.
+of Voyage aux Indes, in 4to.
+
+** As long as the Chinese shall in writing make use of their
+present characters, they can be expected to make no progress in
+civilization.  The necessary introductory step must be the giving
+them an alphabet like our own, or of substituting in the room of
+their language that of the Tartars.  The improvement made in the
+latter by M. de Lengles, is calculated to introduce this change.
+See the Mantchou alphabet, the production of a mind truly learned
+in the formation of language.
+
+
+In some parts of Europe, indeed, reason has begun to dawn, but even
+there, do nations partake of the knowledge of individuals?  Are the
+talents and genius of governors turned to the benefit of the
+people?  And those nations which call themselves polished, are they
+not the same that for the last three centuries have filled the
+earth with their injustice?  Are they not those who, under the
+pretext of commerce, have desolated India, depopulated a new
+continent, and, at present, subject Africa to the most barbarous
+slavery?  Can liberty be born from the bosom of despots? and shall
+justice be rendered by the hands of piracy and avarice?  O Genius,
+I have seen the civilized countries; and the mockery of their
+wisdom has vanished before my sight.  I saw wealth accumulated in
+the hands of a few, and the multitude poor and destitute.  I have
+seen all rights, all powers concentered in certain classes, and the
+mass of the people passive and dependent.  I have seen families of
+princes, but no families of the nation.  I have seen government
+interests, but no public interests or spirit.  I have seen that all
+the science of government was to oppress prudently; and the refined
+servitude of polished nations appeared to me only the more
+irremediable.
+
+One obstacle above all has profoundly struck my mind.  On looking
+over the world, I have seen it divided into twenty different
+systems of religion.  Every nation has received, or formed,
+opposite opinions; and every one ascribing to itself the exclusive
+possession of the truth, must believe the other to be wrong.  Now
+if, as must be the fact in this discordance of opinion, the greater
+part are in error, and are honest in it, then it follows that our
+mind embraces falsehood as it does truth; and if so, how is it to
+be enlightened?  When prejudice has once seized the mind, how is it
+to be dissipated?  How shall we remove the bandage from our eyes,
+when the first article in every creed, the first dogma in all
+religion, is the absolute proscription of doubt, the interdiction
+of examination, and the rejection of our own judgment?  How is
+truth to make herself known?--If she resorts to arguments and
+proofs, the timid man stifles the voice of his own conscience; if
+she invokes the authority of celestial powers, he opposes it with
+another authority of the same origin, with which he is preoccupied;
+and he treats all innovation as blasphemy.  Thus man in his
+blindness, has riveted his own chains, and surrendered himself
+forever, without defence, to the sport of his ignorance and his
+passions.
+
+To dissolve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy
+events would be necessary.  A whole nation, cured of the delirium
+of superstition, must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism.
+Freed from the yoke of false doctrine, a whole people must impose
+upon itself that of true morality and reason.  This people should
+be courageous and prudent, wise and docile.  Each individual,
+knowing his rights, should not transgress them.  The poor should
+know how to resist seduction, and the rich the allurements of
+avarice.  There should be found leaders disinterested and just, and
+their tyrants should be seized with a spirit of madness and folly.
+This people, recovering its rights, should feel its inability to
+exercise them in person, and should name its representatives.
+Creator of its magistrates, it should know at once to respect them
+and to judge them.  In the sudden reform of a whole nation,
+accustomed to live by abuses, each individual displaced should bear
+with patience his privations, and submit to a change of habits.
+This nation should have the courage to conquer its liberty; the
+power to defend it, the wisdom to establish it, and the generosity
+to extend it to others.  And can we ever expect the union of so
+many circumstances?  But suppose that chance in its infinite
+combinations should produce them, shall I see those fortunate days.
+Will not my ashes long ere then be mouldering in the tomb?
+
+Here, sunk in sorrow, my oppressed heart no longer found utterance.
+The Genius answered not, but I heard him whisper to himself:
+
+Let us revive the hope of this man; for if he who loves his fellow
+creatures be suffered to despair, what will become of nations?  The
+past is perhaps too discouraging; I must anticipate futurity, and
+disclose to the eye of virtue the astonishing age that is ready to
+begin; that, on viewing the object she desires, she may be animated
+with new ardor, and redouble her efforts to attain it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE NEW AGE.
+
+
+Scarcely had he finished these words, when a great tumult arose in
+the west; and turning to that quarter, I perceived, at the
+extremity of the Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a
+prodigious movement--such as when a violent sedition arises in a
+vast city--a numberless people, rushing in all directions, pour
+through the streets and fluctuate like waves in the public places.
+My ear, struck with the cries which resounded to the heavens,
+distinguished these words:
+
+What is this new prodigy?  What cruel and mysterious scourge is
+this?  We are a numerous people and we want hands!  We have an
+excellent soil, and we are in want of subsistence?  We are active
+and laborious, and we live in indigence!  We pay enormous tributes,
+and we are told they are not sufficient!  We are at peace without,
+and our persons and property are not safe within.  Who, then, is
+the secret enemy that devours us?
+
+Some voices from the midst of the multitude replied:
+
+Raise a discriminating standard; and let all those who maintain and
+nourish mankind by useful labors gather round it; and you will
+discover the enemy that preys upon you.
+
+The standard being raised, this nation divided itself at once into
+two bodies of unequal magnitude and contrasted appearance.  The
+one, innumerable, and almost total, exhibited in the poverty of its
+clothing, in its emaciated appearance and sun-burnt faces, the
+marks of misery and labor; the other, a little group, an
+insignificant faction, presented in its rich attire embroidered
+with gold and silver, and in its sleek and ruddy faces, the signs
+of leisure and abundance.
+
+Considering these men more attentively, I found that the great body
+was composed of farmers, artificers, merchants, all professions
+useful to society; and that the little group was made up of priests
+of every order, of financiers, of nobles, of men in livery, of
+commanders of armies; in a word, of the civil, military, and
+religious agents of government.
+
+These two bodies being assembled face to face, and regarding each
+other with astonishment, I saw indignation and rage arising in one
+side, and a sort of panic in the other.  And the large body said to
+the little one: Why are you separated from us?  Are you not of our
+number?
+
+No, replied the group; you are the people; we are a privileged
+class, who have our laws, customs, and rights, peculiar to
+ourselves.
+
+PEOPLE.--And what labor do you perform in our society?
+
+PRIVILEGED CLASS.--None; we are not made to work.
+
+PEOPLE.--How, then, have you acquired these riches?
+
+PRIVILEGED CLASS.--By taking the pains to govern you.
+
+PEOPLE.--What! is this what you call governing?  We toil and you
+enjoy! we produce and you dissipate!  Wealth proceeds from us, and
+you absorb it.  Privileged men! class who are not the people; form
+a nation apart, and govern yourselves.*
+
+
+* This dialogue between the people and the indolent classes, is
+applicable to every society; it contains the seeds of all the
+political vices and disorders that prevail, and which may thus be
+defined: Men who do nothing, and who devour the substance of
+others; and men who arrogate to themselves particular rights and
+exclusive privileges of wealth and indolence.  Compare the Mamlouks
+of Egypt, the nobility of Europe, the Nairs of India, the Emirs of
+Arabia, the patricians of Rome, the Christian clergy, the Imans,
+the Bramins, the Bonzes, the Lamas, etc., etc., and you will find
+in all the same characteristic feature:--Men living in idleness at
+the expense of those who labor.
+
+
+Then the little group, deliberating on this new state of things,
+some of the most honorable among them said: We must join the people
+and partake of their labors and burdens, for they are men like us,
+and our riches come from them; but others arrogantly exclaimed: It
+would be a shame, an infamy, for us to mingle with the crowd; they
+are born to serve us.  Are we not men of another race--the noble
+and pure descendants of the conquerors of this empire?  This
+multitude must be reminded of our rights and its own origin.
+
+THE NOBLES.--People! know you not that our ancestors conquered this
+land, and that your race was spared only on condition of serving
+us?  This is our social compact! this the government constituted by
+custom and prescribed by time.
+
+PEOPLE.--O conquerors, pure of blood! show us your genealogies! we
+shall then see if what in an individual is robbery and plunder, can
+be virtuous in a nation.
+
+And forthwith, voices were heard in every quarter calling out the
+nobles by their names; and relating their origin and parentage,
+they told how the grandfather, great-grandfather, or even father,
+born traders and mechanics, after acquiring wealth in every way,
+had purchased their nobility for money: so that but very few
+families were really of the original stock.  See, said these
+voices, see these purse-proud commoners who deny their parents! see
+these plebian recruits who look upon themselves as illustrious
+veterans! and peals of laughter were heard.
+
+And the civil governors said: these people are mild, and naturally
+servile; speak to them of the king and of the law, and they will
+return to their duty.  People! the king wills, the sovereign
+ordains!
+
+PEOPLE.--The king can will nothing but the good of the people; the
+sovereign can only ordain according to law.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--The law commands you to be submissive.
+
+PEOPLE.--The law is the general will; and we will a new order of
+things.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--You are then a rebel people.
+
+PEOPLE.--A nation cannot revolt; tyrants only are rebels.
+
+CIVIL GOVERNORS.--The king is on our side; he commands you to
+submit.
+
+PEOPLE.--Kings are inseparable from their nations.  Our king cannot
+be with you; you possess only his phantom.
+
+And the military governors came forward.  The people are timorous,
+said they; we must threaten them; they will submit only to force.
+Soldiers, chastise this insolent multitude.
+
+PEOPLE.--Soldiers, you are of our blood!  Will you strike your
+brothers, your relatives?  If the people perish who will nourish
+the army?
+
+And the soldiers, grounding their arms, said to the chiefs:
+
+We are likewise the people; show us the enemy!
+
+Then the ecclesiastical governors said: There is but one resource
+left.  The people are superstitious; we must frighten them with the
+names of God and religion.
+
+Our dear brethren! our children!  God has ordained us to govern
+you.
+
+PEOPLE.--Show us your credentials from God!
+
+PRIESTS.--You must have faith; reason leads astray.
+
+PEOPLE.--Do you govern without reason?
+
+PRIESTS.--God commands peace!  Religion prescribes obedience.
+
+PEOPLE.--Peace supposes justice.  Obedience implies conviction of a
+duty.
+
+PRIESTS.--Suffering is the business of this world.
+
+PEOPLE.--Show us the example.
+
+PRIESTS.--Would you live without gods or kings?
+
+PEOPLE.--We would live without oppressors.
+
+PRIESTS.--You must have mediators, intercessors.
+
+PEOPLE.--Mediators with God and with the king! courtiers and
+priests, your services are too expensive: we will henceforth manage
+our own affairs.
+
+And the little group said: We are lost! the multitude are
+enlightened.
+
+And the people answered: You are safe; since we are enlightened we
+will commit no violence; we only claim our rights.  We feel
+resentments, but we will forget them.  We were slaves, we might
+command; but we only wish to be free, and liberty is but justice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A FREE AND LEGISLATIVE PEOPLE.
+
+
+Considering that all public power was now suspended, and that the
+habitual restraint of the people had suddenly ceased, I shuddered
+with the apprehension that they would fall into the dissolution of
+anarchy.  But, taking their affairs into immediate deliberation,
+they said:
+
+It is not enough that we have freed ourselves from tyrants and
+parasites; we must prevent their return.  We are men, and
+experience has abundantly taught us that every man is fond of
+power, and wishes to enjoy it at the expense of others.  It is
+necessary, then, to guard against a propensity which is the source
+of discord; we must establish certain rules of duty and of right.
+But the knowledge of our rights, and the estimation of our duties,
+are so abstract and difficult as to require all the time and all
+the faculties of a man.  Occupied in our own affairs, we have not
+leisure for these studies; nor can we exercise these functions in
+our own persons.  Let us choose, then, among ourselves, such
+persons as are capable of this employment.  To them we will
+delegate our powers to institute our government and laws.  They
+shall be the representatives of our wills and of our interests.
+And in order to attain the fairest representation possible of our
+wills and our interests, let it be numerous, and composed of men
+resembling ourselves.
+
+Having made the election of a numerous body of delegates, the
+people thus addressed them:
+
+We have hitherto lived in a society formed by chance, without fixed
+agreements, without free conventions, without a stipulation of
+rights, without reciprocal engagements,--and a multitude of
+disorders and evils have arisen from this precarious state.  We are
+now determined on forming a regular compact; and we have chosen you
+to adjust the articles.  Examine, then, with care what ought to be
+its basis and its conditions; consider what is the end and the
+principles of every association; recognize the rights which every
+member brings, the powers which he delegates, and those which be
+reserves to himself.  Point out to us the rules of conduct--the
+basis of just and equitable laws.  Prepare for us a new system of
+government; for we realize that the one which has hitherto guided
+us is corrupt.  Our fathers have wandered in the paths of
+ignorance, and habit has taught us to follow in their footsteps.
+Everything has been done by fraud, violence, and delusion; and the
+true laws of morality and reason are still obscure.  Clear up,
+then, their chaos; trace out their connection; publish their code,
+and we will adopt it.
+
+And the people raised a large throne, in the form of a pyramid, and
+seating on it the men they had chosen, said to them:
+
+We raise you to-day above us, that you may better discover the
+whole of our relations, and be above the reach of our passions.
+But remember that you are our fellow-citizens; that the power we
+confer on you is our own; that we deposit it with you, but not as a
+property or a heritage; that you must be the first to obey the laws
+you make; that to-morrow you redescend among us, and that you will
+have acquired no other right but that of our esteem and gratitude.
+And consider what a tribute of glory the world, which reveres so
+many apostles of error, will bestow on the first assembly of
+rational men, who shall have declared the unchangeable principles
+of justice, and consecrated, in the face of tyrants, the rights of
+nations.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+UNIVERSAL BASIS OF ALL RIGHT AND ALL LAW.
+
+
+The men chosen by the people to investigate the true principles of
+morals and of reason then proceeded in the sacred object of their
+mission; and, after a long examination, having discovered a
+fundamental and universal principle, a legislator arose and said to
+the people:
+
+Here is the primordial basis, the physical origin of all justice
+and of all right.
+
+Whatever be the active power, the moving cause, that governs the
+universe, since it has given to all men the same organs, the same
+sensations, and the same wants, it has thereby declared that it has
+given to all the same right to the use of its treasures, and that
+all men are equal in the order of nature.
+
+And, since this power has given to each man the necessary means of
+preserving his own existence, it is evident that it has constituted
+them all independent one of another; that it has created them free;
+that no one is subject to another; that each one is absolute
+proprietor of his own person.
+
+Equality and liberty are, therefore, two essential attributes of
+man, two laws of the Divinity, constitutional and unchangeable,
+like the physical properties of matter.
+
+Now, every individual being absolute master of his own person, it
+follows that a full and free consent is a condition indispensable
+to all contracts and all engagements.
+
+Again, since each individual is equal to another, it follows that
+the balance of what is received and of what is given, should be
+strictly in equilibrium; so that the idea of justice, of equity,
+necessarily imports that of equality.*
+
+
+* The etymology of the words themselves trace out to us this
+connection: equilibrium, equalitas, equitas, are all of one family,
+and the physical idea of equality, in the scales of a balance, is
+the source and type of all the rest.
+
+
+Equality and liberty are therefore the physical and unalterable
+basis of every union of men in society, and of course the necessary
+and generating principle of every law and of every system of
+regular government.*
+
+
+* In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of ideas in
+the first article, liberty being placed before equality, from which
+it in reality springs.  This defect is not to be wondered at; the
+science of the rights of man is a new science: it was invented
+yesterday by the Americans, to-day the French are perfecting it,
+but there yet remains a great deal to be done.  In the ideas that
+constitute it there is a genealogical order which, from us basis,
+physical equality, to the minutest and most remote branches of
+government, ought to proceed in an uninterrupted series of
+inferences.
+
+
+A disregard of this basis has introduced in your nation, and in
+every other, those disorders which have finally roused you.  It is
+by returning to this rule that you may reform them, and reorganize
+a happy order of society.
+
+But observe, this reorganization will occasion a violent shock in
+your habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices.  Vicious contracts
+and abusive claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill
+founded property renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a
+state of nature.  Consider whether you can consent to so many
+sacrifices.
+
+Then, reflecting on the cupidity inherent in the heart of man, I
+thought that this people would renounce all ideas of amelioration.
+
+But, in a moment, a great number of men, advancing toward the
+pyramid, made a solemn abjuration of all their distinctions and all
+their riches.
+
+Establish for us, said they, the laws of equality and liberty; we
+will possess nothing in future but on the title of justice.
+
+Equality, liberty, justice,--these shall be our code, and shall be
+written on our standards.
+
+And the people immediately raised a great standard, inscribed with
+these three words, in three different colors.  They displayed it
+over the pyramid of the legislators, and for the first time the
+flag of universal justice floated on the face of the earth.
+
+And the people raised before the pyramid a new altar, on which they
+placed a golden balance, a sword, and a book with this inscription:
+
+
+TO EQUAL LAW, WHICH JUDGES AND PROTECTS.
+
+
+And having surrounded the pyramid and the altar with a vast
+amphitheatre, all the people took their seats to hear the
+publication of the law.  And millions of men, raising at once their
+hands to heaven, took the solemn oath to live equal, free, and
+just; to respect their reciprocal properties and rights; to obey
+the law and its regularly chosen representatives.
+
+
+A spectacle so impressive and sublime, so replete with generous
+emotions, moved me to tears; and addressing myself to the Genius, I
+exclaimed: Let me now live, for in future I have everything to
+hope.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+CONSTERNATION AND CONSPIRACY OF TYRANTS.
+
+
+But scarcely had the solemn voice of liberty and equality resounded
+through the earth, when a movement of confusion, of astonishment,
+arose in different nations.  On the one hand, the people, warmed
+with desire, but wavering between hope and fear, between the
+sentiment of right and the habit of obedience, began to be in
+motion.  The kings, on the other hand, suddenly awakened from the
+sleep of indolence and despotism, were alarmed for the safety of
+their thrones; while, on all sides, those clans of civil and
+religious tyrants, who deceive kings and oppress the people, were
+seized with rage and consternation; and, concerting their
+perfidious plans, they said: Woe to us, if this fatal cry of
+liberty comes to the ears of the multitude!  Woe to us, if this
+pernicious spirit of justice be propagated!
+
+And, pointing to the floating banner, they continued:
+
+Consider what a swarm of evils are included in these three words!
+If all men are equal, where is our exclusive right to honors and to
+power?  If all men are to be free, what becomes of our slaves, our
+vassals, our property?  If all are equal in the civil state, where
+is our prerogative of birth, of inheritance? and what becomes of
+nobility?  If they are all equal in the sight of God, what need of
+mediators?--where is the priesthood?  Let us hasten, then, to
+destroy a germ so prolific, and so contagious.  We must employ all
+our cunning against this innovation.  We must frighten the kings,
+that they may join us in the cause.  We must divide the people by
+national jealousies, and occupy them with commotions, wars, and
+conquests.  They must be alarmed at the power of this free nation.
+Let us form a league against the common enemy, demolish that
+sacrilegious standard, overturn that throne of rebellion, and
+stifle in its birth the flame of revolution.
+
+And, indeed, the civil and religious tyrants of nations formed a
+general combination; and, multiplying their followers by force and
+seduction, they marched in hostile array against the free nation;
+and, surrounding the altar and the pyramid of natural law, they
+demanded with loud cries:
+
+What is this new and heretical doctrine? what this impious altar,
+this sacrilegious worship?  True believers and loyal subjects! can
+you suppose that truth has been first discovered to-day, and that
+hitherto you have been walking in error? that those men, more
+fortunate than you, have the sole privilege of wisdom?  And you,
+rebel and misguided nation, perceive you not that your new leaders
+are misleading you? that they destroy the principles of your faith,
+and overturn the religion of your ancestors?  Ah, tremble! lest the
+wrath of heaven should kindle against you; and hasten by speedy
+repentance to retrieve your error.
+
+But, inaccessible to seduction as well as to fear, the free nation
+kept silence, and rising universally in arms, assumed an imposing
+attitude.
+
+And the legislator said to the chiefs of nations:
+
+If while we walked with a bandage on our eyes the light guided our
+steps, why, since we are no longer blindfold, should it fly from
+our search?  If guides, who teach mankind to see for themselves,
+mislead and deceive them, what can be expected from those who
+profess to keep them in darkness?
+
+But hark, ye leaders of nations!  If you possess the truth, show it
+to us, and we will receive it with gratitude, for we seek it with
+ardor, and have a great interest in finding it.  We are men, and
+liable to be deceived; but you are also men, and equally fallible.
+Aid us then in this labyrinth, where the human race has wandered
+for so many ages; help us to dissipate the illusion of so many
+prejudices and vicious habits.  Amid the shock of so many opinions
+which dispute for our acceptance, assist us in discovering the
+proper and distinctive character of truth.  Let us this day
+terminate the long combat with error.  Let us establish between it
+and truth a solemn contest, to which we will invite the opinions of
+men of all nations.  Let us convoke a general assembly of the
+nations.  Let them be judges in their own cause; and in the debate
+of all systems, let no champion, no argument, be wanting, either on
+the side of prejudice or of reason; and let the sentiment of a
+general and common mass of evidence give birth to a universal
+concord of opinions and of hearts.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE NATIONS.
+
+
+Thus spoke the legislator; and the multitude, seized with those
+emotions which a reasonable proposition always inspires, expressed
+its applause; while the tyrants, left without support, were
+overwhelmed with confusion.
+
+A scene of a new and astonishing nature then opened to my view.
+All that the earth contains of people and of nations; men of every
+race and of every region, converging from their various climates,
+seemed to assemble in one allotted place; where, forming an immense
+congress, distinguished in groups by the vast variety of their
+dresses, features, and complexion, the numberless multitude
+presented a most unusual and affecting sight.
+
+On one side I saw the European, with his short close coat, pointed
+triangular hat, smooth chin, and powdered hair; on the other side
+the Asiatic, with a flowing robe, long beard, shaved head, and
+round turban.  Here stood the nations of Africa, with their ebony
+skins, their woolly hair, their body girt with white and blue
+tissues of bark, adorned with bracelets and necklaces of coral,
+shells, and glass; there the tribes of the north, enveloped in
+their leathern bags; the Laplander, with his pointed bonnet and his
+snow-shoes; the Samoyede, with his feverish body and strong odor;
+the Tongouse, with his horned cap, and carrying his idols pendant
+from his neck; the Yakoute, with his freckled face; the Kalmuc,
+with his flat nose and little retorted eyes.  Farther distant were
+the Chinese, attired in silk, with their hair hanging in tresses;
+the Japanese, of mingled race; the Malays, with wide-spreading
+ears, rings in their noses, and palm-leaf hats of vast
+circumference;* and the tattooed races of the isles of the southern
+ocean and of the continent of the antipodes.**  The view of so many
+varieties of the same species, of so many extravagant inventions of
+the same understanding, and of so many modifications of the same
+organization, affected me with a thousand feelings and a thousand
+thoughts.***  I contemplated with astonishment this gradation of
+color, which, passing from a bright carnation to a light brown, a
+deeper brown, dusky, bronze, olive, leaden, copper, ends in the
+black of ebony and of jet.  And finding the Cassimerian, with his
+rosy cheek, next to the sun-burnt Hindoo, and the Georgian by the
+side of the Tartar, I reflected on the effects of climate hot or
+cold, of soil high or low, marshy or dry, open or shaded.  I
+compared the dwarf of the pole with the giant of the temperate
+zones, the slender body of the Arab with the ample chest of the
+Hollander; the squat figure of the Samoyede with the elegant form
+of the Greek and the Sclavonian; the greasy black wool of the Negro
+with the bright silken locks of the Dane; the broad face of the
+Kalmuc, his little angular eyes and flattened nose, with the oval
+prominent visage, large blue eyes, and aquiline nose of the
+Circassian and Abazan.  I contrasted the brilliant calicoes of the
+Indian, the well-wrought stuffs of the European, the rich furs of
+the Siberian, with the tissues of bark, of osiers, leaves and
+feathers of savage nations; and the blue figures of serpents,
+flowers, and stars, with which they painted their bodies.
+Sometimes the variegated appearance of this multitude reminded me
+of the enamelled meadows of the Nile and the Euphrates, when, after
+rains or inundations, millions of flowers are rising on every side.
+Sometimes their murmurs and their motions called to mind the
+numberless swarms of locusts which, issuing from the desert, cover
+in the spring the plains of Hauran.
+
+
+* This species of the palm-tree is called Latanier.  Its leaf,
+similar to a fan-mount, grows upon a stalk issuing directly from
+the earth.  A specimen may be seen in the botanic garden.
+
+** The country of the Papons of New Guinea.
+
+*** A hall of costumes in one of the galleries of the Louvre would,
+in every point of view, be an interesting establishment.  It would
+furnish an admirable treat to the curiosity of a great number of
+persons, excellent models to the artist, and useful subjects of
+meditation to the physician, the philosopher and the legislator.
+
+Picture to yourself a collection of the various faces and figures
+of every country and nation, exhibiting accurately, color, features
+and form; what a field for investigation and enquiry as to the
+influence of climate, customs, food, etc.  It might truly be called
+the science of man!  Buffon has attempted a chapter of this nature,
+but it only serves to exhibit more strikingly our actual ignorance.
+Such a collection is said to have been begun at St. Petersburg, but
+it is also said at the same time to be as imperfect as the
+vocabulary of the three hundred languages.  The enterprise would be
+worthy of the French nation.
+
+
+At the sight of so many rational beings, considering on the one
+hand the immensity of thoughts and sensations assembled in this
+place, and on the other hand, reflecting on the opposition of so
+many opinions, and the shock of so many passions of men so
+capricious, I struggled between astonishment, admiration, and
+secret dread--when the legislator commanded silence, and attracted
+all my attention.
+
+Inhabitants of earth! a free and powerful nation addresses you with
+words of justice and peace, and she offers you the sure pledges of
+her intentions in her own conviction and experience.  Long
+afflicted with the same evils as yourselves, we sought for their
+source, and found them all derived from violence and injustice,
+erected into law by the inexperience of past ages, and maintained
+by the prejudices of the present.  Then abolishing our artificial
+and arbitrary institutions, and recurring to the origin of all
+right and reason, we have found that there existed in the very
+order of nature and in the physical constitution of man, eternal
+and immutable laws, which only waited his observance to render him
+happy.
+
+O men! cast your eyes on the heavens that give you light, and on
+the earth that gives you bread!  Since they offer the same bounties
+to you all--since from the power that gives them motion you have
+all received the same life, the same organs, have you not likewise
+all received the same right to enjoy its benefits?  Has it not
+hereby declared you all equal and free?  What mortal shall dare
+refuse to his fellow that which nature gives him?
+
+O nations! let us banish all tyranny and all discord; let us form
+but one society, one great family; and, since human nature has but
+one constitution, let there exist in future but one law, that of
+nature--but one code, that of reason--but one throne, that of
+justice--but one altar, that of union.
+
+He ceased; and an immense acclamation resounded to the skies.  Ten
+thousand benedictions announced the transports of the multitude;
+and they made the earth re-echo JUSTICE, EQUALITY and UNION.
+
+But different emotions soon succeeded; soon the doctors and the
+chiefs of nations exciting a spirit of dispute, there was heard a
+sullen murmur, which growing louder, and spreading from group to
+group, became a vast disorder; and each nation setting up exclusive
+pretensions, claimed a preference for its own code and opinion.
+
+You are in error, said the parties, pointing one to the other.  We
+alone are in possession of reason and truth.  We alone have the
+true law, the real rule of right and justice, the only means of
+happiness and perfection.  All other men are either blind or
+rebellious.
+
+And great agitation prevailed.
+
+Then the legislator, after enforcing silence, loudly exclaimed:
+
+What, O people! is this passionate emotion?  Whither will this
+quarrel conduct you?  What can you expect from this dissension?
+The earth has been for ages a field of disputation, and you have
+shed torrents of blood in your controversies.  What have you gained
+by so many battles and tears?  When the strong has subjected the
+weak to his opinion, has he thereby aided the cause of truth?
+
+O nations! take counsel of your own wisdom.  When among yourselves
+disputes arise between families and individuals, how do you
+reconcile them?  Do you not give them arbitrators?
+
+Yes, cried the whole multitude.
+
+Do so then to the authors of your present dissensions.  Order those
+who call themselves your instructors, and who force their creeds
+upon you, to discuss before you their reasons.  Since they appeal
+to your interests, inform yourselves how they support them.
+
+And you, chiefs and governors of the people! before dragging the
+masses into the quarrels resulting from your diverse opinions, let
+the reasons for and against your views be given.  Let us establish
+one solemn controversy, one public scrutiny of truth--not before
+the tribunal of a corruptible individual, or of a prejudiced party,
+but in the grand forum of mankind--guarded by all their information
+and all their interests.  Let the natural sense of the whole human
+race be our arbiter and judge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE SEARCH OF TRUTH.
+
+
+The people expressed their applause, and the legislator continued:
+To proceed with order, and avoid all confusion, let a spacious
+semicircle be left vacant in front of the altar of peace and union;
+let each system of religion, and each particular sect, erect its
+proper distinctive standard on the line of this semicircle; let its
+chiefs and doctors place themselves around the standard, and their
+followers form a column behind them.
+
+The semicircle being traced, and the order published, there
+instantly rose an innumerable multitude of standards, of all colors
+and of every form, like what we see in a great commercial port,
+when, on a day of rejoicing, a thousand different flags and
+streamers are floating from a forest of masts.
+
+At the sight of this prodigious diversity, I turned towards the
+Genius and said:
+
+I thought that the earth was divided only into eight or ten systems
+of faith, and I then despaired of a reconciliation; I now behold
+thousands of different sects, and how can I hope for concord?
+
+But these, replied the Genius, are not all; and yet they will be
+intolerant!
+
+Then, as the groups advanced to take their stations, he pointed out
+to me their distinctive marks, and thus began to explain their
+characters:
+
+That first group, said he, with a green banner bearing a crescent,
+a bandage, and a sabre, are the followers of the Arabian prophet.
+To say there is a God, without knowing what he is; to believe the
+words of a man, without understanding his language; to go into the
+desert to pray to God, who is everywhere; to wash the hands with
+water, and not abstain from blood; to fast all day, and eat all
+night; to give alms of their own goods, and to plunder those of
+others; such are the means of perfection instituted by Mahomet--
+such are the symbols of his followers; and whoever does not bear
+them is a reprobate, stricken with anathema, and devoted to the
+sword.
+
+A God of clemency, the author of life, has instituted these laws of
+oppression and murder: he made them for all the world, but has
+revealed them only to one man; he established them from all
+eternity, though he made them known but yesterday.  These laws are
+abundantly sufficient for all purposes, and yet a volume is added
+to them.  This volume was to diffuse light, to exhibit evidence, to
+lead men to perfection and happiness; and yet every page was so
+full of obscurities, ambiguities, and contradictions, that
+commentaries and explanations became necessary, even in the life-
+time of its apostle.  Its interpreters, differing in opinion,
+divided into opposite and hostile sects.  One maintains that Ali is
+the true successor; the other contends for Omar and Aboubekre.
+This denies the eternity of the Koran; that the necessity of
+ablutions and prayers.  The Carmite forbids pilgrimages, and allows
+the use of wine; the Hakemite preaches the transmigration of souls.
+Thus they make up the number of seventy-two sects, whose banners
+are before you.*  In this contestation, every one attributing the
+evidence of truth exclusively to himself, and taxing all others
+with heresy and rebellion, turns against them its sanguinary zeal.
+And their religion, which celebrates a mild and merciful God, the
+common father of all men,--changed to a torch of discord, a signal
+for war and murder, has not ceased for twelve hundred years to
+deluge the earth in blood, and to ravage and desolate the ancient
+hemisphere from centre to circumference.**
+
+
+* The Mussulmen enumerate in common seventy-two sects, but I read,
+while I resided among them, a work which gave an account of more
+than eighty,--all equally wise and important.
+
+** Read the history of Islamism by its own writers, and you will be
+convinced that one of the principal causes of the wars which have
+desolated Asia and Africa, since the days of Mahomet, has been the
+apostolical fanaticism of its doctrine.  Caesar has been supposed
+to have destroyed three millions of men: it would be interesting to
+make a similar calculation respecting every founder of a religious
+system.
+
+
+Those men, distinguished by their enormous white turbans, their
+broad sleeves, and their long rosaries, are the Imans, the Mollas,
+and the Muftis; and near them are the Dervishes with pointed
+bonnets, and the Santons with dishevelled hair.  Behold with what
+vehemence they recite their professions of faith!  They are now
+beginning a dispute about the greater and lesser impurities--about
+the matter and the manner of ablutions,--about the attributes of
+God and his perfections--about the Chaitan, and the good and wicked
+angels,--about death, the resurrection, the interrogatory in the
+tomb, the judgment, the passage of the narrow bridge not broader
+than a hair, the balance of works, the pains of hell, and the joys
+of paradise.
+
+
+Next to these, that second more numerous group, with white banners
+intersected with crosses, are the followers of Jesus.
+Acknowledging the same God with the Mussulmans, founding their
+belief on the same books, admitting, like them, a first man who
+lost the human race by eating an apple, they hold them, however, in
+a holy abhorrence; and, out of pure piety, they call each other
+impious blasphemers.
+
+The great point of their dissension consists in this, that after
+admitting a God one and indivisible the Christian divides him into
+three persons, each of which he believes to be a complete and
+entire God, without ceasing to constitute an identical whole, by
+the indivisibility of the three.  And he adds, that this being, who
+fills the universe, has reduced himself to the body of a man; and
+has assumed material, perishable, and limited organs, without
+ceasing to be immaterial, infinite, and eternal.  The Mussulman who
+does not comprehend these mysteries, rejects them as follies, and
+the visions of a distempered brain; though he conceives perfectly
+well the eternity of the Koran, and the mission of the prophet:
+hence their implacable hatreds.
+
+Again, the Christians, divided among themselves on many points,
+have formed parties not less violent than the Mussulmans; and their
+quarrels are so much the more obstinate, as the objects of them are
+inaccessible to the senses and incapable of demonstration: their
+opinions, therefore, have no other basis but the will and caprice
+of the parties.  Thus, while they agree that God is a being
+incomprehensible and unknown, they dispute, nevertheless, about his
+essence, his mode of acting, and his attributes.  While they agree
+that his pretended transformation into man is an enigma above the
+human understanding, they dispute on the junction or distinction of
+his two wills and his two natures, on his change of substance, on
+the real or fictitious presence, on the mode of incarnation, etc.
+
+Hence those innumerable sects, of which two or three hundred have
+already perished, and three or four hundred others, which still
+subsist, display those numberless banners which here distract your
+sight.
+
+The first in order, surrounded by a group in varied and fantastic
+dress, that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black and
+speckled garments--with heads shaved, or with tonsures, or with
+short hair--with red hats, square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long
+beards, is the standard of the Roman pontiff, who, uniting the
+civil government to the priesthood, has erected the supremacy of
+his city into a point of religion, and made of his pride an article
+of faith.
+
+On his right you see the Greek pontiff, who, proud of the rivalship
+of his metropolis, sets up equal pretensions, and supports them
+against the Western church by the priority of that of the East.  On
+the left are the standards of two recent chiefs,* who, shaking off
+a yoke that had become tyrannical, have raised altar against altar
+in their reform, and wrested half of Europe from the pope.  Behind
+these are the subaltern sects, subdivided from the principal
+divisions, the Nestorians, the Eutycheans, the Jacobites, the
+Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Presbyterians, the Wicliffites,
+the Osiandrians, the Manicheans, the Pietists, the Adamites, the
+Contemplatives, the Quakers, the Weepers, and a hundred others,**
+all of distinct parties, persecuting when strong, tolerant when
+weak, hating each other in the name of a God of peace, forming each
+an exclusive heaven in a religion of universal charity, dooming
+each other to pains without end in a future state, and realizing in
+this world the imaginary hell of the other.
+
+
+* Luther and Calvin.
+
+** Consult upon this subject Dictionnaire des Herseies par l'Abbe
+Pluquet, in two volumes 8vo.: a work admirably calculated to
+inspire the mind with philosophy, in the sense that the
+Lacedemonians taught the children temperance by showing to them the
+drunken Helots.
+
+
+After this group, observing a lonely standard of the color of
+hyacinth, round which were assembled men clad in all the different
+dresses of Europe and Asia:
+
+At least, said I, to the Genius, we shall find unanimity here.
+
+Yes, said he, at first sight and by a momentary accident.  Dost
+thou not know that system of worship?
+
+Then, perceiving in Hebrew letters the monogram of the name of God,
+and the palms which the Rabbins held in their hands:
+
+True, said I, these are the children of Moses, dispersed even to
+this day, abhorring every nation, and abhorred and persecuted by
+all.
+
+Yes, he replied, and for this reason, that, having neither the time
+nor liberty to dispute, they have the appearance of unanimity.  But
+no sooner will they come together, compare their principles, and
+reason on their opinions, than they will separate as formerly, at
+least into two principal sects;* one of which, taking advantage of
+the silence of their legislator, and adhering to the literal sense
+of his books, will deny everything that is not clearly expressed
+therein; and on this principle will reject as profane inventions,
+the immortality of the soul, its transmigration to places of pain
+or pleasure, its resurrection, the final judgment, the good and bad
+angels, the revolt of the evil Genius, and all the poetical belief
+of a world to come.  And this highly-favored people, whose
+perfection consists in a slight mutilation of their persons,--this
+atom of a people, which forms but a small wave in the ocean of
+mankind, and which insists that God has made nothing but for them,
+will by its schism reduce to one-half, its present trifling weight
+in the scale of the universe.
+
+
+* The Sadducees and Pharisees.
+
+
+He then showed me a neighboring group, composed of men dressed in
+white robes, wearing a veil over their mouths, and ranged around a
+banner of the color of the morning sky, on which was painted a
+globe cleft in two hemispheres, black and white: The same thing
+will happen, said he, to these children of Zoroaster,* the obscure
+remnant of a people once so powerful.  At present, persecuted like
+the Jews, and dispersed among all nations, they receive without
+discussion the precepts of the representative of their prophet.
+But as soon as the Mobed and the Destours** shall assemble, they
+will renew the controversy about the good and the bad principle; on
+the combats of Ormuzd, God of light, and Ahrimanes, God of
+darkness; on the direct and allegorical sense; on the good and evil
+Genii; on the worship of fire and the elements; on impurities and
+ablutions; on the resurrection of the soul and body, or only of the
+soul;*** on the renovation of the present world, and on that which
+is to take its place.  And the Parses will divide into sects, so
+much the more numerous, as their families will have contracted,
+during their dispersion, the manners and opinions of different
+nations.
+
+
+* They are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name of
+Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels.  They are in Asia
+what the Jews are in Europe.  The name of their pope or high priest
+is Mobed.
+
+** That is to say, their priests.  See, respecting the rites of
+this religion, Henry Lord Hyde, and the Zendavesta.  Their costume
+is a robe with a belt of four knots, and a veil over their mouth
+for fear of polluting the fire with their breath.
+
+*** The Zoroastrians are divided between two opinions; one party
+believing that both soul and body will rise, the other that it will
+be the soul only.  The Christians and Mahometans have embraced the
+most solid of the two.
+
+
+Next to these, remark those banners of an azure ground, painted
+with monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and
+quadruple, with heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of
+fishes and tortoises; these are the ensigns of the sects of India,
+who find their gods in various animals, and the souls of their
+fathers in reptiles and insects.  These men support hospitals for
+hawks, serpents, and rats, and they abhor their fellow creatures!
+They purify themselves with the dung and urine of cows, and think
+themselves defiled by the touch of a man!  They wear a net over the
+mouth, lest, in a fly, they should swallow a soul in a state of
+penance,* and they can see a Pariah** perish with hunger!  They
+acknowledge the same gods, but they separate into hostile bands.
+
+
+* According to the system of the Metempsychosis, a soul, to undergo
+purification, passes into the body of some insect or animal.  It is
+of importance not to disturb this penance, as the work must in that
+case begin afresh.
+
+** This is the name of a cast or tribe reputed unclean, because
+they eat of what has enjoyed life.
+
+
+The first standard, retired from the rest, bearing a figure with
+four heads, is that of Brama, who, though the creator of the
+universe, is without temples or followers; but, reduced to serve as
+a pedestal to the Lingam,* he contents himself with a little water
+which the Bramin throws every morning on his shoulder, reciting
+meanwhile an idle canticle in his praise.
+
+
+* See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, vol. 1.
+
+
+The second, bearing a kite with a scarlet body and a white head, is
+that of Vichenou, who, though preserver of the world, has passed
+part of his life in wicked actions.  You sometimes see him under
+the hideous form of a boar or a lion, tearing human entrails, or
+under that of a horse,* shortly to come armed with a sword to
+destroy the human race, blot out the stars, annihilate the planets,
+shake the earth, and force the great serpent to vomit a fire which
+shall consume the spheres.
+
+
+* These are the incarnations of Vichenou, or metamorphoses of the
+sun.  He is to come at the end of the world, that is, at the
+expiration of the great period, in the form of a horse, like the
+four horses of the Apocalypse.
+
+
+The third is that of Chiven, God of destruction and desolation, who
+has, however, for his emblem the symbol of generation.  He is the
+most wicked of the three, and he has the most followers.  These
+men, proud of his character, express in their devotions to him
+their contempt for the other gods,* his equals and brothers; and,
+in imitation of his inconsistencies, while they profess great
+modesty and chastity, they publicly crown with flowers, and
+sprinkle with milk and honey, the obscene image of the Lingam.
+
+
+* When a sectary of Chiven hears the name of Vichenou pronounced,
+he stops his ears, runs, and purifies himself.
+
+
+In the rear of these, approach the smaller standards of a multitude
+of gods--male, female, and hermaphrodite.  These are friends and
+relations of the principal gods, who have passed their lives in
+wars among themselves, and their followers imitate them.  These
+gods have need of nothing, and they are constantly receiving
+presents; they are omnipotent and omnipresent, and a priest, by
+muttering a few words, shuts them up in an idol or a pitcher, to
+sell their favors for his own benefit.
+
+
+Beyond these, that cloud of standards, which, on a yellow ground,
+common to them all, bear various emblems, are those of the same
+god, who reins under different names in the nations of the East.
+The Chinese adores him in Fot,* the Japanese in Budso, the
+Ceylonese in Bedhou, the people of Laos in Chekia, of Pegu in Phta,
+of Siam in Sommona-Kodom, of Thibet in Budd and in La.  Agreeing in
+some points of his history, they all celebrate his life of
+penitence, his mortifications, his fastings, his functions of
+mediator and expiator, the enmity between him and another god, his
+adversary, their battles, and his ascendency.  But as they disagree
+on the means of pleasing him, they dispute about rites and
+ceremonies, and about the dogmas of interior doctrine and of public
+doctrine.  That Japanese Bonze, with a yellow robe and naked head,
+preaches the eternity of souls, and their successive
+transmigrations into various bodies; near him, the Sintoist denies
+that souls can exist separate from the senses,** and maintains that
+they are only the effect of the organs to which they belong, and
+with which they must perish, as the sound of the flute perishes
+with the flute.  Near him, the Siamese, with his eyebrows shaved,
+and a talipat screen*** in his hand, recommends alms, offerings,
+and expiations, at the same time that he preaches blind necessity
+and inexorable fate.  The Chinese vo-chung sacrifices to the souls
+of his ancestors; and next him, the follower of Confucius
+interrogates his destiny in the cast of dice and the movement of
+the stars.****  That child, surrounded by a swarm of priests in
+yellow robes and hats, is the Grand Lama, in whom the god of Thibet
+has just become incarnate.*5  But a rival has arisen who partakes
+this benefit with him; and the Kalmouc on the banks of the Baikal,
+has a God similar to the inhabitant of Lasa.  And they agree, also,
+in one important point--that god can inhabit only a human body.
+They both laugh at the stupidity of the Indian who pays homage to
+cow-dung, though they themselves consecrate the excrements of their
+high-priest.*6
+
+
+* The original name of this god is Baits, which in Hebrew signifies
+an egg.  The Arabs pronounce it Baidh, giving to the dh an emphatic
+sound which makes it approach to dz.  Kempfer, an acurate traveler,
+writes it Budso, which must be pronounced Boudso, whence is derived
+the name of Budsoist and of Bonze, applied to the priests.  Clement
+of Alexandria, in his Stromata, writes it Bedou, as it is
+pronounced also by the Chingulais; and Saint Jerome, Boudda and
+Boutta.  At Thibet they call it Budd; and hence the name of the
+country called Boud-tan and Ti-budd: it was in this province that
+this system of religion was first inculcated in Upper Asia; La is a
+corruption of Allah, the name of God in the Syriac language, from
+which many of the eastern dialects appear to be derived.  The
+Chinese having neither b nor d, have supplied their place by f and
+t, and have therefore said Fout.
+
+** See in Kempfer the doctrine of the Sintoists, which is a mixture
+of that of Epicurus and of the Stoics.
+
+*** It is a leaf of the Latanier species of the palm-tree.  Hence
+the bonzes of Siam take the appellation of Talapoin.  The use of
+this screen is an exclusive privilege.
+
+**** The sectaries of Confucius are no less addicted to astrology
+than the bonzes.  It is indeed the malady of every eastern nation.
+
+*5 The Delai-La-Ma, or immense high priest of La, is the same
+person whom we find mentioned in our old books of travels, by the
+name of Prester John, from a corruption of the Persian word Djehan,
+which signifies the world, to which has been prefixed the French
+word prestre or pretre, priest.  Thus the priest world, and the god
+world are in the Persian idiom the same.
+
+*6 In a recent expedition the English have found certain idols of
+the Lamas filled in the inside with sacred pastils from the close
+stool of the high priest.  Mr. Hastings, and Colonel Pollier, who
+is now at Lausanne, are living witnesses of this fact, and
+undoubtedly worthy of credit.  It will be very extraordinary to
+observe, that this disgusting ceremony is connected with a profound
+philosophical system, to wit, that of the metempsychosis, admitted
+by the Lamas.  When the Tartars swallow, the sacred relics, which
+they are accustomed to do, they imitate the laws of the universe,
+the parts of which are incessantly absorbed and pass into the
+substance of each other.  It is upon the model of the serpent who
+devours his tail, and this serpent is Budd and the world.
+
+
+After these, a crowd of other banners, which no man could number,
+came forward into sight; and the genius exclaimed:
+
+I should never finish the detail of all the systems of faith which
+divide these nations.  Here the hordes of Tartars adore, in the
+forms of beasts, birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who,
+under a principal, but indolent god, govern the universe.  In their
+idolatry they call to mind the ancient paganism of the West.  You
+observe the fantastical dress of the Chamans; who, under a robe of
+leather, hung round with bells and rattles, idols of iron, claws of
+birds, skins of snakes and heads of owls, invoke, with frantic
+cries and factitious convulsions, the dead to deceive the living.
+There, the black tribes of Africa exhibit the same opinions in the
+worship of their fetiches.  See the inhabitant of Juida worship god
+in a great snake, which, unluckily, the swine delight to eat.*  The
+Teleutean attires his god in a coat of several colors, like a
+Russian soldier.**  The Kamchadale, observing that everything goes
+wrong in his frozen country, considers god as an old ill-natured
+man, smoking his pipe and hunting foxes and martins in his
+sledge.***
+
+
+* It frequently happens that the swine devour the very species of
+serpents the negroes adore, which is a source of great desolation
+in the country.  President de Brosses has given us, in his History
+of the Fetiche, a curious collection of absurdities of this nature.
+
+** The Teleuteans, a Tartar nation, paint God as wearing a vesture
+of all colors, particularly red and green; and as these constitute
+the uniform of the Russian dragoons, they compare him to this
+description of soldiers.  The Egyptians also dress the God World in
+a garment of every color.  Eusebius Proep. Evang. p 115.  The
+Teleuteans call God Bou, which is only an alteration of Boudd, the
+God Egg and World.
+
+*** Consult upon this subject a work entitled, Description des
+Peuples, soumis a la Russie, and it will be found that the picture
+is not overcharged.
+
+
+But you may still behold a hundred savage nations who have none of
+the ideas of civilized people respecting God, the soul, another
+world, and a future life; who have formed no system of worship; and
+who nevertheless enjoy the rich gifts of nature in the irreligion
+in which she has created them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS CONTRADICTIONS.
+
+
+The various groups having taken their places, an unbounded silence
+succeeded to the murmurs of the multitude; and the legislator said:
+
+Chiefs and doctors of mankind!  You remark how the nations, living
+apart, have hitherto followed different paths, each believing its
+own to be that of truth.  If, however, truth is one, and opinions
+are various, it is evident that some are in error.  If, then, such
+vast numbers of us are in the wrong, who shall dare to say, "I am
+in the right?"  Begin, therefore, by being indulgent in your
+dissensions.  Let us all seek truth as if no one possessed it.  The
+opinions which to this day have governed the world, originating
+from chance, propagated in obscurity, admitted without discussion,
+accredited by a love of novelty and imitation, have usurped their
+empire in a clandestine manner.  It is time, if they are well
+founded, to give a solemn stamp to their certainty, and legitimize
+their existence.  Let us summon them this day to a general
+scrutiny, let each propound his creed, let the whole assembly be
+the judge, and let that alone be acknowledged as true which is so
+for the whole human race.
+
+Then, by order of position, the representative of the first
+standard on the left was allowed to speak:
+
+"You are not permitted to doubt," said their chief, "that our
+doctrine is the only true and infallible one.  FIRST, it is
+revealed by God himself--"
+
+"So is ours," cried all the other standards, "and you are not
+permitted to doubt it."
+
+"But at least," said the legislator, "you must prove it, for we
+cannot believe what we do not know."
+
+"Our doctrine is proved," replied the first standard, "by numerous
+facts, by a multitude of miracles, by resurrections of the dead, by
+rivers dried up, by mountains removed--"
+
+"And we also have numberless miracles," cried all the others, and
+each began to recount the most incredible things.
+
+"THEIR miracles," said the first standard, "are imaginary, or the
+fictions of the evil spirit, who has deluded them."
+
+"They are yours," said the others, "that are imaginary;" and each
+group, speaking of itself, cried out:
+
+"None but ours are true, all the others are false."
+
+The legislator then asked: "Have you living witnesses of the
+facts?"
+
+"No," replied they all; "the facts are ancient, the witnesses are
+dead, but their writings remain."
+
+"Be it so," replied the legislator; "but if they contradict each
+other, who shall reconcile them?"
+
+"Just judge!" cried one of the standards, "the proof that our
+witnesses have seen the truth is, that they died to confirm it; and
+our faith is sealed by the blood of martyrs."
+
+"And ours too," said the other standards; "we have thousands of
+martyrs who have died in the most excruciating torments, without
+ever denying the truth."
+
+Then the Christians of every sect, the Mussulmans, the Indians, the
+Japanese, recited endless legends of confessors, martyrs,
+penitents, etc.
+
+And one of these parties, having denied the martyrology of the
+others: "Well," said they, "we will then die ourselves to prove the
+truth of our belief."
+
+And instantly a crowd of men, of every religion and of every sect,
+presented themselves to suffer the torments of death.  Many even
+began to tear their arms, and to beat their heads and breasts,
+without discovering any symptom of pain.
+
+But the legislator, preventing them--"O men!" said he, "hear my
+words with patience.  If you die to prove that two and two make
+four, will your death add any thing to this truth?"
+
+"No!" answered all.
+
+"And if you die to prove that they make five, will that make them
+five?"
+
+Again they all answered, "No."
+
+"What, then, is your persuasion to prove, if it changes not the
+existence of things?  Truth is one--your persuasions are various;
+many of you, therefore, are in error.  Now, if man, as is evident,
+can persuade himself of error, what is the persuasion of man to
+prove?
+
+"If error has its martyrs, what is the sure criterion of truth?
+
+"If the evil spirit works miracles, what is the distinctive
+character of God?
+
+"Besides, why resort forever to incomplete and insufficient
+miracles?  Instead of changing the course of nature, why not rather
+change opinions?  Why murder and terrify men, instead of
+instructing and correcting them?
+
+"O credulous, but opinionated mortals! none of us know what was
+done yesterday, what is doing to-day even under our eyes; and we
+swear to what was done two thousand years ago!
+
+"Oh, the weakness and yet the pride of men!  The laws of nature are
+unchangeable and profound--our minds are full of illusion and
+frivolity--and yet we would comprehend every thing--determine every
+thing!  Forgetting that it is easier for the whole human race to be
+in error, than to change the nature of the smallest atom."
+
+"Well, then," said one of the doctors, "let us lay aside the
+evidence of fact, since it is uncertain; let us come to argument--
+to the proofs inherent in the doctrine."
+
+Then came forward, with a look of confidence, an Iman of the law of
+Mahomet; and, having advanced into the circle, turned towards
+Mecca, and recited with great fervor his confession of faith.
+"Praise be to God," said he, with a solemn and imposing voice, "the
+light shines with full evidence, and the truth has no need of
+examination."  Then, showing the Koran, he exclaimed: "Here is the
+light of truth in its proper essence.  There is no doubt in this
+book.  It conducts with safety him who walks in darkness, and who
+receives without discussion the divine word which descended on the
+prophet, to save the simple and confound the wise.  God has
+established Mahomet his minister on earth; he has given him the
+world, that he may subdue with the sword whoever shall refuse to
+receive his law.  Infidels dispute, and will not believe; their
+obduracy comes from God, who has hardened their hearts to deliver
+them to dreadful punishments."*
+
+
+* This passage contains the sense and nearly the very words of the
+first chapter of the Koran; and the reader will observe in general,
+that, in the pictures that follow, the writer has endeavored to
+give as accurately as possible the letter and spirit of the
+opinions of each party.
+
+
+At these words a violent murmur arose on all sides, and silenced
+the speaker.  "Who is this man," cried all the groups, "who thus
+insults us without a cause?  What right has he to impose his creed
+on us as conqueror and tyrant?  Has not God endowed us, as well as
+him, with eyes, understanding, and reason?  And have we not an
+equal right to use them, in choosing what to believe and what to
+reject?  If he attacks us, shall we not defend ourselves?  If he
+likes to believe without examination, must we therefore not examine
+before we believe?
+
+"And what is this luminous doctrine that fears the light?  What is
+this apostle of a God of clemency, who preaches nothing but murder
+and carnage?  What is this God of justice, who punishes blindness
+which he himself has made?  If violence and persecution are the
+arguments of truth, are gentleness and charity the signs of
+falsehood?"
+
+A man then advancing from a neighboring group, said to the Iman:
+
+"Admitting that Mahomet is the apostle of the best doctrine,--the
+prophet of the true religion,--have the goodness at least to tell
+us whether, in the practice of his doctrine, we are to follow his
+son-in-law Ali, or his vicars Omar and Aboubekre?"*
+
+
+* These are the two grand parties into which the Mussulmans are
+divided.  The Turks have embraced the second, the Persians the
+first.
+
+
+At the sound of these names a terrible schism arose among the
+Mussulmans themselves.  The partisans of Ali and those of Omar,
+calling out heretics and blasphemers, loaded each other with
+execrations.  The quarrel became so violent that neighboring groups
+were obliged to interfere, to prevent their coming to blows.  At
+length, tranquillity being somewhat restored, the legislator said
+to the Imans:
+
+"See the consequences of your principles!  If you yourselves were
+to carry them into practice, you would destroy each other to the
+last man.  Is it not the first law of God that man should live?"
+
+Then, addressing himself to the other groups, he continued:
+
+"Doubtless this intolerant and exclusive spirit shocks every idea
+of justice, and overturns the whole foundation of morals and
+society; but before we totally reject this code of doctrine, is it
+not proper to hear some of its dogmas?  Let us not pronounce on the
+forms, without having some knowledge of the substance."
+
+The groups having consented, the Iman began to expound how God,
+having sent to the nations lost in idolatry twenty-four thousand
+prophets, had finally sent the last, the seal and perfection of
+all, Mahomet; on whom be the salvation of peace: how, to prevent
+the divine word from being any longer perverted by infidels, the
+supreme goodness had itself written the pages of the Koran.  Then,
+explaining the particular dogmas of Islamism, the Iman unfolded how
+the Koran, partaking of the divine nature, was uncreated and
+eternal, like its author: how it had been sent leaf by leaf, in
+twenty-four thousand nocturnal apparitions of the angel Gabriel:
+how the angel announced himself by a gentle knocking, which threw
+the prophet into a cold sweat: how in the vision of one night he
+had travelled over ninety heavens, riding on the beast Borack, half
+horse and half woman: how, endowed with the gift of miracles, he
+walked in the sunshine without a shadow, turned dry trees to green,
+filled wells and cisterns with water, and split in two the body of
+the moon: how, by divine command, Mahomet had propagated, sword in
+hand, the religion the most worthy of God by its sublimity, and the
+most proper for men by the simplicity of its practice; since it
+consisted in only eight or ten points:--To profess the unity of
+God; to acknowledge Mahomet as his only prophet; to pray five times
+a day; to fast one month in the year; to go to Mecca once in our
+life; to pay the tenth of all we possess; to drink no wine; to eat
+no pork; and to make war upon the infidels.*  He taught that by
+these means every Mussulman becoming himself an apostle and martyr,
+should enjoy in this world many blessings; and at his death, his
+soul, weighed in the balance of works, and absolved by the two
+black angels, should pass the infernal pit on the bridge as narrow
+as a hair and as sharp as the edge of a sword, and should finally
+be received to a region of delight, which is watered with rivers of
+milk and honey, and embalmed in all the perfumes of India and
+Arabia; and where the celestial Houris--virgins always chaste--are
+eternally crowning with repeated favors the elect of God, who
+preserve an eternal youth.
+
+
+* Whatever the advocates for the philosophy and civilization of the
+Turks may assert, to make war upon infidels is considered by them
+as an obligatory precept and an act of religion.  See Reland de
+Relig. Mahom.
+
+
+At these words an involuntary smile was seen on all their lips; and
+the various groups, reasoning on these articles of faith, exclaimed
+with one voice:
+
+"Is it possible that reasonable beings can admit such reveries?
+Would you not think it a chapter from The Thousand and One Nights?"
+
+A Samoyede advanced into the circle: "The paradise of Mahomet,"
+said he, "appears to me very good; but one of the means of gaining
+it is embarrassing: for if we must neither eat nor drink between
+the rising and setting sun, as he has ordered, how are we to
+practise that fast in my country, where the sun continues above the
+horizon six months without setting?"
+
+"That is impossible," cried all the Mussulman doctors, to support
+the teaching of the prophet; but a hundred nations having attested
+the fact, the infallibility of Mahomet could not but receive a
+severe shock.
+
+"It is singular," said an European, "that God should be constantly
+revealing what takes place in heaven, without ever instructing us
+what is doing on the earth."
+
+"For my part," said an American," I find a great difficulty in the
+pilgrimage.  For suppose twenty-five years to a generation, and
+only a hundred millions of males on the globe,--each being obliged
+to go to Mecca once in his life,--there must be four millions a
+year on the journey; and as it would be impracticable for them to
+return the same year, the numbers would be doubled--that is, eight
+millions: where would you find provisions, lodgings, water,
+vessels, for this universal procession?  Here must be miracles
+indeed!"
+
+"The proof," said a catholic doctor, "that the religion of Mahomet
+is not revealed, is that the greater part of the ideas which serve
+for its basis existed a long time before, and that it is only a
+confused mixture of truths disfigured and taken from our holy
+religion and from that of the Jews; which an ambitious man has made
+to serve his projects of domination, and his worldly views.  Look
+through his book; you will see nothing there but the histories of
+the Bible and the Gospel travestied into absurd fables--into a
+tissue of vague and contradictory declamations, and ridiculous or
+dangerous precepts.
+
+"Analyze the spirit of these precepts, and the conduct of their
+apostle; you will find there an artful and audacious character,
+which, to obtain its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of
+the people it had to govern.  It is speaking to simple men, and it
+entertains them with miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and
+it flatters their vanity by despising science; they are poor and
+rapacious, and it excites their cupidity by the hope of pillage;
+having nothing at first to give them on earth, it tells them of
+treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire death as a supreme
+good; it threatens cowards with hell; it rewards the brave with
+paradise; it sustains the weak with the opinion of fatality; in
+short, it produces the attachment it wants by all the allurements
+of sense, and all the power of the passions.
+
+"How different is the character of our religion! and how completely
+does its empire, founded on the counteraction of the natural
+temper, and the mortification of all our passions, prove its divine
+origin!  How forcibly does its mild and compassionate morality, its
+affections altogether spiritual, attest its emanation from God!
+Many of its doctrines, it is true, soar above the reach of the
+understanding, and impose on reason a respectful silence; but this
+more fully demonstrates its revelation, since the human mind could
+never have imagined such mysteries."
+
+Then, holding the Bible in one hand and the four Gospels in the
+other, the doctor began to relate that, in the beginning, God,
+after passing an eternity in idleness, took the resolution, without
+any known cause, of making the world out of nothing; that having
+created the whole universe in six days, he found himself fatigued
+on the seventh; that having placed the first human pair in a garden
+of delights, to make them completely happy, he forbade their
+tasting a particular fruit which he placed within their reach; that
+these first parents, having yielded to the temptation, all their
+race (which were not yet born) had been condemned to bear the
+penalty of a fault which they had not committed; that, after having
+left the human race to damn themselves for four or five thousand
+years, this God of mercy ordered a well beloved son, whom he had
+engendered without a mother, and who was as old as himself, to go
+and be put to death on the earth; and this for the salvation of
+mankind; of whom much the greater portion, nevertheless, have ever
+since continued in the way of perdition; that to remedy this new
+difficulty, this same God, born of a virgin, having died and risen
+from the dead, assumes a new existence every day, and in the form
+of a piece of bread, multiplies himself by millions at the voice of
+one of the basest of men.  Then, passing on to the doctrine of the
+sacraments, he was going to treat at large on the power of
+absolution and reprobation, of the means of purging all sins by a
+little water and a few words, when, uttering the words indulgence,
+power of the pope, sufficient grace, and efficacious grace, he was
+interrupted by a thousand cries.
+
+"It is a horrible abuse," cried the Lutherans, "to pretend to remit
+sins for money."
+
+"The notion of the real presence," cried the Calvinists, "is
+contrary to the text of the Gospel."
+
+"The pope has no right to decide anything of himself," cried the
+Jansenists; and thirty other sects rising up, and accusing each
+other of heresies and errors, it was no longer possible to hear
+anything distinctly.
+
+Silence being at last restored, the Mussulmans observed to the
+legislator:
+
+"Since you have rejected our doctrine as containing things
+incredible, can you admit that of the Christians?  Is not theirs
+still more contrary to common sense and justice?  A God, immaterial
+and infinite, to become a man! to have a son as old as himself!
+This god-man to become bread, to be eaten and digested!  Have we
+any thing equal to that?  Have the Christians an exclusive right of
+setting up a blind faith?  And will you grant them privileges of
+belief to our detriment?"
+
+Some savage tribes then advanced: "What!" said they, "because a man
+and woman ate an apple six thousand years ago, all the human race
+are damned?  And you call God just?  What tyrant ever rendered
+children responsible for the faults of their fathers?  What man can
+answer for the actions of another?  Does not this overturn every
+idea of justice and of reason?"
+
+Others exclaimed: "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these
+pretended facts?  Can we receive them without examining the
+evidence?  The least action in a court of justice requires two
+witnesses; and we are ordered to believe all this on mere tradition
+and hearsay!"
+
+A Jewish Rabbin then addressing the assembly, said: "As to the
+fundamental facts, we are sureties; but with regard to their form
+and their application, the case is different, and the Christians
+are here condemned by their own arguments.  For they cannot deny
+that we are the original source from which they are derived--the
+primitive stock on which they are grafted; and hence the reasoning
+is very short: Either our law is from God, and then theirs is a
+heresy, since it differs from ours, or our law is not from God, and
+then theirs falls at the same time."
+
+"But you must make this distinction," replied the Christian: "Your
+law is from God as typical and preparative, but not as final and
+absolute: you are the image of which we are the substance."
+
+"We know," replied the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but
+they are absolutely gratuitous and false.  Your system turns
+altogether on mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical
+interpretations.*  With violent distortions on the letter of our
+books, you substitute the most chimerical ideas for the true ones,
+and find in them whatever pleases you; as a roving imagination will
+find figures in the clouds.  Thus you have made a spiritual Messiah
+of that which, in the spirit of our prophets, is only a temporal
+king.  You have made a redemption of the human race out of the
+simple re-establishment of our nation.  Your conception of the
+Virgin is founded on a single phrase, of which you have changed the
+meaning.  Thus you make from our Scriptures whatever your fancy
+dictates; you even find there your trinity; though there is not a
+word that has the most distant allusion to such a thing; and it is
+an invention of profane writers, admitted into your system with a
+host of other opinions, of every religion and of every sect, during
+the anarchy of the first three centuries of your era."
+
+
+* When we read the Fathers of the church, and see upon what
+arguments they have built the edifice of religion, we are
+inexpressibly astonished with their credulity or their knavery: but
+allegory was the rage of that period; the Pagans employed it to
+explain the actions of their gods, and the Christians acted in the
+same spirit when they employed it after their fashion.
+
+
+At these words, the Christian doctors, crying sacrilege and
+blasphemy, sprang forward in a transport of fury to fall upon the
+Jew; and a troop of monks, in motley dresses of black and white,
+advanced with a standard on which were painted pincers, gridirons,
+lighted fagots, and the words Justice, Charity, Mercy.*  "It is
+necessary," said they, "to make an example of these impious
+wretches, and burn them for the glory of God."  They began even to
+prepare the pile, when a Mussulman answered in a strain of irony:
+
+"This, then, is that religion of peace, that meek and beneficent
+system which you so much extol!  This is that evangelical charity
+which combats infidelity with persuasive mildness, and repays
+injuries with patience!  Ye hypocrites!  It is thus that you
+deceive mankind--thus that you propagate your accursed errors!
+When you were weak, you preached liberty, toleration, peace; when
+you are strong, you practise persecution and violence--"
+
+
+* This description answers exactly to the banner of the Inquisition
+of Spanish Jacobins.
+
+
+And he was going to begin the history of the wars and slaughters of
+Christianity, when the legislator, demanding silence, suspended
+this scene of discord.
+
+The monks, affecting a tone of meekness and humility, exclaimed:
+"It is not ourselves that we would avenge; it is the cause of God;
+it is the glory of God that we defend."
+
+"And what right have you, more than we," said the Imans, "to
+constitute yourselves the representatives of God?  Have you
+privileges that we have not?  Are you not men like us?"
+
+"To defend God," said another group, "to pretend to avenge him, is
+to insult his wisdom and his power.  Does he not know, better than
+men, what befits his dignity?"
+
+"Yes," replied the monks, "but his ways are secret."
+
+"And it remains for you to prove," said the Rabbins, "that you have
+the exclusive privilege of understanding them."
+
+Then, proud of finding supporters to their cause, the Jews thought
+that the books of Moses were going to be triumphant, when the Mobed
+(high priest) of the Parses obtained leave to speak.
+
+"We have heard," said he, "the account of the Jews and Christians
+of the origin of the world; and, though greatly mutilated, we find
+in it some facts which we admit.  But we deny that they are to be
+attributed to the legislator of the Hebrews.  It was not he who
+made known to men these sublime truths, these celestial events.  It
+was not to him that God revealed them, but to our holy prophet
+Zoroaster: and the proof of this is in the very books that they
+refer to.  Examine with attention the laws, the ceremonies, the
+precepts established by Moses in those books; you will not find the
+slightest indication, either expressed or understood, of what
+constitutes the basis of the Jewish and Christian theology.  You
+nowhere find the least trace of the immortality of the soul, or of
+a future life, or of heaven, or of hell, or of the revolt of the
+principal angel, author of the evils of the human race.  These
+ideas were not known to Moses, and the reason is very obvious: it
+was not till four centuries afterwards that Zoroaster first
+evangelized them in Asia.*
+
+
+* See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceive myself
+to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400 years before
+Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.
+
+
+"Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not
+till after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first
+kings, that these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then
+their appearance was obscure and gradual, according to the progress
+of the political relations between your ancestors and ours.  It was
+especially when, having been conquered by the kings of Nineveh and
+Babylon and transported to the banks of the Tygris and the
+Euphrates, where they resided for three successive generations,
+that they imbibed manners and opinions which had been rejected as
+contrary to their law.  When our king Cyrus had delivered them from
+slavery, their heart was won to us by gratitude; they became our
+disciples and imitators; and they admitted our dogmas in the
+revision of their books;* for your Genesis, in particular, was
+never the work of Moses, but a compilation drawn up after the
+return from the Babylonian captivity, in which are inserted the
+Chaldean opinions of the origin of the world.
+
+
+* In the first periods of the Christian church, not only the most
+learned of those who have since been denominated heretics, but many
+of the orthodox conceived Moses to have written neither the law nor
+the Pentateuch, but that the work was a compilation made by the
+elders of the people and the Seventy, who, after the death of
+Moses, collected his scattered ordinances, and mixed with them
+things that were extraneous; similar to what happened as to the
+Koran of Mahomet.  See Les Clementines, Homel. 2. sect. 51. and
+Homel. 3. sect. 42.
+
+Modern critics, more enlightened or more attentive than the
+ancients, have found in Genesis in particular, marks of its having
+been composed on the return from the captivity; but the principal
+proofs have escaped them.  These I mean to exhibit in an analysis
+of the book of Genesis, in which I shall demonstrate that the tenth
+chapter, among others, which treats of the pretended generations of
+the man called Noah, is a real geographical picture of the world,
+as it was known to the Hebrews at the epoch of the captivity, which
+was bounded by Greece or Hellas at the West, mount Caucasus at the
+North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egypt at the South.
+All the pretended personages from Adam to Abraham, or his father
+Terah, are mythological beings, stars, constellations, countries.
+Adam is Bootes: Noah is Osiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to
+say Capricorn, or the celestial Genius that opened the year.  The
+Alexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrod was
+supposed by the Persians to be their first king, as having invented
+the art of hunting, and that he was translated into heaven, where
+he appears under the name of Orion.
+
+
+"At first the pure followers of the law, opposing to the emigrants
+the letter of the text and the absolute silence of the prophet,
+endeavored to repel these innovations; but they ultimately
+prevailed, and our doctrine, modified by your ideas, gave rise to a
+new sect.
+
+"You expected a king to restore your political independence; we
+announced a God to regenerate and save mankind.  From this
+combination of ideas, your Essenians laid the foundation of
+Christianity: and whatever your pretensions may be, Jews,
+Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your system of spiritual
+beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster."
+
+The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting
+from the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as
+they are found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in
+six gahans,* the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a
+divine place, under the reign of perfect good; the introduction of
+evil into the world by the great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the
+revolt and battles of the Genius of evil and darkness against
+Ormuzd, God of good and of light; the division of the angels into
+white and black, or good and bad; their hierarchal orders,
+cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end of the world
+at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the lamb, the
+regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the
+regions of happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the
+bridge of the bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of
+Mithras; the unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism
+of new-born children; the unction of the dead; the confession of
+sins; and, in a word, he recited so many things analagous to those
+of the three preceding religions, that his discourse seemed like a
+commentary or a continuation of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**
+
+
+* Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods of time.
+These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousands of God or of
+light, meaning the six summer months.  In the first, say the
+Persians, God created (arranged in order) the heavens; in the
+second the waters; in the third the earth; in the fourth trees; in
+the fifth animals; and in the sixth man; corresponding with the
+account in Genesis.  For particulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry
+Lord, ch. 2, on the religion of the ancient Persians.  It is
+remarkable that the same tradition is found in the sacred books of
+the Etrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all things had
+comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelve thousand
+years, which period was distributed to the twelve houses of the
+sun.  In the first thousand, God made heaven and earth; in the
+second the firmament; in the third the sea and the waters; in the
+fourth the sun, moon and stars; in the fifth the souls of animals,
+birds, and reptiles; in the sixth man.  See Suidas, at the word
+Tyrrhena; which shows first the identity of their theological and
+astrological opinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather
+confusion of ideas, between absolute and systematical creation;
+that is, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature,
+which were at first the period of the year, and afterwards periods
+of 60, of 600, of 25,000, of 36,000 and of 432,000 years.
+
+** The modern Parses and the ancient Mithriacs, who are the same
+sect, observe all the Christian sacraments, even the laying on of
+hands in confirmation.  The priest of Mithra, says Tertullian, (de
+Proescriptione, ch. 40) promises absolution from sin on confession
+and baptism; and, if I rightly remember, Mithra marks his soldiers
+in the forehead, with the chrism called in the Egyptian Kouphi; he
+celebrates the sacrifice of bread, which is the resurrection, and
+presents the crown to his followers, menacing them at the same time
+with the sword, etc.
+
+In these mysteries they tried the courage of the initiated with a
+thousand terrors, presenting fire to his face, a sword to his
+breast, etc.; they also offered him a crown, which he refused,
+saying, God is my crown: and this crown is to be seen in the
+celestial sphere by the side of Bootes.  The personages in these
+mysteries were distinguished by the names of the animal
+constellations.  The ceremony of mass is nothing more than an
+imitation of these mysteries and those of Eleusis.  The
+benediction, the Lord be with you, is a literal translation of the
+formula of admission chou-k, am, p-ka.  See Beausob. Hist. Du
+Manicheisme, vol. ii.
+
+
+But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out
+against this recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and
+worshippers of fire, charged them with falsehood, interpolations,
+falsification of facts; and there arose a violent dispute as to the
+dates of the events, their order and succession, the origin of the
+doctrines, their transmission from nation to nation, the
+authenticity of the books on which they are founded, the epoch of
+their composition, the character of their compilers, and the
+validity of their testimony.  And the various parties, pointing out
+reciprocally to each other, the contradictions, improbabilities,
+and forgeries, accused one another of having established their
+belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd fables,
+invented without discernment, and admitted without examination by
+unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown
+epochs.
+
+A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various
+Indian sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions
+of the Jews and the Parses, said:
+
+"What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly
+set themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the
+depositaries of its archives?  To hear their calculations of five
+or six thousand years, it would seem that the world was of
+yesterday; whereas our monuments prove a duration of many thousands
+of centuries.  And for what reason are their books to be preferred
+to ours?  Are then the Vedes, the Chastres, and the Pourans
+inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the Zadders?*  And is
+not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as valid as that of
+the fathers and the gods of the West?  Ah! if it were permitted to
+reveal our mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did not
+justly conceal them from every eye!"
+
+
+These are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos; they are sometimes
+written Vedams, Pouranams, Chastrans, because the Hindoos, like the
+Persians, are accustomed to give a nasal sound to the terminations
+of their words, which we represent by the affixes on and an, and
+the Portuguese by the affixes om and am.  Many of these books have
+been translated, thanks to the liberal spirit of Mr. Hastings, who
+has founded at Calcutta a literary society, and a printing press.
+At the same time, however, that we express our gratitude to this
+society, we must be permitted to complain of its exclusive spirit;
+the number of copies printed of each book being such as it is
+impossible to purchase them even in England; they are wholly in the
+hands of the East India proprietors.  Scarcely even is the Asiatic
+Miscellany known in Europe; and a man must be very learned in
+oriental antiquity before he so much as hears of the Jones's, the
+Wilkins's, and the Halhed's, etc.  As to the sacred books of the
+Hindoos, all that are yet in our hands are the Bhagvat Geeta, the
+Ezour-Vedam, the Bagavadam, and certain fragments of the Chastres
+printed at the end of the Bhagvat Geeta.  These books are in
+Indostan what the Old and New Testament are in Christendom, the
+Koran in Turkey, the Zadder and the Zendavesta among the Parses,
+etc.  When I have taken an extensive survey of their contents, I
+have sometimes asked myself, what would be the loss to the human
+race if a new Omar condemned them to the flames; and, unable to
+discover any mischief that would ensue, I call the imaginary chest
+that contains them, the box of Pandora.
+
+
+The Bramins stopping short at these words: "How can we admit your
+doctrine," said the legislator, "if you will not make it known?
+And how did its first authors propagate it, when, being alone
+possessed of it, their own people were to them profane?  Did heaven
+reveal it to be kept a secret?"*
+
+
+* The Vedas or Vedams are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos, as the
+Bibles with us.  They are three in number; the Rick Veda, the
+Yadjour Veda, and the Sama Veda; they are so scarce in India, that
+the English could with great difficulty find an original one, of
+which a copy is deposited in the British Museum; they who reckon
+four Vedas, include among them the Attar Veda, concerning
+ceremonies, but which is lost.  There are besides commentaries
+named Upanishada, one of which was published by Anquetil du Peron,
+and entitled Oupnekhat, a curious work.  The date of these books is
+more than twenty-five centuries prior to our era; their contents
+prove that all the reveries of the Greek metaphysicians come from
+India and Egypt.  Since the year 1788, the learned men of England
+are working in India a mine of literature totally unknown in
+Europe, and which proves that the civilization of India ascends to
+a very remote antiquity.  After the Vedas come the Chastras
+amounting to six.  They treat of theology and the Sciences.
+Afterwards eighteen Pouranas, treating of Mythology and History.
+See the Bahgouet-guita, the Baga Vadam, and the Ezour-Vedam, etc.
+
+
+But the Bramins persisting in their silence: "Let them have the
+honor of the secret," said a European: "Their doctrine is now
+divulged; we have their books, and I can give you the substance of
+them."
+
+Then beginning with an abstract of the four Vedes, the eighteen
+Pourans, and the five or six Chastres, he recounted how a being,
+infinite, eternal, immaterial and round, after having passed an
+eternity in self-contemplation, and determining at last to manifest
+himself, separated the male and female faculties which were in him,
+and performed an act of generation, of which the Lingam remains an
+emblem; how that first act gave birth to three divine powers,
+Brama, Bichen or Vichenou, and Chib or Chiven;* whose functions
+were--the first to create, the second to preserve, and the third to
+destroy, or change the form of the universe.  Then, detailing the
+history of their operations and adventures, he explained how Brama,
+proud of having created the world and the eight bobouns, or spheres
+of probation, thought himself superior to Chib, his equal; how his
+pride brought on a battle between them, in which these celestial
+globes were crushed like a basket of eggs; how Brama, vanquished in
+this conflict, was reduced to serve as a pedestal to Chib,
+metamorphosed into a Lingam; how Vichenou, the god mediator, has
+taken at different times to preserve the world, nine mortal forms
+of animals; how first, in shape of a fish, he saved from the
+universal deluge a family who repeopled the earth; how afterwards,
+in the form of a tortoise,** he drew from the sea of milk the
+mountain Mandreguiri (the pole); then, becoming a boar, he tore the
+belly of the giant Ereuniachessen, who was drowning the earth in
+the abyss of Djole, from whence he drew it out with his tusks; how,
+becoming incarnate in a black shepherd, and under the name of
+Christ-en, he delivered the world of the enormous serpent Calengem,
+and then crushed his head, after having been wounded by him in the
+heel.
+
+
+* These names are differently pronounced according to the different
+dialects; thus they say Birmah, Bremma, Brouma.  Bichen has been
+turned into Vichen by the easy exchange of a B for a V, and into
+Vichenou by means of a grammatical affix.  In the same manner Chib,
+which is synonymous with Satan, and signifies adversary, is
+frequently written Chiba and Chiv-en; he is called also Rouder and
+Routr-en, that is, the destroyer.
+
+** This is the constellation testudo, or the lyre, which was at
+first a tortoise, on account of its slow motion round the Pole;
+then a lyre, because it is the shell of this reptile on which the
+strings of the lyre are mounted.  See an excellent memoir of M.
+Dupuis sur l'Origine des Constellations.
+
+
+Then, passing on to the history of the secondary Genii, he related
+how the Eternal, to display his own glory, created various orders
+of angels, whose business it was to sing his praises and to direct
+the universe; how a part of these angels revolted under the
+guidance of an ambitious chief, who strove to usurp the power of
+God, and to govern all; how God plunged them into a world of
+darkness, there to undergo the punishment for their crimes; how at
+last, touched with compassion, he consented to release them, to
+receive them into favor, after they should undergo a long series of
+probations; how, after creating for this purpose fifteen orbits or
+regions of planets, and peopling them with bodies, he ordered these
+rebel angels to undergo in them eighty-seven transmigrations; he
+then explained how souls, thus purified, returned to the first
+source, to the ocean of life and animation from which they had
+proceeded; and since all living creatures contain portions of this
+universal soul, he taught how criminal it was to deprive them of
+it.  He was finally proceeding to explain the rites and ceremonies,
+when, speaking of offerings and libations of milk and butter made
+to gods of copper and wood, and then of purifications by the dung
+and urine of cows, there arose a universal murmur, mixed with peals
+of laughter, which interrupted the orator.
+
+Each of the different groups began to reason on that religion:
+"They are idolators," said the Mussulmans; "and should be
+exterminated."  "They are deranged in their intellect," said the
+followers of Confucius; "we must try to cure them."  "What
+ridiculous gods," said others, "are these puppets, besmeared with
+grease and smoke!  Are gods to be washed like dirty children, from
+whom you must brush away the flies, which, attracted by honey, are
+fouling them with their excrements!"
+
+But a Bramin exclaimed with indignation: "These are profound
+mysteries,--emblems of truth, which you are not worthy to hear."
+
+"And in what respect are you more worthy than we?" exclaimed a Lama
+of Tibet.  "Is it because you pretend to have issued from the head
+of Brama, and the rest of the human race from the less noble parts
+of his body?  But to support the pride of your distinctions of
+origin and castes, prove to us in the first place that you are
+different from other men; establish, in the next place, as
+historical facts, the allegories which you relate; show us, indeed,
+that you are the authors of all this doctrine; for we will
+demonstrate, if necessary, that you have only stolen and disfigured
+it; that you are only the imitators of the ancient paganism of the
+West; to which, by an ill assorted mixture, you have allied the
+pure and spiritual doctrine of our gods--a doctrine totally
+detached from the senses, and entirely unknown on earth till Beddou
+taught it to the nations."*
+
+
+* All the ancient opinions of the Egyptian and Grecian theologians
+are to be found in India, and they appear to have been introduced,
+by means of the commerce of Arabia and the vicinity of Persia, time
+immemorial.
+
+
+A number of groups having asked what was this doctrine, and who was
+this god, of whom the greater part had never heard the name, the
+Lama resumed and said:
+
+"In the beginning, a sole-existent and self-existent God, having
+passed an eternity in the contemplation of his own being, resolved
+to manifest his perfections out of himself, and created the matter
+of the world.  The four elements being produced, but still in a
+state of confusion, he breathed on the face of the waters, which
+swelled like an immense bubble in form of an egg, which unfolding,
+became the vault or orb of heaven, enclosing the world.*  Having
+made the earth, and the bodies of animals, this God, essence of
+motion, imparted to them a part of his own being to animate them;
+for this reason, the soul of everything that breathes being a
+portion of the universal soul, no one of them can perish; they only
+change their form and mould in passing successively into different
+bodies.  Of all these forms, the one most pleasing to God is that
+of man, as most resembling his own perfections.  When a man, by an
+absolute disengagement from his senses, is wholly absorbed in self-
+contemplation, he then discovers the divinity, and becomes himself
+God.  Of all the incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto
+taken, the greatest and most solemn was that in which he appeared
+thirty centuries ago in Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou,
+to preach the doctrines of self-denial and self-annihilation."
+
+
+* This cosmogony of the Lamas, the Bonzes, and even the Bramins, as
+Henry Lord asserts, is literally that of the ancient Egyptians.
+The Egyptians, says Porphyry, call Kneph, intelligence, or
+efficient cause of the universe.  They relate that this God vomited
+an egg, from which was produced another God named Phtha or Vulcan,
+(igneous principle or the sun) and they add, that this egg is the
+world.  Euseb. Proep. Evang. p. 115.
+
+They represent, says the same author in another place, the God
+Kneph, or efficient cause, under the form of a man in deep blue
+(the color of the sky) having in his hand a sceptre, a belt round
+his body, and a small bonnet royal of light feathers on his head,
+to denote how very subtile and fugacious the idea of that being is.
+Upon which I shall observe that Kneph in Hebrew signifies a wing, a
+feather, and that this color of sky-blue is to be found in the
+majority of the Indian Gods, and is, under the name of Narayan, one
+of their most distinguishing epithets.
+
+
+Then, pursuing the history of Fot, the Lama continued:
+
+"He was born from the right flank of a virgin of royal blood, who
+did not cease to be a virgin for having become a mother; that the
+king of the country, uneasy at his birth, wished to destroy him,
+and for this purpose ordered a massacre of all the males born at
+that period, that being saved by shepherds, Beddou lived in the
+desert till the age of thirty years, at which time he began his
+mission to enlighten men and cast out devils; that he performed a
+multitude of the most astonishing miracles; that he spent his life
+in fasting and severe penitence, and at his death, bequeathed to
+his disciples a book containing his doctrines."
+
+And the Lama began to read:
+
+"He that leaveth his father and mother to follow me," says Fot,
+"becomes a perfect Samanean (a heavenly man).
+
+"He that practices my precepts to the fourth degree of perfection,
+acquires the faculty of flying in the air, of moving heaven and
+earth, of prolonging or shortening his life (rising from the dead).
+
+"The Samanean despises riches, and uses only what is strictly
+necessary; he mortifies his body, silences his passions, desires
+nothing, forms no attachments, meditates my doctrines without
+ceasing, endures injuries with patience, and bears no malice to his
+neighbor.
+
+"Heaven and earth shall perish," says Fot: "despise therefore your
+bodies, which are composed of the four perishable elements, and
+think only of your immortal soul.
+
+"Listen not to the flesh: fear and sorrow spring from the passions:
+stifle the passions and you destroy fear and sorrow.
+
+"Whoever dies without having embraced my religion," says Fot,
+"returns among men, until he embraces it."
+
+The Lama was going on with his reading, when the Christians
+interrupted him, crying out that this was their own religion
+adulterated--that Fot was no other than Jesus himself disfigured,
+and that the Lamas were the Nestorians and the Manicheans disguised
+and bastardized.*
+
+
+* This is asserted by our missionaries, and among others by Georgi
+in his unfinished work of the Thibetan alphabet: but if it can be
+proved that the Manicheans were but plagiarists, and the ignorant
+echo of a doctrine that existed fifteen hundred years before them,
+what becomes of the declarations of Georgi?  See upon this subject,
+Beausob. Hist. du Manicheisme.
+
+
+But the Lama, supported by the Chamans, Bonzes, Gonnis, Talapoins
+of Siam, of Ceylon, of Japan, and of China, proved to the
+Christians, even from their own authors, that the doctrine of the
+Samaneans was known through the East more than a thousand years
+before the Christian era; that their name was cited before the time
+of Alexander, and that Boutta, or Beddou, was known before Jesus.*
+
+
+* The eastern writers in general agree in placing the birth of
+Beddou 1027 years before Jesus Christ, which makes him the
+contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion, they confound
+him.  It is certain that his doctrine notoriously existed at that
+epoch; it is found entire in that of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the
+Indian gymnosophists.  But the gymnosophists are cited at the time
+of Alexander as an ancient sect already divided into Brachmans and
+Samaneans.  See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien.
+Pythagoras lived in the ninth century before Jesus Christ; See
+chronology of the twelve ages; and Orpheus is of still greater
+antiquity.  If, as is the case, the doctrine of Pythagoras and that
+of Orpheus are of Egyptian origin, that of Beddou goes back to the
+common source; and in reality the Egyptian priests recite, that
+Hermes as he was dying said: "I have hitherto lived an exile from
+my country, to which I now return.  Weep not for me, I ascend to
+the celestial abode where each of you will follow in his turn:
+there God is: this life is only death."--Chalcidius in Thinaeum.
+
+Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, the sectaries of
+Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans.  Farther, Hermes is no other than
+Beddou himself; for among the Indians, Chinese, Lamas, etc., the
+planet Mercury and the corresponding day of the week (Wednesday)
+bear the name of Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in
+the rank of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his
+pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that Mercury was
+not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who, placed at the
+summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year; hence his attributes
+taken from the constellation Syrius, and his name of Anubis, as
+well as that of Esculapius, having the figure of a man and the head
+of a dog: hence his serpent, which is the Hydra, emblem of the Nile
+(Hydor, humidity); and from this serpent he seems to have derived
+his name of Hermes, as Remes (with a schin) in the oriental
+languages, signifies serpent.  Now Beddou and Hermes being the same
+names, it is manifest of what antiquity is the system ascribed to
+the former.  As to the name of Samanean, it is precisely that of
+Chaman, still preserved in Tartary, China, and India.  The
+interpretation given to it is, man of the woods, a hermit
+mortifying the flesh, such being the characteristic of this sect;
+but its literal meaning is, celestial (Samaoui) and explains the
+system of those who are called by it.--The system is the same as
+that of the sectaries of Orpheus, of the Essenians, of the ancient
+Anchorets of Persia, and the whole eastern country.  See Porphyry,
+de Abstin. Animal.
+
+These celestial and penitent men carried in India their insanity to
+such an extreme as to wish not to touch the earth, and they
+accordingly lived in cages suspended from the trees, where the
+people, whose admiration was not less absurd, brought them
+provisions.  During the night there were frequent robberies, rapes
+and murders, and it was at length discovered that they were
+committed by those men, who, descending from their cages, thus
+indemnified themselves for their restraint during the day.  The
+Bramins, their rivals, embraced the opportunity of exterminating
+them; and from that time their name in India has been synonymous
+with hypocrite.  See Hist. de la Chine, in 5 vols. quarto, at the
+note page 30; Hist. de Huns, 2 vols. and preface to the Ezour-
+Vedam.
+
+
+Then, retorting the pretensions of the Christians against
+themselves: "Prove to us," said the Lama, "that you are not
+Samaneans degenerated, and that the man you make the author of your
+sect is not Fot himself disguised.  Prove to us by historical facts
+that he even existed at the epoch you pretend; for, it being
+destitute of authentic testimony,* we absolutely deny it; and we
+maintain that your very gospels are only the books of some
+Mithriacs of Persia, and the Essenians of Syria, who were a branch
+of reformed Samaneans."**
+
+
+* There are absolutely no other monuments of the existence of Jesus
+Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus (Antiq. Jud.
+lib. 18, c.3,) a single phrase in Tacitus (Annal. lib. 15, c. 44),
+and the Gospels.  But the passage in Josephus is unanimously
+acknowledged to be apocryphal, and to have been interpolated
+towards the close of the third century, (See Trad. de joseph, par
+M. Gillet); and that of Tacitus in so vague and so evidently taken
+from the deposition of the Christians before the tribunals, that it
+may be ranked in the class of evangelical records.  It remains to
+enquire of what authority are these records.  "All the world
+knows," says Faustus, who, though a Manichean, was one of the most
+learned men of the third century, "All the world knows that the
+gospels were neither written by Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, but
+by certain unknown persons, who rightly judging that they should
+not obtain belief respecting things which they had not seen, placed
+at the head of their recitals the names of contemporary apostles."
+See Beausob. vol. i. and Hist. des Apologistes de la Relig. Chret.
+par Burigni, a sagacious writer, who has demonstrated the absolute
+uncertainty of those foundations of the Christian religion; so that
+the existence of Jesus is no better proved than that of Osiris and
+Hercules, or that of Fot or Beddou, with whom, says M. de Guignes,
+the Chinese continually confound him, for they never call Jesus by
+any other name than Fot.  Hist. de Huns.
+
+** That is to say, from the pious romances formed out of the sacred
+legends of the mysteries of Mithra, Ceres, Isis, etc., from whence
+are equally derived the books of the Hindoos and the Bonzes.  Our
+missionaries have long remarked a striking resemblance between
+those books and the gospels.  M. Wilkins expressly mentions it in a
+note in the Bhagvat Geeta.  All agree that Krisna, Fot, and Jesus
+have the same characteristic features: but religious prejudice has
+stood in the way of drawing from this circumstance the proper and
+natural inference.  To time and reason must it be left to display
+the truth.
+
+
+At these words, the Christians set up a general cry, and a new
+dispute was about to begin; when a number of Chinese Chamans, and
+Talapoins of Siam, came forward and said that they would settle the
+whole controversy.  And one of them speaking for the whole
+exclaimed: "It is time to put an end to these frivolous contests by
+drawing aside the veil from the interior doctrine that Fot himself
+revealed to his disciples on his death bed.*
+
+
+* The Budsoists have two doctrines, the one public and ostensible,
+the other interior and secret, precisely like the Egyptian priests.
+It may be asked, why this distinction?  It is, that as the public
+doctrine recommends offerings, expiations, endowments, etc., the
+priests find their profit in preaching it to the people; whereas
+the other, teaching the vanity of worldly things, and attended with
+no lucre, it is thought proper to make it known only to adepts.
+Can the teachers and followers of this religion be better classed
+than under the heads of knavery and credulity?
+
+
+"All these theological opinions," continued he, "are but chimeras.
+All the stories of the nature of the gods, of their actions and
+their lives, are but allegories and mythological emblems, under
+which are enveloped ingenious ideas of morals, and the knowledge of
+the operations of nature in the action of the elements and the
+movement of the planets.
+
+"The truth is, that all is reduced to nothing--that all is
+illusion, appearance, dream; that the moral metempsychosis is only
+the figurative sense of the physical metempsychosis, or the
+successive movement of the elements of bodies which perish not, but
+which, having composed one body, pass when that is dissolved, into
+other mediums and form other combinations.  The soul is but the
+vital principle which results from the properties of matter, and
+from the action of the elements in those bodies where they create a
+spontaneous movement.  To suppose that this product of the play of
+the organs, born with them, matured with them, and which sleeps
+with them, can subsist when they cease, is the romance of a
+wandering imagination, perhaps agreeable enough, but really
+chimerical.
+
+God itself is nothing more than the moving principle, the occult
+force inherent in all beings--the sum of their laws and properties--
+the animating principle; in a word, the soul of the universe;
+which on account of the infinite variety of its connections and its
+operations, sometimes simple, sometimes multiple, sometimes active,
+sometimes passive, has always presented to the human mind an
+unsolvable enigma.  All that man can comprehend with certainty is,
+that matter does not perish; that it possesses essentially those
+properties by which the world is held together like a living and
+organized being; that the knowledge of these laws with respect to
+man is what constitutes wisdom; that virtue and merit consist in
+their observance; and evil, sin, and vice, in the ignorance and
+violation of them; that happiness and misery result from these by
+the same necessity which makes heavy bodies descend and light ones
+rise, and by a fatality of causes and effects, whose chain extends
+from the smallest atom to the greatest of the heavenly bodies."*
+
+
+* These are the very expressions of La Loubre, in his description
+of the kingdom of Siam and the theology of the Bronzes.  Their
+dogmas, compared with those of the ancient philosophers of Greece
+and Italy, give a complete representation of the whole system of
+the Stoics and Epicureans, mixed with astrological superstitious,
+and some traits of Pythagorism.
+
+
+At these words, a crowd of theologians of every sect cried out that
+this doctrine was materialism, and that those who profess it were
+impious atheists, enemies to God and man, who must be exterminated.
+"Very well," replied the Chamans, "suppose we are in error, which
+is not impossible, since the first attribute of the human mind is
+to be subject to illusion; but what right have you to take away
+from men like yourselves, the life which Heaven has given them?  If
+Heaven holds us guilty and in abhorrence, why does it impart to us
+the same blessings as to you?  And if it treats us with
+forbearance, what authority have you to be less indulgent?  Pious
+men! who speak of God with so much certainty and confidence, be so
+good as to tell us what it is; give us to comprehend what those
+abstract and metaphysical beings are, which you call God and soul,
+substance without matter, existence without body, life without
+organs or sensation.  If you know those beings by your senses or
+their reflections, render them in like manner perceptible to us; or
+if you speak of them on testimony and tradition, show us a uniform
+account, and give a determinate basis to our creed."
+
+There now arose among the theologians a great controversy
+respecting God and his nature, his manner of acting, and of
+manifesting himself; on the nature of the soul and its union with
+the body; whether it exists before the organs, or only after they
+are formed; on the future life, and the other world.  And every
+sect, every school, every individual, differing on all these
+points, and each assigning plausible reasons, and respectable
+though opposite authorities for his opinion, they fell into an
+inextricable labyrinth of contradictions.
+
+Then the legislator, having commanded silence and recalled the
+dispute to its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of
+nations; you came together in search of truth.  At first, every one
+of you, thinking he possessed it, demanded of the others an
+implicit faith; but perceiving the contrariety of your opinions,
+you found it necessary to submit them to a common rule of evidence,
+and to bring them to one general term of comparison; and you agreed
+that each should exhibit the proofs of his doctrine.  You began by
+alleging facts; but each religion and every sect, being equally
+furnished with miracles and martyrs, each producing an equal number
+of witnesses, and offering to support them by a voluntary death,
+the balance on this first point, by right of parity, remained
+equal.
+
+"You then passed to the trial of reasoning; but the same arguments
+applying equally to contrary positions--the same assertions,
+equally gratuitous, being advanced and repelled with equal force,
+and all having an equal right to refuse his assent, nothing was
+demonstrated.  What is more, the confrontation of your systems has
+brought up more and extraordinary difficulties; for amid the
+apparent or adventitious diversities, you have discovered a
+fundamental resemblance, a common groundwork; and each of you
+pretending to be the inventor, and first depositary, have taxed
+each other with adulterations and plagiarisms; and thence arises a
+difficult question concerning the transmission of religious ideas
+from people to people.
+
+"Finally, to complete your embarrassment: when you endeavored to
+explain your doctrines to each other, they appeared confused and
+foreign, even to their adherents; they were founded on ideas
+inaccessible to your senses; you consequently had no means of
+judging of them, and you confessed yourselves in this respect to be
+only the echoes of your fathers.  Hence follows this other
+question: how came they to the knowledge of your fathers, who
+themselves had no other means than you to conceive them?  So that,
+on the one hand, the succession of these ideas being unknown, and
+on the other, their origin and existence being a mystery, all the
+edifice of your religious opinions becomes a complicated problem of
+metaphysics and history.
+
+"Since, however, these opinions, extraordinary as they may be, must
+have had some origin; since even the most abstract and fantastical
+ideas have some physical model, it may be useful to recur to this
+origin, and discover this model--in a word, to find out from what
+source the human understanding has drawn these ideas, at present so
+obscure, of God, of the soul, of all immaterial beings, which make
+the basis of so many systems; to unfold the filiation which they
+have followed, and the alterations which they have undergone in
+their transmissions and ramifications.  If, then, there are any
+persons present who have made a study of these objects, let them
+come forward, and endeavor, in the face of nations, to dissipate
+the obscurity in which their opinions have so long remained."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ORIGIN AND FILIATION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.
+
+
+At these words, a new group, formed in an instant by men from
+various standards, but not distinguished by any, came forward into
+the circle; and one of them spoke in the name of the whole:
+
+"Delegates, friends of evidence and virtue!  It is not surprising
+that the subject in question should be enveloped in so many clouds,
+since, besides its inherent difficulties, thought itself has always
+been encumbered with superadded obstacles peculiar to this study,
+where all free enquiry and discussion have been interdicted by the
+intolerance of every system.  But now that our views are permitted
+to expand, we will expose to open day, and submit to the judgment
+of nations, that which unprejudiced minds, after long researches,
+have found to be the most reasonable; and we do this, not with the
+pretension of imposing a new creed, but with the hope of provoking
+new lights, and obtaining better information.
+
+"Doctors and instructors of nations!  You know what thick darkness
+covers the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you
+teach.  Imposed by authority, inculcated by education, and
+maintained by example, they pass from age to age, and strengthen
+their empire from habit and inattention.  But if man, enlightened
+by reflection and experience, brings to mature examination the
+prejudices of his childhood, he soon discovers a multitude of
+incongruities and contradictions which awaken his sagacity and
+excite his reasoning powers.
+
+"At first, remarking the diversity and opposition of the creeds
+which divide the nations, he takes courage to question the
+infallibility which each of them claims, and arming himself with
+their reciprocal pretensions, he conceives that his senses and his
+reason, derived immediately from God, are a law not less holy, a
+guide not less sure, than the mediate and contradictory codes of
+the prophets.
+
+"If he then examines the texture of these codes themselves, he
+observes that their laws, pretended to be divine, that is,
+immutable and eternal, have arisen from circumstances of times,
+places, and persons; that they have issued one from the other, in a
+kind of genealogical order, borrowing from each other reciprocally
+a common and similar fund of ideas, which every lawgiver modifies
+according to his fancy.
+
+If he ascends to the source of these ideas, he finds it involved in
+the night of time, in the infancy of nations, even to the origin of
+the world, to which they claim alliance; and there, placed in the
+darkness of chaos, in the empire of fables and traditions, they
+present themselves, accompanied with a state of things so full of
+prodigies, that it seems to forbid all access to the judgment: but
+this state itself excites a first effort of reason, which resolves
+the difficulty; for if the prodigies, found in the theological
+systems, have really existed--if, for instance, the metamorphoses,
+the apparitions, the conversations with one or many gods, recorded
+in the books of the Indians, the Hebrews, the Parses, are
+historical events, he must agree that nature in those times was
+totally different from what it is at present; that the present race
+of men are quite another species from those who then existed; and,
+therefore, he ought not to trouble his head about them.
+
+"If, on the contrary, these miraculous events have really not
+existed in the physical order of things, then he readily conceives
+that they are creatures of the human intellect; and this faculty
+being still capable of the most fantastical combinations, explains
+at once the phenomenon of these monsters in history.  It only
+remains, then, to find how and wherefore they have been formed in
+the imagination.  Now, if we examine with care the subjects of
+these intellectual creations, analyze the ideas which they combine
+and associate, and carefully weigh all the circumstances which they
+allege, we shall find that this first obscure and incredible state
+of things is explained by the laws of nature.  We find that these
+stories of a fabulous kind have a figurative sense different from
+the apparent one; that these events, pretended to be marvellous,
+are simple and physical facts, which, being misconceived or
+misrepresented, have been disfigured by accidental causes dependent
+on the human mind, by the confusion of signs employed to represent
+the ideas, the want of precision in words, permanence in language,
+and perfection in writing; we find that these gods, for instance,
+who display such singular characters in every system, are only the
+physical agents of nature, the elements, the winds, the stars, and
+the meteors, which have been personified by the necessary mechanism
+of language and of the human understanding; that their lives, their
+manners, their actions, are only their mechanical operations and
+connections; and that all their pretended history is only the
+description of these phenomena, formed by the first naturalists who
+observed them, and misconceived by the vulgar who did not
+understand them, or by succeeding generations who forgot them.  In
+a word, all the theological dogmas on the origin of the world, the
+nature of God, the revelation of his laws, the manifestation of his
+person, are known to be only the recital of astronomical facts,
+only figurative and emblematical accounts of the motion of the
+heavenly bodies.  We are convinced that the very idea of a God,
+that idea at present so obscure, is, in its first origin, nothing
+but that of the physical powers of the universe, considered
+sometimes as a plurality by reason of their agencies and phenomena,
+sometimes as one simple and only being by reason of the
+universality of the machine and the connection of its parts; so
+that the being called God has been sometimes the wind, the fire,
+the water, all the elements; sometimes the sun, the stars, the
+planets, and their influence; sometimes the matter of the visible
+world, the totality of the universe; sometimes abstract and
+metaphysical qualities, such as space, duration, motion,
+intelligence; and we everywhere see this conclusion, that the idea
+of God has not been a miraculous revelation of invisible beings,
+but a natural offspring of the human intellect--an operation of the
+mind, whose progress it has followed and whose revolutions it has
+undergone, in all the progress that has been made in the knowledge
+of the physical world and its agents.
+
+"It is then in vain that nations attribute their religion to
+heavenly inspirations; it is in vain that their dogmas pretend to a
+primeval state of supernatural events: the original barbarity of
+the human race, attested by their own monuments,* belies these
+assertions at once.  But there is one constant and indubitable fact
+which refutes beyond contradiction all these doubtful accounts of
+past ages.  From this position, that man acquires and receives no
+ideas but through the medium of his senses,** it follows with
+certainty that every notion which claims to itself any other origin
+than that of sensation and experience, is the erroneous supposition
+of a posterior reasoning: now, it is sufficient to cast an eye upon
+the sacred systems of the origin of the world, and of the actions
+of the gods, to discover in every idea, in every word, the
+anticipation of an order of things which could not exist till a
+long time after.  Reason, strengthened by these contradictions,
+rejecting everything that is not in the order of nature, and
+admitting no historical facts but those founded on probabilities,
+lays open its own system, and pronounces itself with assurance.
+
+
+* It is the unanimous testimony of history, and even of legends,
+that the first human beings were every where savages, and that it
+was to civilize them, and teach them to make bread, that the Gods
+manifested themselves.
+
+** The rock on which all the ancients have split, and which has
+occasioned all their errors, has been their supposing the idea of
+God to be innate and co-eternal with the soul; and hence all the
+reveries developed in Plato and Jamblicus.  See the Timoeus, the
+Phedon, and De Mysteriis Egyptiorum, sect. I, c. 3.
+
+
+"Before one nation had received from another nation dogmas already
+invented; before one generation had inherited ideas acquired by a
+preceding generation, none of these complicated systems could have
+existed in the world.  The first men, being children of nature,
+anterior to all events, ignorant of all science, were born without
+any idea of the dogmas arising from scholastic disputes; of rites
+founded on the practice of arts not then known; of precepts framed
+after the development of passions; or of laws which suppose a
+language, a state of society not then in being; or of God, whose
+attributes all refer to physical objects, and his actions to a
+despotic state of government; or of the soul, or of any of those
+metaphysical beings, which we are told are not the objects of
+sense, and for which, however, there can be no other means of
+access to the understanding.  To arrive at so many results, the
+necessary circle of preceding facts must have been observed; slow
+experience and repeated trials must have taught the rude man the
+use of his organs; the accumulated knowledge of successive
+generations must have invented and improved the means of living;
+and the mind, freed from the cares of the first wants of nature,
+must have raised itself to the complicated art of comparing ideas,
+of digesting arguments, and seizing abstract similitudes.
+
+
+I.  Origin of the idea of God: Worship of the elements and of the
+physical powers of nature.
+
+
+"It was not till after having overcome these obstacles, and gone
+through a long career in the night of history, that man, reflecting
+on his condition, began to perceive that he was subjected to forces
+superior to his own, and independent of his will.  The sun
+enlightened and warmed him, the fire burned him, the thunder
+terrified him, the wind beat upon him, the water overwhelmed him.
+All beings acted upon him powerfully and irresistibly.  He
+sustained this action for a long time, like a machine, without
+enquiring the cause; but the moment he began his enquiries, he fell
+into astonishment; and, passing from the surprise of his first
+reflections to the reverie of curiosity, he began a chain of
+reasoning.
+
+"First, considering the action of the elements on him, he conceived
+an idea of weakness and subjection on his part, and of power and
+domination on theirs; and this idea of power was the primitive and
+fundamental type of every idea of God.
+
+"Secondly, the action of these natural existences excited in him
+sensations of pleasure or pain, of good or evil; and by a natural
+effect of his organization, he conceived for them love or aversion;
+he desired or dreaded their presence; and fear or hope gave rise to
+the first idea of religion.
+
+"Then, judging everything by comparison, and remarking in these
+beings a spontaneous movement like his own, he supposed this
+movement directed by a will,--an intelligence of the nature of his
+own; and hence, by induction, he formed a new reasoning.  Having
+experienced that certain practices towards his fellow creatures had
+the effect to modify their affections and direct their conduct to
+his advantage, he resorted to the same practices towards these
+powerful beings of the universe.  He reasoned thus with himself:
+When my fellow creature, stronger than I, is disposed to do me
+injury, I abase myself before him, and my prayer has the art to
+calm him.  I will pray to these powerful beings who strike me.  I
+will supplicate the intelligences of the winds, of the stars, of
+the waters, and they will hear me.  I will conjure them to avert
+the evil and give me the good that is at their disposal; I will
+move them by my tears, I will soften them by offerings, and I shall
+be happy.
+
+"Thus simple man, in the infancy of his reason, spoke to the sun
+and to the moon; he animated with his own understanding and
+passions the great agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds, and
+vain actions, to change their inflexible laws.  Fatal error!  He
+prayed the stone to ascend, the water to mount above its level, the
+mountains to remove, and substituting a fantastical world for the
+real one, he peopled it with imaginary beings, to the terror of his
+mind and the torment of his race.
+
+"In this manner the ideas of God and religion have sprung, like all
+others, from physical objects; they were produced in the mind of
+man from his sensations, from his wants, from the circumstances of
+his life, and the progressive state of his knowledge.
+
+"Now, as the ideas of God had their first models in physical
+agents, it followed that God was at first varied and manifold, like
+the form under which he appeared to act.  Every being was a Power,
+a Genius; and the first men conceived the universe filled with
+innumerable gods.
+
+"Again the ideas of God have been created by the affections of the
+human heart; they became necessarily divided into two classes,
+according to the sensations of pleasure or pain, love or hatred,
+which they inspired.
+
+"The forces of nature, the gods and genii, were divided into
+beneficent and malignant, good and evil powers; and hence the
+universality of these two characters in all the systems of
+religion.
+
+"These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were
+for a long time confused and ill-digested.  Savage men, wandering
+in the woods, beset with wants and destitute of resources, had not
+the leisure to combine principles and draw conclusions; affected
+with more evils than they found pleasures, their most habitual
+sentiment was that of fear, their theology terror; their worship
+was confined to a few salutations and offerings to beings whom they
+conceived as greedy and ferocious as themselves.  In their state of
+equality and independence, no man offered himself as mediator
+between men and gods as insubordinate and poor as himself.  No one
+having superfluities to give, there existed no parasite by the name
+of priest, no tribute by the name of victim, no empire by the name
+of altar.  Their dogmas and their morals were the same thing, it
+was only self-preservation; and religion, that arbitrary idea,
+without influence on the mutual relations of men, was a vain homage
+rendered to the visible powers of nature.
+
+"Such was the necessary and original idea of God."
+
+And the orator, addressing himself to the savage nations,
+continued:
+
+"We appeal to you, men who have received no foreign and factitious
+ideas; tell us, have you ever gone beyond what I have described?
+And you, learned doctors, we call you to witness; is not this the
+unanimous testimony of all ancient monuments?*
+
+
+* It clearly results, says Plutarch, from the verses of Orpheus and
+the sacred books of the Egyptians and Phrygians, that the ancient
+theology, not only of the Greeks, but of all nations, was nothing
+more than a system of physics, a picture of the operations of
+nature, wrapped up in mysterious allegories and enigmatical
+symbols, in a manner that the ignorant multitude attended rather to
+their apparent than to their hidden meaning, and even in what they
+understood of the latter, supposed there to be something more deep
+than what they perceived.  Fragment of a work of Plutarch now lost,
+quoted by Eusebius, Proepar. Evang. lib. 3, ch. 1, p. 83.
+
+The majority of philosophers, says Porphyry, and among others
+Haeremon (who lived in Egypt in the first age of Christianity),
+imagine there never to have been any other world than the one we
+see, and acknowledged no other Gods of all those recognized by the
+Egyptians, than such as are commonly called planets, signs of the
+Zodiac, and constellations; whose aspects, that is, rising and
+setting, are supposed to influence the fortunes of men; to which
+they add their divisions of the signs into decans and dispensers of
+time, whom they style lords of the ascendant, whose names, virtues
+in relieving distempers, rising, setting, and presages of future
+events, are the subjects of almanacs (for be it observed, that the
+Egyptian priests had almanacs the exact counterpart of Matthew
+Lansberg's); for when the priests affirmed that the sun was the
+architect of the universe, Chaeremon presently concludes that all
+their narratives respecting Isis and Osiris, together with their
+other sacred fables, referred in part to the planets, the phases of
+the moon, and the revolution of the sun, and in part to the stars
+of the daily and nightly hemispheres and the river Nile; in a word,
+in all cases to physical and natural existences and never to such
+as might be immaterial and incorporeal. . . .
+
+All these philosophers believe that the acts of our will and the
+motion of our bodies depend on those of the stars to which they are
+subjected, and they refer every thing to the laws of physical
+necessity, which they call destiny or Fatum, supposing a chain of
+causes and effects which binds, by I know not what connection, all
+beings together, from the meanest atom to the supremest power and
+primary influence of the Gods; so that, whether in their temples or
+in their idols, the only subject of worship is the power of
+destiny.  Porphyr. Epist. ad Janebonem.
+
+
+II.  Second system: Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism.
+
+
+"But those same monuments present us likewise a system more
+methodical and more complicated--that of the worship of all the
+stars; adored sometimes in their proper forms, sometimes under
+figurative emblems and symbols; and this worship was the effect of
+the knowledge men had acquired in physics, and was derived
+immediately from the first causes of the social state; that is,
+from the necessities and arts of the first degree, which are among
+the elements of society.
+
+"Indeed, as soon as men began to unite in society, it became
+necessary for them to multiply the means of subsistence, and
+consequently to attend to agriculture: agriculture, to be carried
+on with success, requires the observation and knowledge of the
+heavens.  It was necessary to know the periodical return of the
+same operations of nature, and the same phenomena in the skies;
+indeed to go so far as to ascertain the duration and succession of
+the seasons and the months of the year.  It was indispensable to
+know, in the first place, the course of the sun, who, in his
+zodiacal revolution, shows himself the supreme agent of the whole
+creation; then, of the moon, who, by her phases and periods,
+regulates and distributes time; then, of the stars, and even of the
+planets, which by their appearance and disappearance on the horizon
+and nocturnal hemisphere, marked the minutest divisions.  Finally,
+it was necessary to form a whole system of astronomy,* or a
+calendar; and from these works there naturally followed a new
+manner of considering these predominant and governing powers.
+Having observed that the productions of the earth had a regular and
+constant relation with the heavenly bodies; that the rise, growth,
+and decline of each plant kept pace with the appearance, elevation,
+and declination of the same star or the same group of stars; in
+short, that the languor or activity of vegetation seemed to depend
+on celestial influences, men drew from thence an idea of action, of
+power, in those beings, superior to earthly bodies; and the stars,
+dispensing plenty or scarcity, became powers, genii,** gods,
+authors of good and evil.
+
+
+* It continues to be repeated every day, on the indirect authority
+of the book of Genesis, that astronomy was the invention of the
+children of Noah.  It has been gravely said, that while wandering
+shepherds in the plains of Shinar, they employed their leisure in
+composing a planetary system: as if shepherds had occasion to know
+more than the polar star; and if necessity was not the sole motive
+of every invention!  If the ancient shepherds were so studious and
+sagacious, how does it happen that the modern ones are so stupid,
+ignorant, and inattentive?  And it is a fact that the Arabs of the
+desert know not so many as six constellations, and understand not a
+word of astronomy.
+
+** It appears that by the word genius, the ancients denoted a
+quality, a generative power; for the following words, which are all
+of one family, convey this meaning: generare, genos, genesis,
+genus, gens.
+
+
+"As the state of society had already introduced a regular hierarchy
+of ranks, employments and conditions, men, continuing to reason by
+comparison, carried their new notions into their theology, and
+formed a complicated system of divinities by gradation of rank, in
+which the sun, as first god,* was a military chief or a political
+king: the moon was his wife and queen; the planets were servants,
+bearers of commands, messengers; and the multitude of stars were a
+nation, an army of heroes, genii, whose office was to govern the
+world under the orders of their chiefs.  All the individuals had
+names, functions, attributes, drawn from their relations and
+influences; and even sexes, from the gender of their
+appellations.**
+
+
+* The Sabeans, ancient and modern, says Maimonides, acknowledge a
+principal God, the maker and inhabitant of heaven; but on account
+of his great distance they conceive him to be inaccessible; and in
+imitation of the conduct of people towards their kings, they employ
+as mediators with him, the planets and their angels, whom they call
+princes and potentates, and whom they suppose to reside in those
+luminous bodies as in palaces or tabernacles, etc.  More-Nebuchim.
+
+** According as the gender of the object was in the language of the
+nation masculine or feminine, the Divinity who bore its name was
+male or female.  Thus the Cappadocians called the moon God, and the
+sun Goddess: a circumstance which gives to the same beings a
+perpetual variety in ancient mythology.
+
+
+"And as the social state had introduced certain usages and
+ceremonies, religion, keeping pace with the social state, adopted
+similar ones; these ceremonies, at first simple and private, became
+public and solemn; the offerings became rich and more numerous, and
+the rites more methodical; they assigned certain places for the
+assemblies, and began to have chapels and temples; they instituted
+officers to administer them, and these became priests and pontiffs:
+they established liturgies, and sanctified certain days, and
+religion became a civil act, a political tie.
+
+"But in this arrangement, religion did not change its first
+principles; the idea of God was always that of physical beings,
+operating good or evil, that is, impressing sensations of pleasure
+or pain: the dogma was the knowledge of their laws, or their manner
+of acting; virtue and sin, the observance or infraction of these
+laws; and morality, in its native simplicity, was the judicious
+practice of whatever contributes to the preservation of existence,
+the well-being of one's self and his fellow creatures.*
+
+
+* We may add, says Plutarch, that these Egyptian priests always
+regarded the preservation of health as a point of the first
+importance, and as indispensably necessary to the practice of piety
+and the service of the gods.  See his account of Isis and Osiris,
+towards the end.
+
+
+"Should it be asked at what epoch this system took its birth, we
+shall answer on the testimony of the monuments of astronomy itself;
+that its principles appear with certainty to have been established
+about seventeen thousand years ago,* and if it be asked to what
+people it is to be attributed, we shall answer that the same
+monuments, supported by unanimous traditions, attribute it to the
+first tribes of Egypt; and when reason finds in that country all
+the circumstances which could lead to such a system; when it finds
+there a zone of sky, bordering on the tropic, equally free from the
+rains of the equator and the fogs of the North;** when it finds
+there a central point of the sphere of the ancients, a salubrious
+climate, a great, but manageable river, a soil fertile without art
+or labor, inundated without morbid exhalations, and placed between
+two seas which communicate with the richest countries, it conceives
+that the inhabitant of the Nile, addicted to agriculture from the
+nature of his soil, to geometry from the annual necessity of
+measuring his lands, to commerce from the facility of
+communications, to astronomy from the state of his sky, always open
+to observation, must have been the first to pass from the savage to
+the social state; and consequently to attain the physical and moral
+sciences necessary to civilized life.
+
+
+* The historical orator follows here the opinion of M. Dupuis, who,
+in his learned memoirs concerning the Origin of the Constellations
+and Origin of all Worship, has assigned many plausible reasons to
+prove that Libra was formerly the sign of the vernal, and Aries of
+the autumnal equinox; that is, that since the origin of the actual
+astronomical system, the precession of the equinoxes has carried
+forward by seven signs the primitive order of the zodiac.  Now
+estimating the precession at about seventy years and a half to a
+degree, that is, 2,115 years to each sign; and observing that Aries
+was in its fifteenth degree, 1,447 years before Christ, it follows
+that the first degree of Libra could not have coincided with the
+vernal equinox more lately than 15,194 years before Christ; now, if
+you add 1790 years since Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have
+elapsed since the origin of the Zodiac.  The vernal equinox
+coincided with the first degree of Aries, 2,504 years before
+Christ, and with the first degree of Taurus 4,619 years before
+Christ.  Now it is to be observed, that the worship of the Bull is
+the principal article in the theological creed of the Egyptians,
+Persians, Japanese, etc.; from whence it clearly follows, that some
+general revolution took place among these nations at that time.
+The chronology of five or six thousand years in Genesis is little
+agreeable to this hypothesis; but as the book of Genesis cannot
+claim to be considered as a history farther back than Abraham, we
+are at liberty to make what arrangements we please in the eternity
+that preceded.  See on this subject the analysis of Genesis, in the
+first volume of New Researches on Ancient History; see also Origin
+of Constellatians, by Dupuis, 1781; the Origin of Worship, in 3
+vols. 1794, and the Chronological Zodiac, 1806.
+
+** M. Balli, in placing the first astronomers at Selingenakoy, near
+the Bailkal paid no attention to this twofold circumstance: it
+equally argues against their being placed at Axoum on account of
+the rains, and the Zimb fly of which Mr. Bruce speaks.
+
+
+"It was, then, on the borders of the upper Nile, among a black race
+of men, that was organized the complicated system of the worship of
+the stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth
+and the labors of agriculture; and this first worship,
+characterized by their adoration under their own forms and natural
+attributes, was a simple proceeding of the human mind.  But in a
+short time, the multiplicity of the objects of their relations, and
+their reciprocal influence, having complicated the ideas, and the
+signs that represented them, there followed a confusion as singular
+in its cause as pernicious in its effects.
+
+
+III.  Third system.  Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry.
+
+
+"As soon as this agricultural people began to observe the stars
+with attention, they found it necessary to individualize or group
+them; and to assign to each a proper name, in order to understand
+each other in their designation.  A great difficulty must have
+presented itself in this business: First, the heavenly bodies,
+similar in form, offered no distinguishing characteristics by which
+to denominate them; and, secondly, the language in its infancy and
+poverty, had no expressions for so many new and metaphysical ideas.
+Necessity, the usual stimulus of genius, surmounted everything.
+Having remarked that in the annual revolution, the renewal and
+periodical appearance of terrestrial productions were constantly
+associated with the rising and setting of certain stars, and to
+their position as relative to the sun, the fundamental term of all
+comparison, the mind by a natural operation connected in thought
+these terrestrial and celestial objects, which were connected in
+fact; and applying to them a common sign, it gave to the stars, and
+their groups, the names of the terrestrial objects to which they
+answered.*
+
+
+* "The ancients," says Maimonides, "directing all their attention
+to agriculture, gave names to the stars derived from their
+occupation during the year."  More Neb. pars 3.
+
+
+"Thus the Ethopian of Thebes named stars of inundation, or
+Aquarius, those stars under which the Nile began to overflow;*
+stars of the ox or the bull, those under which they began to plow;
+stars of the lion, those under which that animal, driven from the
+desert by thirst, appeared on the banks of the Nile; stars of the
+sheaf, or of the harvest virgin, those of the reaping season; stars
+of the lamb, stars of the two kids, those under which these
+precious animals were brought forth: and thus was resolved the
+first part of the difficulty.
+
+
+* This must have been June.
+
+
+"Moreover, man having remarked in the beings which surrounded him
+certain qualities distinctive and proper to each species, and
+having thence derived a name by which to designate them, he found
+in the same source an ingenious mode of generalizing his ideas; and
+transferring the name already invented to every thing which bore
+any resemblance or analogy, he enriched his language with a
+perpetual round of metaphors.
+
+"Thus the same Ethiopian having observed that the return of the
+inundation always corresponded with the rising of a beautiful star
+which appeared towards the source of the Nile, and seemed to warn
+the husbandman against the coming waters, he compared this action
+to that of the animal who, by his barking, gives notice of danger,
+and he called this star the dog, the barker (Sirius).  In the same
+manner he named the stars of the crab, those where the sun, having
+arrived at the tropic, retreated by a slow retrograde motion like
+the crab or cancer.  He named stars of the wild goat, or Capricorn,
+those where the sun, having reached the highest point in his
+annuary tract, rests at the summit of the horary gnomon, and
+imitates the goat, who delights to climb the summit of the rocks.
+He named stars of the balance, or libra, those where the days and
+nights, being equal, seemed in equilibrium, like that instrument;
+and stars of the scorpion, those where certain periodical winds
+bring vapors, burning like the venom of the scorpion.  In the same
+manner he called by the name of rings and serpents the figured
+traces of the orbits of the stars and the planets, and such was the
+general mode of naming all the stars and even the planets, taken by
+groups or as individuals, according to their relations with
+husbandry and terrestrial objects, and according to the analogies
+which each nation found between them and the objects of its
+particular soil and climate.*
+
+
+* The ancients had verbs from the substantives crab, goat,
+tortoise, as the French have at present the verbs serpenter,
+coquetter.  The history of all languages is nearly the same.
+
+
+"From this it appeared that abject and terrestrial beings became
+associated with the superior and powerful inhabitants of heaven;
+and this association became stronger every day by the mechanism of
+language and the constitution of the human mind.  Men would say by
+a natural metaphor: The bull spreads over the earth the germs of
+fecundity (in spring) he restores vegetation and plenty: the lamb
+(or ram) delivers the skies from the maleficent powers of winter;
+he saves the world from the serpent (emblem of the humid season)
+and restores the empire of goodness (summer, joyful season): the
+scorpion pours out his poison on the earth, and scatters diseases
+and death.  The same of all similar effects.
+
+"This language, understood by every one, was attended at first with
+no inconvenience; but in the course of time, when the calendar had
+been regulated, the people, who had no longer any need of observing
+the heavens, lost sight of the original meaning of these
+expressions; and the allegories remaining in common use became a
+fatal stumbling block to the understanding and to reason.
+Habituated to associate to the symbols the ideas of their
+archetypes, the mind at last confounded them: then the same
+animals, whom fancy had transported to the skies, returned again to
+the earth; but being thus returned, clothed in the livery of the
+stars, they claimed the stellary attributes, and imposed on their
+own authors.  Then it was that the people, believing that they saw
+their gods among them, could pray to them with more convenience:
+they demanded from the ram of their flock the influences which
+might be expected from the heavenly ram; they prayed the scorpion
+not to pour out his venom upon nature; they revered the crab of the
+sea, the scarabeus of the mud, the fish of the river; and by a
+series of corrupt but inseparable analogies, they lost themselves
+in a labyrinth of well connected absurdities.
+
+"Such was the origin of that ancient whimsical worship of the
+animals; such is the train of ideas by which the character of the
+divinity became common to the vilest of brutes, and by which was
+formed that theological system, extremely comprehensive,
+complicated, and learned, which, rising on the borders of the Nile,
+propagated from country to country by commerce, war, and conquest,
+overspread the whole of the ancient world; and which, modified by
+time, circumstances and prejudices, is still seen entire among a
+hundred nations, and remains as the essential and secret basis of
+the theology of those even who despise and reject it."
+
+Some murmurs at these words being heard from various groups: "Yes!"
+continued the orator, "hence arose, for instance, among you,
+nations of Africa, the adoration of your fetiches, plants, animals,
+pebbles, pieces of wood, before which your ancestors would not have
+had the folly to bow, if they had not seen in them talismans
+endowed with the virtue of the stars.*
+
+
+* The ancient astrologers, says the most learned of the Jews
+(Maimonides), having sacredly assigned to each planet a color, an
+animal, a tree, a metal, a fruit, a plant, formed from them all a
+figure or representation of the star, taking care to select for the
+purpose a proper moment, a fortunate day, such as the conjunction
+of the star, or some other favorable aspect.  They conceived that
+by their magic ceremonies they could introduce into those figures
+or idols the influences of the superior beings after which they
+were modeled.  These were the idols that the Chaldean-Sabeans
+adored; and in the performance of their worship they were obliged
+to be dressed in the proper color.  The astrologers, by their
+practices, thus introduced idolatry, desirous of being regarded as
+the dispensers of the favors of heaven; and as agriculture was the
+sole employment of the ancients, they succeeded in persuading them
+that the rain and other blessings of the seasons were at their
+disposal.  Thus the whole art of agriculture was exercised by rules
+of astrology, and the priests made talismans or charms which were
+to drive away locusts, flies, etc.  See Maimonides, More Nebuchim,
+pars 3, c. 29.
+
+The priests of Egypt, Persia, India, etc., pretended to bind the
+Gods to their idols, and to make them come from heaven at their
+pleasure.  They threatened the sun and moon, if they were
+disobedient, to reveal the secret mysteries, to shake the skies,
+etc., etc.  Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 198, and Jamblicus de
+Mysteriis Aegypt.
+
+
+"Here, ye nations of Tartary, is the origin of your marmosets, and
+of all that train of animals with which your chamans ornament their
+magical robes.  This is the origin of those figures of birds and of
+snakes which savage nations imprint upon their skins with sacred
+and mysterious ceremonies.
+
+"Ye inhabitants of India! in vain you cover yourselves with the
+veil of mystery: the hawk of your god Vichenou is but one of the
+thousand emblems of the sun in Egypt; and your incarnations of a
+god in the fish, the boar, the lion, the tortoise, and all his
+monstrous adventures, are only the metamorphoses of the sun, who,
+passing through the signs of the twelve animals (or the zodiac),
+was supposed to assume their figures, and perform their
+astronomical functions.*
+
+
+* These are the very words of Jamblicus de Symbolis Aegyptiorum, c.
+2, sect. 7.  The sun was the grand Proteus, the universal
+metamorphist.
+
+
+"People of Japan, your bull, which breaks the mundane egg, is only
+the bull of the zodiac, which in former times opened the seasons,
+the age of creation, the vernal equinox.  It is the same bull Apis
+which Egypt adored, and which your ancestors, Jewish Rabbins,
+worshipped in the golden calf.  This is still your bull, followers
+of Zoroaster, which, sacrificed in the symbolic mysteries of
+Mithra, poured out his blood which fertilized the earth.  And ye
+Christians, your bull of the Apocalypse, with his wings, symbol of
+the air, has no other origin; and your lamb of God, sacrificed,
+like the bull of Mithra, for the salvation of the world, is only
+the same sun, in the sign of the celestial ram, which, in a later
+age, opening the equinox in his turn, was supposed to deliver the
+world from evil, that is to say, from the constellation of the
+serpent, from that great snake, the parent of winter, the emblem of
+the Ahrimanes, or Satan of the Persians, your school masters.  Yes,
+in vain does your imprudent zeal consign idolaters to the torments
+of the Tartarus which they invented; the whole basis of your system
+is only the worship of the sun, with whose attributes you have
+decorated your principal personage.  It is the sun which, under the
+name of Horus, was born, like your God, at the winter solstice, in
+the arms of the celestial virgin, and who passed a childhood of
+obscurity, indigence, and want, answering to the season of cold and
+frost.  It is he that, under the name of Osiris, persecuted by
+Typhon and by the tyrants of the air, was put to death, shut up in
+a dark tomb, emblem of the hemisphere of winter, and afterwards,
+ascending from the inferior zone towards the zenith of heaven,
+arose again from the dead triumphant over the giants and the angels
+of destruction.
+
+"Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all
+over your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole
+is his zodiac;* your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets.
+Ye pontiffs and prelates! your mitre, your crozier, your mantle are
+those of Osiris; and that cross whose mystery you extol without
+comprehending it, is the cross of Serapis, traced by the hands of
+Egyptian priests on the plan of the figurative world; which,
+passing through the equinoxes and the tropics, became the emblem of
+the future life and of the resurrection, because it touched the
+gates of ivory and of horn, through which the soul passed to
+heaven."
+
+
+* "The Arabs," says Herodotus, "shave their heads in a circle and
+about the temples, in imitation of Bacchus (that is the sun), who
+shaves himself is this manner."  Jeremiah speaks also of this
+custom.  The tuft of hair which the Mahometans preserve, is taken
+also from the sun, who was painted by the Egyptians at the winter
+solstice, as having but a single hair upon his head. . . .
+
+The robes of the goddess of Syria and of Diana of Ephesus, from
+whence are borrowed the dress of the priests; have the twelve
+animals of the zodiac painted on them. . . .
+
+Rosaries are found upon all the Indian idols, constructed more than
+four thousand years ago, and their use in the East has been
+universal from time immemorial. . . .
+
+The crozier is precisely the staff of Bootes or Osiris.  (See
+plate.)
+
+All the Lamas wear the mitre or cap in the shape of a cone, which
+was an emblem of the sun.
+
+
+At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each
+other with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator
+proceeded:
+
+"Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas:
+First, the figurative expressions under which an infant language
+was obliged to describe the relations of objects; expressions
+which, passing afterwards from a limited to a general sense, and
+from a physical to a moral one, caused, by their ambiguities and
+synonymes, a great number of mistakes.
+
+"Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or
+finished, twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had
+killed them, fought them, conquered them; and of this was composed
+the historical life of Hercules.*
+
+
+* See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the Constellations,
+before cited.
+
+
+"It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the
+seed time and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and
+occupations, ran through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he
+was taken for a legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they
+framed from this the history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of
+that description.
+
+"Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this
+conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.*  Having said that
+the planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and
+ascended to its exaltation, they said that it had died, risen
+again, was carried into heaven, etc.
+
+
+* These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of Isis and
+Osiris.  The Hebrews say, in speaking of the generations of the
+Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam.  From this continual equivoke
+of ancient language, proceeds every mistake.
+
+
+"A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves,
+by which men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of
+hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were the first invention of
+the mind.  Thus, to give warning of the inundation, and of the
+necessity of guarding against it, they painted a boat, the ship
+Argo; to express the wind, they painted the wing of a bird; to
+designate the season, or the month, they painted the bird of
+passage, the insect, or the animal which made its appearance at
+that period; to describe the winter, they painted a hog or a
+serpent, which delight in humid places, and the combination of
+these figures carried the known sense of words and phrases.*  But
+as this sense could not be fixed with precision, as the number of
+these figures and their combinations became excessive, and
+overburdened the memory, the immediate consequence was confusion
+and false interpretations.  Genius afterwards having invented the
+more simple art of applying signs to sounds, of which the number is
+limited, and painting words, instead of thoughts, alphabetical
+writing thus threw into disuetude hieroglyphical painting; and its
+signification, falling daily into oblivion, gave rise to a
+multitude of illusions, ambiguities, and errors.
+
+
+* The reader will doubtless see with pleasure some examples of
+ancient hieroglyphics.
+
+"The Egyptians (says Hor-appolo) represent eternity by the figures
+of the sun and moon.  They designate the world by the blue serpent
+with yellow scales (stars, it is the Chinese Dragon).  If they were
+desirous of expressing the year, they drew a picture of Isis, who
+is also in their language called Sothis, or dog-star, one of the
+first constellations, by the rising of which the year commences;
+its inscription at Sais was, It is I that rise in the constellation
+of the Dog.
+
+"They also represent the year by a palm tree, and the month by one
+of its branches, because it is the nature of this tree to produce a
+branch every month.  They farther represent it by the fourth part
+of an acre of land."  The whole acre divided into four denotes the
+bissextile period of four years.  The abbreviation of this figure
+of a field in four divisions, is manifestly the letter ha or het,
+the seventh in the Samaritan alphabet; and in general all the
+letters of the alphabet are merely astronomical hieroglyphics; and
+it is for this reason that the mode of writing is from right to
+left, like the march of the stars.--"They denote a prophet by the
+image of a dog, because the dog star (Anoubis) by its rising gives
+notice of the inundation.  Noubi, in Hebrew signifies prophet--They
+represent inundation by a lion, because it takes place under that
+sign: and hence, says Plutarch, the custom of placing at the gates
+of temples figures of lions with water issuing from their mouths.--
+They express the idea of God and destiny by a star.  They also
+represent God, says Porphyry, by a black stone, because his nature
+is dark and obscure.  All white things express the celestial and
+luminous Gods: all circular ones the world, the moon, the sun, the
+orbits; all semicircular ones, as bows and crescents are
+descriptive of the moon.  Fire and the Gods of Olympus they
+represent by pyramids and obelisks (the name of the sun, Baal, is
+found in this latter word): the sun by a cone (the mitre of
+Osiris): the earth, by a cylinder (which revolves): the generative
+power of the air by the phalus, and that of the earth by a
+triangle, emblem of the female organ.  Euseb. Proecep.  Evang. p.
+98.
+
+"Clay, says Jamblicus de Symbolis, sect. 7, c. 2. denotes matter,
+the generative and nutrimental power, every thing which receives
+the warmth and fermentation of life."
+
+"A man sitting upon the Lotos or Nenuphar, represents the moving
+spirit (the sun) which, in like manner as that plant lives in the
+water without any communication with clay, exists equally distinct
+from matter, swimming in empty space, resting on itself: it is
+round also in all its parts, like the leaves, the flowers, and the
+fruit of the Lotos.  (Brama has the eyes of the Lotos, says Chasler
+Nesdirsen, to denote his intelligence: his eye swims over every
+thing, like the flower of the Lotos on the waters.)  A man at the
+helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun which
+governs all.  And Porphyry tells us that the sun is also
+represented by a man in a ship resting upon an amphibious crocodile
+(emblem of air and water).
+
+"At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a sitting
+posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and the horns of a
+goat which encompassed a disk; all which represented the sun and
+moon's conjunction at the sign of the ram; the blue color denoting
+the power of the moon, at the period of junction, to raise water
+into the clouds.  Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
+
+"The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account of his
+rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions of the air
+where light abounds.
+
+A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of violence,
+because it is said to kill its father and to ravish its mother.
+Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical inscription of the temple of
+Sais, where we see painted on the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old
+man, 3. A hawk, 4. A fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1.
+Entrance, into life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5.  Injustice.
+See Isis and Osiris.
+
+"The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus,
+because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that in
+which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as the heaven
+of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the sun, (the yolk of
+an egg) in an opposite direction to its own.
+
+"They represent the world also by the number five, being that of
+the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth, water, air, fire,
+and ether, or spiritus.  The Indians have the same number of
+elements, and according to Macrobius's mystics, they are the
+supreme God, or primum mobile, the intelligence, or mens, born of
+him, the soul of the world which proceeds from him, the celestial
+spheres, and all things terrestrial.  Hence, adds Plutarch, the
+analogy between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
+
+"The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because like
+that animal he is of a reddish color.  Now Typhon signifies
+whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in Hebrew I find the
+three words clay, red, and ass to be formed from the same root
+hamr.  Jamblicus has farther told us that clay was the emblem of
+matter and he elsewhere adds, that all evil and corruption
+proceeded from matter; which compared with the phrase of Macrobius,
+all is perishable, liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives
+us the theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good
+and evil of the ancients."
+
+
+"Finally, a third cause of confusion was the civil organization of
+ancient states.  When the people began to apply themselves to
+agriculture, the formation of a rural calendar, requiring a
+continued series of astronomical observations, it became necessary
+to appoint certain individuals charged with the functions of
+watching the appearance and disappearance of certain stars, to
+foretell the return of the inundation, of certain winds, of the
+rainy season, the proper time to sow every kind of grain.  These
+men, on account of their service, were exempt from common labor,
+and the society provided for their maintenance.  With this
+provision, and wholly employed in their observations, they soon
+became acquainted with the great phenomena of nature, and even
+learned to penetrate the secret of many of her operations.  They
+discovered the movement of the stars and planets, the coincidence
+of their phases and returns with the productions of the earth and
+the action of vegetation; the medicinal and nutritive properties of
+plants and fruits; the action of the elements, and their reciprocal
+affinities.  Now, as there was no other method of communicating the
+knowledge of these discoveries but the laborious one of oral
+instruction, they transmitted it only to their relations and
+friends, it followed therefore that all science and instruction
+were confined to a few families, who, arrogating it to themselves
+as an exclusive privilege, assumed a professional distinction, a
+corporation spirit, fatal to the public welfare.  This continued
+succession of the same researches and the same labors, hastened, it
+is true, the progress of knowledge; but by the mystery which
+accompanied it, the people were daily plunged in deeper shades, and
+became more superstitious and more enslaved.  Seeing their fellow
+mortals produce certain phenomena, announce, as at pleasure,
+eclipses and comets, heal diseases, and handle venomous serpents,
+they thought them in alliance with celestial powers; and, to obtain
+the blessings and avert the evils which they expected from above,
+they took them for mediators and interpreters; and thus became
+established in the bosom of every state sacrilegious corporations
+of hypocritical and deceitful men, who centered all powers in
+themselves; and the priests, being at once astronomers,
+theologians, naturalists, physicians, magicians, interpreters of
+the gods, oracles of men, and rivals of kings, or their
+accomplices, established, under the name of religion, an empire of
+mystery and a monopoly of instruction, which to this day have
+ruined every nation. . . ."
+
+Here the priests of all the groups interrupted the orator, and with
+loud cries accused him of impiety, irreligion, blasphemy; and
+endeavored to cut short his discourse; but the legislator observing
+that this was only an exposition of historical facts, which, if
+false or forged, would be easily refuted; that hitherto the
+declaration of every opinion had been free, and without this it
+would be impossible to discover the truth, the orator proceeded:
+
+"Now, from all these causes, and from the continual associations of
+ill-assorted ideas, arose a mass of disorders in theology, in
+morals, and in traditions; first, because the animals represented
+the stars, the characters of the animals, their appetites, their
+sympathies, their aversions, passed over to the gods, and were
+supposed to be their actions; thus, the god Ichneumon made war
+against the god Crocodile; the god Wolf liked to eat the god Sheep;
+the god Ibis devoured the god Serpent; and the deity became a
+strange, capricious, and ferocious being, whose idea deranged the
+judgment of man, and corrupted his morals and his reason.
+
+"Again, because in the spirit of their worship every family, every
+nation, took for its special patron a star or a constellation, the
+affections or antipathies of the symbolic animal were transferred
+to its sectaries; and the partisans of the god Dog were enemies to
+those of the god Wolf;* those who adored the god Ox had an
+abhorrence to those who ate him; and religion became the source of
+hatred and hostility,--the senseless cause of frenzy and
+superstition.
+
+
+* These are properly the words of Plutarch, who relates that those
+various worships were given by a king of Egypt to the different
+towns to disunite and enslave them, and these kings had been taken
+from the cast of priests.  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+
+"Besides, the names of those animal-stars having, for this same
+reason of patronage, been conferred on countries, nations,
+mountains, and rivers, these objects were taken for gods, and hence
+followed a mixture of geographical, historical, and mythological
+beings, which confounded all traditions.
+
+"Finally, by the analogy of actions which were ascribed to them,
+the god-stars, having been taken for men, for heroes, for kings,
+kings and heroes took in their turn the actions of gods for models,
+and by imitation became warriors, conquerors, proud, lascivious,
+indolent, sanguinary; and religion consecrated the crimes of
+despots, and perverted the principles of government.
+
+
+IV.  Fourth system.  Worship of two Principles, or Dualism.
+
+
+"In the mean time, the astronomical priests, enjoying peace and
+abundance in their temples, made every day new progress in the
+sciences, and the system of the world unfolding gradually to their
+view, they raised successively various hypotheses as to its agents
+and effects, which became so many theological systems.
+
+"The voyages of the maritime nations and the caravans of the nomads
+of Asia and Africa, having given them a knowledge of the earth from
+the Fortunate Islands to Serica, and from the Baltic to the sources
+of the Nile, the comparison of the phenomena of the various zones
+taught them the rotundity of the earth, and gave birth to a new
+theory.  Having remarked that all the operations of nature during
+the annual period were reducible to two principal ones, that of
+producing and that of destroying; that on the greater part of the
+globe these two operations were performed in the intervals of the
+two equinoxes; that is to say, during the six months of summer
+every thing was procreating and multiplying, and that during winter
+everything languished and almost died; they supposed in Nature two
+contrary powers, which were in a continual state of contention and
+exertion; and considering the celestial sphere in this view, they
+divided the images which they figured upon it into two halves or
+hemispheres; so that the constellations which were on the summer
+heaven formed a direct and superior empire; and those which were on
+the winter heaven composed an antipode and inferior empire.
+Therefore, as the constellations of summer accompanied the season
+of long, warm, and unclouded days, and that of fruits and harvests,
+they were considered as the powers of light, fecundity, and
+creation; and, by a transition from a physical to a moral sense,
+they became genii, angels of science, of beneficence, of purity and
+virtue.  And as the constellations of winter were connected with
+long nights and polar fogs, they were the genii of darkness, of
+destruction, of death; and by transition, angels of ignorance, of
+wickedness, of sin and vice.  By this arrangement the heaven was
+divided into two domains, two factions; and the analogy of human
+ideas already opened a vast field to the errors of imagination; but
+the mistake and the illusion were determined, if not occasioned by
+a particular circumstance.  (Observe plate Astrological Heaven of
+the Ancients.)
+
+"In the projection of the celestial sphere, as traced by the
+astronomical priests,* the zodiac and the constellations, disposed
+in circular order, presented their halves in diametrical
+opposition; the hemisphere of winter, antipode of that of summer,
+was adverse, contrary, opposed to it.  By a continual metaphor,
+these words acquired a moral sense; and the adverse genii, or
+angels, became revolted enemies.**  From that moment all the
+astronomical history of the constellations was changed into a
+political history ; the heavens became a human state, where things
+happened as on the earth.  Now, as the earthly states, the greater
+part despotic, had already their monarchs, and as the sun was
+apparently the monarch of the skies, the summer hemisphere (empire
+of light) and its constellations (a nation of white angels) had for
+king an enlightened God, a creator intelligent and good.  And as
+every rebel faction must have its chief, the heaven of winter, the
+subterranean empire of darkness and woe, and its stars, a nation of
+black angels, giants and demons, had for their chief a malignant
+genius, whose character was applied by different people to the
+constellation which to them was the most remarkable.  In Egypt it
+was at first the Scorpion, first zodiacal sign after Libra, and for
+a long time chief of the winter signs ; then it was the Bear, or
+the polar Ass, called Typhon, that is to say, deluge,** on account
+of the rains which deluge the earth during the dominion of that
+star.  At a later period,*** in Persia,**** it was the Serpent, who,
+under the name of Abrimanes, formed the basis of the system of
+Zoroaster; and it is the same, O Christians and Jews! that has
+become your serpent of Eve (the celestial virgin,) and that of the
+cross; in both cases it is the emblem of Satan, the enemy and great
+adversary of the Ancient of Days, sung by Daniel.
+
+
+* The ancient priests had three kinds of spheres, which it may be
+useful to make known to the reader.
+
+"We read in Eusebius," says Porphyry, "that Zoroaster was the first
+who, having fixed upon a cavern pleasantly situated in the
+mountains adjacent to Persia, formed the idea of consecrating it to
+Mithra (the sun) creator and father of all things: that is to say,
+having made in this cavern several geometrical divisions,
+representing the seasons and the elements, he imitated on a small
+scale the order and disposition of the universe by Mithra.  After
+Zoroaster, it became a custom to consecrate caverns for the
+celebration of mysteries: so that in like manner as temples were
+dedicated to the Gods, rural altars to heroes and terrestrial
+deities, etc., subterranean abodes to infernal deities, so caverns
+and grottoes were consecrated to the world, to the universe, and to
+the nymphs: and from hence Pythagoras and Plato borrowed the idea
+of calling the earth a cavern, a cave, de Antro Nympharum.
+
+Such was the first projection of the sphere in relief; though the
+Persians give the honor of the invention to Zoroaster, it is
+doubtless due to the Egyptians; for we may suppose from this
+projection being the most simple that it was the most ancient; the
+caverns of Thebes, full of similar pictures, tend to strengthen
+this opinion.
+
+The following was the second projection: "The prophets or
+hierophants," says Bishop Synnesius, "who had been initiated in the
+mysteries, do not permit the common workmen to form idols or images
+of the Gods; but they descend themselves into the sacred caves,
+where they have concealed coffers containing certain spheres upon
+which they construct those images secretly and without the
+knowledge of the people, who despise simple and natural things and
+wish for prodigies and fables."  (Syn. in Calvit.)  That is, the
+ancient priests had armillary spheres like ours; and this passage,
+which so well agrees with that of Chaeremon, gives us the key to
+all their theological astrology.
+
+Lastly, they had flat models of the nature of Plate V. with the
+difference that they were of a very complicated nature, having
+every fictitious division of decan and subdecan, with the
+hieroglyphic signs of their influence.  Kircher has given us a copy
+of one of them in his Egyptian Oedipus, and Gybelin a figured
+fragment in his book of the calendar (under the name of the
+Egyptian Zodiac).  The ancient Egyptians, says the astrologer
+Julius Firmicus, (Astron. lib. ii. and lib. iv., c. 16), divide
+each sign of the Zodiac into three sections; and each section was
+under the direction of an imaginary being whom they called decan or
+chief of ten; so that there were three decans a month, and thirty-
+six a year.  Now these decans, who were also called Gods (Theoi),
+regulated the destinies of mankind--and they were placed
+particularly in certain stars.  They afterwards imagined in every
+ten three other Gods, whom they called arbiters; so that there were
+nine for every month, and these were farther divided into an
+infinite number of powers.  The Persians and Indians made their
+spheres on similar plans; and if a picture thereof were to be drawn
+from the description given by Scaliger at the end of Manilius, we
+should find in it a complete explanation of their hieroglyphics,
+for every article forms one.
+
+** If it was for this reason the Persians always wrote the name of
+Ahrimanes inverted thus: ['Ahrimanes' upside down and backwards].
+
+*** Typhon, pronounced Touphon by the Greeks, is precisely the
+touphan of the Arabs, which signifies deluge; and these deluges in
+mythology are nothing more than winter and the rains, or the
+overflowing of the Nile: as their pretended fires which are to
+destroy the world, are simply the summer season.  And it is for
+this reason that Aristotle (De Meteor, lib. I. c. xiv), says, that
+the winter of the great cyclic year is a deluge; and its summer a
+conflagration.  "The Egyptians," says Porphyry, "employ every year
+a talisman in remembrance of the world: at the summer solstice they
+mark their houses, flocks and trees with red, supposing that on
+that day the whole world had been set on fire.  It was also at the
+same period that they celebrated the pyrric or fire dance."  And
+this illustrates the origin of purification by fire and by water;
+for having denominated the tropic of Cancer the gate of heaven, and
+the genial heat of celestial fire, and that of Capricorn the gate
+of deluge or of water, it was imagined that the spirit or souls who
+passed through these gates in their way to and from heaven, were
+roasted or bathed: hence the baptism of Mithra; and the passage
+through flames, observed throughout the East long before Moses.
+
+**** That is when the ram became the equinoctial sign, or rather when
+the alteration of the skies showed that it was no longer the bull.
+
+
+"In Syria, it was the hog or wild boar, enemy of Adonis; because in
+that country the functions of the Northern Bear were performed by
+the animal whose inclination for mire and dirt was emblematic of
+winter.  And this is the reason, followers of Moses and Mahomet!
+that you hold him in horror, in imitation of the priests of Memphis
+and Balbec, who detested him as the murderer of their God, the sun.
+This likewise, O Indians! is the type of your Chib-en; and it has
+been likewise the Pluto of your brethren, the Romans and Greeks; in
+like manner, your Brama, God the creator, is only the Persian
+Ormuzd, and the Egyptian Osiris, whose very name expresses creative
+power, producer of forms.  And these gods received a worship
+analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary; which worship was
+divided into two branches, according to their characters.  The good
+god receives a worship of love and joy, from which are derived all
+religious acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances, banquets,
+offerings of flowers, milk, honey, perfumes; in a word, everything
+grateful to the senses and to the soul.*  The evil god, on the
+contrary, received a worship of fear and pain; whence originated
+all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears, desolations,
+mournings, self-denials, bloody offerings, and cruel sacrifices.
+
+
+* All the ancient festivals respecting the return and exaltation of
+the sun were of this description: hence the hilaria of the Roman
+calendar at the period of the passage, Pascha, of the vernal
+equinox.  The dances were imitations of the march of the planets.
+Those of the Dervises still represent it to this day.
+
+** "Sacrifices of blood," says Porphyry, "were only offered to
+Demons and evil Genii to avert their wrath.  Demons are fond of
+blood, humidity, stench."  Apud. Euseb. Proep. Ev., p. 173.
+
+"The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "only offer bloody victims to
+Typhon.  They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animal immolated
+is held in execration and loaded with all the sins of the people."
+The goat of Moses.  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+Strabo says, speaking of Moses, and the Jews, "Circumcision and the
+prohibition of certain kinds of meat sprung from superstition."
+And I observe, respecting the ceremony of circumcision, that its
+object was to take from the symbol of Osiris, (Phallus) the
+pretended obstacle to fecundity: an obstacle which bore the seal of
+Typhon, "whose nature," says Plutarch, "is made up of all that
+hinders, opposes, causes obstruction."
+
+
+"Hence arose that distinction of terrestrial beings into pure and
+impure, sacred and abominable, according as their species were of
+the number of the constellations of one of these two gods, and made
+part of his domain; and this produced, on the one hand, the
+superstitions concerning pollutions and purifications; and, on the
+other, the pretended efficacious virtues of amulets and talismans.
+
+"You conceive now," continued the orator, addressing himself to the
+Persians, the Indians, the Jews, the Christians, the Mussulmans,
+"you conceive the origin of those ideas of battles and rebellions,
+which equally abound in all your mythologies.  You see what is
+meant by white and black angels, your cherubim and seraphim, with
+heads of eagles, of lions, or of bulls; your deus, devils, demons,
+with horns of goats and tails of serpents; your thrones and
+dominions, ranged in seven orders or gradations, like the seven
+spheres of the planets; all beings acting the same parts, and
+endowed with the same attributes in your Vedas, Bibles, and Zend-
+avestas, whether they have for chiefs Ormuzd or Brama, Typhon or
+Chiven, Michael or Satan;--whether they appear under the form of
+giants with a hundred arms and feet of serpents, or that of gods
+metamorphosed into lions, storks, bulls or cats, as they are in the
+sacred fables of the Greeks and Egyptians. You perceive the
+successive filiation of these ideas, and how, in proportion to
+their remoteness from their source, and as the minds of men became
+refined, their gross forms have been polished, and rendered less
+disgusting.
+
+"But in the same manner as you have seen the system of two opposite
+principles or gods arise from that of symbols, interwoven into its
+texture, your attention shall now be called to a new system which
+has grown out of this, and to which this has served in its turn as
+the basis and support.
+
+
+V. Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State.
+
+
+"Indeed, when the vulgar heard speak of a new heaven and another
+world, they soon gave a body to these fictions; they erected
+therein a real theatre of action, and their notions of astronomy
+and geography served to strengthen, if not to originate, this
+illusion.
+
+"On the one hand, the Phoenician navigators who passed the pillars
+of Hercules, to fetch the tin of Thule and the amber of the Baltic,
+related that at the extremity of the world, the end of the ocean
+(the Mediterranean), where the sun sets for the countries of Asia,
+were the Fortunate Islands, the abode of eternal spring; and beyond
+were the hyperborean regions, placed under the earth (relatively to
+the tropics) where reigned an eternal night.*  From these stories,
+misunderstood, and no doubt confusedly related, the imagination of
+the people composed the Elysian fields,** regions of delight,
+placed in a world below, having their heaven, their sun, and their
+stars; and Tartarus, a place of darkness, humidity, mire, and
+frost.  Now, as man, inquisitive of that which he knows not, and
+desirous of protracting his existence, had already interrogated
+himself concerning what was to become of him after his death, as he
+had early reasoned on the principle of life which animates his
+body, and which leaves it without deforming it, and as he had
+imagined airy substances, phantoms, and shades, he fondly believed
+that he should continue, in the subterranean world, that life which
+it was too painful for him to lose; and these lower regions seemed
+commodious for the reception of the beloved objects which he could
+not willingly resign.
+
+
+* Nights of six months duration.
+
+** Aliz, in the Phoenician or Hebrew language signifies dancing and
+joyous.
+
+
+"On the other hand, the astrological and geological priests told
+such stories and made such descriptions of their heavens, as
+accorded perfectly well with these fictions.  Having, in their
+metaphorical language, called the equinoxes and solstices the gates
+of heaven, the entrance of the seasons, they explained these
+terrestrial phenomena by saying, that through the gate of horn
+(first the bull, afterwards the ram) and through the gate of
+Cancer, descended the vivifying fires which give life to vegetation
+in the spring, and the aqueous spirits which bring, at the
+solstice, the inundation of the Nile; that through the gate of
+ivory (Libra, formerly Sagittarius, or the bowman) and that of
+Capricorn, or the urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens
+returned to their source, and reascended to their origin; and the
+Milky Way, which passed through the gates of the solstices, seemed
+to be placed there to serve them as a road or vehicle.*  Besides,
+in their atlas, the celestial scene presented a river (the Nile,
+designated by the windings of the hydra), a boat, (the ship Argo)
+and the dog Sirius, both relative to this river, whose inundation
+they foretold.  These circumstances, added to the preceding, and
+still further explaining them, increased their probability, and to
+arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the
+rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of the ferryman Charon, and to
+pass through the gates of horn or ivory, guarded by the dog
+Cerberus.  Finally, these inventions were applied to a civil use,
+and thence received a further consistency.
+
+
+*See Macrob. Som. Scrip. c. 12.
+
+
+"Having remarked that in their burning climate the putrefaction of
+dead bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in
+many of their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead
+beyond the limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the
+West.  To go there, it was necessary to pass the channels of the
+river, and consequently to be received into a boat, and pay
+something to the ferryman, without which the body, deprived of
+sepulture, must have been the prey of wild beasts.  This custom
+suggested to the civil and religious legislators the means of a
+powerful influence on manners; and, addressing uncultivated and
+ferocious men with the motives of filial piety and a reverence for
+the dead, they established, as a necessary condition, their
+undergoing a previous trial, which should decide whether the
+deceased merited to be admitted to the rank of the family in the
+black city.  Such an idea accorded too well with all the others,
+not to be incorporated with them: the people soon adopted it; and
+hell had its Minos and its Rhadamanthus, with the wand, the bench,
+the ushers, and the urn, as in the earthly and civil state.  It was
+then that God became a moral and political being, a lawgiver to
+men, and so much the more to be dreaded, as this supreme
+legislator, this final judge, was inaccessible and invisible.  Then
+it was that this fabulous and mythological world, composed of such
+odd materials and disjointed parts, became a place of punishments
+and of rewards, where divine justice was supposed to correct what
+was vicious and erroneous in the judgment of men.  This spiritual
+and mystical system acquired the more credit, as it took possession
+of man by all his natural inclinations.  The oppressed found in it
+the hope of indemnity, and the consolation of future vengeance; the
+oppressor, expecting by rich offerings to purchase his impunity,
+formed out of the errors of the vulgar an additional weapon of
+oppression; the chiefs of nations, the kings and priests, found in
+this a new instrument of domination by the privilege which they
+reserved to themselves of distributing the favors and punishments
+of the great judge, according to the merit or demerit of actions,
+which they took care to characterize as best suited their system.
+
+"This, then, is the manner in which an invisible and imaginary
+world has been introduced into the real and visible one; this is
+the origin of those regions of pleasure and pain, of which you
+Persians have made your regenerated earth, your city of
+resurrection, placed under the equator, with this singular
+attribute, that in it the blessed cast no shade.*  Of these
+materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have you
+formed your New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, your paradise, your
+heaven, copied in all its parts from the astrological heaven of
+Hermes: and your hell, ye Mussulmans, your bottomless pit,
+surmounted by a bridge, your balance for weighing souls and good
+works, your last judgment by the angels Monkir and Nekir, are
+likewise modeled from the mysterious ceremonies of the cave of
+Mithras** and your heaven differs not in the least from that of
+Osiris, of Ormuzd, and of Brama.
+
+
+* There is on this subject a passage in Plutarch, so interesting
+and explanatory of the whole of this system, that we shall cite it
+entire.  Having observed that the theory of good and evil had at
+all times occupied the attention of philosophers and theologians,
+he adds: "Many suppose there to be two gods of opposite
+inclinations, one delighting in good, the other in evil; the first
+of these is called particularly by the name of God, the second by
+that of Genius or Demon.  Zoroaster has denominated them Oromaze
+and Ahrimanes, and has said that of whatever falls under the
+cognizance of our senses, light is the best representation of the
+one, and darkness and ignorance of the other.  He adds, that Mithra
+is an intermediate being, and it is for this reason the Persians
+call Mithra the mediator or intermediator.  Each of these Gods has
+distinct plants and animals consecrated to him: for example, dogs,
+birds and hedge-hogs belong to the good Genius, and all aquatic
+animals to the evil one.
+
+"The Persians also say, that Oromaze was born or formed out of the
+purest light; Ahrimanes, on the contrary, out of the thickest
+darkness: that Oromaze made six gods as good as himself, and
+Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones: that Oromaze afterwards
+multiplied himself threefold (Hermes trismegistus) and removed to a
+distance as remote from the sun as the sun is remote from the earth
+that he there formed stars, and, among others, Sirius, which he
+placed in the heavens as a guard and sentinel.  He made also
+twenty-four other Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanes
+created an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, and from
+that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).  But
+Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth to be made
+equal and smooth, that all men may live happy.
+
+"Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one of these
+Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years during which the
+other is kept in subjection; that they afterwards contend with
+equal weapons during a similar portion of time, but that in the end
+the evil Genius will fall (never to rise again).  Then men will
+become happy, and their bodies cast no shade.  The God who mediates
+all these things reclines at present in repose, waiting till he
+shall be pleased to execute them."  See Isis and Osiris.
+
+There is an apparent allegory through the whole of this passage.
+The egg is the fixed sphere, the world: the six Gods of Oromaze are
+the six signs of summer, those of Ahrimanes the six signs of
+winter.  The forty-eight other Gods are the forty-eight
+constellations of the ancient sphere, divided equally between
+Ahrimanes and Oronmze.  The office of Sirius, as guard and
+sentinel, tells us that the origin of these ideas was Egyptian:
+finally, the expression that the earth is to become equal and
+smooth, and that the bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade,
+proves that the equator was considered as their true paradise.
+
+** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they
+celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against Celsus)
+in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets and the heavens.
+The initiated took the name of constellations, and assumed the
+figures of animals.  One was a lion, another a raven, and a third a
+ram.  Hence the use of masks in the first representation of the
+drama.  See Ant. Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244.  "In the mysteries of
+Ceres the chief in the procession called himself the creator; the
+bearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the person nearest to
+the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon, Mercury.  In Egypt there
+was a festival in which the men and women represented the year, the
+age, the seasons, the different parts of the day, and they walked
+in precession after Bacchus.  Athen. lib. v., ch. 7.  In the cave
+of Mithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the seven
+spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and
+descended.  This is precisely the ladder in Jacob's vision, which
+shows that at that epoch a the whole system was formed.  There is
+in the French king's library a superb volume of pictures of the
+Indian Gods, in which the ladder is represented with the souls of
+men mounting it."
+
+
+VI.  Sixth System.  The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe
+under diverse Emblems.
+
+
+"While the nations were wandering in the dark labyrinth of
+mythology and fables, the physical priests, pursuing their studies
+and enquiries into the order and disposition of the universe, came
+to new conclusions, and formed new systems concerning powers and
+first causes.
+
+"Long confined to simple appearances, they saw nothing in the
+movement of the stars but an unknown play of luminous bodies
+rolling round the earth, which they believed the central point of
+all the spheres; but as soon as they discovered the rotundity of
+our planet, the consequences of this first fact led them to new
+considerations; and from induction to induction they rose to the
+highest conceptions in astronomy and physics.
+
+"Indeed, after having conceived this luminous idea, that the
+terrestrial globe is a little circle inscribed in the greater
+circle of the heavens, the theory of concentric circles came
+naturally into their hypothesis, to determine the unknown circle of
+the terrestrial globe by certain known portions of the celestial
+circle; and the measurement of one or more degrees of the meridian
+gave with precision the whole circumference.  Then, taking for a
+compass the known diameter of the earth, some fortunate genius
+applied it with a bold hand to the boundless orbits of the heavens;
+and man, the inhabitant of a grain of sand, embracing the infinite
+distances of the stars, launches into the immensity of space and
+the eternity of time: there he is presented with a new order of the
+universe of which the atom-globe which he inhabited appeared no
+longer to be the centre; this important post was reserved to the
+enormous mass of the sun; and that body became the flaming pivot of
+eight surrounding spheres, whose movements were henceforth
+subjected to precise calculations.
+
+"It was indeed a great effort for the human mind to have undertaken
+to determine the disposition and order of the great engines of
+nature; but not content with this first effort, it still endeavored
+to develop the mechanism, and discover the origin and the
+instinctive principle.  Hence, engaged in the abstract and
+metaphysical nature of motion and its first cause, of the inherent
+or incidental properties of matter, its successive forms and its
+extension, that is to say, of time and space unbounded, the
+physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of subtile
+reasoning and scholastic controversy.*
+
+
+* Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you will find our
+assertions respecting the knowledge of the priests amply proved.
+
+
+"In the first place, the action of the sun on terrestrial bodies,
+teaching them to regard his substance as a pure and elementary
+fire, they made it the focus and reservoir of an ocean of igneous
+and luminous fluid, which, under the name of ether, filled the
+universe and nourished all beings.  Afterwards, having discovered,
+by a physical and attentive analysis, this same fire, or another
+perfectly resembling it, in the composition of all bodies, and
+having perceived it to be the essential agent of that spontaneous
+movement which is called life in animals and vegetation in plants,
+they conceived the mechanism and harmony of the universe, as of a
+homogeneous whole, of one identical body, whose parts, though
+distant, had nevertheless an intimate relation;* and the world was
+a living being, animated by the organic circulation of an igneous
+and even electrical fluid,** which, by a term of comparison
+borrowed first from men and animals, had the sun for a heart and a
+focus.***
+
+
+* These are the very words of Jamblicus.  De Myst. Egypt.
+
+** The more I consider what the ancients understood by ether and
+spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the stronger do I find
+the analogy between it and the electrial fluid.  A luminous fluid,
+principle of warmth and motion, pervading the universe, forming the
+matter of the stars, having small round particles, which insinuate
+themselves into bodies, and fill them by dilating itself, be their
+extent what it will.  What can more strongly resemble electricity?
+
+*** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun the heart of
+the world.  Som. Scrip. c. 20.  The Egyptians, says Plutarch, call
+the East the face, the North the right side, and the South the left
+side of the world, because there the heart is placed.  They
+continually compare the universe to a man; and hence the celebrated
+microcosm of the Alchymists.  We observe, by the bye, that the
+Alchymists, Cabalists, Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and
+every other such sort of visionaries, are but the mistaken
+disciples of this ancient school: we say mistaken, because, in
+spite of their pretensions, the thread of the occult science is
+broken.
+
+
+"From this time the physical theologians seem to have divided into
+several classes; one class, grounding itself on these principles
+resulting from observation; that nothing can be annihilated in the
+world; that the elements are indestructible; that they change their
+combinations but not their nature; that the life and death of
+beings are but the different modifications of the same atoms; that
+matter itself possesses properties which give rise to all its modes
+of existence; that the world is eternal,* or unlimited in space and
+duration; said that the whole universe was God; and, according to
+them, God was a being, effect and cause, agent and patient, moving
+principle and thing moved, having for laws the invariable
+properties that constitute fatality; and this class conveyed their
+idea by the emblem of Pan (the great whole); or of Jupiter, with a
+forehead of stars, body of planets, and feet of animals; or of the
+Orphic Egg,** whose yolk, suspended in the center of a liquid,
+surrounded by a vault, represented the globe of the sun, swimming
+in ether in the midst of the vault of heaven;*** sometimes by a
+great round serpent, representing the heavens where they placed the
+moving principle, and for that reason of an azure color, studded
+with spots of gold, (the stars) devouring his tail--that is,
+folding and unfolding himself eternally, like the revolutions of
+the spheres; sometimes by that of a man, having his feet joined
+together and tied, to signify immutable existence, wrapped in a
+cloak of all colors, like the face of nature, and bearing on his
+head a sphere of gold,**** emblem of the sphere of the stars; or by
+that of another man, sometimes seated on the flower of the lotos
+borne on the abyss of waters, sometimes lying on a pile of twelve
+cushions, denoting the twelve celestial signs.  And here, Indians,
+Japanese, Siamese, Tibetans, and Chinese, is the theology, which,
+founded by the Egyptians and transmitted to you, is preserved in
+the pictures which you compose of Brama, of Beddou, of Somona-Kodom
+of Omito.  This, ye Jews and Christians, is likewise the opinion of
+which you have preserved a part in your God moving on the face of
+the waters, by an allusion to the wind*5 which, at the beginning of
+the world, that is, the departure of the sun from the sign of
+Cancer, announced the inundation of the Nile, and seemed to prepare
+the creation.
+
+
+* See the Pythagorean, Ocellus Lacunus.
+
+** Vide Oedip. Aegypt. Tome II., page 205.
+
+*** This comparison of the sun with the yolk of an egg refers: 1.
+To its round and yellow figure; 2. To its central situation; 3. To
+the germ or principle of life contained in the yolk.  May not the
+oval form of the egg allude to the elipsis of the orbs?  I am
+inclined to this opinion.  The word Orphic offers a farther
+observation.  Macrobius says (Som. Scrip. c. 14. and c. 20), that
+the sun is the brain of the universe, and that it is from analogy
+that the skull of a human being is round, like the planet, the seat
+of intelligence.  Now the word Oerph signifies in Hebrew the brain
+and its seat (cervix): Orpheus, then, is the same as Bedou or
+Baits; and the Bonzes are those very Orphics which Plutarch
+represents as quacks, who ate no meat, vended talismans and little
+stones, and deceived individuals, and even governments themselves.
+See a learned memoir of Freret sur les Orphiques, Acad. des Inscrp.
+vol. 25, in quarto.
+
+**** See Porphyry in Eusebus. Proep. Evang., lib. 3, p. 115.
+
+*5 The Northern or Etesian wind, which commences regularly at the
+solstice, with the inundation.
+
+
+VII.  Seventh System.  Worship of the SOUL of the WORLD, that is to
+say, the Element of Fire, vital Principle of the Universe.
+
+
+"But others, disgusted at the idea of a being at once effect and
+cause, agent and patient, and uniting contrary natures in the same
+nature, distinguished the moving principle from the thing moved;
+and premising that matter in itself was inert they pretended that
+its properties were communicated to it by a distinct agent, of
+which itself was only the cover or the case.  This agent was called
+by some the igneous principle, known to be the author of all
+motion; by others it was supposed to be the fluid called ether,
+which was thought more active and subtile; and, as in animals the
+vital and moving principle was called a soul, a spirit, and as they
+reasoned constantly by comparisons, especially those drawn from
+human beings, they gave to the moving principle of the universe the
+name of soul, intelligence, spirit; and God was the vital spirit,
+which extended through all beings and animated the vast body of the
+world.  And this class conveyed their idea sometimes by Youpiter,*
+essence of motion and animation, principle of existence, or rather
+existence itself; sometimes by Vulcan or Phtha, elementary
+principle of fire; or by the altar of Vesta, placed in the center
+of her temple like the sun in the heavens; sometimes by Kneph, a
+human figure, dressed in dark blue, having in one hand a sceptre
+and a girdle (the zodiac), with a cap of feathers to express the
+fugacity of thought, and producing from his mouth the great egg.
+
+
+* This is the true pronunciation of the Jupiter of the Latins. . . .
+Existence itself.  This is the signification of the word You.
+
+
+"Now, as a consequence of this system, every being containing in
+itself a portion of the igneous and etherial fluid, common and
+universal mover, and this fluid soul of the world being God, it
+followed that the souls of all beings were portions of God himself
+partaking of all his attributes, that is, being a substance
+indivisible, simple, and immortal; and hence the whole system of
+the immortality of the soul, which at first was eternity.*
+
+
+* In the system of the first spiritualists, the soul was not
+created with, or at the same time as the body, in order to be
+inserted in it: its existence was supposed to be anterior and from
+all eternity.  Such, in a few words, is the doctrine of Macrobius
+on this head.  Som. Seip. passim.
+
+"There exists a luminous, igneous, subtile fluid, which under the
+name of ether and spiritus, fills the universe.  It is the
+essential principle and agent of motion and life, it is the Deity.
+When an earthly body is to be animated, a small round particle of
+this fluid gravitates through the milky way towards the lunar
+sphere; where, when it arrives, it unites with a grosser air, and
+becomes fit to associate with matter: it then enters and entirely
+fills the body, animates it, suffers, grows, increases, and
+diminishes with it; lastly, when the body dies, and its gross
+elements dissolve, this incorruptible particle takes its leave of
+it, and returns to the grand ocean of ether, if not retained by its
+union with the lunar air: it is this air or gas, which, retaining
+the shape of the body, becomes a phantom or ghost, the perfect
+representation of the deceased.  The Greeks called this phantom the
+image or idol of the soul; the Pythagoreans, its chariot, its
+frame; and the Rabbinical school, its vessel, or boat.  When a man
+had conducted himself well in this world, his whole soul, that is
+its chariot and ether, ascended to the moon, where a separation
+took place: the chariot lived in the lunar Elysium, and the ether
+returned to the fixed sphere, that is, to God: for the fixed
+heaven, says Macrobius, was by many called by the name of God (c.
+14).  If a man had not lived virtuously, the soul remained on earth
+to undergo purification, and was to wander to and fro, like the
+ghosts of Homer, to whom this doctrine must have been known, since
+he wrote after the time of Pherecydes and Pythagoras, who were its
+promulgators in Greece.  Herodotus upon this occasion says, that
+the whole romance of the soul and its transmigrations was invented
+by the Egyptians, and propagated in Greece by men, who pretended to
+be its authors.  I know their names, adds he, but shall not mention
+them (lib. 2).  Cicero, however, has positively informed us, that
+it was Pherecydes, master of Pythagoras.  Tuscul. lib. 1, sect. 16.
+Now admitting that this system was at that period a novelty, it
+accounts for Solomon's treating it as a fable, who lived 130 years
+before Pherecydes.  "Who knoweth," said he, "the spirit of a man
+that it goeth upwards?  I said in my heart concerning the estate of
+the sons of men, that God might manifest them and that they might
+see that they themselves are beasts.  For that which befalleth the
+sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as
+the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea they have all one breath, so
+that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity."
+Eccles. c. iii: v. 18.
+
+And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator of
+Herodotus (M. Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justly
+observes in note 389 of the second book; where he says also that
+the immortality of the soul was not introduced among the Hebrews
+till their intercourse with the Assyrians.  In other respects, the
+whole Pythagorean system, properly analysed, appears to be merely a
+system of physics badly understood.
+
+
+"Hence, also its transmigrations, known by the name of
+metempsychosis, that is, the passage of the vital principle from
+one body to another; an idea which arose from the real
+transmigration of the material elements.  And behold, ye Indians,
+ye Boudhists, ye Christians, ye Mussulmans! whence are derived all
+your opinions on the spirituality of the soul; behold what was the
+source of the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato, your masters, who
+were themselves but the echoes of another, the last sect of
+visionary philosophers, which we will proceed to examine.
+
+
+VIII.  Eighth system.  The WORLD-MACHINE: Worship of the Demi-
+Ourgos, or Grand Artificer.
+
+
+"Hitherto the theologians, employing themselves in examining the
+fine and subtile substances of ether or the generating fire, had
+not, however, ceased to treat of beings palpable and perceptible to
+the senses; and theology continued to be the theory of physical
+powers, placed sometimes exclusively in the stars, and sometimes
+disseminated through the universe; but at this period, certain
+superficial minds, losing the chain of ideas which had directed
+them in their profound studies, or ignorant of the facts on which
+they were founded, distorted all the conclusions that flowed from
+them by the introduction of a strange and novel chimera.  They
+pretended that this universe, these heavens, these stars, this sun,
+differed in no respect from an ordinary machine; and applying to
+this first hypothesis a comparison drawn from the works of art,
+they raised an edifice of the most whimsical sophisms.  A machine,
+said they, does not make itself; it has had an anterior workman;
+its very existence proves it.  The world is a machine; therefore it
+had an artificer.*
+
+
+* All the arguments of the spiritualists are founded on this.  See
+Macrobius, at the end of the second book, and Plato, with the
+comments of Marcilius Ficinus.
+
+
+"Here, then, is the Demi-Ourgos or grand artificer, constituted God
+autocratical and supreme.  In vain the ancient philosophy objected
+to this by saying that the artificer himself must have had parents
+and progenitors; and that they only added another step to the
+ladder by taking eternity from the world, and giving it to its
+supposed author.  The innovators, not content with this first
+paradox, passed on to a second; and, applying to their artificer
+the theory of the human understanding, they pretended that the
+Demi-Ourgos had framed his machine on a plan already existing in
+his understanding.  Now, as their masters, the naturalists, had
+placed in the regions of the fixed stars the great primum mobile,
+under the name of intelligence and reason, so their mimics, the
+spiritualists, seizing this idea, applied it to their Demi-Ourgos,
+and making it a substance distinct and self-existent, they called
+it mens or logos (reason or word).  And, as they likewise admitted
+the existence of the soul of the world, or solar principle, they
+found themselves obliged to compose three grades of divine beings,
+which were: first, the Demi-Ourgos, or working god; secondly, the
+logos, word or reason; thirdly, the spirit or soul (of the world).*
+And here, Christians! is the romance on which you have founded your
+trinity; here is the system which, born a heretic in the temples of
+Egypt, transported a pagan into the schools of Greece and Italy, is
+now found to be good, catholic, and orthodox, by the conversion of
+its partisans, the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, to
+Christianity.
+
+
+* These are the real types of the Christian Trinity.
+
+
+"It is thus that God, after having been, First, The visible and
+various action of the meteors and the elements;
+
+"Secondly, The combined powers of the stars, considered in their
+relations to terrestrial beings;
+
+Thirdly, These terrestrial beings themselves, by confounding the
+symbols with their archetypes;
+
+Fourthly, The double power of nature in its two principal
+operations of producing and destroying;
+
+"Fifthly, The animated world, with distinction of agent and
+patient, of effect and cause;
+
+"Sixthly, The solar principle, or the element of fire considered as
+the only mover;
+
+"Has thus become, finally, in the last resort, a chimerical and
+abstract being, a scholastic subtilty, of substance without form, a
+body without a figure, a very delirium of the mind, beyond the
+power of reason to comprehend.  But vainly does it seek in this
+last transformation to elude the senses; the seal of its origin is
+imprinted upon it too deep to be effaced; and its attributes, all
+borrowed from the physical attributes of the universe, such as
+immensity, eternity, indivisibility, incomprehensibility; or on the
+moral affections of man, such as goodness, justice, majesty; its
+names* even, all derived from the physical beings which were its
+types, and especially from the sun, from the planets, and from the
+world, constantly bring to mind, in spite of its corrupters,
+indelible marks of its real nature.
+
+
+* In our last analysis we found all the names of the Deity to be
+derived from some material object in which it was supposed to
+reside.  We have given a considerable number of instances; let us
+add one more relative to our word God.  This is known to be the
+Deus of the Latins, and the Theos of the Greeks.  Now by the
+confession of Plato (in Cratylo), of Macrobius (Saturn, lib. 1, c.
+24,) and of Plutarch (Isis and Osiris) its root is thein, which
+signifies to wander, like planein, that is to say, it is synonymous
+with planets; because, add our authors, both the ancient Greeks and
+Barbarians particularly worshipped the planets.  I know that such
+enquiries into etymologies have been much decried: but if, as is
+the case, words are the representative signs of ideas, the
+genealogy of the one becomes that of the other, and a good
+etymological dictionary would be the most perfect history of the
+human understanding.  It would only be necessary in this enquiry to
+observe certain precautions, which have hitherto been neglected,
+and particularly to make an exact comparison of the value of the
+letters of the different alphabets.  But, to continue our subject,
+we shall add, that in the Phoenician language, the word thah (with
+ain) signifies also to wander, and appears to be the derivation of
+thein.  If we suppose Deus to be derived from the Greek Zeus, a
+proper name of You-piter, having zaw, I live, for its root, its
+sense will be precisely that of you, and will mean soul of the
+world, igneous principle.  (See note p. 143).  Div-us, which only
+signifies Genius, God of the second order, appears to me to come
+from the oriental word div substituted for dib, wolf and chacal,
+one of the emblems of the sun.  At Thebes, says Macrobius, the sun
+was painted under the form of a wolf or chacal, for there are no
+wolves in Egypt.  The reason of this emblem, doubtless, is that the
+chacal, like the cock announces by its cries the sun's rising; and
+this reason is confirmed by the analogy of the words lykos, wolf,
+and lyke, light of the morning, whence comes lux.
+
+Dius, which is to be understood also of the sun, must be derived
+from dih, a hawk.  "The Egyptians," says Porphyry (Euseb. Proecep.
+Evang. p. 92,) "represent the sun under the emblem of a hawk,
+because this bird soars to the highest regions of air where light
+abounds."  And in reality we continually see at Cairo large flights
+of these birds, hovering in the air, from whence they descend not
+but to stun us with their shrieks, which are like the monosyllable
+dih: and here, as in the preceding example, we find an analogy
+between the word dies, day, light, and dius, god, sun.
+
+
+"Such is the chain of ideas which the human mind had already run
+through at an epoch previous to the records of history; and since
+their continuity proves that they were the produce of the same
+series of studies and labors, we have every reason to place their
+origin in Egypt, the cradle of their first elements.  This progress
+there may have been rapid; because the physical priests had no
+other food, in the retirement of the temples, but the enigma of the
+universe, always present to their minds; and because in the
+political districts into which that country was for a long time
+divided, every state had its college of priests, who, being by
+turns auxiliaries or rivals, hastened by their disputes the
+progress of science and discovery.*
+
+
+* One of the proofs that all these systems were invented in Egypt,
+is that this is the only country where we see a complete body of
+doctrine formed from the remotest antiquity.
+
+Clemens Alexandrinus has transmitted to us (Stromat. lib. 6,) a
+curious detail of the forty-two volumes which were borne in the
+procession of Isis.  "The priest," says he, "or chanter, carries
+one of the symbolic instruments of music, and two of the books of
+Mercury; one containing hymns of the gods, the other the list of
+kings.  Next to him the horoscope (the regulator of time,) carries
+a palm and a dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the
+four books of Mercury which treat of astrology: the first on the
+order of the planets, the second on the risings of the sun and
+moon, and the two last on the rising and aspect of the stars.  Then
+comes the sacred author, with feathers on his head (like Kneph) and
+a book in his hand, together with ink, and a reed to write with,
+(as is still the practice among the Arabs).  He must be versed in
+hieroglyphics, must understand the description of the universe, the
+course of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, be acquainted with the
+division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes, with the course of the
+Nile, with instruments, measures, sacred ornaments, and sacred
+places.  Next comes the stole bearer, who carries the cubit of
+justice, or measure of the Nile, and a cup for the libations; he
+bears also in the procession ten volumes on the subject of
+sacrifices, hymns, prayers, offerings, ceremonies, festivals.
+Lastly arrives the prophet, bearing in his bosom a pitcher, so as
+to be exposed to view; he is followed by persons carrying bread (as
+at the marriage of Cana.) This prophet, as president of the
+mysteries, learns ten other sacred volumes, which treat of the
+laws, the gods, and the discipline of the priests.  Now there are
+in all forty-two volumes, thirty-six of which are studied and got
+by heart by these personages, and the remaining six are set apart
+to be consulted by the pastophores; they treat of medicine, the
+construction of the human body (anatomy), diseases, remedies,
+instruments, etc., etc."
+
+We leave the reader to deduce all the consequences of an
+Encyclopedia.  It is ascribed to Mercury; but Jamblicus tells us
+that each book, composed by priests, was dedicated to that god,
+who, on account of his title of genius or decan opening the zodiac,
+presided over every enterprise.  He is the Janus of the Romans, and
+the Guianesa of the Indians, and it is remarkable that Yanus and
+Guianes are homonymous.  In short it appears that these books are
+the source of all that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and
+Latins in every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc.  What is
+most to be regretted in their loss is that part which related to
+the principles of medicine and diet, in which the Egyptians appear
+to have made a considerable progress, and to have delivered many
+useful observations.
+
+
+"There happened early on the borders of the Nile, what has since
+been repeated in every country; as soon as a new system was formed
+its novelty excited quarrels and schisms; then, gaining credit by
+persecution itself, sometimes it effaced antecedent ideas,
+sometimes it modified and incorporated them; then, by the
+intervention of political revolutions, the aggregation of states
+and the mixture of nations confused all opinions; and the filiation
+of ideas being lost, theology fell into a chaos, and became a mere
+logogriph of old traditions no longer understood.  Religion, having
+strayed from its object was now nothing more than a political
+engine to conduct the credulous vulgar; and it was used for this
+purpose, sometimes by men credulous themselves and dupes of their
+own visions, and sometimes by bold and energetic spirits in pursuit
+of great objects of ambition.
+
+
+IX.  Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World (You-
+piter).
+
+
+"Such was the legislator of the Hebrews; who, wishing to separate
+his nation from all others, and to form a distinct and solitary
+empire, conceived the design of establishing its basis on religious
+prejudices, and of raising around it a sacred rampart of opinions
+and of rites.  But in vain did he prescribe the worship of the
+symbols which prevailed in lower Egypt and in Phoenicia;* for his
+god was nevertheless an Egyptian god, invented by those priests of
+whom Moses had been the disciple; and Yahouh,** betrayed by its
+very name, essence (of beings), and by its symbol, the burning
+bush, is only the soul of the world, the moving principle which the
+Greeks soon after adopted under the same denomination in their you-
+piter, regenerating being, and under that of Ei, existence,***
+which the Thebans consecrated by the name of Kneph, which Sais
+worshipped under the emblem of Isis veiled, with this inscription:
+I am al that has been, all that is, and all that is to come, and no
+mortal has raised my veil; which Pythagoras honored under the name
+of Vesta, and which the stoic philosophy defined precisely by
+calling it the principle of fire.  In vain did Moses wish to blot
+from his religion every thing which had relation to the stars; many
+traits call them to mind in spite of all he has done.  The seven
+planetary luminaries of the great candlestick; the twelve stones,
+or signs in the Urim of the high priests; the feast of the two
+equinoxes, (entrances and gates of the two hemispheres); the
+ceremony of the lamb, (the celestial ram then in his fifteenth
+degree); lastly, the name even of Osiris preserved in his song,****
+and the ark, or coffer, an imitation of the tomb in which that God
+was laid, all remain as so many witnesses of the filiation of his
+ideas, and of their extraction from the common source.
+
+
+* "At a certain period," says Plutarch (de Iside) "all the
+Egyptians have their animal gods painted.  The Thebans are the only
+people who do not employ painters, because they worship a god whose
+form comes not under the senses, and cannot be represented."  And
+this is the god whom Moses, educated at Heliopolis, adopted; but
+the idea was not of his invention.
+
+** Such is the true pronunciation of the Jehovah of the moderns,
+who violate, in this respect, every rule of criticism; since it is
+evident that the ancients, particularly the eastern Syrians and
+Phoenicians, were acquainted neither with the J nor the P which are
+of Tartar origin.  The subsisting usage of the Arabs, which we have
+re-established here, is confirmed by Diodorus, who calls the god of
+Moses Iaw, (lib. 1), and Iaw and Yahouh are manifestly the same
+word: the identity continues in that of You-piter; but in order to
+render it more complete, we shall demonstrate the signification to
+be the same.
+
+In Hebrew, that is to say, in one of the dialects of the common
+language of lower Asia, Yahouh is the participle of the verb hih,
+to exist, to be, and signifies existing: in other words, the
+principle of life, the mover or even motion (the universal soul of
+beings).  Now what is Jupiter?  Let us hear the Greeks and Latins
+explain their theology.  "The Egyptians," says Diodorus, after
+Manatho, priest of Memphis, "in giving names to the five elements,
+called spirit, or ether, You-piter, on account of the true meaning
+of that word: for spirit is the source of life, author of the vital
+principle in animals; and for this reason they considered him as
+the father, the generator of beings."  For the same reason Homer
+says, father, and king of men and gods.  (Diod. lib. 1, sect 1).
+
+"Theologians," says Macrobius, "consider You-piter as the soul of
+the world."  Hence the words of Virgil: " Muses let us begin with
+You-piter; the world is full of You-piter."  (Somn. Scrip., ch.
+17).  And in the Saturnalia, he says, "Jupiter is the sun himself."
+It was this also which made Virgil say, "The spirit nourishes the
+life (of beings), and the soul diffused through the vast members
+(of the universe), agitates the whole mass, and forms but one
+immense body."
+
+"Ioupiter," says the ancient verses of the Orphic sect, which
+originated in Egypt; verses collected by Onomacritus in the days of
+Pisistratus, "Ioupiter, represented with the thunder in his hand,
+is the beginning, origin, end, and middle of all things: a single
+and universal power, he governs every thing; heaven, earth, fire,
+water, the elements, day, and night.  These are what constitute his
+immense body: his eyes are the sun and moon: he is space and
+eternity: in fine," adds Porphyry.  "Jupiter is the world, the
+universe, that which constitutes the essence and life of all
+beings.  Now," continues the same author, "as philosophers differed
+in opinion respecting the nature and constituent parts of this god,
+and as they could invent no figure that should represent all his
+attributes, they painted him in the form of a man.  He is in a
+sitting posture, in allusion to his immutable essence; the upper
+part of his body is uncovered, because it is in the upper regions
+of the universe (the stars) that he most conspicuously displays
+himself.  He is covered from the waist downwards, because
+respecting terrestrial things he is more secret and concealed.  He
+holds a scepter in his left hand, because on the left side is the
+heart, and the heart is the seat of the understanding, which, (in
+human beings) regulates every action."  Euseb. Proeper. Evang., p
+100.
+
+The following passage of the geographer and philosopher, Strabo,
+removes every doubt as to the identity of the ideas of Moses and
+those of the heathen theologians.
+
+"Moses, who was one of the Egyptian priests, taught his followers
+that it was an egregious error to represent the Deity under the
+form of animals, as the Egyptians did, or in the shape of man, as
+was the practice of the Greeks and Africans.  That alone is the
+Deity, said he, which constitutes heaven, earth, and every living
+thing; that which we call the world, the sum of all things, nature;
+and no reasonable person will think of representing such a being by
+the image of any one of the objects around us.  It is for this
+reason, that, rejecting every species of images or idols, Moses
+wished the Deity to be worshipped without emblems, and according to
+his proper nature; and he accordingly ordered a temple worthy of
+him to be erected, etc.  Geograph. lib. 16, p. 1104, edition of
+1707.
+
+The theology of Moses has, then, differed in no respect from that
+of his followers, that is to say, from that of the Stoics and
+Epicureans, who consider the Deity as the soul of the world.  This
+philosophy appears to have taken birth, or to have been
+disseminated when Abraham came into Egypt (200 years before Moses),
+since he quitted his system of idols for that of the god Yahouh; so
+that we may place its promulgation about the seventeenth or
+eighteenth century before Christ; which corresponds with what we
+have said before.
+
+As to the history of Moses, Diodorus properly represents it when he
+says, lib. 34 and 40, "That the Jews were driven out of Egypt at a
+time of dearth, when the country was full of foreigners, and that
+Moses, a man of extraordinary prudence seized this opportunity of
+establishing his religion in the mountains of Judea."  It will seem
+paradoxical to assert, that the 600,000 armed men whom he conducted
+thither ought to be reduced to 6,000; but I can confirm the
+assertion by so many proofs drawn from the books themselves, that
+it will be necessary to correct an error which appears to have
+arisen from the mistake of the transcribers.
+
+*** This was the monosyllable written on the gates of the temple of
+Delphos.  Plutarch has made it the subject of a dissertation.
+
+**** These are the literal expressions of the book of Deuteronomy,
+chap. XXXII.  "The works of Tsour are perfect."  Now Tsour has been
+translated by the word creator; its proper signification is to give
+forms, and this is one of the definitions of Osiris in Plutarch.
+
+
+X.  Religion of Zoroaster.
+
+
+"Such also was Zoroaster; who, five centuries after Moses, and in
+the time of David, revived and moralized among the Medes and
+Bactrians, the whole Egyptian system of Osiris and Typhon, under
+the names Ormuzd and Ahrimanes; who called the reign of summer,
+virtue and good; the reign of winter, sin and evil; the renewal of
+nature in spring, creation of the world; the conjunction of the
+spheres at secular periods, resurrection; and the Tartarus and
+Elysium of the astrologers and geographers were named future life,
+hell and paradise.  In a word, he did nothing but consecrate the
+existing dreams of the mystical system.
+
+
+XI.  Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans.
+
+
+"Such again are the propagators of the dismal doctrine of the
+Samaneans; who, on the basis of the Metempsychosis, have erected
+the misanthropic system of self-denial, and of privations; who,
+laying it down as a principle that the body is only a prison where
+the soul lives in an impure confinement, that life is only a dream,
+an illusion, and the world only a passage to another country, to a
+life without end, placed virtue and perfection in absolute
+immobility, in the destruction of all sentiment, in the abnegation
+of physical organs, in the annihilation of all our being; whence
+resulted fasts, penances, macerations, solitude, contemplations,
+and all the practices of the deplorable delirium of the Anchorites.
+
+
+XII.  Brahmism, or Indian System.
+
+
+"And such, too, were the founders of the Indian System; who,
+refining after Zoroaster on the two principles of creation and
+destruction, introduced an intermediary principle, that of
+preservation, and on their trinity in unity, of Brama, Chiven, and
+Vichenou, accumulated the allegories of their ancient traditions,
+and the alembicated subtilities of their metaphysics.
+
+"These are the materials which existed in a scattered state for
+many centuries in Asia; when a fortuitous concourse of events and
+circumstances, on the borders of the Euphrates and the
+Mediterranean, served to form them into new combinations.
+
+
+XIII.  Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun, under
+the cabalistical names of Chrish-en, or Christ, and Ye-sus or
+Jesus.
+
+
+"In constituting a separate nation, Moses strove in vain to defend
+it against the invasion of foreign ideas.  An invisible
+inclination, founded on the affinity of their origin, had
+constantly brought back the Hebrews towards the worship of the
+neighboring nations; and the commercial and political relations
+which necessarily existed between them, strengthened this
+propensity from day to day.  As long as the constitution of the
+state remained entire, the coercive force of the government and the
+laws opposed these innovations, and retarded their progress;
+nevertheless the high places were full of idols; and the god Sun
+had his chariot and horses painted in the palaces of the kings, and
+even in the temples of Yahouh; but when the conquests of the
+sultans of Nineveh and Babylon had dissolved the bands of civil
+power, the people, left to themselves and solicited by their
+conquerors, restrained no longer their inclination for profane
+opinions, and they were publicly established in Judea.  First, the
+Assyrian colonies, which came and occupied the lands of the tribes,
+filled the kingdom of Samaria with dogmas of the Magi, which very
+soon penetrated into the kingdom of Judea.  Afterwards, Jerusalem
+being subjugated, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Arabs, entering
+this defenceless country, introduced their opinions; and the
+religion of Moses was doubly mutilated.  Besides the priests and
+great men, being transported to Babylon and educated in the
+sciences of the Chaldeans, imbibed, during a residence of seventy
+years, the whole of their theology; and from that moment the dogmas
+of the hostile Genius (Satan), the archangel Michael,* the ancient
+of days (Ormuzd), the rebel angels, the battles in heaven, the
+immortality of the soul, and the resurrection, all unknown to
+Moses, or rejected by his total silence respecting them, were
+introduced and naturalized among the Jews.
+
+
+* "The names of the angels and of the months, such as Gabriel,
+Michael, Yar, Nisan, etc., came from Babylon with the Jews:" says
+expressly the Talmud of Jerusalem.  See Beousob. Hist. du Manich.
+Vol. II, p. 624, where he proves that the saints of the Almanac are
+an imitation of the 365 angels of the Persians; and Jamblicus in
+his Egyptian Mysteries, sect. 2, c. 3, speaks of angels,
+archangels, seraphims, etc., like a true Christian.
+
+
+"The emigrants returned to their country with these ideas; and
+their innovation at first excited disputes between their partisans
+the Pharisees, and their opponents the Saducees, who maintained the
+ancient national worship; but the former, aided by the propensities
+of the people and their habits already contracted, and supported by
+the Persians, their deliverers and masters, gained the ascendant
+over the latter; and the Sons of Moses consecrated the theology of
+Zoroaster.*
+
+
+* "The whole philosophy of the gymnosophists," says Diogenes
+Laertius on the authority of an ancient writer, "is derived from
+that of the Magi, and many assert that of the Jews to have the same
+origin."  Lib. 1. c. 9.  Megasthenes, an historian of repute in the
+days of Seleucus Nicanor, and who wrote particularly upon India,
+speaking of the philosophy of the ancients respecting natural
+things, puts the Brachmans and the Jews precisely on the same
+footing.
+
+
+"A fortuitous analogy between two leading ideas was highly
+favorable to this coalition, and became the basis of a last system,
+not less surprising in the fortune it has had in the world, than in
+the causes of its formation.
+
+"After the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Samaria, some
+judicious men foresaw the same destiny for Jerusalem, which they
+did not fail to predict and publish; and their predictions had the
+particular turn of being terminated by prayers for a re-
+establishment and regeneration, uttered in the form of prophecies.
+The Hierophants, in their enthusiasm, had painted a king as a
+deliverer, who was to re-establish the nation in its ancient glory;
+the Hebrews were to become once more a powerful, a conquering
+nation, and Jerusalem the capital of an empire extended over the
+whole earth.
+
+"Events having realized the first part of these predictions, the
+ruin of Jerusalem, the people adhered to the second with a firmness
+of belief in proportion to their misfortunes; and the afflicted
+Jews expected, with the impatience of want and desire, this
+victorious king and deliverer, who was to come and save the nation
+of Moses, and restore the empire of David.
+
+"On the other hand, the sacred and mythological traditions of
+preceding times had spread through all Asia a dogma perfectly
+analogous.  The cry there was a great mediator, a final judge, a
+future saviour, a king, god, conqueror and legislator, who was to
+restore the golden age upon earth,* to deliver it from the dominion
+of evil, and restore men to the empire of good, peace, and
+happiness.  The people seized and cherished these ideas with so
+much the more avidity, as they found in them a consolation under
+that deplorable state of suffering into which they had been plunged
+by the devastations of successive conquests, and the barbarous
+despotism of their governments.  This conformity between the
+oracles of different nations, and those of the prophets, excited
+the attention of the Jews; and doubtless the prophets had the art
+to compose their descriptions after the style and genius of the
+sacred books employed in the Pagan mysteries.  There was therefore
+a general expectation in Judea of a great ambassador, a final
+Saviour; when a singular circumstance determined the epoch of his
+coming.
+
+
+* This is the reason of the application of the many Pagan oracles
+to Jesus, and particularly the fourth eclogue of Virgil, and the
+Sybilline verses so celebrated among the ancients.
+
+
+"It is found in the sacred books of the Persians and Chaldeans,
+that the world, composed of a total revolution of twelve thousand,
+was divided into two partial revolutions; one of which, the age and
+reign of good, terminated in six thousand; the other, the age and
+reign of evil, was to terminate in six thousand more.
+
+"By these records, the first authors had understood the annual
+revolution of the great celestial orb called the world, (a
+revolution composed of twelve months or signs, divided each into a
+thousand parts), and the two systematic periods, of winter and
+summer, composed each of six thousand.  These expressions, wholly
+equivocal and badly explained, having received an absolute and
+moral, instead of a physical and astrological sense, it happened
+that the annual world was taken for the secular world, the thousand
+of the zodiacal divisions, for a thousand of years; and supposing,
+from the state of things, that they lived in the age of evil, they
+inferred that it would end with the six thousand pretended years.*
+
+
+* We have already seen this tradition current among the Tuscans; it
+was disseminated through most nations, and shows us what we ought
+to think of all the pretended creations and terminations of the
+world, which are merely the beginnings and endings of astronomical
+periods invented by astrologers.  That of the year or solar
+revolution, being the most simple and perceptible, served as a
+model to the rest, and its comparison gave rise to the most
+whimsical ideas.  Of this description is the idea of the four ages
+of the world among the Indians.  Originally these four ages were
+merely the four seasons; and as each season was under the supposed
+influence of a planet, it bore the name of the metal appropriated
+to that planet; thus spring was the age of the sun, or of gold;
+summer the age of the moon, or of silver; autumn the age of Venus,
+or of brass; and winter the age of Mars, or of iron.  Afterwards
+when astronomers invented the great year of 25 and 36 thousand
+common years, which had for its object the bringing back all the
+stars to one point of departure and a general conjunction, the
+ambiguity of the terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and
+the myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which were
+thus measured were easily converted into so many revolutions of the
+sun.  Thus the different periods of creation which have been so
+great a source of difficulty and misapprehension to curious
+enquirers, were in reality nothing more than hypothetical
+calculations of astronomical periods.  In the same manner the
+creation of the world has been attributed to different seasons of
+the year, just as these different seasons have served for the
+fictitious period of these conjunctions; and of consequence has
+been adopted by different nations for the commencement of an
+ordinary year.  Among the Egyptians this period fell upon the
+summer solstice, which was the commencement of their year; and the
+departure of the spheres, according to their conjectures, fell in
+like manner upon the period when the sun enters cancer.  Among the
+Persians the year commenced at first in the spring, or when the sun
+enters Aries; and from thence the first Christians were led to
+suppose that God created the world in the spring: this opinion is
+also favored by the book of Genesis; and it is farther remarkable,
+that the world is not there said to be created by the God of Moses
+(Yahouh), but by the Elohim or gods in the plural, that is by the
+angels or genii, for so the word constantly means in the Hebrew
+books.  If we farther observe that the root of the word Elohim
+signifies strong or powerful, and that the Egyptians called their
+decans strong and powerful leaders, attributing to them the
+creation of the world, we shall presently perceive that the book of
+Genesis affirms neither more nor less than that the world was
+created by the decans, by those very genii whom, according to
+Sanchoniathon, Mercury excited against Saturn, and who were called
+Elohim.  It may be farther asked why the plural substantive Elohim
+is made to agree with the singular verb bara (the Elohim creates).
+The reason is that after the Babylonish captivity the unity of the
+Supreme Being was the prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was
+therefore thought proper to introduce a pious solecism in language,
+which it is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the
+names of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a
+plural verb, to which Elohim is the nominative case understood, as
+Raouben (Reuben), they have looked upon me, and Samaonni (Simeon),
+they have granted me my prayer; to wit, the Elohim.  The reason of
+this etymology is to be found in the religious creeds of the wives
+of Jacob, whose gods were the taraphim of Laban, that is, the
+angels of the Persians, and Egyptian decans.
+
+
+"Now, according to calculations admitted by the Jews, they began to
+reckon near six thousand years since the supposed creation of the
+world.*  This coincidence caused a fermentation in the public mind.
+Nothing was thought of but the approaching end.  They consulted the
+hierophants and the mystical books, which differed as to the term;
+the great mediator, the final judge, was expected and desired, to
+put an end to so many calamities.  This being was so much spoken
+of, that some person finally was said to have seen him; and a first
+rumor of this sort was sufficient to establish a general certainty.
+Popular report became an established fact: the imaginary being was
+realized; and all the circumstances of mythological tradition,
+being assembled around this phantom, produced a regular history, of
+which it was no longer permitted to doubt.
+
+
+* According to the computation of the Seventy, the period elapsed
+consisted of about 5,600 years, and this computation was
+principally followed.  It is well known how much, in the first ages
+of the church, this opinion of the end of the world agitated the
+minds of men.  In the sequel, the general councils encouraged by
+finding that the general conflagration did not come, pronounced the
+expectation that prevailed heretical, and its believers were called
+Millenarians; a circumstance curious enough, since it is evident
+from the history of the gospels that Jesus Christ was a
+Millenarian, and of consequence a heretic.
+
+
+"These mythological traditions recounted that, in the beginning, a
+woman and a man had by their fall introduced sin and misery into
+the world.  (Consult plate of the Astrological Heaven of the
+Ancients.)
+
+"By this was denoted the astronomical fact, that the celestial
+virgin and the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the
+autumnal equinox, delivered the world to the wintry constellations,
+and seemed, on falling below the horizon, to introduce into the
+world the genius of evil, Ahrimanes, represented by the
+constellation of the Serpent.*
+
+
+* "The Persians," says Chardin, "call the constellation of the
+serpent Ophiucus, serpent of Eve: and this serpent Ophiucas or
+Ophioneus plays a similar part in the theology of the Phoenicians,"
+for Pherecydes, their disciple and the master of Pythagoras, said
+"that Ophioneus Serpentinus had been chief of the rebels against
+Jupiter."  See Mars. Ficin. Apol. Socrat. p. m. 797, col. 2.  I
+shall add that ephah (with ain) signifies in Hebrew, serpent.
+
+
+These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the
+man.*
+
+
+* In a physical sense to seduce, seducere, means only to attract,
+to draw after us.
+
+
+"And in fact, the virgin, setting first, seems to draw the herdsman
+after her.
+
+"That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight
+and good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil.
+
+"And in fact, the Virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit, which
+she seems to offer to the Herdsman; and the branch, emblem of
+autumn, placed in the picture of Mithra* between winter and summer,
+seems to open the door and give knowledge, the key of good and
+evil.
+
+
+* See this picture in Hyde, page 111, edition of 1760.
+
+
+That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and
+that a cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to
+guard it.
+
+"And in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the
+horizon, Perseus rises on the other side;* and this Genius, with a
+sword in his hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the
+garden and dominion of fruits and flowers.
+
+
+* Rather the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so
+beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his hand, is
+only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the horizon at the
+very moment that Perseus rises; and the serpents which surround it
+are Orphiucus and the Polar Dragon, who then occupy the zenith.
+This shows us in what manner the ancients composed all their
+figures and fables.  They took such constellations as they found at
+the same time on the circle of the horizon, and collecting the
+different parts, they formed groups which served them as an almanac
+in hieroglyphic characters.  Such is the secret of all their
+pictures, and the solution of all their mythological monsters.  The
+virgin is also Andromeda, delivered by Perseus from the whale that
+pursues her (pro-sequitor).
+
+
+That of this virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a
+child, who should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the
+world from sin.
+
+"This denotes the son, which, at the moment of the winter solstice,
+precisely when the Persian Magi drew the horoscope of the new year,
+was placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the
+eastern horizon; on this account he was figured in their
+astrological pictures under the form of a child suckled by a chaste
+virgin,* and became afterwards, at the vernal equinox, the ram, or
+the lamb, triumphant over the constellation of the Serpent, which
+disappeared from the skies.
+
+
+* Such was the picture of the Persian sphere, cited by Aben Ezra in
+the Coelam Poeticum of Blaeu, p. 71.  "The picture of the first
+decan of the Virgin," says that writer.  "represents a beautiful
+virgin with flowing hair; sitting in a chair, with two ears of corn
+in her hand, and suckling an infant, called Jesus by some nations,
+and Christ in Greek."
+
+In the library of the king of France is a manuscript in Arabic,
+marked 1165, in which is a picture of the twelve signs; and that of
+the Virgin represents a young woman with an infant by her side: the
+whole scene indeed of the birth of Jesus is to be found in the
+adjacent part of the heavens.  The stable is the constellation of
+the charioteer and the goat, formerly Capricorn: a constellation
+called proesepe Jovis Heniochi, stable of Iou; and the word Iou is
+found in the name Iou-seph (Joseph).  At no great distance is the
+ass of Typhon (the great she-bear), and the ox or bull, the ancient
+attendants of the manger.  Peter the porter, is Janus with his keys
+and bald forehead: the twelve apostles are the genii of the twelve
+months, etc.  This Virgin has acted very different parts in the
+various systems of mythology: she has been the Isis of the
+Egyptians, who said of her in one of their inscriptions cited by
+Julian, the fruit I have brought forth is the sun.  The majority of
+traits drawn by Plutarch apply to her, in the same manner as those
+of Osiris apply to Bootes: also the seven principal stars of the
+she-bear, called David's chariot, were called the chariot of Osiris
+(See Kirker); and the crown that is situated behind, formed of ivy,
+was called Chen-Osiris, the tree of Osiris.  The Virgin has
+likewise been Ceres, whose mysteries were the same with those of
+Isis and Mithra; she has been the Diana of the Ephesians; the great
+goddess of Syria, Cybele, drawn by lions; Minerva, the mother of
+Bacchus; Astraea, a chaste virgin taken up into heaven at the end
+of a golden age; Themis at whose feet is the balance that was put
+in her hands; the Sybil of Virgil, who descends into hell, or sinks
+below the hemisphere with a branch in her hand, etc.
+
+
+That, in his infancy, this restorer of divine and celestial nature
+would live abased, humble, obscure and indigent.
+
+"And this, because the winter sun is abased below the horizon; and
+that this first period of his four ages or seasons, is a time of
+obscurity, scarcity, fasting, and want.
+
+"That, being put to death by the wicked, he had risen gloriously;
+that he had reascended from hell to heaven, where he would reign
+forever
+
+"This is a sketch of the life of the sun; who, finishing his career
+at the winter solstice, when Typhon and the rebel angels gain the
+dominion, seems to be put to death by them; but who soon after is
+born again, and rises* into the vault of heaven, where he reigns.
+
+
+* Resurgere, to rise a second time, cannot signify to return to
+life, but in a metaphorical sense; but we see continually mistakes
+of this kind result from the ambiguous meaning of the words made
+use of in ancient tradition.
+
+
+"Finally, these traditions went so far as to mention even his
+astrological and mythological names, and inform us that he was
+called sometimes Chris, that is to say, preserver,* and from that,
+ye Indians, you have made your god Chrish-en or Chrish-na; and, ye
+Greek and Western Christians, your Chris-tos, son of Mary, is the
+same; sometimes he is called Yes, by the union of three letters,
+which by their numerical value form the number 608, one of the
+solar periods.**  And this, Europeans, is the name which, with the
+Latin termination, is become your Yes-us or Jesus, the ancient and
+cabalistic name attributed to young Bacchus, the clandestine son
+(nocturnal) of the Virgin Minerva, who, in the history of his whole
+life, and even of his death, brings to mind the history of the god
+of the Christians, that is, of the star of day, of which they are
+each of them the emblems."
+
+
+* The Greeks used to express by X, or Spanish iota, the aspirated
+ha of the Orientals, who said haris.  In Hebrew heres signifies the
+sun, but in Arabic the meaning of the radical word is, to guard, to
+preserve, and of haris, guardian, preserver.  It is the proper
+epithet of Vichenou, which demonstrates at once the identity of the
+Indian and Christian Trinities, and their common origin.  It is
+manifestly but one system, which divided into two branches, one
+extending to the east, and the other to the west, assumed two
+different forms: Its principal trunk is the Pythagorean system of
+the soul of the world, or Iou-piter.  The epithet piter, or father,
+having been applied to the demi-ourgos of Plato, gave rise to an
+ambiguity which caused an enquiry to be made respecting the son of
+this father.  In the opinion of the philosophers the son was
+understanding, Nous and Logos, from which the Latins made their
+Verbum.  And thus we clearly perceive the origin of the eternal
+father and of the Verbum his son, proceeding from him (Mens Ex Deo
+nata, says Macrobius): the oenima or spiritus mundi, was the Holy
+Ghost; and it is for this reason that Manes, Pasilides,
+Valentinius, and other pretended heretics of the first ages, who
+traced things to their source, said, that God the Father was the
+supreme inaccessible light (that of the heaven, the primum mobile,
+or the aplanes); the Son the secondary light resident in the sun,
+and the Holy Ghost the atmosphere of the earth (See Beausob. vol.
+II, p. 586): hence, among the Syrians, the representation of the
+Holy Ghost by a dove, the bird of Venus Urania, that is of the air.
+The Syrians (says Nigidius de Germaico) assert that a dove sat for
+a certain number of days on the egg of a fish, and that from this
+incubation Venus was born: Sextus Empiricus also observes (Inst.
+Pyrrh. lib. 3, c. 23) that the Syrians abstain from eating doves;
+which intimates to us a period commencing in the sign Pisces, in
+the winter solstice.  We may farther observe, that if Chris comes
+from Harisch by a chin, it will signify artificer, an epithet
+belonging to the sun.  These variations, which must have
+embarrassed the ancients, prove it to be the real type of Jesus, as
+had been already remarked in the time of Tertullian.  "Many, says
+this writer, suppose with greater probability that the sun is our
+God, and they refer us to the religion of the Persians."  Apologet.
+c. 16.
+
+** See a curious ode to the sun, by Martianus Capella, translated
+by Gebelin.
+
+
+Here a great murmur having arisen among all the Christian groups,
+the Lamas, the Mussulmans and the Indians called them to order, and
+the orator went on to finish his discourse:
+
+"You know at present," said he, "how the rest of this system was
+composed in the chaos and anarchy of the three first centuries;
+what a multitude of singular opinions divided the minds of men, and
+armed them with an enthusiasm and a reciprocal obstinacy; because,
+being equally founded on ancient tradition, they were equally
+sacred.  You know how the government, after three centuries, having
+embraced one of these sects, made it the orthodox, that is to say,
+the pre-dominant religion, to the exclusion of the rest; which,
+being less in number, became heretics; you know how and by what
+means of violence and seduction this religion was propagated,
+extended, divided, and enfeebled; how, six hundred years after the
+Christian innovation, another system was formed from it and from
+that of the Jews; and how Mahomet found the means of composing a
+political and theological empire at the expense of those of Moses
+and the vicars of Jesus.
+
+"Now, if you take a review of the whole history of the spirit of
+all religion, you will see that in its origin it has had no other
+author than the sensations and wants of man; that the idea of God
+has had no other type and model than those of physical powers,
+material beings, producing either good or evil, by impressions of
+pleasure or pain on sensitive beings; that in the formation of all
+these systems the spirit of religion has always followed the same
+course, and been uniform in its proceedings; that in all of them
+the dogma has never failed to represent, under the name of gods,
+the operations of nature, and passions and prejudices of men; that
+the moral of them all has had for its object the desire of
+happiness and the aversion to pain; but that the people, and the
+greater part of legislators, not knowing the route to be pursued,
+have formed false, and therefore discordant, ideas of virtue and
+vice of good and evil, that is to say, of what renders man happy or
+miserable; that in every instance, the means and the causes of
+propagating and establishing systems have exhibited the same scenes
+of passion and the same events; everywhere disputes about words,
+pretexts for zeal, revolutions and wars excited by the ambition of
+princes, the knavery of apostles, the credulity of proselytes, the
+ignorance of the vulgar, the exclusive cupidity and intolerant
+arrogance of all.  Indeed, you will see that the whole history of
+the spirit of religion is only the history of the errors of the
+human mind, which, placed in a world that it does not comprehend,
+endeavors nevertheless to solve the enigma; and which, beholding
+with astonishment this mysterious and visible prodigy, imagines
+causes, supposes reasons, builds systems; then, finding one
+defective, destroys it for another not less so; hates the error
+that it abandons, misconceives the one that it embraces, rejects
+the truth that it is seeking, composes chimeras of discordant
+beings; and thus, while always dreaming of wisdom and happiness,
+wanders blindly in a labyrinth of illusion and doubt."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ALL RELIGIONS HAVE THE SAME OBJECT.
+
+
+Thus spoke the orator in the name of those men who had studied the
+origin and succession of religious ideas.
+
+The theologians of various systems, reasoning on this discourse:
+"It is an impious representation," said some, whose tendency is
+nothing less than to overturn all belief, to destroy subordination
+in the minds of men, and annihilate our ministry and power."  "It
+is a romance," said others, "a tissue of conjectures, composed with
+art, but without foundation."  The moderate and prudent men added:
+"Supposing all this to be true, why reveal these mysteries?
+Doubtless our opinions are full of errors; but these errors are a
+necessary restraint on the multitude.  The world has gone thus for
+two thousand years; why change it now?"
+
+A murmur of disapprobation, which never fails to rise at every
+innovation, now began to increase; when a numerous group of the
+common classes of people, and of untaught men of all countries and
+of every nation, without prophets, without doctors, and without
+doctrine, advancing in the circle, drew the attention of the whole
+assembly; and one of them, in the name of all, thus addressed the
+multitude:
+
+"Mediators and arbiters of nations! the strange relations which
+have occupied the present debate were unknown to us until this day.
+Our understanding, confounded and amazed at so many statements,
+some of them learned, others absurd and all incomprehensible,
+remains in uncertainty and doubt.  One only reflection has struck
+us: on reviewing so many prodigious facts, so many contradictory
+assertions, we ask ourselves: What are all these discussions to us?
+What need have we of knowing what passed five or six thousand years
+ago, in countries we never heard of, and among men who will ever be
+unknown to us?  True or false, what interest have we in knowing
+whether the world has existed six thousand, or twenty-five thousand
+years?  Whether it was made of nothing, or of something; by itself,
+or by a maker, who in his turn would require another maker?  What!
+we are not sure of what happens near us, and shall we answer for
+what happens in the sun, in the moon, or in imaginary regions of
+space?  We have forgotten our own infancy, and shall we know the
+infancy of the world?  And who will attest what no one has seen?
+who will certify what no man comprehends?
+
+"Besides, what addition or diminution will it make to our
+existence, to answer yes or no to all these chimeras?  Hitherto
+neither our fathers nor ourselves have had the least knowledge or
+notion of them, and we do not perceive that we have had on this
+account either more or less of the sun, more or less of
+subsistence, more or less of good or of evil.
+
+"If the knowledge of these things is so necessary, why have we
+lived as well without it as those who have taken so much trouble
+concerning it?  If this knowledge is superfluous, why should we
+burden ourselves with it to-day?"
+
+Then addressing himself to the doctors and theologians:
+
+"What!" said he, "is it necessary that we, poor and ignorant men,
+whose every moment is scarcely sufficient for the cares of life,
+and the labors of which you take the profit,--is it necessary for
+us to learn the numberless histories that you have recounted, to
+read the quantity of books that you have cited, and to study the
+various languages in which they are composed!  A thousand years of
+life would not suffice--"
+
+"It is not necessary," replied the doctors, "that you should
+acquire all this science; we have it for you--"
+
+"But even you," replied the simple men, "with all your science, you
+are not agreed; of what advantage, then, is your science?  Besides,
+how can you answer for us?  If the faith of one man is applicable
+to many, what need have even you to believe? your fathers may have
+believed for you; and this would be reasonable, since they have
+seen for you.
+
+"Farther, what is believing, if believing influences no action?
+And what action is influenced by believing, for instance, that the
+world is or is not eternal?"
+
+"The latter would be offensive to God," said the doctors.
+
+"How prove you that?" replied the simple men.
+
+"In our books," answered the doctors.
+
+"We do not understand them," returned the simple men.
+
+"We understand them for you," said the doctors.
+
+"That is the difficulty," replied the simple men.  "By what right
+do you constitute yourselves mediators between God and us?"
+
+"By his orders," said the doctors.
+
+"Where is the proof of these orders?" said the simple men.
+
+"In our books," said the doctors.
+
+"We understand them not," said the simple men; "and how came this
+just God to give you this privilege over us?  Why did this common
+father oblige us to believe on a less degree of evidence than you?
+He has spoken to you; be it so; he is infallible, and deceives you
+not.  But it is you who speak to us!  And who shall assure us that
+you are not in error yourselves, or that you will not lead us into
+error?  And if we should be deceived, how will that just God save
+us contrary to law, or condemn us on a law which we have not
+known?"
+
+"He has given you the natural law," said the doctors.
+
+"And what is the natural law?" replied the simple men.  "If that
+law is sufficient, why has he given any other?  If it is not
+sufficient, why did he make it imperfect?"
+
+"His judgments are mysteries," said the doctors, "and his justice
+is not like that of men."
+
+"If his justice," replied the simple men, "is not like ours, by
+what rule are we to judge of it?  And, moreover, why all these
+laws, and what is the object proposed by them?"
+
+"To render you more happy," replied a doctor, "by rendering you
+better and more virtuous.  It is to teach man to enjoy his
+benefits, and not injure his fellows, that God has manifested
+himself by so many oracles and prodigies."
+
+"In that case," said the simple men, "there is no necessity for so
+many studies, nor of such a variety of arguments; only tell us
+which is the religion that best answers the end which they all
+propose."
+
+Immediately, on this, every group, extolling its own morality above
+that of all others, there arose among the different sects a new and
+most violent dispute.
+
+"It is we," said the Mussulmans, "who possess the most excellent
+morals, who teach all the virtues useful to men and agreeable to
+God.  We profess justice, disinterestedness, resignation to
+providence, charity to our brethren, alms-giving, and devotion; we
+torment not the soul with superstitious fears; we live without
+alarm, and die without remorse."
+
+"How dare you speak of morals," answered the Christian priests,
+"you, whose chief lived in licentiousness and preached impurity?
+You, whose first precept is homicide and war?  For this we appeal
+to experience: for these twelve hundred years your fanatical zeal
+has not ceased to spread commotion and carnage among the nations.
+If Asia, so flourishing in former times, is now languishing in
+barbarity and depopulation, it is in your doctrine that we find the
+cause; in that doctrine, the enemy of all instruction, which
+sanctifies ignorance, which consecrates the most absolute despotism
+in the governors, imposes the most blind and passive obedience in
+the people, that has stupefied the faculties of man, and brutalized
+the nations.
+
+"It is not so with our sublime and celestial morals; it was they
+which raised the world from its primitive barbarity, from the
+senseless and cruel superstitions of idolatry, from human
+sacrifices,* from the shameful orgies of pagan mysteries; they it
+was that purified manners, proscribed incest and adultery, polished
+savage nations, banished slavery, and introduced new and unknown
+virtues, charity for men, their equality in the sight of God,
+forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries, the restraint of all the
+passions, the contempt of worldly greatness, a life completely
+spiritual and completely holy!"
+
+
+* Read the cold declaration of Eusebius (Proep. Evang. lib. I, p.
+11,), who pretends that, since the coming of Christ, there have
+been neither wars, nor tyrants, nor cannibals, nor sodomites, nor
+persons committing incest, nor savages destroying their parents,
+etc.  When we read these fathers of the church we are astonished at
+their insincerity or infatuation.
+
+
+"We admire," said the Mussulmans, "the ease with which you
+reconcile that evangelical meekness, of which you are so
+ostentatious, with the injuries and outrages with which you are
+constantly galling your neighbors.  When you criminate so severely
+the great man whom we revere, we might fairly retort on the conduct
+of him whom you adore; but we scorn such advantages, and confining
+ourselves to the real object in question, we maintain that the
+morals of your gospel have by no means that perfection which you
+ascribe to them; it is not true that they have introduced into the
+world new and unknown virtues: for example, the equality of men in
+the sight of God,--that fraternity and that benevolence which
+follow from it, were formal doctrines of the sect of the Hermatics
+or Samaneans,* from whom you descend.  As to the forgiveness of
+injuries, the Pagans themselves had taught it; but in the extent
+that you give it, far from being a virtue, it becomes an
+immorality, a vice.  Your so much boasted precept of turning one
+cheek after the other, is not only contrary to every sentiment of
+man, but is opposed to all ideas of justice.  It emboldens the
+wicked by impunity, debases the virtuous by servility, delivers up
+the world to despotism and tyranny, and dissolves all society.
+Such is the true spirit of your doctrines.  Your gospels in their
+precepts and their parables, never represent God but as a despot
+without any rules of equity; a partial father treating a debauched
+and prodigal son with more favor than his respectful and virtuous
+children; a capricious master, who gives the same wages to workmen
+who had wrought but one hour, as to those who had labored through
+the whole day; one who prefers the last comers to the first.  The
+moral is everywhere misanthropic and antisocial; it disgusts men
+with life and with society; and tends only to encourage hermitism
+and celibacy.
+
+
+* The equality of mankind in a state of nature and in the eyes of
+God was one of the principal tenets of the Samaneans, and they
+appear to be the only ancients that entertained this opinion.
+
+
+"As to the manner in which you have practised these morals, we
+appeal in our turn to the testimony of facts.  We ask whether it is
+this evangelical meekness which has excited your interminable wars
+between your sects, your atrocious persecutions of pretended
+heretics, your crusades against Arianism, Manicheism,
+Protestantism, without speaking of your crusades against us, and of
+those sacrilegious associations, still subsisting, of men who take
+an oath to continue them?*  We ask you whether it be gospel charity
+which has made you exterminate whole nations in America, to
+annihilate the empires of Mexico and Peru; which makes you continue
+to dispeople Africa and sell its inhabitants like cattle,
+notwithstanding your abolition of slavery; which makes you ravage
+India and usurp its dominions; and whether it be the same charity
+which, for three centuries past, has led you to harrass the
+habitations of the people of three continents, of whom the most
+prudent, the Chinese and Japanese, were constrained to drive you
+off, that they might escape your chains and recover their internal
+peace?"
+
+
+* The oath taken by the knights of the Order of Malta, is to kill,
+or make the Mahometans prisoners, for the glory of God.
+
+
+Here the Bramins, the Rabbins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, the Priests
+of the Molucca islands, and the coasts of Guinea, loading the
+Christian doctors with reproaches: "Yes!" cried they, "these men
+are robbers and hypocrites, who preach simplicity, to surprise
+confidence; humility, to enslave with more ease; poverty, to
+appropriate all riches to themselves.  They promise another world,
+the better to usurp the present; and while they speak to you of
+tolerance and charity, they burn, in the name of God, the men who
+do not worship him in their manner."
+
+"Lying priests," retorted the missionaries, "it is you who abuse
+the credulity of ignorant nations to subjugate them.  It is you who
+have made of your ministry an art of cheating and imposture; you
+have converted religion into a traffic of cupidity and avarice.
+You pretend to hold communications with spirits, and they give for
+oracles nothing but your wills.  You feign to read the stars, and
+destiny decrees only your desires.  You cause idols to speak, and
+the gods are but the instruments of your passions.  You have
+invented sacrifices and libations, to collect for your own profit
+the milk of flocks, and the flesh and fat of victims; and under the
+cloak of piety you devour the offerings of the gods, who cannot
+eat, and the substance of the people who are forced to labor."
+
+"And you," replied the Bramins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, "you sell
+to the credulous living, your vain prayers for the souls of the
+dead.  With your indulgences and your absolutions you have usurped
+the power of God himself; and making a traffic of his favors and
+pardons, you have put heaven at auction; and by your system of
+expiations you have formed a tariff of crimes, which has perverted
+all consciences."*
+
+
+* As long as it shall be possible to obtain purification from
+crimes and exemption from punishment by means of money or other
+frivolous practices; as long as kings and great men shall suppose
+that building temples or instituting foundations, will absolve them
+from the guilt of oppression and homicide; as long as individuals
+shall imagine that they may rob and cheat, provided they observe
+fast during Lent, go to confession, and receive extreme unction, it
+is impossible there should exist in society any morality or virtue;
+and it is from a deep conviction of truth, that a modern
+philosopher has called the doctrine of expiations la verola des
+societes.
+
+
+"Add to this," said the Imans, "that these men have invented the
+most insidious of all systems of wickedness,--the absurd and
+impious obligation of recounting to them the most intimate secrets
+of actions and of thoughts (confessions); so their insolent
+curiosity has carried their inquisition even into the sanctuary of
+the marriage bed,* and the inviolable recesses of the heart."
+
+
+* Confession is a very ancient invention of the priests, who did
+not fail to avail themselves of that means of governing.  It was
+practised in the Egyptian, Greek, Phrygian, Persian mysteries, etc.
+Plutarch has transmitted us the remarkable answer of a Spartan whom
+a priest wanted to confess.  "Is it to you or to God I am to
+confess?"  "To God," answered the priest: "In that case," replied
+the Spartan, "man, begone!"  (Remarkable Savings of the
+Lacedemonians.)  The first Christians confessed their faults
+publicly, like the Essenians.  Afterwards, priests began to be
+established, with power of absolution from the sin of idolatry.  In
+the time of Theodosius, a woman having publicly confessed an
+intrigue with a deacon, bishop Necterius, and his successor
+Chrysostom, granted communion without confession.  It was not until
+the seventh century that the abbots of convents exacted from monks
+and nuns confession twice a year; and it was at a still later
+period that bishops of Rome generalized it.
+
+The Mussulmen, who suppose women to have no souls, are shocked at
+the idea of confession; and say; How can an honest man think of
+listening to the recital of the actions or the secret thoughts of a
+woman?  May we not also ask, on the other hand, how can an honest
+woman consent to reveal them?
+
+
+Thus by mutual reproaches the doctors of the different sects began
+to reveal all the crimes of their ministry--all the vices of their
+craft; and it was found that among all nations the spirit of the
+priesthood, their system of conduct, their actions their morals,
+were absolutely the same:
+
+That they had everywhere formed secret associations and
+corporations at enmity with the rest of society:*
+
+
+* That we may understand the general feelings of priests respecting
+the rest of mankind, whom they always call by the name of the
+people, let us hear one of the doctors of the church.  "The
+people," says Bishop Synnesius, in Calvit. page 315, "are desirous
+of being deceived, we cannot act otherwise respecting them.  The
+case was similar with the ancient priests of Egypt, and for this
+reason they shut themselves up in their temples, and there composed
+their mysteries, out of the reach of the eye of the people."  And
+forgetting what he has before just said, he adds: "for had the
+people been in the secret they might have been offended at the
+deception played upon them.  In the mean time how is it possible to
+conduct one's self otherwise with the people so long as they are
+people?  For my own part, to myself I shall always be a
+philosopher, but in dealing with the mass of mankind, I shall be a
+priest."
+
+"A little jargon," says Geogory Nazianzen to St. Jerome (Hieron.
+ad. Nep.) "is all that is necessary to impose on the people.  The
+less they comprehend, the more they admire.  Our forefathers and
+doctors of the church have often said, not what they thought, but
+what circumstances and necessity dictated to them."
+
+"We endeavor," says Sanchoniaton, "to excite admiration by means of
+the marvellous." (Proep. Evang. lib. 3.)
+
+Such was the conduct of all the priests of antiquity, and is still
+that of the Bramins and Lamas who are the exact counterpart of the
+Egyptian priests.  Such was the practice of the Jesuits, who
+marched with hasty strides in the same career.  It is useless to
+point out the whole depravity of such a doctrine.  In general every
+association which has mystery for its basis, or an oath of secrecy,
+is a league of robbers against society, a league divided in its
+very bosom into knaves and dupes, or in other words agents and
+instruments.  It is thus we ought to judge of those modern clubs,
+which, under the name of Illuminatists, Martinists,
+Cagliostronists, and Mesmerites, infest Europe.  These societies
+are the follies and deceptions of the ancient Cabalists, Magicians,
+Orphies, etc., "who," says Plutarch, "led into errors of
+considerable magnitude, not only individuals, but kings and
+nations."
+
+
+That they had everywhere attributed to themselves prerogatives and
+immunities, by means of which they lived exempt from the burdens of
+other classes:
+
+That they everywhere avoided the toils of the laborer, the dangers
+of the soldier, and the disappointments of the merchant:
+
+That they lived everywhere in celibacy, to shun even the cares of a
+family:
+
+That, under the cloak of poverty, they found everywhere the secret
+of procuring wealth and all sorts of enjoyments:
+
+That under the name of mendicity they raised taxes to a greater
+amount than princes:
+
+That in the form of gifts and offerings they had established fixed
+and certain revenues exempt from charges:
+
+That under pretence of retirement and devotion they lived in
+idleness and licentiousness:
+
+That they had made a virtue of alms-giving, to live quietly on the
+labors of others:
+
+That they had invented the ceremonies of worship, as a means of
+attracting the reverence of the people, while they were playing the
+parts of gods, of whom they styled themselves the interpreters and
+mediators, to assume all their powers; that, with this design, they
+had (according to the degree of ignorance or information of their
+people) assumed by turns the character of astrologers, drawers of
+horoscopes, fortune-tellers, magicians,* necromancers, quacks,
+physicians, courtiers, confessors of princes, always aiming at the
+great object to govern for their own advantage:
+
+
+* What is a magician, in the sense in which people understand the
+word?  A man who by words and gestures pretends to act on
+supernatural beings, and compel them to descend at his call and
+obey his orders.  Such was the conduct of the ancient priests, and
+such is still that of all priests in idolatrous nations; for which
+reason we have given them the denomination of Magicians.
+
+And when a Christian priest pretends to make God descend from
+heaven, to fix him to a morsel of leaven, and render, by means of
+this talisman, souls pure and in a state of grace, what is this but
+a trick of magic?  And where is the difference between a Chaman of
+Tartary who invokes the Genii, or an Indian Bramin, who makes
+Vichenou descend in a vessel of water to drive away evil spirits?
+Yes, the identity of the spirit of priests in every age and country
+is fully established!  Every where it is the assumption of an
+exclusive privilege, the pretended faculty of moving at will the
+powers of nature; and this assumption is so direct a violation of
+the right of equality, that whenever the people shall regain their
+importance, they will forever abolish this sacrilegious kind of
+nobility, which has been the type and parent stock of the other
+species of nobility.
+
+
+That sometimes they had exalted the power of kings and consecrated
+their persons, to monopolize their favors, or participate their
+sway:
+
+That sometimes they had preached up the murder of tyrants
+(reserving it to themselves to define tyranny), to avenge
+themselves of their contempt or their disobedience:
+
+And that they always stigmatised with impiety whatever crossed
+their interests; that they hindered all public instruction, to
+exercise the monopoly of science; that finally, at all times and in
+all places, they had found the secret of living in peace in the
+midst of the anarchy they created, in safety under the despotism
+that they favored, in idleness amidst the industry they preached,
+and in abundance while surrounded with scarcity; and all this by
+carrying on the singular trade of selling words and gestures to
+credulous people, who purchase them as commodities of the greatest
+value.*
+
+
+* A curious work would be the comparative history of the agnuses of
+the pope and the pastils of the grand Lama.  It would be worth
+while to extend this idea to religions ceremonies in general, and
+to confront column by column, the analogous or contrasting points
+of faith and superstitious practices in all nations.  There is one
+more species of superstition which it would be equally salutary to
+cure, blind veneration for the great; and for this purpose it would
+be alone sufficient to write a minute detail of the private life of
+kings and princes.  No work could be so philosophical as this; and
+accordingly we have seen what a general outcry was excited among
+kings and the panders of kings, when the Anecdotes of the Court of
+Berlin first appeared.  What would be the alarm were the public put
+in possession of the sequel of this work?  Were the people fairly
+acquainted with all the absurdities of this species of idol, they
+would no longer be exposed to covet their specious pleasures of
+which the plausible and hollow appearance disturbs their peace, and
+hinders them from enjoying the much more solid happiness of their
+own condition.
+
+
+Then the different nations, in a transport of fury, were going to
+tear in pieces the men who had thus abused them; but the
+legislator, arresting this movement of violence, addressed the
+chiefs and doctors:
+
+"What!" said he, "instructors of nations, is it thus that you have
+deceived them?"
+
+And the terrified priests replied.
+
+"O legislator! we are men.  The people are so superstitious! they
+have themselves encouraged these errors."*
+
+
+* Consider in this view the Brabanters.
+
+
+And the kings said:
+
+"O legislator! the people are so servile and so ignorant! they
+prostrated themselves before the yoke, which we scarcely dared to
+show them."*
+
+
+* The inhabitants of Vienna, for example, who harnessed themselves
+like cattle and drew the chariot of Leopold.
+
+
+Then the legislator, turning to the people--"People!" said he,
+"remember what you have just heard; they are two indelible truths.
+Yes, you yourselves cause the evils of which you complain;
+yourselves encourage the tyrants, by a base adulation of their
+power, by an imprudent admiration of their false beneficence, by
+servility in obedience, by licentiousness in liberty, and by a
+credulous reception of every imposition.  On whom shall you wreak
+vengeance for the faults committed by your own ignorance and
+cupidity?"
+
+And the people, struck with confusion, remained in mournful
+silence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF CONTRADICTIONS.
+
+
+The legislator then resumed his discourse: "O nations!" said he,
+"we have heard the discussion of your opinions.  The different
+sentiments which divide you have given rise to many reflections,
+and furnished several questions which we shall propose to you to
+solve.
+
+"First, considering the diversity and opposition of the creeds to
+which you are attached, we ask on what motives you found your
+persuasion?  Is it from a deliberate choice that you follow the
+standard of one prophet rather than another?  Before adopting this
+doctrine, rather than that, did you first compare? did you
+carefully examine them?  Or have you received them only from the
+chance of birth, from the empire of education and habit?  Are you
+not born Christians on the borders of the Tiber, Mussulmans on
+those of the Euphrates, Idolaters on the Indus, just as you are
+born fair in cold climates, and sable under the scorching sun of
+Africa?  And if your opinions are the effect of your fortuitous
+position on the earth, of consanguinity, of imitation, how is it
+that such a hazard should be a ground of conviction, an argument of
+truth?
+
+"Secondly, when we reflect on the mutual proscriptions and
+arbitrary intolerance of your pretensions, we are frightened at the
+consequences that flow from your own principles.  Nations! who
+reciprocally devote each other to the bolts of heavenly wrath,
+suppose that the universal Being, whom you revere, should this
+moment descend from heaven on this multitude; and, clothed with all
+his power, should sit on this throne to judge you; suppose that he
+should say to you: Mortals! it is your own justice that I am going
+to exercise upon you.  Yes, of all the religious systems that
+divide you, one alone shall this day be preferred; all the others,
+all this multitude of standards, of nations, of prophets, shall be
+condemned to eternal destruction.  This is not enough: among the
+particular sects of the chosen system, one only can be favored; all
+the others must be condemned: neither is this enough;--from this
+little remnant of a group I must exclude all those who have not
+fulfilled the conditions enjoined by its precepts.  O men! to what
+a small number of elect have you limited your race! to what a
+penury of beneficence do you reduce the immensity of my goodness!
+to what a solitude of beholders do you condemn my greatness and my
+glory!
+
+"But," said the legislator rising, no matter you have willed it so.
+Nations! here is an urn in which all your names are placed: one
+only is a prize: approach, and draw this tremendous lottery!"  And
+the nations, seized with terror cried: "No, no; we are all
+brothers, all equal; we cannot condemn each other."
+
+"Then," said the legislator, resuming his seat: "O men! who dispute
+on so many subjects, lend an attentive ear to one problem which you
+exhibit, and which you ought to decide yourselves."
+
+And the people, giving great attention, he lifted an arm towards
+heaven, and, pointing to the sun, said:
+
+"Nations, does that sun, which enlightens you, appear square or
+triangular?"
+
+"No," answered they with one voice, "it is round."
+
+Then, taking the golden balance that was on the altar:
+
+"This gold," said the legislator, "that you handle every day, is it
+heavier than the same volume of copper?"
+
+"Yes,' answered all the people, "gold is heavier than Copper."
+
+Then, taking the sword:
+
+"Is this iron," said the legislator, "softer than lead?"
+
+"No," said the people.
+
+"Is sugar sweet, and gall bitter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you love pleasure and hate pain?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thus, then, you are agreed in these points, and many others of the
+same nature.
+
+"Now, tell us, is there a cavern in the centre of the earth, or
+inhabitants in the moon?"
+
+This question caused a universal murmur.  Every one answered
+differently--some yes, others no; one said it was probable, another
+said it was an idle and ridiculous question; some, that it was
+worth knowing.  And the discord was universal.
+
+After some time the legislator, having obtained silence, said:
+
+"Explain to us, O Nations! this problem: we have put to you several
+questions which you have answered with one voice, without
+distinction of race or of sect: white men, black men, followers of
+Mahomet and of Moses, worshippers of Boudha and of Jesus, all have
+returned the same answer.  We then proposed another question, and
+you have all disagreed!  Why this unanimity in one case, and this
+discordance in the other?"
+
+And the group of simple men and savages answered and said: "The
+reason of this is plain.  In the first case we see and feel the
+objects, and we speak from sensation; in the second, they are
+beyond the reach of our senses--we speak of them only from
+conjecture."
+
+"You have resolved the problem," said the legislator; "and your own
+consent has established this first truth:
+
+"That whenever objects can be examined and judged of by your
+senses, you are agreed in opinion; and that you only differ when
+the objects are absent and beyond your reach.
+
+"From this first truth flows another equally clear and worthy of
+notice.  Since you agree on things which you know with certainty,
+it follows that you disagree only on those which you know not with
+certainty, and about which you are not sure; that is to say, you
+dispute, you quarrel, you fight, for that which is uncertain, that
+of which you doubt.  O men! is this wisdom?
+
+"Is it not, then, demonstrated that truth is not the object of your
+contests? that it is not her cause which you defend, but that of
+your affections, and your prejudices? that it is not the object, as
+it really is in itself, that you would verify, but the object as
+you would have it; that is to say, it is not the evidence of the
+thing that you would enforce, but your own personal opinion, your
+particular manner of seeing and judging?  It is a power that you
+wish to exercise, an interest that you wish to satisfy, a
+prerogative that you arrogate to yourself; it is a contest of
+vanity.  Now, as each of you, on comparing himself to every other,
+finds himself his equal and his fellow, he resists by a feeling of
+the same right.  And your disputes, your combats, your intolerance,
+are the effect of this right which you deny each other, and of the
+intimate conviction of your equality.
+
+"Now, the only means of establishing harmony is to return to
+nature, and to take for a guide and regulator the order of things
+which she has founded; and then your accord will prove this other
+truth:
+
+"That real beings have in themselves an identical, constant and
+uniform mode of existence; and that there is in your organs a like
+mode of being affected by them.
+
+"But at the same time, by reason of the mobility of these organs as
+subject to your will, you may conceive different affections, and
+find yourselves in different relations with the same objects; so
+that you are to them like a mirror, capable of reflecting them
+truly as they are, or of distorting and disfiguring them.
+
+"Hence it follows, that whenever you perceive objects as they are,
+you agree among yourselves, and with the objects; and this
+similitude between your sensations and their manner of existence,
+is what constitutes their truth with respect to you; and, on the
+contrary, whenever you differ in opinion, your disagreement is a
+proof that you do not represent them such as they are,--that you
+change them.
+
+"Hence, also, it follows, that the causes of your disagreement
+exist not in the objects themselves, but in your minds, in your
+manner of perceiving or judging.
+
+"To establish, therefore, a uniformity of opinion, it is necessary
+first to establish the certainty, completely verified, that the
+portraits which the mind forms are perfectly like the originals;
+that it reflects the objects correctly as they exist.  Now, this
+result cannot be obtained but in those cases where the objects can
+be brought to the test, and submitted to the examination of the
+senses.  Everything which cannot be brought to this trial is, for
+that reason alone, impossible to be determined; there exists no
+rule, no term of comparison, no means of certainty, respecting it.
+
+"From this we conclude, that, to live in harmony and peace, we must
+agree never to decide on such subjects, and to attach to them no
+importance; in a word, we must trace a line of distinction between
+those that are capable of verification, and those that are not; and
+separate by an inviolable barrier the world of fantastical beings
+from the world of realities; that is to say, all civil effect must
+be taken away from theological and religious opinions.
+
+"This, O ye people of the earth! is the object proposed by a great
+nation freed from her fetters and her prejudices; this is the work
+which, under her eye and by her orders, we had undertaken, when
+your kings and your priests came to interrupt it.  O kings and
+priests! you may suspend, yet for a while, the solemn publication
+of the laws of nature; but it is no longer in your power to
+annihilate or to subvert them."
+
+
+A general shout then arose from every part of the assembly; and the
+nations universally, and with one voice, testified their assent to
+the proposals of the delegates: "Resume," said they, "your holy and
+sublime labors, and bring them to perfection.  Investigate the laws
+which nature, for our guidance, has implanted in our breasts, and
+collect from them an authentic and immutable code; nor let this
+code be any longer for one family only, but for us all without
+exception.  Be the legislators of the whole human race, as you are
+the interpreters of nature herself.  Show us the line of partition
+between the world of chimeras and that of realities; and teach us,
+after so many religions of error and delusion, the religion of
+evidence and truth!
+
+
+Then the delegates, having resumed their enquiries into the
+physical and constituent attributes of man, and examined the
+motives and affections which govern him in his individual and
+social state, unfolded in these words the laws on which nature
+herself has founded his happiness.
+
+
+
+THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.
+
+OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+Q.  What is the law of nature?
+
+A.  It is the constant and regular order of events, by which God
+governs the universe; an order which his wisdom presents to the
+senses and reason of men, as an equal and common rule for their
+actions, to guide them, without distinction of country or sect,
+towards perfection and happiness.
+
+Q.  Give a clear definition of the word law.
+
+A.  The word law, taken literary, signifies lecture,* because
+originally, ordinances and regulations were the lectures,
+preferably to all others, made to the people, in order that they
+might observe them, and not incur the penalties attached to their
+infraction: whence follows the original custom explaining the true
+idea.
+
+The definition of law is, "An order or prohibition to act with the
+express clause of a penalty attached to the infraction, or of a
+recompense attached to the observance of that order."
+
+
+* From the Latin word lex, lectio.  Alcoran likewise signifies
+lecture and is only a literal translation of the word law.
+
+
+Q.  Do such orders exist in nature?
+
+A.  Yes.
+
+Q.  What does the word nature signify?
+
+A.  The word nature bears three different significations.
+
+1.  It signifies the universe, the material world: in this first
+sense we say the beauties of nature, the riches of nature, that is
+to say, the objects in the heavens and on the earth exposed to our
+sight;
+
+2.  It signifies the power that animates, that moves the universe,
+considering it as a distinct being, such as the soul is to the
+body; in this second sense we say, "The intentions of nature, the
+incomprehensible secrets of nature."
+
+3.  It signifies the partial operations of that power on each
+being, or on each class of beings; and in this third sense we say,
+"The nature of man is an enigma; every being acts according to its
+nature."
+
+Wherefore, as the actions of each being, or of each species of
+beings, are subjected to constant and general rules, which cannot
+be infringed without interrupting and troubling the general or
+particular order, those rules of action and of motion are called
+natural laws, or laws of nature.
+
+Q.  Give me examples of those laws.
+
+A.  It is a law of nature, that the sun illuminates successively
+the surface of the terrestrial globe;--that its presence causes
+both light and heat;--that heat acting upon water, produces
+vapors;--that those vapors rising in clouds into the regions of the
+air, dissolve into rain or snow, and renew incessantly the waters
+of fountains and rivers.
+
+It is a law of nature, that water flows downwards; that it
+endeavors to find its level; that it is heavier than air; that all
+bodies tend towards the earth; that flame ascends towards the
+heavens;--that it disorganizes vegetables and animals; that air is
+essential to the life of certain animals; that, in certain
+circumstances, water suffocates and kills them; that certain juices
+of plants, certain minerals attack their organs, and destroy their
+life, and so on in a multitude of other instances.
+
+Wherefore, as all those and similar facts are immutable, constant,
+and regular, so many real orders result from them for man to
+conform himself to, with the express clause of punishment attending
+the infraction of them, or of welfare attending their observance.
+So that if man pretends to see clear in darkness, if he goes in
+contradiction to the course of the seasons, or the action of the
+elements; if he pretends to remain under water without being
+drowned, to touch fire without burning himself, to deprive himself
+of air without being suffocated, to swallow poison without
+destroying himself, he receives from each of those infractions of
+the laws of nature a corporeal punishment proportionate to his
+fault; but if on the contrary, he observes and practises each of
+those laws according to the regular and exact relations they have
+to him he preserves his existence, and renders it as happy as it
+can be: and as the only and common end of all those laws,
+considered relatively to mankind, is to preserve, and render them
+happy, it has been agreed upon to reduce the idea to one simple
+expression, and to call them collectively the law of nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CHARACTERS OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
+
+
+Q.  What are the characters of the law of nature?
+
+A.  There can be assigned ten principal ones.
+
+Q.  Which is the first?
+
+A.  To be inherent to the existence of things, and, consequently,
+primitive and anterior to every other law: so that all those which
+man has received, are only imitations of it, and their perfection
+is ascertained by the resemblance they bear to this primordial
+model.
+
+Q.  Which is the second?
+
+A.  To be derived immediately from God, and presented by him to
+each man, whereas all other laws are presented to us by men, who
+may be either deceived or deceivers.
+
+Q.  Which is the third?
+
+A.  To be common to all times, and to all countries, that is to
+say, one and universal.
+
+Q.  Is no other law universal?
+
+A.  No: for no other is agreeable or applicable to all the people
+of the earth; they are all local and accidental, originating from
+circumstances of places and of persons; so that if such a man had
+not existed, or such an event happened, such a law would never have
+been enacted.
+
+Q.  Which is the fourth character?
+
+A.  To be uniform and invariable.
+
+Q.  Is no other law uniform and invariable?
+
+A.  No: for what is good and virtue according to one, is evil and
+vice according to another; and what one and the same law approves
+of at one time, it often condemns at another.
+
+Q.  Which is the fifth character?
+
+A.  To be evident and palpable, because it consists entirely of
+facts incessantly present to the senses, and to demonstration.
+
+Q.  Are not other laws evident?
+
+A.  No: for they are founded on past and doubtful facts, on
+equivocal and suspicious testimonies, and on proofs inaccessible to
+the senses.
+
+Q.  Which is the sixth character?
+
+A.  To be reasonable, because its precepts and entire doctrine are
+conformable to reason, and to the human understanding.
+
+Q.  Is no other law reasonable?
+
+A.  No: for all are in contradiction to the reason and the
+understanding of men, and tyrannically impose on him a blind and
+impracticable belief.
+
+Q.  Which is the seventh character?
+
+A.  To be just, because in that law, the penalties are
+proportionate to the infractions.
+
+Q.  Are not other laws just?
+
+A.  No: for they often exceed bounds, either in rewarding deserts,
+or in punishing delinquencies, and consider as meritorious or
+criminal, null or indifferent actions.
+
+Q.  Which is the eighth character?
+
+A.  To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature, all
+men being brothers and equal in rights, it recommends to them only
+peace and toleration, even for errors.
+
+Q.  Are not other laws pacific?
+
+A.  No: for all preach dissension, discord, and war, and divide
+mankind by exclusive pretensions of truth and domination.
+
+Q.  Which is the ninth character?
+
+A.  To be equally beneficent to all men, in teaching them the true
+means of becoming better and happier.
+
+Q.  Are not other laws beneficent likewise?
+
+A.  No: for none of them teach the real means of attaining
+happiness; all are confined to pernicious or futile practices; and
+this is evident from facts, since after so many laws, so many
+religions, so many legislators and prophets, men are still as
+unhappy and ignorant, as they were six thousand years ago.
+
+Q.  Which is the last character of the law of nature?
+
+A.  That it is alone sufficient to render men happier and better,
+because it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws,
+either civil or religious, that is to say, it constitutes
+essentially the moral part of them; so that if other laws were
+divested of it, they would be reduced to chimerical and imaginary
+opinions devoid of any practical utility.
+
+Q.  Recapitulate all those characters.
+
+A.  We have said that the law of nature is,
+
+1.  Primitive;     6.  Reasonable;
+2.  Immediate;     7.  Just;
+3.  Universal;     8.  Pacific;
+4.  Invariable;    9.  Beneficent: and
+5.  Evident;      10.  Alone sufficient.
+
+And such is the power of all these attributes of perfection and
+truth, that when in their disputes the theologians can agree upon
+no article of belief, they recur to the law of nature, the neglect
+of which, say they, forced God to send from time to time prophets
+to proclaim new laws; as if God enacted laws for particular
+circumstances, as men do; especially when the first subsists in
+such force, that we may assert it to have been at all times and in
+all countries the rule of conscience for every man of sense or
+understanding.
+
+Q.  If, as you say, it emanates immediately from God, does it teach
+his existence?
+
+A.  Yes, most positively: for, to any man whatever, who observes
+with reflection the astonishing spectacle of the universe, the more
+he meditates on the properties and attributes of each being, on the
+admirable order and harmony of their motions, the more it is
+demonstrated that there exists a supreme agent, a universal and
+identic mover, designated by the appellation of God; and so true it
+is that the law of nature suffices to elevate him to the knowledge
+of God, that all which men have pretended to know by supernatural
+means, has constantly turned out ridiculous and absurd, and that
+they have ever been obliged to recur to the immutable conceptions
+of natural reason.
+
+Q.  Then it is not true that the followers of the law of nature are
+atheists?
+
+A.  No; it is not true; on the contrary, they entertain stronger
+and nobler ideas of the Divinity than most other men; for they do
+not sully him with the foul ingredients of all the weaknesses and
+passions entailed on humanity.
+
+Q. What worship do they pay to him?
+
+A.  A worship wholly of action; the practice and observance of all
+the rules which the supreme wisdom has imposed on the motion of
+each being; eternal and unalterable rules, by which it maintains
+the order and harmony of the universe, and which, in their
+relations to man, constitute the law of nature.
+
+Q.  Was the law of nature known before this period:
+
+A.  It has been at all times spoken of: most legislators pretend to
+adopt it as the basis of their laws; but they only quote some of
+its precepts, and have only vague ideas of its totality.
+
+Q.  Why.
+
+A.  Because, though simple in its basis, it forms in its
+developements and consequences, a complicated whole which requires
+an extensive knowledge of facts, joined to all the sagacity of
+reasoning.
+
+Q.  Does not instinct alone teach the law of nature?
+
+A.  No; for by instinct is meant nothing more than that blind
+sentiment by which we are actuated indiscriminately towards
+everything that flatters the senses.
+
+Q. Why, then, is it said that the law of nature is engraved in the
+hearts of all men.
+
+A.  It is said for two reasons: first, because it has been
+remarked, that there are acts and sentiments common to all men, and
+this proceeds from their common organization; secondly, because the
+first philosophers believed that men were born with ideas already
+formed, which is now demonstrated to be erroneous.
+
+Q.  Philosophers, then, are fallible?
+
+A.  Yes, sometimes.
+
+Q.  Why so?
+
+A.  First, because they are men; secondly, because the ignorant
+call all those who reason, right or wrong, philosophers; thirdly,
+because those who reason on many subjects, and who are the first to
+reason on them, are liable to be deceived.
+
+Q.  If the law of nature be not written, must it not become
+arbitrary and ideal?
+
+A.  No: because it consists entirely in facts, the demonstration of
+which can be incessantly renewed to the senses, and constitutes a
+science as accurate and precise as geometry and mathematics; and it
+is because the law of nature forms an exact science, that men, born
+ignorant and living inattentive and heedless, have had hitherto
+only a superficial knowledge of it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF NATURE RELATING TO MAN.
+
+
+Q.  Explain the principles of the law of nature with relation to
+man.
+
+A.  They are simple; all of them are comprised in one fundamental
+and single precept.
+
+Q.  What is that precept?
+
+A.  It is self-preservation.
+
+Q.  Is not happiness also a precept of the law of nature?
+
+A.  Yes: but as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only
+from the development of man's faculties and his social system, it
+is not the immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some
+measure, a superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental
+object of preservation.
+
+Q.  How does nature order man to preserve himself?
+
+A.  By two powerful and involuntary sensations, which it has
+attached, as two guides, two guardian Geniuses to all his actions:
+the one a sensation of pain, by which it admonishes him of, and
+deters him from, everything that tends to destroy him; the other, a
+sensation of pleasure, by which it attracts and carries him towards
+everything that tends to his preservation and the development of
+his existence.
+
+Q.  Pleasure, then, is not an evil, a sin, as casuists pretend?
+
+A.  No, only inasmuch as it tends to destroy life and health which,
+by the avowal of those same casuists, we derive from God himself.
+
+Q.  Is pleasure the principal object of our existence, as some
+philosophers have asserted?
+
+A.  No; not more than pain; pleasure is an incitement to live as
+pain is a repulsion from death.
+
+Q.  How do you prove this assertion?
+
+A.  By two palpable facts: One, that pleasure, when taken
+immoderately, leads to destruction; for instance, a man who abuses
+the pleasure of eating or drinking, attacks his health, and injures
+his life.  The other, that pain sometimes leads to self-
+preservation; for instance, a man who permits a mortified member to
+be cut off, suffers pain in order not to perish totally.
+
+Q.  But does not even this prove that our sensations can deceive us
+respecting the end of our preservation?
+
+A.  Yes; they can momentarily.
+
+Q.  How do our sensations deceive us?
+
+A.  In two ways: by ignorance, and by passion.
+
+Q.  When do they deceive us by ignorance?
+
+A.  When we act without knowing the action and effect of objects on
+our senses: for example, when a man touches nettles without knowing
+their stinging quality, or when he swallows opium without knowing
+its soporiferous effects.
+
+Q.  When do they deceive us by passion?
+
+A.  When, conscious of the pernicious action of objects, we abandon
+ourselves, nevertheless, to the impetuosity of our desires and
+appetites: for example, when a man who knows that wine intoxicates,
+does nevertheless drink it to excess.
+
+Q.  What is the result?
+
+A.  That the ignorance in which we are born, and the unbridled
+appetites to which we abandon ourselves, are contrary to our
+preservation; that, therefore, the instruction of our minds and the
+moderation of our passions are two obligations, two laws, which
+spring directly from the first law of preservation.
+
+Q.  But being born ignorant, is not ignorance a law of nature?
+
+A.  No more than to remain in the naked and feeble state of
+infancy.  Far from being a law of nature, ignorance is an obstacle
+to the practice of all its laws.  It is the real original sin.
+
+Q.  Why, then, have there been moralists who have looked upon it as
+a virtue and perfection?
+
+A.  Because, from a strange or perverted disposition, they
+confounded the abuse of knowledge with knowledge itself; as if,
+because men abuse the power of speech, their tongues should be cut
+out; as if perfection and virtue consisted in the nullity, and not
+in the proper development of our faculties.
+
+Q.  Instruction, then, is indispensable to man's existence?
+
+A.  Yes, so indispensable, that without it he is every instant
+assailed and wounded by all that surrounds him; for if he does not
+know the effects of fire, he burns himself; those of water he
+drowns himself; those of opium, he poisons himself; if, in the
+savage state, he does not know the wiles of animals, and the art of
+seizing game, he perishes through hunger; if in the social state,
+he does not know the course of the seasons, he can neither
+cultivate the ground, nor procure nourishment; and so on, of all
+his actions, respecting all his wants.
+
+Q.  But can man individually acquire this knowledge necessary to
+his existence, and to the development of his faculties?
+
+A.  No; not without the assistance of his fellow men, and by living
+in society.
+
+Q.  But is not society to man a state against nature?
+
+A.  No: it is on the contrary a necessity, a law that nature
+imposed on him by the very act of his organization; for, first,
+nature has so constituted man, that he cannot see his species of
+another sex without feeling emotions and an attraction which induce
+him to live in a family, which is already a state of society;
+secondly, by endowing him with sensibility, she organized him so
+that the sensations of others reflect within him, and excite
+reciprocal sentiments of pleasure and of grief, which are
+attractions, and indissoluble ties of society; thirdly, and
+finally, the state of society, founded on the wants of man, is only
+a further means of fulfilling the law of preservation: and to
+pretend that this state is out of nature, because it is more
+perfect, is the same as to say, that a bitter and wild fruit of the
+forest, is no longer the production of nature, when rendered sweet
+and delicious by cultivation in our gardens.
+
+Q.  Why, then, have philosophers called the savage state the state
+of perfection?
+
+A.  Because, as I have told you, the vulgar have often given the
+name of philosophers to whimsical geniuses, who, from moroseness,
+from wounded vanity, or from a disgust to the vices of society,
+have conceived chimerical ideas of the savage state, in
+contradiction with their own system of a perfect man.
+
+Q.  What is the true meaning of the word philosopher?
+
+A.  The word philosopher signifies a lover of wisdom; and as wisdom
+consists in the practice of the laws of nature, the true
+philosopher is he who knows those laws, and conforms the whole
+tenor of his conduct to them.
+
+Q.  What is man in the savage state?
+
+A.  A brutal, ignorant animal, a wicked and ferocious beast.
+
+Q.  Is he happy in that state?
+
+A.  No; for he only feels momentary sensations, which are
+habitually of violent wants which he cannot satisfy, since he is
+ignorant by nature, and weak by being isolated from his race.
+
+Q.  Is he free?
+
+A.  No; he is the most abject slave that exists; for his life
+depends on everything that surrounds him: he is not free to eat
+when hungry, to rest when tired, to warm himself when cold; he is
+every instant in danger of perishing; wherefore nature offers but
+fortuitous examples of such beings; and we see that all the efforts
+of the human species, since its origin, sorely tends to emerge from
+that violent state by the pressing necessity of self-preservation.
+
+Q.  But does not this necessity of preservation engender in
+individuals egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism
+contrary to the social state?
+
+A.  No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our
+neighbor, it is no longer self-love, but the hatred of others.
+Self-love, taken in its true sense, not only is not contrary to
+society, but is its firmest support, by the necessity we lie under
+of not injuring others, lest in return they should injure us.
+
+Thus mans preservation, and the unfolding of his faculties,
+directed towards this end, teach the true law of nature in the
+production of the human being; and it is from this essential
+principle that are derived, are referred, and in its scale are
+weighed, all ideas of good and evil, of vice and virtue, of just
+and unjust, of truth or error, of lawful or forbidden, on which is
+founded the morality of individual, or of social man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+BASIS OF MORALITY; OF GOOD, OF EVIL, OF SIN, OF CRIME, OF VICE AND
+OF VIRTUE.
+
+
+Q.  What is good, according to the law of nature?
+
+A.  It is everything that tends to preserve and perfect man.
+
+Q.  What is evil?
+
+A.  That which tends to man's destruction or deterioration.
+
+Q.  What is meant by physical good and evil, and by moral good and
+evil?
+
+A.  By the word physical is understood, whatever acts immediately
+on the body.  Health is a physical good; and sickness a physical
+evil.  By moral, is meant what acts by consequences more or less
+remote.  Calumny is a moral evil; a fair reputation is a moral
+good, because both one and the other occasion towards us, on the
+part of other men, dispositions and habitudes,* which are useful or
+hurtful to our preservation, and which attack or favor our means of
+existence.
+
+
+* It is from this word habitudes, (reiterated actions,) in Latin
+mores, that the word moral, and all its family, are derived.
+
+
+Q.  Everything that tends to preserve, or to produce is therefore a
+good?
+
+A.  Yes; and it is for that reason that certain legislators have
+classed among the works agreeable to the divinity, the cultivation
+of a field and the fecundity of a woman.
+
+Q.  Whatever tends to cause death is, therefore, an evil?
+
+A.  Yes; and it is for that reason some legislators have extended
+the idea of evil and of sin even to the killing of animals.
+
+Q.  The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of
+nature?
+
+A.  Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other
+evil can be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.
+
+Q.  What is a sin in the law of nature?
+
+A.  Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for
+the preservation and perfection of man and of society.
+
+Q.  Can intention be a merit or a crime?
+
+A.  No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a
+commencement of sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.
+
+Q.  What is virtue according to the law of nature?
+
+A.  It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to
+society.
+
+Q.  What is meant by the word individual?
+
+A.  It means a man considered separately from every other.
+
+Q.  What is vice according to the law of nature?
+
+A.  It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and
+to society.
+
+Q.  Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and
+abstracted from the senses?
+
+A.  No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate,
+and that end is always to destroy or preserve the body.
+
+Q.  Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?
+
+A.  Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they
+attack or which they favor; and according to the number of persons
+in whom those faculties are favored or injured.
+
+Q.  Give me some examples?
+
+A.  The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of
+saving his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men,
+than that of saving only the life of one, and an action useful to
+the whole human race is more virtuous than an action that is only
+useful to one single nation.
+
+Q.  How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and
+virtue, and forbid that of evil and vice?
+
+A.  By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and
+virtue for the preservation of our body, and by the losses which
+result to our existence from the practice of evil and vice.
+
+Q.  Its precepts are then in action?
+
+A.  Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect
+and in its future consequences.
+
+Q.  How do you divide the virtues?
+
+A.  We divide them in three classes, first, individual virtues, as
+relative to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relative to a
+family; thirdly, social virtues, as relative to society.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+OF INDIVIDUAL VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q.  Which are the individual virtues?
+
+A.  There are five principal ones, to wit: first, science, which
+comprises prudence and wisdom; secondly, temperance, comprising
+sobriety and chastity; thirdly, courage, or strength of body and
+mind; fourthly, activity, that is to say, love of labor and
+employment of time; fifthly, and finally, cleanliness, or purity of
+body, as well in dress as in habitation.
+
+Q.  How does the law of nature prescribe science?
+
+A.  Because the man acquainted with the causes and effects of
+things attends in a careful and sure manner to his preservation,
+and to the development of his faculties.  Science is to him the eye
+and the light, which enable him to discern clearly and accurately
+all the objects with which he is conversant, and hence by an
+enlightened man is meant a learned and well-informed man.  With
+science and instruction a man never wants for resources and means
+of subsistence; and upon this principle a philosopher, who had been
+shipwrecked, said to his companions, that were inconsolable for the
+loss of their wealth: "For my part, I carry all my wealth within
+me."
+
+Q.  Which is the vice contrary to science?
+
+A.  It is ignorance.
+
+Q.  How does the law of nature forbid ignorance?
+
+A.  By the grievous detriments resulting from it to our existence;
+for the ignorant man who knows neither causes nor effects, commits
+every instant errors most pernicious to himself and to others; he
+resembles a blind man groping his way at random, and who, at every
+step, jostles or is jostled by every one he meets.
+
+Q.  What difference is there between an ignorant and a silly man?
+
+A.  The same difference as between him who frankly avows his
+blindness and the blind man who pretends to sight; silliness is the
+reality of ignorance, to which is superadded the vanity of
+knowledge.
+
+Q.  Are ignorance and silliness common?
+
+A.  Yes, very common; they are the usual and general distempers of
+mankind: more than three thousand years ago the wisest of men said:
+"The number of fools is infinite;" and the world has not changed.
+
+Q.  What is the reason of it?
+
+A.  Because much labor and time are necessary to acquire
+instruction, and because men, born ignorant and indolent, find it
+more convenient to remain blind, and pretend to see clear.
+
+Q.  What difference is there between a learned and a wise man?
+
+A.  The learned knows, and the wise man practices.
+
+Q.  What is prudence?
+
+A.  It is the anticipated perception, the foresight of the effects
+and consequences of every action; by means of which foresight, man
+avoids the dangers which threaten him, while he seizes on and
+creates opportunities favorable to him: he thereby provides for his
+present and future safety in a certain and secure manner, whereas
+the imprudent man, who calculates neither his steps nor his
+conduct, nor efforts, nor resistance, falls every instant into
+difficulties and dangers, which sooner or later impair his
+faculties and destroy his existence.
+
+Q.  When the Gospel says, "Happy are the poor of spirit," does it
+mean the ignorant and imprudent?
+
+A.  No; for, at the same time that it recommends the simplicity of
+doves, it adds the prudent cunning of serpents.  By simplicity of
+mind is meant uprightness, and the precept of the Gospel is that of
+nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ON TEMPERANCE.
+
+
+Q.  What is temperance?
+
+A.  It is a regular use of our faculties, which makes us never
+exceed in our sensations the end of nature to preserve us; it is
+the moderation of the passions.
+
+Q.  Which is the vice contrary to temperance?
+
+A.  The disorder of the passions, the avidity of all kind of
+enjoyments, in a word, cupidity.
+
+Q.  Which are the principal branches of temperance?
+
+A.  Sobriety, and continence or chastity.
+
+Q.  How does the law of nature prescribe sobriety?
+
+A.  By its powerful influence over our health.  The sober man
+digests with comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of
+aliments; his ideas are clear and easy; he fulfills all his
+functions properly; he conducts his business with intelligence; his
+old age is exempt from infirmity; he does not spend his money in
+remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and gladness, the wealth which
+chance and his own prudence have procured him.  Thus, from one
+virtue alone, generous nature derives innumerable recompenses.
+
+Q.  How does it prohibit gluttony?
+
+A.  By the numerous evils that are attached to it.  The glutton,
+oppressed with aliments, digests with anxiety; his head, troubled
+by the fumes of indigestion, is incapable of conceiving clear and
+distinct ideas; he abandons himself with violence to the disorderly
+impulse of lust and anger, which impair his health; his body
+becomes bloated, heavy, and unfit for labor; he endures painful and
+expensive distempers; he seldom lives to be old; and his age is
+replete with infirmities and sorrow.
+
+Q.  Should abstinence and fasting be considered as virtuous
+actions?
+
+A.  Yes, when one has eaten too much; for then abstinence and
+fasting are simple and efficacious remedies; but when the body is
+in want of aliment, to refuse it any, and let it suffer from hunger
+or thirst, is delirium and a real sin against the law of nature.
+
+Q.  How is drunkenness considered in the law of nature?
+
+A.  As a most vile and pernicious vice.  The drunkard, deprived of
+the sense and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the
+divinity: he debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable
+even to guide his steps, he staggers and falls as if he were
+epileptic; he hurts and even risks killing himself; his debility in
+this state exposes him to the ridicule and contempt of every person
+that sees him; he makes in his drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous
+bargains, and injures his fortune; he makes use of opprobrious
+language, which creates him enemies and repentance; he fills his
+house with trouble and sorrow, and ends by a premature death or by
+a cacochymical old age.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature interdict absolutely the use of wine?
+
+A.  No; it only forbids the abuse; but as the transition from the
+use to the abuse is easy and prompt among the generality of men,
+perhaps the legislators, who have proscribed the use of wine, have
+rendered a service to humanity.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature forbid the use of certain kinds of meat,
+or of certain vegetables, on particular days, during certain
+seasons?
+
+A.  No; it absolutely forbids only whatever is injurious to health;
+its precepts, in this respect, vary according to persons, and even
+constitute a very delicate and important science for the quality,
+the quantity, and the combination of aliments have the greatest
+influence, not only over the momentary affections of the soul, but
+even over its habitual disposition.  A man is not the same when
+fasting as after a meal, even if he were sober.  A glass of
+spirituous liquor, or a dish of coffee, gives degrees of vivacity,
+of mobility, of disposition to anger, sadness, or gaiety; such a
+meat, because it lies heavy on the stomach, engenders moroseness
+and melancholy; such another, because it facilitates digestion,
+creates sprightliness, and an inclination to oblige and to love.
+The use of vegetables, because they have little nourishment,
+enfeebles the body, and gives a disposition to repose, indolence,
+and ease; the use of meat, because it is full of nourishment, and
+of spirituous liquors, because they stimulate the nerves, creates
+vivacity, uneasiness, and audacity.  Now from those habitudes of
+aliment result habits of constitution and of the organs, which form
+afterwards different kinds of temperaments, each of which is
+distinguished by a peculiar characteristic.  And it is for this
+reason that, in hot countries especially, legislators have made
+laws respecting regimen or food.  The ancients were taught by long
+experience that the dietetic science constituted a considerable
+part of morality; among the Egyptians, the ancient Persians, and
+even among the Greeks, at the Areopagus, important affairs were
+examined fasting; and it has been remarked that, among those
+people, where public affairs were discussed during the heat of
+meals, and the fumes of digestion, deliberations were hasty and
+violent, and the results of them frequently unreasonable, and
+productive of turbulence and confusion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ON CONTINENCE.
+
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature prescribe continence?
+
+A.  Yes: because a moderate use of the most lively of pleasures is
+not only useful, but indispensable, to the support of strength and
+health: and because a simple calculation proves that, for some
+minutes of privation, you increase the number of your days, both in
+vigor of body and of mind.
+
+Q.  How does it forbid libertinism?
+
+A.  By the numerous evils which result from it to the physical and
+the moral existence.  He who carries it to an excess enervates and
+pines away; he can no longer attend to study or labor; he contracts
+idle and expensive habits, which destroy his means of existence,
+his public consideration, and his credit; his intrigues occasion
+continual embarrassment, cares, quarrels and lawsuits, without
+mentioning the grievous deep-rooted distempers, and the loss of his
+strength by an inward and slow poison; the stupid dullness of his
+mind, by the exhaustion of the nervous system; and, in fine, a
+premature and infirm old age.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature look on that absolute chastity so
+recommended in monastical institutions, as a virtue?
+
+A.  No: for that chastity is of no use either to the society that
+witnesses, or the individual who practises it; it is even
+prejudicial to both.  First, it injures society by depriving it of
+population, which is one of its principal sources of wealth and
+power; and as bachelors confine all their views and affections to
+the term of their lives, they have in general an egotism
+unfavorable to the interests of society.
+
+In the second place, it injures the individuals who practise it,
+because it deprives them of a number of affections and relations
+which are the springs of most domestic and social virtues; and
+besides, it often happens, from circumstances of age, regimen, or
+temperament, that absolute continence injures the constitution and
+causes severe diseases, because it is contrary to the physical laws
+on which nature has founded the system of the reproduction of
+beings; and they who recommend so strongly chastity, even supposing
+them to be sincere, are in contradiction with their own doctrine,
+which consecrates the law of nature by the well known commandment:
+increase and multiply.
+
+Q.  Why is chastity considered a greater virtue in women than in
+men?
+
+A.  Because a want of chastity in women is attended with
+inconveniences much more serious and dangerous for them and for
+society; for, without taking into account the pains and diseases
+they have in common with men, they are further exposed to all the
+disadvantages and perils that precede, attend, and follow child-
+birth.  When pregnant contrary to law, they become an object of
+public scandal and contempt, and spend the remainder of their lives
+in bitterness and misery.  Moreover, all the expense of maintaining
+and educating their fatherless children falls on them: which
+expense impoverishes them, and is every way prejudicial to their
+physical and moral existence.  In this situation, deprived of the
+freshness and health that constitute their charm, carrying with
+them an extraneous and expensive burden, they are less prized by
+men, they find no solid establishment, they fall into poverty,
+misery, and wretchedness, and thus drag on in sorrow their unhappy
+existence.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature extend so far as the scruples of desires
+and thoughts.
+
+A.  Yes; because, in the physical laws of the human body, thoughts
+and desires inflame the senses, and soon provoke to action: now, by
+another law of nature in the organization of our body, those
+actions become mechanical wants which recur at certain periods of
+days or of weeks, so that, at such a time, the want is renewed of
+such an action and such a secretion; if this action and this
+secretion be injurious to health, the habitude of them becomes
+destructive of life itself.  Thus thoughts and desires have a true
+and natural importance.
+
+Q.  Should modesty be considered as a virtue?
+
+A.  Yes; because modesty, inasmuch as it is a shame of certain
+actions, maintains the soul and body in all those habits useful to
+good order, and to self-preservation.  The modest woman is
+esteemed, courted, and established, with advantages of fortune
+which ensure her existence, and render it agreeable to her, while
+the immodest and prostitute are despised, repulsed, and abandoned
+to misery and infamy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ON COURAGE AND ACTIVITY.
+
+
+Q.  Are courage and strength of body and mind virtues in the law of
+nature?
+
+A.  Yes, and most important virtues; for they are the efficacious
+and indispensable means of attending to our preservation and
+welfare.  The courageous and strong man repulses oppression,
+defends his life, his liberty, and his property; by his labor he
+procures himself an abundant subsistence, which he enjoys in
+tranquillity and peace of mind.  If he falls into misfortunes, from
+which his prudence could not protect him, he supports them with
+fortitude and resignation; and it is for this reason that the
+ancient moralists have reckoned strength and courage among the four
+principal virtues.
+
+Q.  Should weakness and cowardice be considered as vices?
+
+A.  Yes, since it is certain that they produce innumerable
+calamities.  The weak or cowardly man lives in perpetual cares and
+agonies; he undermines his health by the dread, oftentimes ill
+founded, of attacks and dangers: and this dread which is an evil,
+is not a remedy; it renders him, on the contrary, the slave of him
+who wishes to oppress him; and by the servitude and debasement of
+all his faculties, it degrades and diminishes his means of
+existence, so far as the seeing his life depend on the will and
+caprice of another man.
+
+Q.  But, after what you have said on the influence of aliments, are
+not courage and force, as well as many other virtues, in a great
+measure the effect of our physical constitution and temperament?
+
+A.  Yes, it is true; and so far, that those qualities are
+transmitted by generation and blood, with the elements on which
+they depend: the most reiterated and constant facts prove that in
+the breed of animals of every kind, we see certain physical and
+moral qualities, attached to the individuals of those species,
+increase or decay according to the combinations and mixtures they
+make with other breeds.
+
+Q.  But, then, as our will is not sufficient to procure us those
+qualities, is it a crime to be destitute of them?
+
+A.  No, it is not a crime, but a misfortune; it is what the
+ancients call an unlucky fatality; but even then we have it yet in
+our power to acquire them; for, as soon as we know on what physical
+elements such or such a quality is founded, we can promote its
+growth, and hasten its developments, by a skillful management of
+those elements; and in this consists the science of education,
+which, according as it is directed, meliorates or degrades
+individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch as totally to
+change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it is of the
+greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature by
+which those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily
+effected.
+
+Q.  Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law
+of nature?
+
+A.  Because the man who works and employs his time usefully,
+derives from it a thousand precious advantages to his existence.
+If he is born poor, his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and
+still more so, if he is sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon
+acquires a competency, and enjoys the sweets of life; his very
+labor gives him virtues; for, while he occupies his body and mind,
+he is not affected with unruly desires, time does not lie heavy on
+him, he contracts mild habits, he augments his strength and health,
+and attains a peaceful and happy old age.
+
+Q.  Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?
+
+A.  Yes, and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all
+the others.  By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets
+even the science he had acquired, and falls into all the
+misfortunes which accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and
+sloth man, devoured with disquietude, in order to dissipate it,
+abandons himself to all the desires of his senses, which, becoming
+every day more inordinate, render him intemperate, gluttonous,
+lascivious, enervated, cowardly, vile, and contemptible.  By the
+certain effect of all those vices, he ruins his fortune, consumes
+his health, and terminates his life in all the agonies of sickness
+and of poverty.
+
+Q.  From what you say, one would think that poverty was a vice?
+
+A.  No, it is not a vice; but it is still less a virtue, for it is
+by far more ready to injure than to be useful; it is even commonly
+the result, or the beginning of vice, for the effect of all
+individual vices is to lead to indigence, and to the privation of
+the necessaries of life; and when a man is in want of necessaries,
+he is tempted to procure them by vicious means, that is to say, by
+means injurious to society.  All the individual virtues tend, on
+the contrary, to procure to a man an abundant subsistence; and when
+he has more than he can consume, it is much easier for him to give
+to others, and to practice the actions useful to society.
+
+Q.  Do you look upon opulence as a virtue?
+
+A.  No; but still less as a vice: it is the use alone of wealth
+that can be called virtuous or vicious, according as it is
+serviceable or prejudicial to man and to society.  Wealth is an
+instrument, the use and employment alone of which determine its
+virtue or vice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ON CLEANLINESS.
+
+
+Q.  Why is cleanliness included among the virtues?
+
+A.  Because it is, in reality, one of the most important among
+them, on account of its powerful influence over the health and
+preservation of the body.  Cleanliness, as well in dress as in
+residence, obviates the pernicious effects of the humidity, baneful
+odors, and contagious exhalations, proceeding from all things
+abandoned to putrefaction.  Cleanliness, maintains free
+transpiration; it renews the air, refreshes the blood, and disposes
+even the mind to cheerfulness.
+
+From this it appears that persons attentive to the cleanliness of
+their bodies and habitations are, in general, more healthy, and
+less subject to disease, than those who live in filth and
+nastiness; and it is further remarked, that cleanliness carries
+with it, throughout all the branches of domestic administration,
+habits of order and arrangement, which are the chief means and
+first elements of happiness.
+
+Q.  Uncleanliness or filthiness is, then, a real vice?
+
+A.  Yes, as real a one as drunkenness, or as idleness, from which
+in a great measure it is derived.  Uncleanliness is the second, and
+often the first, cause of many inconveniences, and even of grievous
+disorders; it is a fact in medicine, that it brings on the itch,
+the scurf, tetters, leprosies, as much as the use of tainted or
+sour aliments; that it favors the contagious influence of the
+plague and malignant fevers, that it even produces them in
+hospitals and prisons; that it occasions rheumatisms, by incrusting
+the skin with dirt, and thereby preventing transpiration; without
+reckoning the shameful inconvenience of being devoured by vermin--
+the foul appendage of misery and depravity.
+
+Most ancient legislators, therefore, considered cleanliness, which
+they called purity, as one of the essential dogmas of their
+religions.  It was for this reason that they expelled from society,
+and even punished corporeally those who were infected with
+distempers produced by uncleanliness; that they instituted and
+consecrated ceremonies of ablutions baths, baptisms, and of
+purifications, even by fire and the aromatic fumes of incense,
+myrrh, benjamin, etc., so that the entire system of pollutions, all
+those rites of clean and unclean things, degenerated since into
+abuses and prejudices, were only founded originally on the
+judicious observation, which wise and learned men had made, of the
+extreme influence that cleanliness in dress and abode exercises
+over the health of the body, and by an immediate consequence over
+that of the mind and moral faculties.
+
+Thus all the individual virtues have for their object, more or less
+direct, more or less near, the preservation of the man who
+practises them and by the preservation of each man, they lead to
+that of families and society, which are composed of the united sum
+of individuals.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ON DOMESTIC VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q.  What do you mean be domestic virtues?
+
+A.  I mean the practice of actions useful to a family, supposed to
+live in the same house.*
+
+
+* Domestic is derived from the Latin word domus, a house.
+
+
+Q.  What are those virtues?
+
+A.  They are economy, paternal love, filial love, conjugal love,
+fraternal love, and the accomplishment of the duties of master and
+servant.
+
+Q.  What is economy?
+
+A.  It is, according to the most extensive meaning of the word, the
+proper administration of every thing that concerns the existence of
+the family or house; and as subsistence holds the first rank, the
+word economy in confined to the employment of money for the wants
+of life.
+
+Q.  Why is economy a virtue?
+
+A.  Because a man who makes no useless expenses acquires a
+superabundancy, which is true wealth, and by means of which he
+procures for himself and his family everything that is really
+convenient and useful; without mentioning his securing thereby
+resources against accidental and unforeseen losses, so that he and
+his family enjoy an agreeable and undisturbed competency, which is
+the basis of human felicity.
+
+Q.  Dissipation and prodigality, therefore, are vices?
+
+A.  Yes, for by them man, in the end, is deprived of the
+necessaries of life; he falls into poverty and wretchedness; and
+his very friends, fearing to be obliged to restore to him what he
+has spent with or for them, avoid him as a debtor does his
+creditor, and he remains abandoned by the whole world.
+
+Q.  What is paternal love?
+
+A.  It is the assiduous care taken by parents to make their
+children contract the habit of every action useful to themselves
+and to society.
+
+Q.  Why is paternal tenderness a virtue in parents?
+
+A.  Because parents, who rear their children in those habits,
+procure for themselves, during the course of their lives,
+enjoyments and helps that give a sensible satisfaction at every
+instant, and which assure to them, when advanced in years, supports
+and consolations against the wants and calamities of all kinds with
+which old age is beset.
+
+Q.  Is paternal love a common virtue?
+
+A.  No; notwithstanding the ostentation made of it by parents, it
+is a rare virtue.  They do not love their children, they caress and
+spoil them.  In them they love only the agents of their will, the
+instruments of their power, the trophies of their vanity, the
+pastime of their idleness.  It is not so much the welfare of their
+children that they propose to themselves, as their submission and
+obedience; and if among children so many are seen ungrateful for
+benefits received, it is because there are among parents as many
+despotic and ignorant benefactors.
+
+Q.  Why do you say that conjugal love is a virtue?
+
+A.  Because the concord and union resulting from the love of the
+married, establish in the heart of the family a multitude of habits
+useful to its prosperity and preservation.  The united pair are
+attached to, and seldom quit their home; they superintend each
+particular direction of it; they attend to the education of their
+children; they maintain the respect and fidelity of domestics; they
+prevent all disorder and dissipation; and from the whole of their
+good conduct, they live in ease and consideration; while married
+persons who do not love one another, fill their house with quarrels
+and troubles, create dissension between their children and the
+servants, leaving both indiscriminately to all kinds of vicious
+habits; every one in turn spoils, robs, and plunders the house; the
+revenues are absorbed without profit; debts accumulate; the married
+pair avoid each other, or contend in lawsuits; and the whole family
+falls into disorder, ruin, disgrace and want.
+
+Q.  Is adultery an offence in the law of nature?
+
+A.  Yes; for it is attended with a number of habits injurious to
+the married and to their families.  The wife or husband, whose
+affections are estranged, neglect their house, avoid it, and
+deprive it, as much as they can, of its revenues or income, to
+expend them with the object of their affections; hence arise
+quarrels, scandal, lawsuits, the neglect of their children and
+servants, and at last the plundering and ruin of the whole family;
+without reckoning that the adulterous woman commits a most grievous
+theft, in giving to her husband heirs of foreign blood, who deprive
+his real children of their legitimate portion.
+
+Q.  What is filial love?
+
+A.  It is, on the side of children, the practice of those actions
+useful to themselves and to their parents.
+
+Q.  How does the law of nature prescribe filial love?
+
+A.  By three principal motives:
+
+1.  By sentiment; for the affectionate care of parents inspires,
+from the most tender age, mild habits of attachment.
+
+2.  By justice; for children owe to their parents a return and
+indemnity for the cares, and even for the expenses, they have
+caused them.
+
+3.  By personal interest; for, if they use them ill, they give to
+their own children examples of revolt and ingratitude, which
+authorize them, at a future day, to behave to themselves in a
+similar manner.
+
+Q.  Are we to understand by filial love a passive and blind
+submission?
+
+A.  No; but a reasonable submission, founded on the knowledge of
+the mutual rights and duties of parents and children; rights and
+duties, without the observance of which their mutual conduct is
+nothing but disorder.
+
+Q.  Why is fraternal love a virtue?
+
+A.  Because the concord and union, which result from the love of
+brothers, establish the strength, security, and conservation of the
+family: brothers united defend themselves against all oppression,
+they aid one another in their wants, they help one another in their
+misfortunes, and thus secure their common existence; while brothers
+disunited, abandoned each to his own personal strength, fall into
+all the inconveniences attendant on an insulated state and
+individual weakness.  This is what a certain Scythian king
+ingeniously expressed when, on his death-bed, calling his children
+to him, he ordered them to break a bundle of arrows.  The young
+men, though strong, being unable to effect it, he took them in his
+turn, and untieing them, broke each of the arrows separately with
+his fingers.  "Behold," said he, "the effects of union; united
+together, you will be invincible; taken separately, you will be
+broken like reeds."
+
+Q.  What are the reciprocal duties of masters and of servants?
+
+A.  They consist in the practice of the actions which are
+respectively and justly useful to them; and here begin the
+relations of society; for the rule and measure of those respective
+actions is the equilibrium or equality between the service and the
+recompense, between what the one returns and the other gives; which
+is the fundamental basis of all society.
+
+Thus all the domestic and individual virtues refer, more or less
+mediately, but always with certitude, to the physical object of the
+amelioration and preservation of man, and are thereby precepts
+resulting from the fundamental law of nature in his formation.
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+THE SOCIAL VIRTUES; JUSTICE.
+
+
+Q.  What is society?
+
+A.  It is every reunion of men living together under the clauses of
+an expressed or tacit contract, which has for its end their common
+preservation.
+
+Q.  Are the social virtues numerous?
+
+A.  Yes; they are in as great number as the kinds of actions useful
+to society; but all may be reduced to one principle.
+
+Q.  What is that fundamental principle?
+
+A.  It is justice, which alone comprises all the virtues of
+society.
+
+Q.  Why do you say that justice is the fundamental and almost only
+virtue of society?
+
+A.  Because it alone embraces the practice of all the actions
+useful to it; and because all the other virtues, under the
+denominations of charity, humanity, probity, love of one's country,
+sincerity, generosity, simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only
+varied forms and diversified applications of the axiom, "Do not to
+another what you do not wish to be done to yourself," which is the
+definition of justice.
+
+Q.  How does the law of nature prescribe justice?
+
+A.  By three physical attributes, inherent in the organization of
+man.
+
+Q.  What are those attributes?
+
+A.  They are equality, liberty, and property.
+
+Q.  How is equality a physical attribute of man?
+
+A.  Because all men, having equally eyes, hands, mouths, ears, and
+the necessity of making use of them, in order to live, have, by
+this reason alone, an equal right to life, and to the use of the
+aliments which maintain it; they are all equal before God.
+
+Q.  Do you suppose that all men hear equally, see equally, feel
+equally, have equal wants, and equal passions?
+
+A.  No; for it is evident, and daily demonstrated, that one is
+short, and another long-sighted; that one eats much, another
+little; that one has mild, another violent passions; in a word,
+that one is weak in body and mind, while another is strong in both.
+
+Q.  They are, therefore, really unequal?
+
+A.  Yes, in the development of their means, but not in the nature
+and essence of those means.  They are made of the same stuff, but
+not in the same dimensions; nor are the weight and value equal.
+Our language possesses no one word capable of expressing the
+identity of nature, and the diversity of its form and employment.
+It is a proportional equality; and it is for this reason I have
+said, equal before God, and in the order of nature.
+
+Q.  How is liberty a physical attribute of man?
+
+A.  Because all men having senses sufficient for their
+preservation--no one wanting the eye of another to see, his ear to
+hear, his mouth to eat, his feet to walk--they are all, by this
+very reason, constituted naturally independent and free; no man is
+necessarily subjected to another, nor has he a right to dominate
+over him.
+
+Q.  But if a man is born strong, has he a natural right to master
+the weak man?
+
+A.  No; for it is neither a necessity for him, nor a convention
+between them; it is an abusive extension of his strength; and here
+an abuse is made of the word right, which in its true meaning
+implies, justice or reciprocal faculty.
+
+Q.  How is property a physical attribute of man?
+
+A.  Inasmuch as all men being constituted equal or similar to one
+another, and consequently independent and free, each is the
+absolute master, the full proprietor of his body and of the produce
+of his labor.
+
+Q.  How is justice derived from these three attributes?
+
+A.  In this, that men being equal and free, owing nothing to each
+other, have no right to require anything from one another only
+inasmuch as they return an equal value for it; or inasmuch as the
+balance of what is given is in equilibrium with what is returned:
+and it is this equality, this equilibrium which is called justice,
+equity;* that is to say that equality and justice are but one and
+the same word, the same law of nature, of which the social virtues
+are only applications and derivatives.
+
+
+* Aequitas, aequilibrium, aequalitas, are all of the same family.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL VIRTUES.
+
+
+Q.  Explain how the social virtues are derived from the law of
+nature.  How is charity or the love of one's neighbor a precept and
+application of it?
+
+A.  By reason of equality and reciprocity; for when we injure
+another, we give him a right to injure us in return; thus, by
+attacking the existence of our neighbor, we endanger our own, from
+the effect of reciprocity; on the other hand, by doing good to
+others, we have room and right to expect an equivalent exchange;
+and such is the character of all social virtues, that they are
+useful to the man who practises them, by the right of reciprocity
+which they give him over those who are benefited by them.
+
+Q.  Charity is then nothing but justice?
+
+A.  No: it is only justice; with this slight difference, that
+strict justice confines itself to saying, "Do not to another the
+harm you would not wish he should do to you;" and that charity, or
+the love of one's neighbor, extends so far as to say, "Do to
+another the good which you would wish to receive from him."  Thus
+when the gospel said, that this precept contained the whole of the
+law and the prophets, it announced nothing more than the precept of
+the law of nature.
+
+Q.  Does it enjoin forgiveness of injuries?
+
+A.  Yes, when that forgiveness implies self-preservation.
+
+Q.  Does it prescribe to us, after having received a blow on one
+cheek, to hold out the other?
+
+A.  No; for it is, in the first place, contrary to the precept of
+loving our neighbor as ourselves, since thereby we should love,
+more than ourselves, him who makes an attack on our preservation.
+Secondly, such a precept in its literal sense, encourages the
+wicked to oppression and injustice.  The law of nature has been
+more wise in prescribing a calculated proportion of courage and
+moderation, which induces us to forget a first or unpremediated
+injury, but which punishes every act tending to oppression.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature prescribe to do good to others beyond
+the bounds of reason and measure?
+
+A.  No; for it is a sure way of leading them to ingratitude.  Such
+is the force of sentiment and justice implanted in the heart of
+man, that he is not even grateful for benefits conferred without
+discretion.  There is only one measure with them, and that is to be
+just.
+
+Q.  Is alms-giving a virtuous action?
+
+A.  Yes, when it is practised according to the rule first
+mentioned; without which it degenerates into imprudence and vice,
+inasmuch as it encourages laziness, which is hurtful to the beggar
+and to society; no one has a right to partake of the property and
+fruits of another's labor, without rendering an equivalent of his
+own industry.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature consider as virtues faith and hope,
+which are often joined with charity?
+
+A.  No; for they are ideas without reality; and if any effects
+result from them, they turn rather to the profit of those who have
+not those ideas, than of those who have them; so that faith and
+hope may be called the virtues of dupes for the benefit of knaves.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature prescribe probity?
+
+A.  Yes, for probity is nothing more than respect for one's own
+rights in those of another; a respect founded on a prudent and well
+combined calculation of our interests compared to those of others.
+
+Q.  But does not this calculation, which embraces the complicated
+interests and rights of the social state, require an enlightened
+understanding and knowledge, which make it a difficult science?
+
+A.  Yes, and a science so much the more delicate as the honest man
+pronounces in his own cause.
+
+Q.  Probity, then, shows an extension and justice in the mind?
+
+A.  Yes, for an honest man almost always neglects a present
+interest, in order not to destroy a future one; whereas the knave
+does the contrary, and loses a great future interest for a present
+smaller one.
+
+Q.  Improbity, therefore, is a sign of false judgment and a narrow
+mind?
+
+A.  Yes, and rogues may be defined ignorant and silly calculators;
+for they do not understand their true interest, and they pretend to
+cunning: nevertheless, their cunning only ends in making known what
+they are--in losing all confidence and esteem, and the good
+services resulting from them for their physical and social
+existence.  They neither live in peace with others, nor with
+themselves; and incessantly menaced by their conscience and their
+enemies, they enjoy no other real happiness but that of not being
+hanged.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature forbid robbery?
+
+A.  Yes, for the man who robs another gives him a right to rob him;
+from that moment there is no security in his property, nor in his
+means of preservation: thus in injuring others, he, by a
+counterblow, injures himself.
+
+Q.  Does it interdict even an inclination to rob?
+
+A.  Yes; for that inclination leads naturally to action, and it is
+for this reason that envy is considered a sin?
+
+Q.  How does it forbid murder?
+
+A.  By the most powerful motives of self-preservation; for, first,
+the man who attacks exposes himself to the risk of being killed, by
+the right of defence; secondly, if he kills, he gives to the
+relations and friends of the deceased, and to society at large, an
+equal right of killing him; so that his life is no longer in
+safety.
+
+Q.  How can we, by the law of nature, repair the evil we have done?
+
+A.  By rendering a proportionate good to those whom we have
+injured.
+
+Q.  Does it allow us to repair it by prayers, vows, offerings to
+God, fasting and mortifications?
+
+A.  No: for all those things are foreign to the action we wish to
+repair: they neither restore the ox to him from whom it has been
+stolen, honor to him whom we have deprived of it, nor life to him
+from whom it has been taken away; consequently they miss the end of
+justice; they are only perverse contracts by which a man sells to
+another goods which do not belong to him; they are a real
+depravation of morality, inasmuch as they embolden to commit crimes
+through the hope of expiating them; wherefore, they have been the
+real cause of all the evils by which the people among whom those
+expiatory practices were used, have been continually tormented.
+
+Q.  Does the law of nature order sincerity?
+
+A.  Yes; for lying, perfidy, and perjury create distrust, quarrels,
+hatred, revenge, and a crowd of evils among men, which tend to
+their common destruction; while sincerity and fidelity establish
+confidence, concord, and peace, besides the infinite good resulting
+from such a state of things to society.
+
+Q.  Does it prescribe mildness and modesty?
+
+A.  Yes; for harshness and obduracy, by alienating from us the
+hearts of other men, give them an inclination to hurt us;
+ostentation and vanity, by wounding their self-love and jealousy,
+occasion us to miss the end of a real utility.
+
+Q.  Does it prescribe humility as a virtue?
+
+A.  No; for it is a propensity in the human heart to despise
+secretly everything that presents to it the idea of weakness; and
+self-debasement encourages pride and oppression in others; the
+balance must be kept in equipoise.
+
+Q.  You have reckoned simplicity of manners among the social
+virtues; what do you understand by that word?
+
+A.  I mean the restricting our wants and desires to what is truly
+useful to the existence of the citizen and his family; that is to
+say, the man of simple manners has but few wants, and lives content
+with a little.
+
+Q.  How is this virtue prescribed to us?
+
+A.  By the numerous advantages which the practice of it procures to
+the individual and to society; for the man whose wants are few, is
+free at once from a crowd of cares, perplexities, and labors; he
+avoids many quarrels and contests arising from avidity and a desire
+of gain; he spares himself the anxiety of ambition, the inquietudes
+of possession, and the uneasiness of losses; finding superfluity
+everywhere, he is the real rich man; always content with what he
+has, he is happy at little expense; and other men, not fearing any
+competition from him, leave him in quiet, and are disposed to
+render him the services he should stand in need of.  And if this
+virtue of simplicity extends to a whole people, they insure to
+themselves abundance; rich in everything they do not consume, they
+acquire immense means of exchange and commerce; they work,
+fabricate, and sell at a lower price than others, and attain to all
+kinds of prosperity, both at home and abroad.
+
+Q.  What is the vice contrary to this virtue?
+
+A.  It is cupidity and luxury.
+
+Q.  Is luxury a vice in the individual and in society?
+
+A.  Yes, and to that degree, that it may be said to include all the
+others; for the man who stands in need of many things, imposes
+thereby on himself all the anxiety, and submits to all the means
+just or unjust of acquiring them.  Does he possess an enjoyment, he
+covets another; and in the bosom of superfluity, he is never rich;
+a commodious dwelling is not sufficient for him, he must have a
+beautiful hotel; not content with a plenteous table, he must have
+rare and costly viands: he must have splendid furniture, expensive
+clothes, a train of attendants, horses, carriages, women,
+theatrical representations and games.  Now, to supply so many
+expenses, much money must be had; and he looks on every method of
+procuring it as good and even necessary; at first he borrows,
+afterwards he steals, robs, plunders, turns bankrupt, is at war
+with every one, ruins and is ruined.
+
+Should a nation be involved in luxury, it occasions on a larger
+scale the same devastations; by reason that it consumes its entire
+produce, it finds itself poor even with abundance; it has nothing
+to sell to foreigners; its manufactures are carried on at a great
+expense, and are sold too dear; it becomes tributary for everything
+it imports; it attacks externally its consideration, power,
+strength, and means of defence and preservation, while internally
+it undermines and falls into the dissolution of its members.  All
+its citizens being covetous of enjoyments, are engaged in a
+perpetual struggle to obtain them; all injure or are near injuring
+themselves; and hence arise those habits and actions of usurpation,
+which constitute what is denominated moral corruption, intestine
+war between citizen and citizen.  From luxury arises avidity, from
+avidity, invasion by violence and perfidy; from luxury arises the
+iniquity of the judge, the venality of the witness, the improbity
+of the husband, the prostitution of the wife, the obduracy of
+parents, the ingratitude of children, the avarice of the master,
+the dishonesty of the servant, the dilapidation of the
+administrator, the perversity of the legislator, lying, perfidy,
+perjury, assassination, and all the disorders of the social state;
+so that it was with a profound sense of truth, that ancient
+moralists have laid the basis of the social virtues on simplicity
+of manners, restriction of wants, and contentment with a little;
+and a sure way of knowing the extent of a man's virtues and vices
+is, to find out if his expenses are proportionate to his fortune,
+and calculate, from his want of money, his probity, his integrity
+in fulfilling his engagements, his devotion to the public weal, and
+his sincere or pretended love of his country.
+
+Q.  What do you mean by the word country?
+
+A.  I mean the community of citizens who, united by fraternal
+sentiments, and reciprocal wants, make of their respective strength
+one common force, the reaction of which on each of them assumes the
+noble and beneficent character of paternity.  In society, citizens
+form a bank of interest; in our country we form a family of
+endearing attachments; it is charity, the love of one's neighbor
+extended to a whole nation.  Now as charity cannot be separated
+from justice, no member of the family can pretend to the enjoyment
+of its advantages, except in proportion to his labor; if he
+consumes more than it produces, he necessarily encroaches on his
+fellow-citizens; and it is only by consuming less than what he
+produces or possesses, that he can acquire the means of making
+sacrifices and being generous.
+
+Q.  What do you conclude from all this?
+
+A.  I conclude from it that all the social virtues are only the
+habitude of actions useful to society and to the individual who
+practices them; That they refer to the physical object of man's
+preservation; That nature having implanted in us the want of that
+preservation, has made a law to us of all its consequences, and a
+crime of everything that deviates from it; That we carry in us the
+seed of every virtue, and of every perfection; That it only
+requires to be developed; That we are only happy inasmuch as we
+observe the rules established by nature for the end of our
+preservation; And that all wisdom, all perfection, all law, all
+virtue, all philosophy, consist in the practice of these axioms
+founded on our own organization:
+
+
+Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself;
+Live for thy fellow citizens, that they may live for thee.
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY.*
+
+
+* In 1797, Dr. Priestly published a pamphlet, entitled,
+"Observation on the increase of infidelity, with animadversions
+upon the writings of several modern unbelievers, and especially the
+Ruins of Mr. Volney." The motto to this tract was:
+
+"Minds of little penetration rest naturally on the surface of
+things.  They do not like to pierce deep into them, for fear of
+labor and trouble; sometimes still more for fear of truth."
+
+This Letter is an answer from Volney, taken from the Anti-Jacobin
+Review of March and April, 1799.
+
+
+SIR.--I received in due time your pamphlet on the increase of
+infidelity, together with the note without date which accompanied
+it.*  My answer has been delayed by the incidents of business, and
+even by ill health, which you will surely excuse: this delay has,
+besides, no inconvenience in it.  The question between us is not of
+a very urgent nature: the world would not go on less well with or
+without my answer as with or without your book.  I might, indeed,
+have dispensed with returning you any answer at all; and I should
+have been warranted in so doing, by the manner in which you have
+stated the debate, and by the opinion pretty generally received
+that, on certain occasions, and with certain persons, the most
+noble reply is silence.  You seem to have been aware of this
+yourself, considering the extreme precautions you have taken to
+deprive me of this resource; but as according to our French
+customs, any answer is an act of civility, I am not willing to
+concede the advantage of politeness--besides, although silence is
+sometimes very significant, its eloquence is not understood by
+every one, and the public which has not leisure to analyze disputes
+(often of little interest) has a reasonable right to require at
+least some preliminary explanations; reserving to itself, should
+the discussion degenerate into the recriminative clamors of an
+irritated self-love, to allow the right of silence to him in whom
+it becomes the virtue of moderation.
+
+
+* Dr. Priestly sent his pamphlet to Volney, desiring his answer to
+the strictures on his opinions in his Ruins of Empires.
+
+
+I have read, therefore, your animadversions on my Ruins, which you
+are pleased to class among the writings of modern unbelievers, and
+since you absolutely insist on my expressing my opinion before the
+public, I shall now fulfill this rather disagreeable task with all
+possible brevity, for the sake of economizing the time of our
+readers.  In the first place, sir, it appears evidently, from your
+pamphlet, that your design is less to attack my book than my
+personal and moral character; and in order that the public may
+pronounce with accuracy on this point, I submit several passages
+fitted to throw light on the subject.
+
+You say, in the preface of your discourses, p. 12, "There are,
+however, unbelievers more ignorant than Mr. Paine, Mr. Volney,
+Lequino, and others in France say," &c.
+
+Also in the preface of your present observations, p. 20.  "I can
+truly say that in the writings of Hume, Mr. Gibbon, Voltaire, Mr.
+Volney--there is nothing of solid argument: all abound in gross
+mistakes and misrepresentations."  Idem, p. 38--"Whereas had he
+(Mr. Volney) given attention to the history of the times in which
+Christianity was promulgated . . . he could have no more doubt . . .
+&c., it is as much in vain to argue with such a person as this,
+as with a Chinese or even a Hottentot."
+
+Idem, p. 119--"Mr. Volney, if we may judge from his numerous
+quotations of ancient writers in all the learned languages,
+oriental as well as occidental, must be acquainted with all; for he
+makes no mention of any translation, and yet if we judge from this
+specimen of his knowledge of them, he cannot have the smallest
+tincture of that of the Hebrew or even of the Greek."
+
+And, at last, after having published and posted me in your very
+title page, as an unbeliever and an infidel; after having pointed
+me out in your motto as one of those superficial spirits who know
+not how to find out, and are unwilling to encounter, truth; you
+add, p. 124, immediately after an article in which you speak of me
+under all these denominations--
+
+"The progress of infidelity, in the present age, is attended with a
+circumstance which did not so frequently accompany it in any former
+period, at least, in England, which is, that unbelievers in
+revelation generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and
+providence of God so as to become properly Atheists."  So that,
+according to you, I am a Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an
+Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of no sincerity; whose writings are
+full of nothing but gross mistakes and misrepresentations.  Now I
+ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the main question?  What
+has my book in common with my person?  And how can you hold any
+converse with a man of such bad connexions?  In the second place,
+your invitation, or rather, your summons to me, to point out the
+mistakes which I think you have made with respect to my opinions,
+suggest to me several observations.
+
+First.  You suppose that the public attaches a high importance to
+your mistakes and to my opinions: but I cannot act upon a
+supposition.  Am I not an unbeliever?
+
+Secondly.  You say, p. 18, that the public will expect it from me:
+Where are the powers by which you make the public speak and act?
+Is this also a revelation?
+
+Thirdly.  You require me to point out your mistakes.  I do not know
+that I am under any such obligation: I have not reproached you with
+them; it is not, indeed, very correct to ascribe to me, by
+selection or indiscriminately, as you have done, all the opinions
+scattered through my book, since, having introduced many different
+persons, I was under the necessity of making them deliver different
+sentiments, according to their different characters.  The part
+which belongs to me is that of a traveler, resting upon the ruins
+and meditating on the causes of the misfortunes of the human race.
+To be consistent with yourself you ought to have assigned to me
+that of the Hottentot or Samoyde savage, who argues with the
+Doctors, chap. xxiii, and I should have accepted it; you have
+preferred that of the erudite historian, chap. xxii, nor do I look
+upon this as a mistake; I discover on the contrary, an insidious
+design to engage me in a duel of self-love before the public,
+wherein you would excite the exclusive interest of the spectators
+by supporting the cause which they approve; while the task which
+you would impose on me, would only, in the event of success, be
+attended with sentiments of disapprobation.  Such is your artful
+purpose, that, in attacking me as doubting the existence of Jesus,
+you might secure to yourself, by surprise, the favor of every
+Christian sect, although your own incredulity in his divine nature
+is not less subversive of Christianity than the profane opinion,
+which does not find in history the proof required by the English
+law to establish a fact: to say nothing of the extraordinary kind
+of pride assumed in the silent, but palpable, comparison of
+yourself to Paul and to Christ, by likening your labors to theirs
+as tending to the same object, p. 10, preface.  Nevertheless, as
+the first impression of an attack always confers an advantage, you
+have some ground for expecting you may obtain the apostolic crown;
+unfortunately for your purpose I entertain no disposition to that
+of martrydom: and however glorious it might be to me to fall under
+the arm of him who has overcome Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire and even
+Frederick II., I find myself under the necessity of declining your
+theological challenge, for a number of substantial reasons.
+
+1.  Because, to religious quarrels there is no end, since the
+prejudices of infancy and education almost unavoidably exclude
+impartial reasoning, and besides, the vanity of the champions
+becomes committed by the very publicity of the contest, never to
+give up a first assertion, whence result a spirit of sectarism and
+faction.
+
+2.  Because no one has a right to ask of me an account of my
+religious opinions.  Every inquisition of this kind is a pretension
+to sovereignty, a first step towards persecution; and the tolerant
+spirit of this country, which you invoke, has much less in view to
+engage men to speak, than to invite them to be silent.
+
+3.  Because, supposing I do hold the opinions you attribute to me,
+I wish not to engage my vanity so as never to retract, nor to
+deprive myself of the resource of a conversion on some future day
+after more ample information.
+
+4.  And because, reverend sir, if, in the support of your own
+thesis, you should happen to be discomfited before the Christian
+audience, it would be a dreadful scandal; and I will not be a cause
+for scandal, even for the sake of good.
+
+5.  Because in this metaphysical contest our arms are too unequal;
+you speaking in your mother tongue, which I scarcely lisp, might
+bring forth huge volumes, while I could hardly oppose pages; and
+the public, who would read neither production, might take the
+weight of the books for that of reasoning.
+
+6.  And because, being endowed with the gift of faith in a pretty
+sufficient quantity, you might swallow in a quarter of an hour more
+articles than my logic would digest in a week.
+
+7.  Because again, if you were to oblige me to attend your sermons,
+as you have compelled me to read your pamphlet, the congregation
+would never believe that a man powdered and adorned like any
+worldling, could be in the right against a man dressed out in a
+large hat, with straight hair,* and a mortified countenance,
+although the gospel, speaking of the pharisees of other times, who
+were unpowdered, says that when one fasts he must anoint his head
+and wash his face.**
+
+
+* Dr. Priestly has discarded his wig since he went to America, and
+wears his own hair.  Editor A. J. Reveiw.
+
+** St. Matthew, Chapter VI. verses 16 and 17.
+
+
+8. Because, finally, a dispute to one having nothing else to do
+would be a gratification, while to me, who can employ my time
+better, it would be an absolute loss.
+
+I shall not then, reverend sir, make you my confessor in matters of
+religion, but I will disclose to you my opinion, as a man of
+letters, on the composition of your book.  Having in former days,
+read many works of theology, I was curious to learn whether by any
+chemical process you had discovered real beings in that world of
+invisibles.  Unfortunately, I am obliged to declare to the public,
+which, according to your expression, p. 19, "hopes to be
+instructed, to be led into truth, and not into error by me," that I
+have not found in your book a single new argument, but the mere
+repetition of what is told over and over in thousands of volumes,
+the whole fruit of which has been to procure for their authors a
+cursory mention in the dictionary of heresies.  You everywhere lay
+down that as proved which remains to be proved; with this
+peculiarity, that, as Gibbon says, firing away your double battery
+against those who believe too much, and those who believe too
+little, you hold out your own peculiar sensations, as to the
+precise criterion of truth; so that we must all be just of your
+size in order to pass the gate of that New Jerusalem which you are
+building.  After this, your reputation as a divine might have
+become problematical with me; but recollecting the principle of the
+association of ideas so well developed by Locke, whom you hold in
+estimation, and whom, for that reason I am happy to cite to you,
+although to him I owe that pernicious use of my understanding which
+makes me disbelieve what I do not comprehend--I perceive why the
+public having originally attached the idea of talents to the name
+of Mr. Priestly, doctor in chemistry, continued by habit to
+associate it with the name of Mr. Priestly, doctor in divinity;
+which, however, is not the same thing: an association of ideas the
+more vicious as it is liable to be moved inversely.*  Happily you
+have yourself raised a bar of separation between your admirers, by
+advising us in the first page of your preface, that your present
+book is especially destined for believers.  To cooperate, however,
+with you, sir, in this judicious design, I must observe that it is
+necessary to retrench two passages, seeing they afford the greatest
+support to the arguments of unbelievers.
+
+
+* Mr. Blair, doctor of divinity, and Mr. Black, doctor in
+chemistry, met at the coffee house in Edinburg: a new theological
+pamphlet written by doctor Priestly was thrown upon the table,
+"Really," said Dr. Blair, "this man had better confine himself to
+chemistry, for he is absolutely ignorant in theology:"--"I beg your
+pardon," answered Dr. Black, "he is in the right, he is a minister
+of the gospel, he ought to adhere to his profession, for in truth
+he knows nothing of chemistry."
+
+
+You say, p. 15, "What is manifestly contrary to natural reason
+cannot be received by it;"--and p. 62, "With respect to intellect,
+men and brute animals are born in the same state, having the same
+external senses, which are the only inlets to all ideas, and
+consequently the source of all the knowledge and of all the mental
+habits they ever acquire."
+
+Now if you admit, with Locke, and with us infidels, that every one
+has the right of rejecting whatever is contrary to his natural
+reason, and that all our ideas and all our knowledge are acquired
+only by the inlets of our external senses; What becomes of the
+system of revelation, and of that order of things in times past,
+which is so contradictory to that of the time present? unless we
+consider it as a dream of the human brain during the state of
+superstitious ignorance.
+
+With these two single phrases, I could overturn the whole edifice
+of your faith.  Dread not, however, sir, in me such overflowing
+zeal.  For the same reason that I have not the frenzy of martyrdom,
+I have not that of making proselytes.  It becomes those ardent, or
+rather acrimonious tempers, who mistake the violence of their
+sentiments for the enthusiasm of truth; the ambition of noise and
+rumor, for the love of glory; and for the love of their neighbor,
+the detestation of his opinions, and the secret desire of dominion.
+
+As for me, who have not received from nature the turbulent
+qualities of an apostle, and never sustained in Europe the
+character of a dissenter, I am come to America neither to agitate
+the conscience of men, nor to form a sect, nor to establish a
+colony, in which, under the pretext of religion, I might erect a
+little empire to myself.  I have never been seen evangelizing my
+ideas, either in temples or in public meetings.  I have never
+likewise practiced that quackery of beneficence, by which a certain
+divine, imposing a tax upon the generosity of the public, procures
+for himself the honors of a more numerous audience, and the merit
+of distributing at his pleasure a bounty which costs him nothing,
+and for which he receives grateful thanks dexterously stolen from
+the original donors.
+
+Either in the capacity of a stranger, or in that of a citizen, a
+sincere friend to peace, I carry into society neither the spirit of
+dissension, nor the desire of commotion; and because I respect in
+every one what I wish him to respect in me, the name of liberty is
+in my mind nothing else but the synonyma of justice.
+
+As a man, whether from moderation or indolence, a spectator of the
+world rather than an actor in it, I am every day less tempted to
+take on me the management of the minds or bodies of men: it is
+sufficient for an individual to govern his own passions and
+caprices.
+
+If by one of these caprices, I am induced to think it may be
+useful, sometimes, to publish my reflections, I do it without
+obstinacy or pretension to that implicit faith, the ridicule of
+which you desire to impart to me, p. 123.  My whole book of the
+Ruins which you treat so ungratefully, since you thought it
+amusing, p. 122, evidently bears this character.  By means of the
+contrasted opinions I have scattered through it, it breathes that
+spirit of doubt and uncertainty which appears to me the best suited
+to the weakness of the human mind, and the most adapted to its
+improvement, inasmuch as it always leaves a door open to new
+truths; while the spirit of dogmatism and immovable belief,
+limiting our progress to a first received opinion, binds us at
+hazard, and without resource, to the yoke of error or falsehood,
+and occasions the most serious mischiefs to society; since by
+combining with the passions, it engenders fanaticism, which,
+sometimes misled and sometimes misleading, though always intolerant
+and despotic, attacks whatever is not of its own nature; drawing
+upon itself persecution when it is weak, and practising persecution
+when it is powerful; establishing a religion of terror, which
+annihilates the faculties, and vitiates the conscience: so that,
+whether under a political or a religious aspect, the spirit of
+doubt is friendly to all ideas of liberty, truth, or genius, while
+a spirit of confidence is connected with the ideas of tyranny,
+servility, and ignorance.
+
+If, as is the fact, our own experience and that of others daily
+teaches us that what at one time appeared true, afterwards appeared
+demonstrably false, how can we connect with our judgments that
+blind and presumptuous confidence which pursues those of others
+with so much hatred?
+
+No doubt it is reasonable, and even honest, to act according to our
+present feelings and conviction: but if these feelings and their
+causes do vary by the very nature of things, how dare we impose
+upon ourselves or others an invariable conviction?  How, above all,
+dare we require this conviction in cases where there is really no
+sensation, as happens in purely speculative questions, in which no
+palpable fact can be presented?
+
+Therefore, when opening the book of nature, (a more authentic one
+and more easy to be read than leaves of paper blackened over with
+Greek or Hebrew,) and when I reflected that the slightest change in
+the material world has not been in times past, nor is at present
+effected by the difference of so many religions and sects which
+have appeared and still exist on the globe, and that the course of
+the seasons, the path of the sun, the return of rain and drought,
+are the same for the inhabitants of each country, whether
+Christians, Mussulmans, Idolaters, Catholics, Protestants, etc., I
+am induced to believe that the universe is governed by laws of
+wisdom and justice, very different from those which human ignorance
+and intolerance would enact.
+
+And as in living with men of very opposite religious persuasions, I
+have had occasion to remark that their manners were, nevertheless,
+very analogous; that is to say, among the different Christian
+sects, among the Mahometans, and even among those people who were
+of no sect, I have found men who practise all the virtues, public
+and private, and that too without affectation; while others, who
+were incessantly declaiming of God and religion, abandoned
+themselves to every vicious habit which their belief condemned, I
+thereby became convinced that Ethics, the doctrines of morality,
+are the only essential, as they are only demonstrable, part of
+religion.  And as, by your own avowal, the only end of religion is
+to render men better, in order to add to their happiness, p. 62, I
+have concluded that there are but two great systems of religion in
+the world, that of good sense and beneficence, and that of malice
+and hypocrisy.
+
+In closing this letter, I find myself embarrassed by the nature of
+the sentiment which I ought to express to you, for in declaring as
+you have done, p. 123, that you do not care for the contempt of
+such as me* (ignorant as you were of my opinion), you tell me
+plainly that you do not care for their esteem.  I leave, therefore,
+to your discernment and taste to determine the sentiment most
+congenial to my situation and your desert.
+
+
+* "And what does it do for me here, except, perhaps, expose me to
+the contempt of such men as Mr. Volney, which, however, I feel
+myself pretty well able to bear?" p. 124.  This language is the
+more surprising, as Dr. Priestly never received anything from me
+but civilities.  In the year 1791 I sent him a dissertation of mine
+on the Chronology of the Ancients, in consequence of some charts
+which he had himself published.  His only answer was to abuse me in
+a pamphlet in 1792.  After this first abuse, on meeting me here
+last winter, he procured me an invitation to dine with his friend
+Mr. Russell, at whose house he lodged; after having shown me polite
+attention at that dinner, he abuses me in his new pamphlet.  After
+this second abuse he meets me in Spruce Street, and takes me by the
+hand as a friend, and speaks of me in a large company under that
+denomination.  Now I ask the public, what kind of a man is Dr.
+Priestly?
+
+
+C. F. VOLNEY.
+
+Philadelphia, March 10, 1797.
+
+P. S. I do not accompany this public letter with a private note to
+Dr. Priestly, because communications of that nature carry an
+appearance of bravado, which, even in exercising the right of a
+necessary defence, appear to me imcompatible with decency and
+politeness.
+
+
+
+THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+(Compiled by the publisher from recognized authorities.)
+
+
+The Zodiac is an imaginary girdle or belt in the celestial sphere,
+which extends about eight degrees on each side of the Ecliptic.  It
+is divided into twelve portions, called the signs of the Zodiac,
+within which all the planets make their revolutions.  The Zodiac is
+so called from the animals represented upon it, and is supposed to
+have originated in remote ages and in latitudes where the camel and
+elephant were comparatively unknown.  This pictorial representation
+of the zodiac was probably the origin, as M. Dupuis suggests, of
+the Arabian and Egyptian adoration of animals and birds, and has
+led in the natural progress of events to the adoration of images by
+both Christians and pagans.
+
+"The Signs of the Zodiac, (says Godfrey Higgins in The Anacalypsis)
+with the exception of the Scorpion, which was exchanged by Dan for
+the Eagle, were carried by the different tribes of the Israelites
+on their standards; and Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio or the
+Eagle--the four signs of Reuben, Judah, Ephriam, and Dan--were
+placed at the four corners, (the four cardinal points), of their
+encampment, evidently in allusion to the cardinal points of the
+sphere, the equinoxes and solstices, when the equinox was in
+Taurus.  (See Parkhurst's Lexicon.)  These coincidences prove that
+this religious system had its origin before the bull ceased to be
+an equinoctial sign, and prove also, that the religion of Moses was
+originally the same in its secret mysteries as that of the Heathen,
+or, if my reader likes it better, that the Heathen secret mysteries
+were the same as those of Moses."
+
+The Ecliptic, a great circle of the sphere, (shown on the preceding
+map by two parallel lines), is supposed to be drawn through the
+middle of the Zodiac, cutting the Equator at two points, (called
+the Equinoctial points), at an angle with the equinoctial of 23
+degrees 28 minutes, (the sun's greatest declination), and is the
+path which the earth is supposed to describe amidst the fixed stars
+in performing its annual circuit around the sun.  It is called the
+Ecliptic because the eclipses of the sun and moon always occur
+under it.
+
+The Signs are each the twelfth part of the Ecliptic or Zodiac, (30
+degrees,) and are reckoned from the point of intersection of the
+ecliptic and equator at the vernal equinox.  They are named
+respectively Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra,
+Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces.  These names
+are borrowed from the constellations of the zodiac of the same
+denomination, which corresponded when these divisions were
+originally made; but in consequence of the precession, recession,
+or retrocession of the equinoxes, (about 50 1/10" yearly, at the
+rate of about 72 years to a degree, displacing an entire sign in
+about 2152 years, and making an entire revolution of the
+equinoctial in about 25,868 years), the positions of these
+constellations in the heavens no longer correspond with the
+divisions of the ecliptic of the same name, but are in advance of
+them.  Thus, the constellation Aries is now in that part of the
+ecliptic called Taurus, and the stars of Taurus are in Gemini,
+those of Gemini in Cancer, and so on throughout the ecliptic.
+
+The relative positions of the signs and constellations in the
+zodiac and ecliptic seem thus to have gradually changed with the
+revolving years; and the worship of the three constellations,
+Taurus, Aries, and Pisces, with which Christianity is so intimately
+connected, seems to have changed in a corresponding degree.  The
+worship of the bull of Egypt--the celestial Taurus--has given place
+to that of the lamb of Palestine--the celestial Aries; and under
+the astronomical emblem Pisces--the twelfth sign of the zodiac--the
+dominant faith of to-day was appropriately taught by the twelve
+apostolic fishermen.
+
+It is from one of these chosen fishermen, St. Peter, that the Pope
+of Rome claims to have derived his arbitrary power for binding and
+loosing on earth those who are to be bound and loosed in heaven.
+(Matt. xvi, 19.)  The grave responsibility of wielding with justice
+and equity this tremendous power over the future destiny of
+mankind, seems never to have disconcerted any of the successors of
+St. Peter.  They have all proved to be equally arrogant and
+intolerant, zealous for both temporal and spiritual domination, and
+merciless to those who have opposed their pretensions.  The present
+incumbent of the papal chair, who modestly claims the attribute of
+infallibility, seems proud of his inherited title, The Great
+Fisherman! and hopes in the progress of time, with the assistance
+of his monks, bishops, and cardinals, to entangle all nations in
+his net of faith, and to dictate with unquestioned authority the
+religious worship of the entire human race.
+
+As the precession of the equinoxes still continues as of yore, and
+as the masses still continue credulous and devout, they may in
+succeeding ages be again called upon to worship the god Apis, when
+the sign of Taurus shall again coincide in the zodiac and the
+ecliptic; and Aries, "the lamb of God," may again be offered in the
+"fullness of time" as a sacrifice for mankind, again be crucified,
+and again shed his redeeming blood to wash away the sins of a
+believing world.
+
+M. Dupuis has satisfactorily shown in The History of all Religions
+that the twelve labors of the god and saviour Hercules were
+astronomical allegories--the history of the passage of the sun
+through the twelve signs of the zodiac--and these labors are so
+similar to the sufferings of Jesus, that the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst has
+been obliged, much against his inclination, to acknowledge that
+they "were types of what the real Saviour was to do and suffer."
+(Parkhurst, p.47.)  An intimate connection, if not identity, is
+thus shown between ancient and modern belief--between the paganism
+of the past and the orthodoxy of the present.
+
+
+
+THE ZODIACAL SIGNS.
+
+
+ARIES, the Ram: (marked [symbol for ARIES])--A northern
+constellation, usually named as the first sign in the zodiac, into
+which, when the sun enters at the vernal equinox in March, the days
+and nights are of equal length.  Aries has been regarded by the
+devout during many ages as the celestial representative, visible in
+the heavens, of "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the
+world."
+
+TAURUS, the Bull:(marked thus, [symbol for TAURUS])--The second
+sign in the zodiac, which by the Arabians is called Ataur.  This
+constellation was worshipped for ages by the idolatrous Egyptians
+as the heavenly representative of their god Osiris; and derives its
+name, according to Grecian fable, from the bull into which Jupiter
+transformed himself in order to carry Europa over into Crete; but
+the constellation was probably so named by the Egyptians to
+designate that period of the year, (April), in which cows mostly
+bring forth their young.
+
+"The Rev. Mr. Maurice in his work on the antiquities of India, has
+shown that the May-day festival and the May-pole of Great Britain
+with its garlands, etc., are the remains of an ancient festival of
+Egypt and India, and probably of Phoenicia, when these nations, in
+countries very distant, and from times very remote, have all, with
+one consent, celebrated the entrance of the sun into the sign of
+Taurus at the vernal equinox."
+
+GEMINI, the Twins: (marked thus, [symbol for GEMINI])--A zodiacal
+constellation, visible in May, containing the two bright stars
+Castor and Pollux, the fabled sons of Leda and Jupiter, who during
+their lives had cleared the Hellespont and neighboring seas of
+pirates, and were therefore deemed the protectors of navigators and
+sailors.
+
+CANCER, the Crab: (marked thus, [symbol for CANCER])--Is the fourth
+sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters on the 21st day of June,
+and is thence called the summer solstice.  According to Grecian
+fable, the crab was transported to heaven at the request of Juno,
+after it had been slain by Hercules during his battle with the
+serpent Python, but the evident design of the name is to represent
+the apparent backward motion of the sun in June, which is said to
+resemble the motions of a crab.
+
+LEO, the Lion: ([symbol for LEO]).--Is the fifth sign in the
+zodiac, and contains one star of the first magiiitude, called
+Regulus, or Cor Leonis--the Lion's Heart.  The fervid heat of July,
+when the sun has attained its greatest power, is now symbolized in
+our almanacs by the figure of an enraged lion; and the feasts or
+sacrifices formerly celebrated among the ancients during this
+month, in honor of the sun, (which they also represented under the
+form of a lion,) were called Leonitica.  The priests who performed
+the sacred rites were called Leones.  This feast was sometimes
+called Mithriaca, because Mithra was the name of the sun among the
+Persians.  The sacred writings abound with references to the "king
+of beasts;" among the most interesting of which is the story of the
+battle between the lion and Samson, the Jewish Herculus; while the
+most wonderful example of animal evolution on record is found in
+the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where we are gravely informed
+that "the lion shall eat straw like the bullock."
+
+VIRGO, Virgin Mother, Venus, Eve, Isis, &c.--([symbol for VIRGO]).--
+Is the sixth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the
+21st of August.  The myths and fables regarding the virgin which
+abound among all nations and all religions, are both various and
+voluminous, and we may add somewhat improbable.  They all agree,
+however, in this, that the female, shown on the preceding diagram,
+holding in her right hand a branch of ripened fruit,--the apples of
+Paradise,--was intended to represent the reproductive powers of
+nature,--the abundance, satisfaction and contentment which mortals
+enjoy during the happy period of harvest.
+
+LIBRA, the Balance.--The seventh sign of the zodiac, directly
+opposite to Aries, from which it is distant 180 degrees.  It is
+marked thus [symbol for LIBRA], after the manner of a pair of
+scales; to denote, probably, that when the sun arrives at this part
+of the ecliptic, the days and nights are equal, as if weighed in a
+balance.  Hence the period when the sun enters Libra, (about
+September 21st,) is called the Autumnal equinox.  On the 25th of
+September was born John the Baptist, the forerunner of his cousin
+Jesus, who came to his exaltation of glory on the 25th of March,
+the Vernal equinox.  "The equinoxes and solstices," says Higgins,
+"equally marked the births and deaths of John and Jesus."  The one
+preceded and prepared the way for the other, who receded.  One
+advanced, the other declined.  Jesus ascended, John descended.
+Astrologically speaking, "He must increase, but I must decrease."
+(John iii, 30.)
+
+SCORPIO, the Scorpion.--The eighth sign of the zodiac, which the
+sun enters on the 23d of October, is marked thus [symbol for
+SCORPIO].  Scorpio is fabled to have killed the great hunter Orion,
+and for that exploit to have been placed among the constellations.
+For this reason it is also said that when Scorpio rises Orion sets.
+
+SAGITTARIUS, the Archer: (marked thus, [symbol for SAGITTARIUS]) is
+the ninth zodiacal sign, and corresponds with the month of
+November.  This sign is represented like a centaur and was fabled
+to be Crotus, the son of Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses.
+
+CAPRICORNUS, the Goat.([symbol for CAPRICORNUS])--The tenth sign of
+the zodiac, which the sun enters the 21st of December, (the longest
+night in the year,) called the winter solstice.  This sign is drawn
+to represent the horns of a goat, and is fabled to have been Pan,
+who in the war of the giants was taken to heaven in the shape of a
+goat.  Others claim that it was the goat of Amalthaea, which fed
+Jupiter with her milk.  Macrobius, who calls Cancer and Capricorn
+the gates of the sun, makes the latter sign to represent his
+motion, after the manner of a goat climbing the mountains.
+
+AQUARIUS, the Water Bearer.--A constellation in the heavens so
+called, because during its rising there is usually an abundance of
+rain.  It is the eleventh sign in the zodiac, reckoned from Aries,
+and is marked thus, [symbol for AQUARIUS].  It rises in January and
+sets in February, and is supposed by the poets to be Ganymede.
+
+PISCES, the Fishes, [symbol for PISCES]).--The twelfth sign of the
+zodiac, rises in February and is represented by two fishes tied
+together by the tails.  These fishes are fabled by the Greeks to be
+those into which Venus and Cupid were changed to escape from the
+giant Typhon.  This fable may not be true, but that wonderful
+miracles were once performed with two small fishes is stated in the
+ninth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke, where it is said that 5000
+hungry mortals were cheaply, if not sumptuously regaled with two
+small fishes and five loaves of bread; while a large surplus of
+this piscatory diet, larger indeed than the original stock, still
+remained intact.
+
+In the vestibule or approaches to catholic churches is usually
+found a vase filled with water, (called Piscina,) and this water is
+considered holy.  The Fish-days are observed as holy days, or fast
+days, in which Fish may be eaten and meat is forbidden; and learned
+writers have asserted that in the worship of Pisces may be found
+the true secret of the origin of the rite of baptism.  The Fish-god
+Oannes, is said to have come out of the Erythraean Sea and taught
+the Babylonians all kinds of useful knowledge.  Ionnes or Jonas
+went headlong into the sea and into a fish, and has kindly recorded
+for our instruction his remarkable adventures.  The miraculous
+draughts of fishes in the apostolic age still excite the emulation
+of modern fishermen, who cannot even hope to rival the wonders that
+have been recorded.  St. Peter is said to have secured ready money
+from the mouth of a fish that he caught with a hook and line in the
+sea of Galilee.  (Matthew xvii, 27.)  His success was justly
+rewarded, and to him was delegated the power of ruling the infant
+church.  Pisces thus displaced Aries.  The fisherman succeeded the
+shepherd.  The precession of the equinoxes produced a new avatar; a
+new sign arose in the heavens; and a new saviour was born to save
+mankind.
+
+
+THE CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+
+SIRIUS, the Dog Star.--A bright star of the first magnitude in the
+mouth of the constellation Canis Major.  This is the brightest star
+that appears in our firmament, and is supposed by some to be the
+nearest.
+
+LEPUS.--One of the southern constellations, placed near Orion,
+according to Grecian fable, because it was one of the animals which
+he hunted.
+
+ERIDANUS.--A winding southern constellation, near the Cetus,
+containing the bright star Achemar.
+
+CETUS, the Whale.--A southern constellation, and one of the forty-
+eight old asterisms.  It is fabled to have been the sea monster
+sent by Neptune to devour Andromeda, which was killed by Perseus.
+
+CRATER, the Cup.--A southern constellation, near Hydra.  This is
+supposed by Hyainus to be the cup which Apollo gave to the Corvus,
+or Raven.
+
+CORVUS.--One of the old constellations in the southern hemisphere,
+near Sagittarius.  This bird is fabled to have been translated to
+heaven by Apollo for discovering to him the infidelity of the nymph
+Coronis.
+
+ARGO NAVIS, the Ship.--A constellation near to the Canis Major, and
+the name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four
+companions to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece, and was said
+to have been translated into the heavens.
+
+CANOPUS.--The name formerly given to a star in the second bend of
+Eridanus.  A bright star of the first magnitude in the rudder of
+the ship Argo, which, according to Pliny, was visible at Alexandria
+in Egypt.
+
+CENTAURUS.--One of the forty-eight old constellations in the
+southern hemisphere, represented in the form of half man and half
+horse, who was fabled by the Greeks to have been Chiron, the tutor
+of Achilles.
+
+AVA, or ALTAR.--One of the old constellations, and fabled to have
+been that at which the giants entered into their conspiracy against
+the gods; wherefore Jupiter, in commemoration of the event,
+transplanted the altar into the heavens.
+
+PEGASUS.--One of the forty-eight old constellations of the northern
+hemisphere, figured in the form of a flying horse.
+
+DELPHINUS, or DOLPHIN.--A northern constellation, near Pegasus.
+The Dolphin is fabled to have been translated to heaven by Neptune.
+
+AQUILA, the Eagle.--In the Arabic Altair, but in the Persian tables
+the Flying Vulture.  This is one of the old constellations,
+situated near Delphinus in the northern hemisphere.  According to
+Grecian fable, Aquila represented Ganymede or Hebe, who was
+transported to heaven and made cup-bearer to Jupiter.
+
+SAGITTA--the Dart or Arrow, called by the Arabians Schahan.  One of
+the old constellations in the northern hemisphere, near Aquila and
+Delphinus.  It is fabled to have been the arrow with which Hercules
+slew the vulture that was devouring the liver of Prometheus who
+was, like Jesus, crucified for loving mankind.
+
+CYGNUS, the Swan.--An old constellation in the milky-way, between
+Equus and the Dragon.  This is fabled to be the swan into which
+Jupiter transformed himself in order to deceive the virtuous Leda,
+wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta.  The Grecian matron, like the
+Jewish virgin, thus became the mother of a God.
+
+LYRA.--A northern constellation between Hercules and Cygnus,
+containing a white star of the first magnitude.
+
+MILKY-WAY.--Galaxy, or Via Lactia.--A broad luminous path or circle
+encompassing the heavens, which is easily discernible by its white
+appearance, from which it derives its name.  It is supposed to be
+the blended light of innumerable fixed stars, which are not
+distinguishable with ordinary telescopes.
+
+HYDRA, the Serpent.--A southern constellation of great length,
+which is drawn to represent a serpent.  The Hydra is fabled to have
+been placed in the heavens by Apollo, to frighten the Raven from
+drinking.
+
+ORION, the hunter.--A constellation of the southern hemisphere with
+respect to the ecliptic, but half southern and half northern with
+respect to the equinoctial.  It is placed near the feet of the
+bull, and is composed of seventeen stars in the form of a sword,
+which has given occasion to the poets to speak of Orion's sword.
+He was described by the Greeks as a "mighty hunter," who for his
+exploits was placed in the heavens by Jupiter, between the Canis
+and the Lepus.  He is believed by many to have been the "mighty
+hunter" spoken of in the bible, under the name of Nimrod.  (See
+Gen. x: 8, 9; 1 Chron. i: 10; Micha v: 6, Job ix, 9; Amos v, 8.)
+
+PERSEUS.--This constellation is named from Perseus, the son of
+Jupiter by Danae, who was translated into the heavens by the
+assistance of Minerva, for having released Andromeda from her
+confinement on the rock to which she was chained.  He is
+represented in the preceding illustration holding a drawn sword in
+his right hand and in his left the head of Medusa, the Gorgon,
+whose terrifying appearance changed all who beheld her into stone,
+and whom he had destroyed with the assistance of the wings he had
+borrowed from Mercury, the helmet from Pluto, the sword from
+Vulcan, and the shield from Minerva.
+
+JOSEPH'S STABLE; AURIGA, the Wagoner:--A northern constellation
+between Perseus and Gemini, represented by the figure of an old man
+supporting a goat.  He is said to have been taken to heaven by
+Jupiter after the invention of wagons.
+
+URSA MAJOR, the Bear.--One of the prominent northern
+constellations, situated near the north pole.  It contains the
+stars called the Dipper.  Ursa Minor contains the pole-star, which
+is shown in the extremity of the tail of the bear.
+
+ANDROMEDA.--A northern constellation, represented by a woman
+chained; as, according to Grecian fable, Andromeda, the daughter of
+Cassiopia, was bound to a rock by the Nereides, and afterwards
+released by Perseus.  Minerva changed her into a constellation
+after her death, and placed her in the heavens.
+
+DRACO OR DRAGON.--A northern constellation, supposed to represent
+the Dragon that guarded the Hesperian fruit, and was killed by
+Hercules.  It is said that Juno took it up to heaven and placed it
+among the constellations.
+
+BOOTIS, the Ox driver: so called because this constellation seems
+to follow the Great Bear as the driver follows his oxen.  Bootis is
+represented as grasping in his right hand a sickle and in his left
+a club, and is fabled to have been Icarius, who was transported to
+heaven because he was a great cultivator of the vine; for when
+Bootes rises the works of ploughing and cultivation go forward.
+
+CORONA BOREALIS.  Northern Crown.--One of the old northern
+constellations, between Hercules and Bootes.
+
+CORONA AUSTRALIS--Southern Crown.--One of the old constellations in
+the southern hemisphere, between Sagittarius and Scorpio.  The
+Corona were fabled to be Menippe and Metioche, two daughters of
+Orion, who sacrificed themselves at the suggestion of an oracle, to
+protect Boeotia, their native country, from the ravages of a
+pestilence: it being the belief of idolatrous nations that an angry
+god could be propitiated by human sacrifices, and that the death of
+the innocent might atone for the sins of the guilty.  The deities
+of Hades were astonished, it is said, at the patriotism and
+devotion of these Grecian maidens, who had so generously and
+uselessly sacrificed their lives.  After their death two stars were
+seen to issue from the altars that still smoked with their blood,
+and these stars were placed in the heavens in the form of a crown
+or coronet.
+
+CEPHEUS AND CASSIOPIA.--One of the old asterism in the northern
+hemisphere, near the pole.  According to Grecian fables, Cassiopia
+and her husband Cepheus, king of Etheopia, were placed among the
+constellations to witness the punishment inflicted on their
+daughter, Andromeda.
+
+TRIANGULARIUM.--A name for both one of the old and new
+constellations in the northern hemisphere, between Andromeda and
+Aries.
+
+SERPENTARIUS, called Ophiucus, is a constellation in the northern
+hemisphere, between Scorpio and Hercules.
+
+HERCULES, one of the old northern constellations.  In Grecian
+mythology it was taught and believed that Hercules, the Theban, was
+born of a human mother and an immortal father, like other so-called
+saviours of mankind.  His mother, the fair Alcmena, wife of
+Amphitryon, having found favor in the eyes of the god Jupiter, soon
+fell an unwilling victim to his celestial wiles.  The life of the
+infant Hercules, born of this unnatural union, was threatened by
+the jealous Juno, the same as the life of the infant Jesus was
+threatened by the tyrant Herod.  Like Jesus, Hercules devoted his
+life to the benefit of the human race, and like Jesus he was also
+worshipped after his death as a God in heaven.  He is shown in the
+astrological chart, enveloped in the skin of the lion he has slain,
+with his club upraised, and his foot placed threateningly above the
+head of the Dragon, as if about to fulfill the scriptural prophecy,
+that "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Ruins by C. F. Volney
+
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