SECTION I.

What is an idea?

It is an image painted upon my brain.

Are all your thoughts, then, images?

Certainly; for the most abstract thoughts are only the consequences of all the objects that I have perceived. I utter the word “being” in general, only because I have known particular beings; I utter the word “infinity,” only because I have seen certain limits, and because I push back those limits in my mind to a greater and still greater distance, as far as I am able. I have ideas in my head only because I have images.

And who is the painter of this picture?

It is not myself; I cannot draw with sufficient skill; the being that made me, makes my ideas.

And how do you know that the ideas are not made by yourself?

Because they frequently come to me involuntarily when I am awake, and always without my consent when I dream.

You are persuaded, then, that your ideas belong to you only in the same manner as your hairs, which grow and become white, and fall off, without your having anything at all to do with the matter?

Nothing can possibly be clearer; all that I can do is to frizzle, cut, and powder them; but I have nothing to do with producing them.

You must, then, I imagine, be of Malebranche’s opinion, that we see all in God?

I am at least certain of this, that if we do not see things in the Great Being, we see them in consequence of His powerful and immediate action.

And what was the nature or process of this action?

I have already told you repeatedly, in the course of our conversation, that I do not know a single syllable about the subject, and that God has not communicated His secret to any one. I am completely ignorant of that which makes my heart beat, and my blood flow through my veins; I am ignorant of the principle of all my movements, and yet you seem to Edition: current; Page: [106] expect how I should explain how I feel and how I think. Such an expectation is unreasonable.

But you at least know whether your faculty of having ideas is joined to extension?

Not in the least. It is true that Tatian, in his discourse to the Greeks, says the soul is evidently composed of a body. Irenæus, in the twenty-sixth chapter of his second book, says, “The Lord has taught that our souls preserve the figure of our body in order to retain the memory of it.” Tertullian asserts, in his second book on the soul, that it is a body. Arnobius, Lactantius, Hilary, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose, are precisely of the same opinion. It is pretended that other fathers of the Church assert that the soul is without extension, and that in this respect they adopt the opinion of Plato; this, however, may well be doubted. With respect to myself, I dare not venture to form an opinion; I see nothing but obscurity and incomprehensibility in either system; and, after a whole life’s meditation on the subject, I am not advanced a single step beyond where I was on the first day.

The subject, then, was not worth thinking about?

That is true; the man who enjoys knows more of it, or at least knows it better, than he who reflects; he is more happy. But what is it that you would have? It depended not, I repeat, upon myself whether I should admit or reject all those ideas which have crowded into my brain in conflict with each other, and actually converted my medullary Edition: current; Page: [107] magazine into their field of battle. After a hard-fought contest between them, I have obtained nothing but uncertainty from the spoils.

It is a melancholy thing to possess so many ideas, and yet to have no precise knowledge of the nature of ideas?

It is, I admit; but it is much more melancholy, and inexpressibly more foolish, for a man to believe he knows what in fact he does not.

But, if you do not positively know what an idea is, if you are ignorant whence ideas come, you at least know by what they come?

Yes; just in the same way as the ancient Egyptians, who, without knowing the source of the Nile, knew perfectly well that its waters reached them by its bed. We know perfectly that ideas come to us by the senses; but we never know whence they come. The source of this Nile will never be discovered.

If it is certain that all ideas are given by means of the senses, why does the Sorbonne, which has so long adopted this doctrine from Aristotle, condemn it with so much virulence in Helvetius?

Because the Sorbonne is composed of theologians.

SECTION II.

SECTION I.

Idol is derived from the Greek word “eidos,” figure; “eidolos,” the representation of a figure, and “latreuein,” to serve, revere, or adore.

It does not appear that there was ever any people on earth who took the name of idolaters. This word is an offence, an insulting term, like that of “gavache,” which the Spaniards formerly gave to the French; and that of “maranes,” which the French gave to the Spaniards in return. If we had demanded of the senate of the Areopagus of Athens, or at the court of the kings of Persia: “Are you idolaters?” they would scarcely have understood the question. None would have answered: “We adore images and idols.” This word, idolater, idolatry, is found neither in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, nor any other author of the religion of the Gentiles. There was never any edict, any law, which commanded that idols should be adored; that they should be treated as gods and regarded as gods.

When the Roman and Carthaginian captains made a treaty, they called all their gods to witness. “It is in their presence,” said they, “that we swear peace.” Yet the statues of these gods, whose number was very great, were not in the tents of the generals. They regarded, or pretended to regard, the gods as present at the actions of men as witnesses Edition: current; Page: [120] and judges. And assuredly it was not the image which constituted the divinity.

In what view, therefore, did they see the statues of their false gods in the temples? With the same view, if we may so express ourselves, that the Catholics see the images, the object of their veneration. The error was not in adoring a piece of wood or marble, but in adoring a false divinity, represented by this wood and marble. The difference between them and the Catholics is, not that they had images, and the Catholics had none; the difference is, that their images represented the fantastic beings of a false religion, and that the Christian images represent real beings in a true religion. The Greeks had the statue of Hercules, and we have that of St. Christopher; they had Æsculpius and his goat, we have St. Roch and his dog; they had Mars and his lance, and we have St. Anthony of Padua and St. James of Compostella.

When the consul Pliny addresses prayers to the immortal gods in the exordium of the panegyric of Trajan, it is not to images that he addresses them. These images were not immortal.

Neither the latest nor the most remote times of paganism offer a single fact which can lead to the conclusion that they adored idols. Homer speaks only of the gods who inhabited the high Olympus. The palladium, although fallen from heaven, was only a sacred token of the protection of Pallas; it Edition: current; Page: [121] was herself that was venerated in the palladium. It was our ampoule, or holy oil.

But the Romans and Greeks knelt before their statues, gave them crowns, incense, and flowers, and carried them in triumph in the public places. The Catholics have sanctified these customs, and yet are not called idolaters.

The women in times of drouth carried the statues of the Gods after having fasted. They walked barefooted with dishevelled hair, and it quickly rained bucketfuls, says Pretonius: “Et statim urceatim pluebat.” Has not this custom been consecrated; illegitimate indeed among the Gentiles, but legitimate among the Catholics? In how many towns are not images carried to obtain the blessings of heaven through their intercession? If a Turk, or a learned Chinese, were a witness of these ceremonies, he would, through ignorance, accuse the Italians of putting their trust in the figures which they thus promenade in possession.

SECTION II.
Examination of the Ancient Idolatry.

From the time of Charles I., the Catholic religion was declared idolatrous in England. All the Presbyterians are persuaded that the Catholics adore bread, which they eat, and figures, which are the work of their sculptors and painters. With that which one part of Europe reproaches the Catholics, they themselves reproach the Gentiles.

We are surprised at the prodigious number of declamations uttered in all times against the idolatry of the Romans and Greeks; and we are afterwards still more surprised when we see that they were not idolaters.

They had some temples more privileged than others. The great Diana of Ephesus had more reputation than a village Diana. There were more miracles performed in the temple of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, than in any other of his temples. The statue of the Olympian Jupiter attracted more offerings than that of the Paphlagonian Jupiter. But to oppose the customs of a true religion to those of a false one, have we not for several ages had more devotion to certain altars than to others?

Has not Our Lady of Loretto been preferred to Our Lady of Neiges, to that of Ardens, of Hall, etc.? That is not saying there is more virtue in a statue at Loretto than in a statue of the village of Hall, but we have felt more devotion to the one than to the other; we have believed that she whom we invoked, at the feet of her statues, would condescend, from the height of heaven, to diffuse more favors and to work more miracles in Loretto than in Hall. This multiplicity of images of the same person also proves that it is the images that we revere, and that the worship relates to the person who is represented; for it is not possible that every image can be the same thing. There are Edition: current; Page: [123] a thousand images of St. Francis, which have no resemblance to him, and which do not resemble one another; and all indicate a single Saint Francis, invoked, on the day of his feast, by those who are devoted to this saint.

It was precisely the same with the pagans, who supposed the existence only of a single divinity, a single Apollo, and not as many Apollos and Dianas as they had temples and statues. It is therefore proved, as much as history can prove anything, that the ancients believed not the statue to be a divinity; that worship was not paid to this statue or image, and consequently that they were not idolaters. It is for us to ascertain how far the imputation has been a mere pretext to accuse them of idolatry.

A gross and superstitious populace who reason not, and who know neither how to doubt, deny, or believe; who visit the temples out of idleness, and because the lowly are there equal to the great; who make their contributions because it is the custom; who speak continually of miracles without examining any of them; and who are very little in point of intellect beyond the brutes whom they sacrifice—such a people, I repeat, in the sight of the great Diana, or of Jupiter the Thunderer, may well be seized with a religious horror, and adore, without consciousness, the statue itself. This is what happens now and then, in our own churches, to our ignorant peasantry, who, however, are informed Edition: current; Page: [124] that it is the blessed mortals received into heaven whose intercession they solicit, and not that of images of wood and stone.

The Greeks and Romans augment the number of their gods by their apotheoses. The Greeks deified conquerors like Bacchus, Hercules, and Perseus. Rome devoted altars to her emperors. Our apotheoses are of a different kind; we have infinitely more saints than they have secondary gods, but we pay respect neither to rank nor to conquest. We consecrate temples to the simply virtuous, who would have been unknown on earth if they had not been placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients were the effect of flattery, ours are produced by a respect for virtue.

Cicero, in his philosophical works, only allows of a suspicion that the people may mistake the statues of the gods and confound them with the gods themselves. His interlocutors attack the established religion, but none of them think of accusing the Romans of taking marble and brass for divinities. Lucretius accuses no person of this stupidity, although he reproaches the superstitious of every class. This opinion, therefore, has never existed; there never have been idolaters.

Horace causes an image of Priapus to speak, and makes him say: “I was once the trunk of a fig tree, and a carpenter being doubtful whether he should make of me a god or a bench, at length determined to make me a divinity.” What are we to gather Edition: current; Page: [125] from this pleasantry? Priapus was one of the subaltern divinities, and a subject of raillery for the wits, and this pleasantry is a tolerable proof that a figure placed in the garden to frighten away the birds could not be very profoundly worshipped.

Dacier, giving way to the spirit of a commentator, observes that Baruch predicted this adventure. “They became what the workmen chose to make them:” but might not this be observed of all statues? Had Baruch a visionary anticipation of the “Satires of Horace”?

A block of marble may as well be hewn into a cistern, as into a figure of Alexander, Jupiter, or any being still more respectable. The matter which composed the cherubim of the Holy of Holies might have been equally appropriated to the vilest functions. Is a throne or altar the less revered because it might have been formed into a kitchen table?

Dacier, instead of concluding that the Romans adored the statue of Priapus, and that Baruch predicted it, should have perceived that the Romans laughed at it. Consult all the authors who speak of the statues of the gods, you will not find one of them allude to idolatry; their testimony amounts to the express contrary. “It is not the workman,” says Martial, “who makes the gods, but he who prays to them.”

• Qui finxit sacros auro vel marmore vultus
• Non facit ille deos, qui rogat ille facit.

“It is Jove whom we adore in the image of Jove,” writes Ovid: “Colitur pro Jove, forma Jovis.”

“The gods inhabit our minds and bosoms,” observes Statius, “and not images in the form of them:”

• Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo.
• Forma Dei, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet.

Lucan, too, calls the universe the abode and empire of God: “Estne Dei, sedes, nisi terra, et pontus, et aer?” A volume might be filled with passages asserting idols to be images alone.

There remains but the case in which statues became oracles; notions that might have led to an opinion that there was something divine about them. The predominant sentiment, however, was that the gods had chosen to visit certain altars and images, in order to give audience to mortals, and to reply to them. We read in Homer and in the chorus of the Greek tragedies, of prayers to Apollo, who delivered his responses on the mountains in such a temple, or such a town. There is not, in all antiquity, the least trace of a prayer addressed to a statue; and if it was believed that the divine spirit preferred certain temples and images, as he preferred certain men, it was simply an error in application. How many miraculous images have we? The ancients only boasted of possessing what we possess, and if we are not idolaters for using images, by what correct principle can we term them so?

Those who profess magic, and who either believe, or affect to believe it, a science, pretend to possess Edition: current; Page: [127] the secret of making the gods descend into their statues, not indeed, the superior gods, but the secondary gods or genii. This is what Hermes Trismegistus calls “making” gods—a doctrine which is controverted by St. Augustine in his “City of God.” But even this clearly shows that the images were not thought to possess anything divine, since it required a magician to animate them, and it happened very rarely that a magician was successful in these sublime endeavors.

In a word, the images of the gods were not gods. Jupiter, and not his statue, launched his thunderbolts; it was not the statue of Neptune which stirred up tempests, nor that of Apollo which bestowed light. The Greeks and the Romans were Gentiles and Polytheists, but not idolaters.

We lavished this reproach upon them when we had neither statues nor temples, and have continued the injustice even after having employed painting and sculpture to honor and represent our truths, precisely in the same manner in which those we reproach employed them to honor and personify their fiction.

SECTION III.
Whether the Persians, the Sabæans, the Egyptians, the Tartars, or the Turks, have been Idolaters, and the Extent of the Antiquity of the Images Called Idols—History of Their Worship.

It is a great error to denominate those idolaters who worship the sun and the stars. These nations Edition: current; Page: [128] for a long time had neither images nor temples. If they were wrong, it was in rendering to the stars that which belonged only to the creator of the stars. Moreover, the dogma of Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, teaches a Supreme Being, an avenger and rewarder, which opinion is very distant from idolatry. The government of China possesses no idol, but has always preserved the simple worship of the master of heaven, Kien-tien.

Genghis Khan, among the Tartars, was not an idolater, and used no images. The Mahometans, who inhabit Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and Africa, call the Christians idolaters and giaours, because they imagine that Christians worship images. They break the statues which they find in Sancta Sophia, the church of the Holy Apostles; and others they convert into mosques. Appearances have deceived them, as they are eternally deceiving man, and have led them to believe that churches dedicated to saints who were formerly men, images of saints worshipped kneeling, and miracles worked in these churches, are invincible proofs of absolute idolatry; although all amount to nothing. Christians, in fact, adore one God only, and even in the blessed, only revere the virtues of God manifested in them. The image-breakers (iconoclasts), and the Protestants, who reproach the Catholic Church with idolatry, claim the same answer.

As men rarely form precise ideas, and still less express them with precision, we call the Gentiles, and still more the Polytheists, idolaters. An immense number of volumes have been written in order to develop the various opinions upon the origin of the worship rendered to the deity. This multitude of books and opinions proves nothing, except ignorance.

It is not known who invented coats, shoes, and stockings, and yet we would know who invented idols. What signifies a passage of Sanchoniathon, who lived before the battle of Troy? What does he teach us when he says that Chaos—the spirit, that is to say, the breath—in love with his principles, draws the veil from it, which renders the air luminous; that the wind Colp, and his wife Bau, engendered Eon; that Eon engendered Genos, that Chronos, their descendant, had two eyes behind as well as before; that he became a god, and that he gave Egypt to his son Thaut? Such is one of the most respectable monuments of antiquity.

Orpheus will teach us no more in his “Theogony,” than Damasius has preserved to us. He represents the principles of the world under the figure of a dragon with two heads, the one of a bull, the other of a lion; a face in the middle, which he calls the face of God, and golden wings to his shoulders.

But, from these fantastic ideas may be drawn Edition: current; Page: [130] two great truths—the one that sensible images and hieroglyphics are of the remotest antiquity; the other that all the ancient philosophers have recognized a First Principle.

As to polytheism, good sense will tell you that as long as men have existed—that is to say, weak animals capable of reason and folly, subject to all accidents, sickness and death—these men have felt their weakness and dependence. Obliged to acknowledge that there is something more powerful than themselves; having discovered a principle in the earth which furnishes their aliment; one in the air which often destroys them; one in fire which consumes; and in water which drowns them—what is more natural than for ignorant men to imagine beings which preside over these elements? What is more natural than to revere the invisible power which makes the sun and stars shine to our eyes? and, since they would form an idea of powers superior to man, what more natural than to figure them in a sensible manner? Could they think otherwise? The Jewish religion, which preceded ours, and which was given by God himself, was filled with these images, under which God is represented. He deigns to speak the human language in a bush; He appeared once on a mountain; the celestial spirits which he sends all come with a human form: finally, the sanctuary is covered with cherubs, which are the bodies of men with the wings and heads of animals. It is this which has given rise to the error Edition: current; Page: [131] of Plutarch, Tacitus, Appian, and so many others, of reproaching the Jews with adoring an ass’s head. God, in spite of his prohibition to paint or form likenesses, has, therefore, deigned to adapt himself to human weakness, which required the senses to be addressed by sensible beings.

Isaiah, in chapter vi., sees the Lord seated on a throne, and His train filled the temple. The Lord extends His hand, and touches the mouth of Jeremiah, in chap. i. of that prophet. Ezekiel, in chap. i., sees a throne of sapphire, and God appeared to him like a man seated on this throne. These images alter not the purity of the Jewish religion, which never employed pictures, statues, or idols, to represent God to the eyes of the people.

The learned Chinese, the Parsees, and the ancient Egyptians, had no idols; but Isis and Osiris were soon represented. Bel, at Babylon, was a great colossus. Brahma was a fantastic monster in the peninsula of India. Above all, the Greeks multiplied the names of the gods, statues, and temples, but always attributed the supreme power to their Zeus, called Jupiter by the Latins, the sovereign of gods and men. The Romans imitated the Greeks. These people always placed all the gods in heaven, without knowing what they understood by heaven.

The Romans had their twelve great gods, six male and six female, whom they called “Dii majorum gentium”; Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Vulcar., Mars, Mercury, Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Venus, Edition: current; Page: [132] and Diana; Pluto was therefore forgotten: Vesta took his place.

Afterwards, came the gods “minorum gentium,” the gods of mortal origin; the heroes, as Bacchus, Hercules, and Æsculapius: the infernal gods, Pluto and Proserpine: those of the sea, as Tethys, Amphitrite, the Nereids, and Glaucus. The Dryads, Naiads, gods of gardens; those of shepherds, etc. They had them, indeed, for every profession, for every action of life, for children, marriageable girls, married, and lying-in women: they had even the god Peditum; and finally, they idolized their emperors. Neither these emperors nor the god Peditum, the goddess Pertunda, nor Priapus, nor Rumilia, the goddess of nipples; nor Stercutius, the god of the privy, were, in truth, regarded as the masters of heaven and earth. The emperors had sometimes temples, the petty gods—the penates—had none; but all had their representations, their images.

There were little images with which they ornamented their closets, the amusements of old women and children, which were not authorized by any public worship. The superstition of every individual was left to act according to his own taste. These small idols are still found in the ruins of ancient towns.

If no person knows when men began to make these images, they must know that they are of the greatest antiquity. Terah, the father of Abraham, made them at Ur in Chaldæa. Rachel stole and carried Edition: current; Page: [133] off the images of Laban, her father. We cannot go back further.

But what precise notion had the ancient nations of all these representations? What virtue, what power, was attributed to them? Believed they that the gods descended from heaven to conceal themselves in these statues; or that they communicated to them a part of the divine spirit; or that they communicated to them nothing at all? There has been much very uselessly written on this subject; it is clear that every man judged of it according to the degree of his reason, credulity, or fanaticism. It is evident that the priests attached as much divinity to their statues as they possibly could, to attract more offerings. We know that the philosophers reproved these superstitions, that warriors laughed at them, that the magistrates tolerated them, and that the people, always absurd, knew not what they did. In a word, this is the history of all nations to which God has not made himself known.

The same idea may be formed of the worship which all Egypt rendered to the cow, and that several towns paid to a dog, an ape, a cat, and to onions. It appears that these were first emblems. Afterwards, a certain ox Apis, and a certain dog Anubis, were adored; they always ate beef and onions; but it is difficult to know what the old women of Egypt thought of the holy cows and onions.

Idols also often spoke. On the day of the feast Edition: current; Page: [134] of Cybele at Rome, those fine words were commemorated which the statue pronounced when it was translated from the palace of King Attilus: “I wish to depart; take me away quickly; Rome is worthy the residence of every god.”

• Ipsa peti volui; ne sit mora, mitte volentum;
• Dignus Roma locus quo Deus omnis eat.
• —Ovid’s Fasti, iv, 269-270.

The statue of Fortune spoke; the Scipios, the Ciceros, and the Cæsars, indeed, believed nothing of it; but the old woman, to whom Encolpus gave a crown to buy geese and gods, might credit it.

Idols also gave oracles, and priests hidden in the hollow of the statues spoke in the name of the divinity.

How happens it, in the midst of so many gods and different theogonies and particular worships, that there was never any religious war among the people called idolaters? This peace was a good produced from an evil, even from error; for each nation, acknowledging several inferior gods, found it good for his neighbors also to have theirs. If you except Cambyses, who is reproached with having killed the ox Apis, you will not see any conqueror in profane history who ill-treated the gods of a vanquished people. The heathens had no exclusive religion, and the priests thought only of multiplying the offerings and sacrifices.

The first offerings were fruits. Soon after, animals were required for the table of the priests; Edition: current; Page: [135] they killed them themselves, and became cruel butchers; finally, they introduced the horrible custom of sacrificing human victims, and above all, children and young girls. The Chinese, Parsees, and Indians, were never guilty of these abominations; but at Hieropolis, in Egypt, according to Porphyrius, they immolated men.

Strangers were sacrificed at Taurida: happily, the priests of Taurida had not much practice. The first Greeks, the Cypriots, Phœnicians, Tyrians, and Carthaginians, possessed this abominable superstition. The Romans themselves fell into this religious crime; and Plutarch relates, that they immolated two Greeks and two Gauls to expiate the gallantries of three vestals. Procopius, contemporary with the king of the Franks, Theodobert, says that the Franks sacrificed men when they entered Italy with that prince. The Gauls and Germans commonly made these frightful sacrifices. We can scarcely read history without conceiving horror at mankind.

It is true that among the Jews, Jeptha sacrificed his daughter, and Saul was ready to immolate his son; it is also true that those who were devoted to the Lord by anathema could not be redeemed, as other beasts were, but were doomed to perish.

We will now speak of the human victims sacrificed in all religions.

To console mankind for the horrible picture of these pious sacrifices, it is important to know, that amongst almost all nations called idolatrous, there Edition: current; Page: [136] have been holy theologies and popular error, secret worship and public ceremonies; the religion of sages, and that of the vulgar. To know that one God alone was taught to those initiated into the mysteries, it is only necessary to look at the hymn attributed to the ancient Orpheus, which was sung in the mysteries of the Eleusinian Ceres, so celebrated in Europe and Asia: “Contemplate divine nature; illuminate thy mind; govern thy heart; walk in the path of justice, that the God of heaven and earth may be always present to thy eyes: He only self-exists, all beings derive their existence from Him; He sustains them all; He has never been seen by mortals, and He sees all things.”

We may also read the passage of the philosopher Maximus, whom we have already quoted: “What man is so gross and stupid as to doubt that there is a supreme, eternal, and infinite God, who has engendered nothing like Himself, and who is the common father of all things?”

There are a thousand proofs that the ancient sages not only abhorred idolatry, but polytheism.

Epictetus, that model of resignation and patience, that man so great in a humble condition, never speaks of but one God. Read over these maxims: “God has created me; God is within me; I carry Him everywhere. Can I defile Him by obscene thoughts, unjust actions, or infamous desires? My duty is to thank God for all, to praise Him for all; and only to cease blessing Him in ceasing to live.” Edition: current; Page: [137] All the ideas of Epictetus turn on this principle. Is this an idolater?

Marcus Aurelius, perhaps as great on the throne of the Roman Empire as Epictetus was in slavery, often speaks, indeed, of the gods, either to conform himself to the received language, or to express intermediate beings between the Supreme Being and men; but in how many places does he show that he recognizes one eternal, infinite God alone? “Our soul,” says he, “is an emanation from the divinity. My children, my body, my mind, are derived from God.”

The Stoics and Platonics admitted a divine and universal nature; the Epicureans denied it. The pontiffs spoke only of a single God in their mysteries. Where then were the idolaters? All our declaimers exclaim against idolatry like little dogs, that yelp when they hear a great one bark.

As to the rest, it is one of the greatest errors of the “Dictionary” of Moreri to say, that in the time of Theodosius the younger, there remained no idolaters except in the retired countries of Asia and Africa. Even in the seventh century there were many people still heathen in Italy. The north of Germany, from the Weser, was not Christian in the time of Charlemagne. Poland and all the south remained a long time after him in what was called idolatry; the half of Africa, all the kingdoms beyond the Ganges, Japan, the populace of China, and a hundred hordes of Tartars, have preserved their Edition: current; Page: [138] ancient religion. In Europe there are only a few Laplanders, Samoyedes, and Tartars, who have persevered in the religion of their ancestors.

Let us conclude with remarking, that in the time which we call the middle ages, we dominated the country of the Mahometans pagan; we treated as idolaters and adorers of images, a people who hold all images in abhorrence. Let us once more avow, that the Turks are more excusable in believing us idolaters, when they see our altars loaded with images and statues.

A gentleman belonging to Prince Ragotski assured me upon his honor, that being in a coffee-house at Constantinople, the mistress ordered that he should not be served because he was an idolater. He was a Protestant, and swore to her that he adored neither host nor images. “Ah! if that is the case,” said the woman, “come to me every day, and you shall be served for nothing.”

SECTION I.

There are many kinds of ignorance; but the worst of all is that of critics, who, it is well known, are doubly bound to possess information and judgment as persons who undertake to affirm and to censure. When they pronounce erroneously, therefore, they are doubly culpable.

A man, for example, composes two large volumes upon a few pages of a valuable book which he has not understood, and in the first place examines the following words:

“The sea has covered immense tracts. . . . . The deep beds of shells which are found in Touraine and elsewhere, could have been deposited there only by the sea.”

True, if those beds of shells exist in fact; but the critic ought to be aware that the author himself discovered, or thought he had discovered, that those regular beds of shells have no existence.

He ought to have said:

“The universal Deluge is related by Moses with the agreement of all nations.”

1. Because the Pentateuch was long unknown, not only to the other nations of the world, but to the Jews themselves.

2. Because only a single copy of the law was found at the bottom of an old chest in the time of King Josiah.

3. Because that book was lost during the captivity.

4. Because it was restored by Esdras.

5. Because it was always unknown to every other nation till the time of its being translated by the Seventy.

6. Because, even after the translation ascribed to the Seventy, we have not a single author among the Gentiles who quotes a single passage from this book, down to the time of Longinus, who lived under the Emperor Aurelian.

7. Because no other nation ever admitted a universal deluge before Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”; and even Ovid himself does not make his deluge extend beyond the Mediterranean.

8. Because St. Augustine expressly acknowledges that the universal deluge was unknown to all antiquity.

9. Because the first deluge of which any notice is taken by the Gentiles, is that mentioned by Berosus, and which he fixes at about four thousand four hundred years before our vulgar era; which deluge did not extend beyond the Euxine Sea.

10. Finally, because no monument of a universal deluge remains in any nation in the world.

In addition to all these reasons, it must be observed, that the critic did not even understand the simple state of the question. The only inquiry is, whether we have any natural proof that the sea has successively abandoned many tracts of territory? Edition: current; Page: [145] and upon this plain and mere matter-of-fact subject, M. Abbé François has taken occasion to abuse men whom he certainly neither knows nor understands. It is far better to be silent, than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.

The same critic, in order to prop up old ideas, now almost universally despised and derided, and which have not the slightest relation to Moses, thinks proper to say: “Berosus perfectly agrees with Moses in the number of generations before the Deluge.”

Be it known to you, my dear reader, that this same Berosus is the writer who informs us that the fish Oannes came out to the river Euphrates every day, to go and preach to the Chaldæans; and that the same fish wrote with one of its bones a capital book about the origin of things. Such is the writer whom the ingenious abbé brings forward as a voucher for Moses.

“Is it not evident,” he says, “that a great number of European families, transplanted to the coasts of Africa, have become, without any mixture of African blood, as black as any of the natives of the country?”

It is just the contrary of this, M. l’Abbé, that is evident. You are ignorant that the reticulum mucosum” of the negroes is black, although I have mentioned the fact times innumerable. Were you to have ever so large a number of children born to you in Guinea, of a European wife, they would not one of them have that black unctuous skin, those Edition: current; Page: [146] dark and thick lips, those round eyes, or that woolly hair, which form the specific differences of the negro race. In the same manner, were your family established in America, they would have beards, while a native American will have none. Now extricate yourself from the difficulty, with Adam and Eve only, if you can.

“Who was this ‘Melchom,’ you ask, who had taken possession of the country of God? A pleasant sort of god, certainly, whom the God of Jeremiah would carry off to be dragged into captivity.”

Ah, M. l’Abbé! you are quite smart and lively. You ask, who is this Melchom? I will immediately inform you. Melek or Melkom signified the Lord, as did Adoni or Adonai, Baal or Bel, Adad or Shadai, Eloi or Eloa. Almost all the nations of Syria gave such names to their gods; each had its lord, its protector, its god. Even the name of Jehovah was a Phœnician and proper name; this we learn from Sanchoniathon, who was certainly anterior to Moses; and also from Diodorus.

We well know that God is equally the God, the absolute master, of Egyptians and Jews, of all men and all worlds; but it is not in this light that he is represented when Moses appears before Pharaoh. He never speaks to that monarch but in the name of the God of the Hebrews, as an ambassador delivers the orders of the king his master. He speaks so little in the name of the Master of all Nature, that Pharaoh replies to him, “I do not know him.” Moses Edition: current; Page: [147] performs prodigies in the name of this God; but the magicians of Pharaoh perform precisely the same prodigies in the name of their own. Hitherto both sides are equal; the contest is, who shall be deemed most powerful, not who shall be deemed alone powerful. At length, the God of the Hebrews decidedly carries the day; he manifests a power by far the greater; but not the only power. Thus, speaking after the manner of men, Pharaoh’s incredulity is very excusable. It is the same incredulity as Montezuma exhibited before Cortes, and Atahualpa before the Pizarros.

When Joshua called together the Jews, he said to them: “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve, whether the gods which your father served, that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The people, therefore, had already given themselves up to other gods, and might serve whom they pleased.

When the family of Micah, in Ephraim, hire a Levitical priest to conduct the service of a strange god, when the whole tribe of Dan serve the same god as the family of Micah; when a grandson of Moses himself becomes a hired priest of the same god—no one murmurs; every one has his own god, undisturbed; and the grandson of Moses becomes an idolater without any one’s reviling or accusing him. At that time, therefore, every one chose his own local god, his own protector.

The same Jews, after the death of Gideon, adore Baal-berith, which means precisely the same as Adonai—the lord, the protector; they change their protector.

Adonai, in the time of Joshua, becomes master of the mountains; but he is unable to overcome the inhabitants of the valleys, because they had chariots armed with scythes. Can anything more correctly represent the idea of a local deity, a god who is strong in one place, but not so in another?

Jephthah, the son of Gilead, and a concubine, says to the Moabites: “Wilt thou not possess what Chemosh, thy god, giveth thee to possess? So, whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess.”

It is then perfectly proved, that the undistinguishing Jews, although chosen by the God of the universe, regarded him notwithstanding as a mere local god, the god of a particular territory of people, like the god of the Amorites, or that of the Moabites, of the mountains or of the valleys.

It is unfortunately very evident that it was perfectly indifferent to the grandson of Moses whether he served Micah’s god or his grandfather’s. It is clear, and cannot but be admitted, that the Jewish religion was not formed, that it was not uniform, till the time of Esdras; and we must, even then, except the Samaritans.

You may now, probably, have some idea of the meaning of this lord or god Melchom. I am not in Edition: current; Page: [149] favor of his cause—the Lord deliver me from such folly!—but when you remark, “the god which Jeremiah threatened to carry into slavery must be a curious and pleasant sort of deity,” I will answer you, M. l’Abbé, with this short piece of advice:—“From your own house of glass do not throw stones at those of your neighbors.”

They were the Jews who were at that very time carried off in slavery to Babylon. It was the good Jeremiah himself who was accused of being bribed by the court of Babylon, and of having consequently prophesied in his favor. It was he who was the object of public scorn and hatred, and who it is thought ended his career by being stoned to death by the Jews themselves. This Jeremiah, be assured from me, was never before understood to be a joker.

The God of the Jews, I again repeat, is the God of all nature. I expressly make this repetition that you may have no ground for pretending ignorance of it, and that you may not accuse me before the ecclesiastical court. I still, however, assert and maintain, that the stupid Jews frequently knew no other God than a local one.

“It is not natural to attribute the tides to the phases of the moon. They are not the high tides which occur at the full moon, that are ascribed to the phases of that planet.” Here we see ignorance of a different description.

It occasionally happens that persons of a certain description are so much ashamed of the part they Edition: current; Page: [150] play in the world, that they are desirous of disguising themselves sometimes as wits, and sometimes as philosophers.

In the first place, it is proper to inform M. l’Abbé, that nothing is more natural than to attribute an effect to that which is always followed by this effect. If a particular wind is constantly followed by rain, it is natural to attribute the rain to the wind. Now, over all the shores of the ocean, the tides are always higher in the moon’s “syzygies”—if you happen to know the meaning of the term—than at its quarterings. The moon rises every day later; the tide is also every day later. The nearer the moon approaches our zenith, the greater is the tide; the nearer the moon approaches its perigee, the higher the tide still rises. These experiences and various others, these invariable correspondences with the phases of the moon, were the foundation of the ancient and just opinion, that that body is a principal cause of the flux and reflux of the ocean.

After numerous centuries appeared the great Newton—Are you at all acquainted with Newton? Did you ever hear, that after calculating the square of the progress of the moon in its orbit during the space of a minute, and dividing that square by the diameter of that orbit, he found the quotient to be fifteen feet? that he thence demonstrated that the moon gravitates towards the earth three thousand six hundred times less than if she were near the earth? that he afterwards demonstrated that its attractive Edition: current; Page: [151] force is the cause of three-fourths of the elevation of the sea by the tide, and that the force of the sun is the cause of the remaining fourth? You appear perfectly astonished. You never read anything like this in the “Christian Pedagogue.” Endeavor henceforward, both you and the porters of your parish, never to speak about things of which you have not even the slightest idea.

You can form no conception of the injury you do to religion by your ignorance, and still more by your reasonings. In order to preserve in the world the little faith that remains in it, it would be the most judicious measure possible to restrain you, and such as you, from writing and publishing in behalf of it.

I should absolutely make your astonished eyes stare almost to starting, were I to inform you, that this same Newton was persuaded that Samuel is the author of the Pentateuch. I do not mean to say that he demonstrated it in the same way as he calculated and deduced the power of gravitation. Learn, then, to doubt and to be modest. I believe in the Pentateuch, remember; but I believe, also, that you have printed and published the most enormous absurdities. I could here transcribe a large volume of instances of your own individual ignorance and imbecility, and many of those of your brethren and colleagues. I shall not, however, take the trouble of doing it. Let us go on with our questions.

SECTION II.

I am ignorant how I was formed, and how I was born. I was perfectly ignorant, for a quarter of my life, of the reasons of all that I saw, heard, and felt, and was a mere parrot, talking by rote in imitation of other parrots.

When I looked about me and within me, I conceived that something existed from all eternity. Since there are beings actually existing, I concluded that there is some being necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus the first step I took to extricate myself from my ignorance, overpassed the limits of all ages—the boundaries of time.

But when I was desirous of proceeding in this infinite career, I could neither perceive a single path, nor clearly distinguish a single object; and from the flight which I took to contemplate eternity, I have fallen back into the abyss of my original ignorance.

I have seen what is denominated “matter,” from the star Sirius, and the stars of the “milky way,” as distant from Sirius as that is from us, to the smallest atom that can be perceived by the microscope; and yet I know not what matter is.

Light, which has enabled me to see all these different and distant beings, is perfectly unknown to me; I am able by the help of a prism to anatomize this light, and divide it into seven pencillings of rays; but I cannot divide these pencillings themselves; I know not of what they are composed. Light resembles Edition: current; Page: [153] matter in having motion and impinging upon objects, but it does not tend towards a common centre like all other bodies; on the contrary it flies off by some invincible power from the centre, while all matter gravitates towards a centre. Light appears to be penetrable, and matter is impenetrable. Is light matter, or is it not matter? What is it? With what numberless properties can it be invested? I am completely ignorant.

This substance so brilliant, so rapid, and so unknown, and those other substances which float in the immensity of space—seeming to be infinite—are they eternal? I know nothing on the subject. Has a necessary being, sovereignly intelligent, created them from nothing, or has he only arranged them? Did he produce this order in time, or before time? Alas! what is this time, of which I am speaking? I am incapable of defining it. O God, it is Thou alone by whom I can be instructed, for I am neither enlightened by the darkness of other men nor by my own.

Mice and moles have their resemblances of structure, in certain respects, to the human frame. What difference can it make to the Supreme Being whether animals like ourselves, or such as mice, exist upon this globe revolving in space with innumerable globes around it?

Why have we being? Why are there any beings? What is sensation? How have I received it? What connection is there between the air which vibrates on Edition: current; Page: [154] my ear and the sensation of sound? between this body and the sensation of colors? I am perfectly ignorant, and shall ever remain ignorant.

What is thought? Where does it reside? How is it formed? Who gives me thoughts during my sleep? Is it in virtue of my will that I think? No, for always during sleep, and often when I am awake, I have ideas against, or at least without, my will. These ideas, long forgotten, long put away, and banished in the lumber room of my brain, issue from it without any effort or volition of mine, and suddenly present themselves to my memory, which had, perhaps, previously made various vain attempts to recall them.

External objects have not the power of forming ideas in me, for nothing can communicate what it does not possess; I am well assured that they are not given me by myself, for they are produced without my orders. Who then produces them in me? Whence do they come? Whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms! What invisible hand produces and disperses you?

Why, of all the various tribes of animals, has man alone the mad ambition of domineering over his fellow? Why and how could it happen, that out of a thousand millions of men, more than nine hundred and ninety-nine have been sacrificed to this mad ambition?

How is it that reason is a gift so precious that we would none of us lose it for all the pomp or Edition: current; Page: [155] wealth of the world, and yet at the same time that it has merely served to render us, in almost all cases, the most miserable of beings? Whence comes it, that with a passionate attachment to truth, we are always yielding to the most palpable impostures?

Why do the vast tribes of India, deceived and enslaved by the bonzes, trampled upon by the descendant of a Tartar, bowed down by labor, groaning in misery, assailed by diseases, and a mark for all the scourges and plagues of life, still fondly cling to that life? Whence comes evil, and why does it exist?

O atoms of a day! O companions in littleness, born like me to suffer everything, and be ignorant of everything!—are there in reality any among you so completely mad as to imagine you know all this, or that you can solve all these difficulties? Certainly there can be none. No; in the bottom of your heart you feel your own nothingness, as completely as I do justice to mine. But you are nevertheless arrogant and conceited enough to be eager for our embracing your vain systems; and not having the power to tyrannize over our bodies, you aim at becoming the tyrants of our souls.

SECTION I.

Imagination is the power which every being, endowed with perception and reason, is conscious he possesses of representing to himself sensible objects. This faculty is dependent upon memory. We Edition: current; Page: [156] see men, animals, gardens, which perceptions are introduced by the senses; the memory retains them, and the imagination compounds them. On this account the ancient Greeks called the muses, “the daughters of memory.”

It is of great importance to observe, that these faculties of receiving ideas, retaining them, and compounding them, are among the many things of which we can give no explanation. These invisible springs of our being are of nature’s workmanship, and not of our own.

Perhaps this gift of God, imagination, is the sole instrument with which we compound ideas, even those which are abstract and metaphysical.

You pronounce the word “triangle;” but you merely utter a sound, if you do not represent to yourself the image of some particular triangle. You certainly have no idea of a triangle but in consequence of having seen triangles, if you have the gift of sight, or of having felt them, if you are blind. You cannot think of a triangle in general, unless your imagination figures to itself, at least in a confused way, some particular triangle. You calculate; but it is necessary that you should represent to yourself units added to each other, or your mind will be totally insensible to the operation of your hand.

You utter the abstract terms—greatness, truth, justice, finite, infinite; but is the term “greatness” thus uttered, anything more or less, than a mere sound, from the action of your tongue, producing Edition: current; Page: [157] vibrations in the air, unless you have the image of some greatness in your mind? What meaning is there in the words “truth” and “falsehood,” if you have not perceived, by means of your senses, that some particular thing which you were told existed, did exist in fact; and that another of which you were told the same, did not exist? And, is it not from this experience, that you frame the general idea of truth and falsehood? And, when asked what you mean by these words, can you help figuring to yourself some sensible image, occasioning you to recollect that you have sometimes been told, as a fact, what really and truly happened, and very often what was not so?

Have you any other notion of just and unjust, than what is derived from particular actions, which appeared to you respectively of these descriptions? You began in your childhood by learning to read under some master: you endeavored to spell well, but you really spelled ill: your master chastised you: this appeared to you very unjust. You have observed a laborer refused his wages, and innumerable instances of the like nature. Is the abstract idea of just and unjust anything more than facts of this character confusedly mixed up in your imagination?

Is “finite” anything else in your conception than the image of some limited quantity or extent? Is “infinite” anything but the image of the same extent or quantity enlarged indefinitely? Do not all these operations take place in your mind just in the same Edition: current; Page: [158] manner as you read a book? You read circumstances and events recorded in it, and never think at the time of the alphabetical characters, without which, however, you would have no notion of these events and circumstances. Attend to this point for a single moment, and then you will distinctly perceive the essential importance of those characters over which your eye previously glided without thinking of them. In the same manner all your reasonings, all your accumulations of knowledge are founded on images traced in your brain. You have, in general, no distinct perception or recollection of them; but give the case only a moment’s attention, and you will then clearly discern, that these images are the foundation of all the notions you possess. It may be worth the reader’s while to dwell a little upon this idea, to extend it, and to rectify it.

The celebrated Addison, in the eleven essays on the imagination with which he has enriched the volumes of the “Spectator,” begins with observing, that “the sense of sight is the only one which furnishes the imagination with ideas.” Yet certainly it must be allowed, that the other senses contribute some share. A man born blind still hears, in his imagination, the harmony which no longer vibrates upon his ear; he still continues listening as in a trance or dream; the objects which have resisted or yielded to his hands produce a similar effect in his head or mind. It is true that the sense of sight alone supplies images; and as it is a kind of touching Edition: current; Page: [159] or feeling which extends even to the distance of the stars, its immense diffusion enriches the imagination more than all the other senses put together.

There are two descriptions of imagination; one consists in retaining a simple impression of objects; the other arranges the images received, and combines them in endless diversity. The first has been called passive imagination, and the second active. The passive scarcely advances beyond memory, and is common to man and to animals. From this power or faculty it arises, that the sportsman and his dog both follow the hunted game in their dreams, that they both hear the sound of the horn, and the one shouts and the other barks in their sleep. Both men and brutes do something more than recollect on these occasions, for dreams are never faithful and accurate images. This species of imagination compounds objects, but it is not the understanding which acts in it; it is the memory laboring under error.

This passive imagination certainly requires no assistance from volition, whether we are asleep or awake; it paints, independently of ourselves, what our eyes have seen; it hears what our ears have heard, and touches what we have touched; it adds to it or takes from it. It is an internal sense, acting necessarily, and accordingly there is nothing more common, in speaking of any particular individual, than to say, “he has no command over his imagination.”

In this respect we cannot but see, and be astonished at the slight share of power we really possess. Whence comes it, that occasionally in dreams we compose most coherent and eloquent discourses, and verses far superior to what we should write on the same subject if perfectly awake?—that we even solve complicated problems in mathematics? Here certainly there are very combined and complex ideas in no degree dependent on ourselves. But if it is incontestable that coherent ideas are formed within us independently of our will in sleep, who can safely assert that they are not produced in the same manner when we are awake? Is there a man living who foresees the idea which he will form in his mind the ensuing minute? Does it not seem as if ideas were given to us as much as the motions of our fibres; and had Father Malebranche merely maintained the principle that all ideas are given by God, could any one have successfully opposed him?

This passive faculty, independent of reflection, is the source of our passions and our errors; far from being dependent on the will, the will is determined by it. It urges us towards the objects which it paints before us, or diverts us from them, just according to the nature of the exhibition thus made of them by it. The image of a danger inspires fear; that of a benefit excites desire. It is this faculty alone which produces the enthusiasm of glory, of party, of fanaticism; it is this which produces so Edition: current; Page: [161] many mental alienations and disorders, making weak brains, when powerfully impressed, conceive that their bodies are metamorphosed into various animals, that they are possessed by demons, that they are under the infernal dominion of witchcraft, and that they are in reality going to unite with sorcerers in the worship of the devil, because they have been told that they were going to do so. This species of slavish imagination, which generally is the lot of ignorant people, has been the instrument which the imagination of some men has employed to acquire and retain power. It is, moreover, this passive imagination of brains easily excited and agitated, which sometimes produces on the bodies of children evident marks of the impression received by the mother; examples of this kind are indeed innumerable, and the writer of this article has seen some so striking that, were he to deny them, he must contradict his own ocular demonstration. This effect of imagination is incapable of being explained; but every other operation of nature is equally so; we have no clearer idea how we have perceptions, how we retain them, or how we combine them. There is an infinity between us and the springs or first principles of our nature.

Active imagination is that which joins combination and reflection to memory. It brings near to us many objects at a distance; it separates those mixed together, compounds them, and changes them; it seems to create, while in fact it merely arranges; Edition: current; Page: [162] for it has not been given to man to make ideas—he is only able to modify them.

This active imagination then is in reality a faculty as independent of ourselves as passive imagination; and one proof of its not depending upon ourselves is that, if we propose to a hundred persons, equally ignorant, to imagine a certain new machine, ninety-nine of them will form no imagination at all about it, notwithstanding all their endeavors. If the hundredth imagines something, is it not clear that it is a particular gift or talent which he has received? It is this gift which is called “genius”; it is in this that we recognize something inspired and divine.

This gift of nature is an imagination inventive in the arts—in the disposition of a picture, in the structure of a poem. It cannot exist without memory, but it uses memory as an instrument with which it produces all its performances.

In consequence of having seen that a large stone which the hand of man could not move, might be moved by means of a staff, active imagination invented levers, and afterwards compound moving forces, which are no other than disguised levers. It is necessary to figure in the mind the machines with their various effects and processes, in order to the actual production of them.

It is not this description of imagination that is called by the vulgar the enemy of judgment. On the contrary, it can only act in union with profound Edition: current; Page: [163] judgment; it incessantly combines its pictures, corrects its errors, and raises all its edifices according to calculation and upon a plan. There is an astonishing imagination in practical mathematics; and Archimedes had at least as much imagination as Homer. It is by this power that a poet creates his personages, appropriates to them characters and manners, invents his fable, presents the exposition of it, constructs its complexity, and prepares its development; a labor, all this, requiring judgment the most profound and the most delicately discriminative.

A very high degree of art is necessary in all these imaginative inventions, and even in romances. Those which are deficient in this quality are neglected and despised by all minds of natural good taste. An invariably sound judgment pervades all the fables of Æsop. They will never cease to be the delight of mankind. There is more imagination in the “Fairy Tales”; but these fantastic imaginations, destitute of order and good sense, can never be in high esteem; they are read childishly, and must be condemned by reason.

The second part of active imagination is that of detail, and it is this to which the world distinguishingly applies the term. It is this which constitutes the charm of conversation, for it is constantly presenting to the mind what mankind are most fond of—new objects. It paints in vivid colors what men of cold and reserved temperament hardly Edition: current; Page: [164] sketch; it employs the most striking circumstances; it cites the most appropriate examples; and when this talent displays itself in union with the modesty and simplicity which become and adorn all talents, it conciliates to itself an empire over society. Man is so completely a machine that wine sometimes produces this imagination, as intoxication destroys it. This is a topic to excite at once humiliation and wonder. How can it happen that a small quantity of a certain liquor, which would prevent a man from effecting an important calculation, shall at the same time bestow on him the most brilliant ideas?

It is in poetry particularly that this imagination of detail and expression ought to prevail. It is always agreeable, but there it is necessary. In Homer, Virgil, and Horace, almost all is imagery, without even the reader’s perceiving it. Tragedy requires fewer images, fewer picturesque expressions and sublime metaphors and allegories than the epic poem and the ode; but the greater part of these beauties, under discreet and able management, produce an admirable effect in tragedy; they should never, however, be forced, stilted, or gigantic.

Active imagination, which constitutes men poets, confers on them enthusiasm, according to the true meaning of the Greek word, that internal emotion which in reality agitates the mind and transforms the author into the personage whom he introduces as the speaker; for such is the true enthusiasm, which consists in emotion and imagery. An author Edition: current; Page: [165] under this influence says precisely what would be said by the character he is exhibiting.

Less imagination is admissible in eloquence than in poetry. The reason is obvious—ordinary discourse should be less remote from common ideas. The orator speaks the language of all; the foundation of the poet’s performance is fiction. Accordingly, imagination is the essence of his art; to the orator it is only an accessory.

Particular traits or touches of imagination have, it is observed, added great beauties to painting. That artifice especially is often cited, by which the artist covers with a veil the head of Agamemnon at the sacrifice of Iphigenia; an expedient, nevertheless, far less beautiful than if the painter had possessed the secret of exhibiting in the countenance of Agamemnon the conflict between the grief of a father, the majesty of a monarch, and the resignation of a good man to the will of heaven; as Rubens had the skill to paint in the looks and attitude of Mary de Medici the pain of childbirth, the joy of being delivered of a son, and the maternal affection with which she looks upon her child.

In general, the imaginations of painters when they are merely ingenious, contribute more to exhibit the learning in the artist than to increase the beauty of the art. All the allegorical compositions in the world are not worth the masterly execution and fine finish which constitute the true value of paintings.

In all the arts, the most beautiful imagination is always the most natural. The false is that which brings together objects incompatible; the extravagant paints objects which have no analogy, allegory, or resemblance. A strong imagination explores everything to the bottom; a weak one skims over the surface; the placid one reposes in agreeable pictures; the ardent one piles images upon images. The judicious or sage imagination is that which employs with discrimination all these different characters, but which rarely admits the extravagant and always rejects the false.

If memory nourished and exercised be the source of all imagination, that same faculty of memory, when overcharged, becomes the extinction of it. Accordingly, the man whose head is full of names and dates does not possess that storehouse of materials from which he can derive compound images. Men occupied in calculation, or with intricate matters of business, have generally a very barren imagination.

When imagination is remarkably stirring and ardent, it may easily degenerate into madness; but it has been observed that this morbid affection of the organs of the brain more frequently attaches to those passive imaginations which are limited to receiving strong impressions of objects than to those fervid and active ones which collect and combine ideas; for this active imagination always requires Edition: current; Page: [167] the association of judgment, the other is independent of it.

It is not perhaps useless to add to this essay, that by the words perception, memory, imagination, and judgment, we do not mean distinct and separate organs, one of which has the gift of perceiving, another of recollecting, the third of imagining, and the last of judging. Men are more inclined, than some are aware, to consider these as completely distinct and separate faculties. It is, however, one and the same being that performs all these operations, which we know only by their effects, without being able to know anything of that being itself.

SECTION II.

Brutes possess imagination as well as ourselves; your dog, for example, hunts in his dreams. “Objects are painted in the fancy,” says Descartes, as others have also said. Certainly they are; but what is the fancy, and how are objects painted in it? Is it with “the subtle matter”? “How can I tell” is the appropriate answer to all questions thus affecting the first principles of human organization.

Nothing enters the understanding without an image. It was necessary, in order to our obtaining the confused idea we possess of infinite space, that we should have an idea of a space of a few feet. It is necessary, in order to our having the idea of God, that the image of something more powerful than ourselves should have long dwelt upon our minds.

We do not create a single idea or image. I defy you to create one. Ariosto did not make Astolpho travel to the moon till long after he had heard of the moon, of St. John, and of the Paladins.

We make no images; we only collect and combine them. The extravagances of the “Thousand and One Nights” and the “Fairy Tales” are merely combinations. He who comprises most images in the storehouse of his memory is the person who possesses most imagination.

The difficulty is in not bringing together these images in profusion, without any selection. You might employ a whole day in representing, without any toilsome effort, and almost without any attention, a fine old man with a long beard, clothed in ample drapery, and borne in the midst of a cloud resting on chubby children with beautiful wings attached to their shoulders, or upon an eagle of immense size and grandeur; all the gods and animals surrounding him; golden tripods running to arrive at his council; wheels revolving by their own self-motion, advancing as they revolve; having four faces covered with eyes, ears, tongues, and noses; and between these tripods and wheels an immense multitude of dead resuscitated by the crash of thunder; the celestial spheres dancing and joining in harmonious concert, etc. The lunatic asylum abounds in such imaginations.

We may, in dealing with the subject of imagination distinguish:

1. The imagination which disposes of the events of a poem, romance, tragedy, or comedy, and which attaches the characters and passions to the different personages. This requires the profoundest judgment and the most exquisite knowledge of the human heart; talents absolutely indispensable; but with which, however, nothing has yet been done but merely laying the foundation of the edifice.

2. The imagination which gives to all these personages the eloquence or diction appropriate to their rank, suitable to their station. Here is the great art and difficulty; but even after doing this they have not done enough.

3. The imagination in the expression, by which every word paints an image in the mind without astonishing or overwhelming it; as in Virgil:

• . . . . Remigium alarum.
• —Æneid, vi, 19.

• Mœrentem abjungens fraterna morte juvencum.
• —Georgics, iii, 517.

• . . . . Velorum pandimus alas.
• —Æneid, iii, 520.

• Pendent circum oscula nati.
• —Georgics, ii, 523.

• Immortale jecur tundens fecundaque pœnis
• Viscera.
• —Æneid, vi, 598-599.

• Et caligantem nigra formidine lucum.
• —Georgics, iv, 468.

• Fata vocant, conditque natantia lumina somnus.
• —Georgics, iv, 496.

Virgil is full of these picturesque expressions, with which he enriches the Latin language, and which are so difficult to be translated into our European jargons—the crooked and lame offspring of Edition: current; Page: [170] a well-formed and majestic sire, but which, however, have some merit of their own, and have done some tolerably good things in their way.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. An inventor must begin with painting correctly in his mind the figure, the machine invented by him, and its properties or effects. We repeat there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.

As the imagination of a great mathematician must possess extreme precision, so must that of a great poet be exceedingly correct and chaste. He must never present images that are incompatible with each other, incoherent, highly exaggerated, or unsuitable to the nature of the subject.

The great fault of some writers who have appeared since the age of Louis XIV. is attempting a constant display of imagination, and fatiguing the reader by the profuse abundance of far-fetched images and double rhymes, one-half of which may be pronounced absolutely useless. It is this which at length brought into neglect and obscurity a number of small poems, such as “Ver Vert,” “The Chartreuse,” and “The Shades,” which at one period possessed considerable celebrity. Mere sounding superfluity soon finds oblivion.

• Omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat.
• —Horace, Art of Poetry, 837.

The active and the passive imagination have been distinguished in the “Encyclopædia.” The active is Edition: current; Page: [171] that of which we have treated. It is the talent of forming new pictures out of all those contained in our memory.

The passive is scarcely anything beyond memory itself, even in a brain under strong emotion. A man of an active and fervid imagination, a preacher of the League in France, or a Puritan in England, harangues the populace with a voice of thunder, with an eye of fire, and the gesture of a demoniac, and represents Jesus Christ as demanding justice of the Eternal Father for the new wounds he has received from the royalists, for the nails which have been driven for the second time through his feet and hands by these impious miscreants. Avenge, O God the Father, avenge the blood of God the Son; march under the banner of the Holy Spirit; it was formerly a dove, but is now an eagle bearing thunder! The passive imaginations, roused and stimulated by these images, by the voice, by the action of those sanguinary empirics, urge the maddened hearers to rush with fury from the chapel or meeting house, to kill their opponents and get themselves hanged.

Persons of passive imaginations, for the sake of high and violent excitement, go sometimes to the sermon and sometimes to the play; sometimes to the place of execution; and sometimes even to what they suppose to be the midnight and appalling meetings of presumed sorcerers.

SECTION I.

So many philosophical works have been written on the nature of impost, that we need say very little about it here. It is true that nothing is less philosophical than this subject; but it may enter into moral philosophy by representing to a superintendent of finances or to a Turkish teftardar that it accords not with universal morals to take his neighbor’s money; and that all receivers and custom-house officers and collectors of taxes are cursed in the gospel.

Cursed as they are, it must, however, be agreed that it is impossible for society to subsist unless each member pays something towards the expenses of it; and as, since every one ought to pay, it is necessary to have a receiver, we do not see why this receiver is to be cursed and regarded as an idolater. There is certainly no idolatry in receiving money of guests to-day for their supper.

In republics, and states which with the name of kingdoms are really republics, every individual is taxed according to his means and to the wants of society.

In despotic kingdoms—or to speak more politely—in monarchical states, it is not quite the same—the nation is taxed without consulting it. An agriculturist who has twelve hundred livres of Edition: current; Page: [175] revenue is quite astonished when four hundred are demanded of him. There are several who are even obliged to pay more than half of what they receive.

The cultivator demands why the half of his fortune is taken from him to pay soldiers, when the hundredth part would suffice. He is answered that, besides the soldiers, he must pay for luxury and the arts; that nothing is lost; and that in Persia towns and villages are assigned to the queen to pay for her girdles, slippers, and pins.

He replies that he knows nothing of the history of Persia, and that he should be very indignant if half his fortune were taken for girdles, pins, and shoes; that he would furnish them from a better market, and that he endures a grievous imposition.

He is made to hear reason by being put into a dungeon, and having his goods put up to sale. If he resists the tax-collectors whom the New Testament has damned, he is hanged, which renders all his neighbors infinitely accommodating.

Were this money employed by the sovereign in importing spices from India, coffee from Mocha, English and Arabian horses, silks from the Levant, and gew-gaws from China, it is clear that in a few years there would not remain a single sous in the kingdom. The taxes, therefore, serve to maintain the manufacturers; and so far what is poured into the coffers of the prince returns to the cultivators. They suffer, they complain, and other parts of the state suffer and complain also; but at the end of the Edition: current; Page: [176] year they find that every one has labored and lived some way or other.

If by chance a clown goes to the capital, he sees with astonishment a fine lady dressed in a gown of silk embroidered with gold, drawn in a magnificent carriage by two valuable horses, and followed by four lackeys dressed in a cloth of twenty francs an ell. He addresses himself to one of these lackeys, and says to him: “Sir, where does this lady get money to make such an expensive appearance?” “My friend,” says the lackey, “the king allows her a pension of forty thousand livres.” “Alas,” says the rustic, “it is my village which pays this pension.” “Yes,” answers the servant; “but the silk that you have gathered and sold has made the stuff in which she is dressed; my cloth is a part of thy sheep’s wool; my baker has made my bread of thy corn; thou hast sold at market the very fowls that we eat; thus thou seest that the pension of madame returns to thee and thy comrades.”

The peasant does not absolutely agree with the axioms of this philosophical lackey; but one proof that there is something true in his answer is that the village exists, and produces children who also complain, and who bring forth children again to complain.

SECTION II.

If we were obliged to read all the edicts of taxation, and all the books written against them, that would be the greatest tax of all.

We well know that taxes are necessary, and that the malediction pronounced in the gospel only regards those who abuse their employment to harass the people. Perhaps the copyist forgot a word, as for instance the epithet pravus. It might have meant pravus publicanus; this word was much more necessary, as the general malediction is a formal contradiction to the words put into the mouth of Jesus Christ: “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.” Certainly those who collected the dues of Cæsar ought not to have been held in horror. It would have been, at once, insulting the order of Roman Knights and the emperor himself; nothing could have been more ill-advised.

In all civilized countries the imposts are great, because the charges of the state are heavy. In Spain the articles of commerce sent to Cadiz, and thence to America, pay more than thirty per cent. before their transit is accomplished.

In England all duty upon importation is very considerable; however, it is paid without murmuring; there is even a pride in paying it. A merchant boasts of putting four or five thousand guineas a year into the public treasury. The richer a country is, the heavier are the taxes. Speculators would have taxes fall on landed productions only. What! having sown a field of flax, which will bring me two hundred crowns, by which flax a great manufacturer will gain two hundred thousand crowns by converting it into lace—must this manufacturer pay nothing, Edition: current; Page: [178] and shall I pay all, because it is produced by my land? The wife of this manufacturer will furnish the queen and princesses with fine point of Alençon, she will be patronized; her son will become intendant of justice, police, and finance, and will augment my taxes in my miserable old age. Ah! gentlemen speculators, you calculate badly; you are unjust.

The great point is that an entire people be not despoiled by an army of alguazils, in order that a score of town or court leeches may feast upon its blood.

The Duke de Sully relates, in his “Political Economy,” that in 1585 there were just twenty lords interested in the leases of farms, to whom the highest bidders gave three million two hundred and forty-eight thousand crowns.

It was still worse under Charles IX., and Francis I., and Louis XIII. There was not less depredation in the minority of Louis XIV. France, notwithstanding so many wounds, is still in being. Yes; but if it had not received them it would have been in better health. It was thus with several other states.

SECTION III.

It is just that those who enjoy the advantages of a government should support the charges. The ecclesiastics and monks, who possess great property, for this reason should contribute to the taxes in all countries, like other citizens. In the times which Edition: current; Page: [none] Edition: current; Page: [none] Edition: current; Page: [179] we call barbarous, great benefices and abbeys were taxed in France to the third of their revenue.

The Duke of Sully.

By a statute of the year 1188, Philip Augustus imposed a tenth of the revenues of all benefices. Philip le Bel caused the fifth, afterwards the fifteenth, and finally the twentieth part, to be paid, of all the possessions of the clergy.

King John, by a statute of March 12, 1355, taxed bishops, abbots, chapters, and all ecclesiastics generally, to the tenth of the revenue of their benefices and patrimonies. The same prince confirmed this tax by two other statutes, one of March 3, the other of Dec. 28, 1358.

In the letters-patent of Charles V., of June 22, 1372, it is decreed, that the churchmen shall pay taxes and other real and personal imposts. These letters-patent were renewed by Charles VI. in the year 1390.

How is it that these laws have been abolished, while so many monstrous customs and sanguinary decrees have been preserved? The clergy, indeed, pay a tax under the name of a free gift, and, as it is known, it is principally the poorest and most useful part of the church—the curates (rectors)—who pay this tax. But, why this difference and inequality of contributions between the citizens of the same state? Why do those who enjoy the greatest prerogatives, and who are sometimes useless to the public, pay less than the laborer, who is so necessary? The Republic of Venice supplies rules on this Edition: current; Page: [180] subject, which should serve as examples to all Europe.

SECTION IV.

Churchmen have not only pretended to be exempt from taxes, they have found the means in several provinces to tax the people, and make them pay as a legitimate right.

In several countries, monks having seized the tithes to the prejudice of the rectors, the peasants are obliged to tax themselves, to furnish their pastors with subsistence; and thus in several villages, and above all, in Franche-Comté, besides the tithes which the parishioners pay to the monks or to chapters, they further pay three or four measures of corn to their curates or rectors. This tax was called the right of harvest in some provinces, and boisselage in others.

It is no doubt right that curates should be well paid, but it would be much better to give them a part of the tithes which the monks have taken from them, than to overcharge the poor cultivator.

Since the king of France fixed the competent allowances for the curates, by his edict of the month of May, 1768, and charged the tithe-collectors with paying them, the peasants should no longer be held to pay a second tithe, a tax to which they only voluntarily submitted at a time when the influence and violence of the monks had taken from their pastors all means of subsistence.

The king has abolished this second tithe in Edition: current; Page: [181] Poitou, by letters-patent, registered by the Parliament of Paris July 11, 1769. It would be well worthy of the justice and beneficence of his majesty to make a similar law for other provinces, which are in the same situation as those of Poitou, Franche-Comté, etc.

Of the Infinite in Number.

We have adroitly defined the infinite in arithmetic by a love-knot, in this manner ∞; but we possess not therefore a clearer notion of it. This infinity is not like the others, a powerlessness of reaching a termination. We call the infinite in quantity any number soever, which surpasses the utmost number we are able to imagine.

When we seek the infinitely small, we divide, and call that infinitely small which is less than the least assignable quantity. It is only another name for incapacity.

Is Matter Infinitely Divisible?

This question brings us back again precisely to our inability of finding the remotest number. In thought we are able to divide a grain of sand, but in Edition: current; Page: [196] imagination only; and the incapacity of eternally dividing this grain is called infinity.

It is true, that matter is not always practically divisible, and if the last atom could be divided into two, it would no longer be the least; or if the least, it would not be divisible; or if divisible, what is the germ or origin of things? These are all abstruse queries.

Of the Universe.

Is the universe bounded—is its extent immense—are the suns and planets without number? What advantage has the space which contains suns and planets, over the space which is void of them? Whether space be an existence or not, what is the space which we occupy, preferable to other space?

If our material heaven be not infinite, it is but a point in general extent. If it is infinite, it is an infinity to which something can always be added by the imagination.

Of the Infinite in Geometry.

We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads. It means, however, nothing more than that a square larger than any assignable square, surpasses a line larger than any assignable line, and bears no proportion to it.

It is a mode of operating, a mode of working geometrically, and the word infinite is a mere symbol.

Of Infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness.

In the same manner, as we cannot form any positive idea of the infinite in duration, number, and extension, are we unable to form one in respect to physical and moral power.

We can easily conceive, that a powerful being has modified matter, caused worlds to circulate in space, and formed animals, vegetables, and metals. We are led to this idea by the perception of the want of power on the part of these beings to form themselves. We are also forced to allow, that the Great Being exists eternally by His own power, since He cannot have sprung from nothing; but we discover not so easily His infinity in magnitude, power, and moral attributes.

How are we to conceive infinite extent in a being called simple? and if he be uncompounded, what notions can we form of a simple being? We know God by His works, but we cannot understand Him by His Nature. If it is evident that we cannot understand His nature, is it not equally so, that we must remain ignorant of His attributes?

When we say that His power is infinite, do we mean anything more than that it is very great? Aware of the existence of pyramids of the height of six hundred feet, we can conceive them of the altitude of 600,000 feet.

Nothing can limit the power of the Eternal Being existing necessarily of Himself. Agreed: no antagonists circumscribe Him; but how convince me that He is not circumscribed by His own nature? Has all that has been said on this great subject been demonstrated?

We speak of His moral attributes, but we only judge of them by our own; and it is impossible to do otherwise. We attribute to Him justice, goodness, etc., only from the ideas we collect from the small degree of justice and goodness existing among ourselves. But, in fact, what connection is there between our qualities so uncertain and variable, and those of the Supreme Being?

Our idea of justice is only that of not allowing our own interest to usurp over the interest of another. The bread which a wife has kneaded out of the flour produced from the wheat which her husband has sown, belongs to her. A hungry savage snatches away her bread, and the woman exclaims against such enormous injustice. The savage quietly answers that nothing is more just, and that it was not for him and his family to expire of famine for the sake of an old woman.

At all events, the infinite justice we attribute to God can but little resemble the contradictory notions of justice of this woman and this savage; and yet, when we say that God is just, we only pronounce these words agreeably to our own ideas of justice.

We know of nothing belonging to virtue more Edition: current; Page: [199] agreeable than frankness and cordiality, but to attribute infinite frankness and cordiality to God would amount to an absurdity.

We have such confused notions of the attributes of the Supreme Being, that some schools endow Him with prescience, an infinite foresight which excludes all contingent event, while other schools contend for prescience without contingency.

Lastly, since the Sorbonne has declared that God can make a stick divested of two ends, and that the same thing can at once be and not be, we know not what to say, being in eternal fear of advancing a heresy. One thing may, however, be asserted without danger—that God is infinite, and man exceedingly bounded.

The mind of man is so extremely narrow, that Pascal has said: “Do you believe it impossible for God to be infinite and without parts? I wish to convince you of an existence infinite and indivisible—it is a mathematical point—moving everywhere with infinite swiftness, for it is in all places, and entire in every place.”

Nothing more absurd was ever asserted, and yet it has been said by the author of the “Provincial Letters.” It is sufficient to give men of sense the ague.

Influence of the Passions of Mothers upon their Fœtus.

I think, for the present, that violent affections of pregnant women produce often a prodigious effect upon the embryo within them; and I think that I shall always think so: my reason is that I have actually seen this effect. If I had no voucher of my opinion but the testimony of historians who relate the instance of Mary Stuart and her son James I., I should suspend my judgment; because between that event and myself, a series of two hundred years has intervened, Edition: current; Page: [204] a circumstance naturally tending to weaken belief; and because I can ascribe the impression made upon the brain of James to other causes than the imagination of Mary. The royal assassins, headed by her husband, rush with drawn swords into the cabinet where she is supping in company with her favorite, and kill him before her eyes; the sudden convulsion experienced by her in the interior of her frame extends to her offspring; and James I., although not deficient in courage, felt during his whole life an involuntary shuddering at the sight of a sword drawn from a scabbard. It is, however, possible that this striking and peculiar agitation might be owing to a different cause.

There was once introduced, in my presence, into the court of a woman with child, a showman who exhibited a little dancing dog with a kind of red bonnet on its head: the woman called out to have the figure removed; she declared that her child would be marked like it; she wept; and nothing could restore her confidence and peace. “This is the second time,” she said, “that such a misfortune has befallen me. My first child bears the impression of a similar terror that I was exposed to; I feel extremely weak. I know that some misfortune will reach me.” She was but too correct in her prediction. She was delivered of a child similar to the figure which had so terrified her. The bonnet was particularly distinguishable. The little creature lived two days.

In the time of Malebranche no one entertained the slightest doubt of the adventure which he relates, of the woman who, after seeing a criminal racked, was delivered of a son, all whose limbs were broken in the same places in which the malefactor had received the blows of the executioner. All the physicians at the time were agreed, that the imagination had produced this fatal effect upon her offspring.

Since that period, mankind is believed to have refined and improved; and the influence under consideration has been denied. It has been asked, in what way do you suppose that the affections of a mother should operate to derange the members of the fœtus? Of that I know nothing; but I have witnessed the fact. You new-fangled philosophers inquire and study in vain how an infant is formed, and yet require me to know how it becomes deformed.

SECTION I.

The Inquisition is an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, established by the see of Rome in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and even in the Indies, for the purpose of searching out and extirpating infidels, Jews, and heretics.

That we may not be suspected of resorting to falsehood in order to render this tribunal odious, we shall in this present article give the abstract of a Latin work on the “Origin and Progress of the Edition: current; Page: [219] Office of the Holy Inquisition,” printed by the royal press at Madrid in 1589, by order of Louis de Paramo, inquisitor in the kingdom of Sicily.

Without going back to the origin of the Inquisition, which Paramo thinks he discovers in the manner in which God is related to have proceeded against Adam and Eve, let us abide by the new law of which Jesus Christ, according to him, was the chief inquisitor. He exercised the functions of that office on the thirteenth day after his birth, by announcing to the city of Jerusalem, through the three kings or Magi, his appearance in the world, and afterwards by causing Herod to be devoured alive by worms; by driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple; and finally, by delivering Judæa into the hands of tyrants, who pillaged it in punishment of its unbelief.

After Jesus Christ, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the rest of the apostles exercised the office of inquisitor, which they transmitted to the popes and bishops, and their successors. St. Dominic having arrived in France with the bishop of Osma, of which he was archdeacon, became animated with zeal against the Albigenses, and obtained the regard and favor of Simon, Count de Montfort. Having been appointed by the pope inquisitor in Languedoc, he there founded his order, which was approved of and ratified, in 1216, by Honorius III. Under the auspices of St. Madelaine, Count Montfort took the city of Gezer by assault, and put all the inhabitants to Edition: current; Page: [220] the sword; and at Laval, four hundred Albigenses were burned at once. “In all the histories of the Inquisition that I ever read,” says Paramo, “I never met with an act of faith so eminent, or a spectacle so solemn. At the village of Cazera, sixty were burned; and in another place a hundred and eighty.”

The Inquisition was adopted by the count of Toulouse in 1229, and confided to the Dominicans by Pope Gregory IX. in 1233; Innocent IV. in 1251 established it in the whole of Italy, with the exception of Naples. At the commencement, indeed, heretics were not subjected in the Milanese to the punishment of death, which they nevertheless so richly deserved, because the popes were not sufficiently respected by the emperor Frederick, to whom that state belonged; but a short time afterwards heretics were burned at Milan, as well as in the other parts of Italy; and our author remarks, that in 1315 some thousands of heretics having spread themselves through Cremasco, a small territory included in the jurisdiction of the Milanese, the Dominican brothers burned the greater part of them; and thus checked the ravages of the theological pestilence by the flames.

As the first canon of the Council of Toulouse enjoined the bishops to appoint in every parish a priest and two or three laymen of reputation, who should be bound by oath to search carefully and frequently for heretics, in houses, caves, and all places wherever they might be able to hide themselves, and Edition: current; Page: [221] to give the speediest information to the bishop, the seigneur of the place, or his bailiff, after having taken all necessary precautions against the escape of any heretics discovered, the inquisitors must have acted at this time in concert with the bishops. The prisons of the bishop and of the Inquisition were frequently the same; and, although in the course of the procedure the inquisitor might act in his own name, he could not, without the intervention of the bishop, apply the torture, pronounce any definitive sentence, or condemn to perpetual imprisonment, etc. The frequent disputes that occurred between the bishops and the inquisitors, on the limits of their authority, on the spoils of the condemned, etc., compelled Pope Sixtus IV., in 1473, to make the Inquisitions independent and separate from the tribunals of the bishops. He created for Spain an Inquisitor-general, with full powers to nominate particular inquisitors; and Ferdinand V., in 1478, founded and endowed the Inquisition.

At the solicitation of Turrecremata (or Torquemada), a brother of the Dominican order, and grand inquisitor of Spain, the same Ferdinand, surnamed the Catholic, banished from his kingdom all the Jews, allowing them three months from the publication of his edict, after the expiration of which period they were not to be found in any of the Spanish dominions under pain of death. They were permitted, on quitting the kingdom, to take with them the goods and merchandise which they had purchased, Edition: current; Page: [222] but forbidden to take out of it any description of gold or silver.

The brother Turrecremata followed up and strengthened this edict, in the diocese of Toledo, by prohibiting all Christians, under pain of excommunication, from giving anything whatever to the Jews, even that which might be necessary to preserve life itself.

In consequence of these decrees about a million Jews departed from Catalonia, the kingdom of Aragon, that of Valencia, and other countries subject to the dominion of Ferdinand; the greater part of whom perished miserably; so that they compare the calamities that they suffered during this period to those they experienced under Titus and Vespasian. This expulsion of the Jews gave incredible joy to all Catholic sovereigns.

Some divines blamed these edicts of the king of Spain; their principal reasons are that unbelievers ought not to be constrained to embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, and that these violences are a disgrace to our religion.

But these arguments are very weak, and I contend, says Paramo, that the edict is pious, just, and praiseworthy, as the violence with which the Jews are required to be converted is not an absolute but a conditional violence, since they might avoid it by quitting their country. Besides, they might corrupt those of the Jews who were newly converted, and even Christians themselves; but, as St. Paul says, Edition: current; Page: [223] what communion is there between justice and iniquity, light and darkness, Jesus Christ and Belial?

With respect to the confiscation of their goods, nothing could be more equitable, as they had acquired them only by usury towards Christians, who only received back, therefore, what was in fact their own.

In short, by the death of our Lord, the Jews became slaves, and everything that a slave possesses belongs to his master. We could not but suspend our narrative for a moment to make these remarks, in opposition to persons who have thus calumniated the piety, the spotless justice, and the sanctity of the Catholic king.

At Seville, where an example of severity to the Jews was ardently desired, it was the holy will of God, who knows how to draw good out of evil, that a young man who was in waiting in consequence of an assignation, should see through the chinks of a partition an assembly of Jews, and in consequence inform against them. A great number of the unhappy wretches were apprehended, and punished as they deserved. By virtue of different edicts of the kings of Spain, and of the inquisitors, general and particular, established in that kingdom, there were, in a very short time, about two thousand heretics burned at Seville, and more than four thousand from 1482 to 1520. A vast number of others were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, or exposed to inflictions of different descriptions. The emigration from it was so great that five hundred houses were Edition: current; Page: [224] supposed to be left in consequence quite empty, and in the whole diocese, three thousand; and altogether more than a hundred thousand heretics were put to death, or punished in some other manner, or went into banishment to avoid severer suffering. Such was the destruction of heretics accomplished by these pious brethren.

The establishment of the Inquisition at Toledo was a fruitful source of revenue to the Catholic Church. In the short space of two years it actually burned at the stake fifty-two obstinate heretics, and two hundred and twenty more were outlawed; whence we may easily conjecture of what utility the Inquisition has been from its original establishment, since in so short a period it performed such wonders.

From the beginning of the fifteenth century, Pope Boniface IX. attempted in vain to establish the Inquisition in Portugal, where he created the provincial of the Dominicans, Vincent de Lisbon, inquisitor-general. Innocent VII., some years after, having named as inquisitor the Minim Didacus de Sylva, King John I. wrote to that pope that the establishment of the Inquisition in his kingdom was contrary to the good of his subjects, to his own interests, and perhaps also to the interests of religion.

The pope, affected by the representations of a too mild and easy monarch, revoked all the powers granted to the inquisitors newly established, and authorized Mark, bishop of Senigaglia, to absolve the persons accused; which he accordingly did. Edition: current; Page: [225] Those who had been deprived of their dignities and offices were re-established in them, and many were delivered from the fear of the confiscation of their property.

But how admirable, continues Paramo, is the Lord in all his ways! That which the sovereign pontiffs had been unable effectually to obtain with all their urgency, King John granted spontaneously to a dexterous impostor, whom God made use of as an instrument for accomplishing the good work. In fact, the wicked are frequently useful instruments in God’s hands, and he does not reject the good they bring about. Thus, when John remarks to our Lord Jesus Christ, “Lord, we saw one who was not Thy disciple casting out demons in Thy name, and we prevented him from doing so,” Jesus answered him, “Prevent him not; for he who works miracles in My name will not speak ill of Me; and he who is not against Me is for Me.”

Paramo relates afterwards that he saw in the library of St. Laurence, at the Escorial, a manuscript in the handwriting of Saavedra, in which that knave details his fabrication of a false bull, and obtaining thereby his entrée into Seville as legate, with a train of a hundred and twenty domestics; his defrauding of thirteen thousand ducats the heirs of a rich nobleman in that neighborhood, during his twenty days’ residence in the palace of the archbishop, by producing a counterfeit bond for the same sum, which the nobleman acknowledged, in that instrument, Edition: current; Page: [226] to have borrowed of the legate when he visited Rome; and finally, after his arrival at Badajoz, the permission granted him by King John III., to whom he was presented by means of forged letters of the pope, to establish tribunals of the Inquisition in the principal cities of the kingdom.

These tribunals began immediately to exercise their jurisdiction; and a vast number of condemnations and executions of relapsed heretics took place, as also of absolutions of recanting and penitent heretics. Six months had passed in this manner, when the truth was made apparent of that expression in the Gospel, “There is nothing hid which shall not be made known.” The Marquis de Villeneuve de Barcarotta, a Spanish nobleman, assisted by the governor of Mora, had the impostor apprehended and conducted to Madrid. He was there carried before John de Tavera, archbishop of Toledo. That prelate, perfectly astonished at all that now transpired of the knavery and address of the false legate, despatched all the depositions and documents relative to the case to Pope Paul III.; as he did also the acts of the inquisitions which Saavedra had established, and by which it appeared that a great number of heretics had already been judged and condemned, and that the impostor had extorted from his victims more than three hundred thousand ducats.

The pope could not help acknowledging in this the finger of God and a miracle of His providence; he accordingly formed the congregation of the Edition: current; Page: [227] tribunal of the Inquisition, under the denomination of “The Holy Office,” in 1545, and Sixtus V. confirmed it in 1588.

All writers but one agree with Paramo on the subject of the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal. Antoine de Sousa alone, in his “Aphorisms of Inquisitors,” calls the history of Saavedra in question, under the pretence that he may very easily be conceived to have accused himself without being in fact guilty, in consideration of the glory which would redound to him from the event, and in the hope of living in the memory of mankind. But Sousa, in the very narrative which he substitutes for that of Paramo, exposes himself to the suspicion of bad faith, in citing two bulls of Paul III., and two others from the same pope to Cardinal Henry, the king’s brother; bulls which Sousa has not introduced into his printed work, and which are not to be found in any collection of apostolical bulls extant; two decisive reasons for rejecting his opinion, and adhering to that of Paramo, Hiescas, Salasar, Mendoça, Fernandez, and Placentinus.

When the Spaniards passed over to America they carried the Inquisition with them; the Portuguese introduced it in the Indies, immediately upon its being established at Lisbon, which led to the observation which Louis de Paramo makes in his preface, that this flourishing and verdant tree had extended its branches and its roots throughout the world, and produced the most pleasant fruits.

In order to form some correct idea of the jurisprudence of the Inquisition, and the forms of its proceedings, unknown to civil tribunals, let us take a cursory view of the “Directory of Inquisitors,” which Nicolas Eymeric, grand inquisitor of the kingdom of Aragon about the middle of the fourteenth century, composed in Latin, and addressed to his brother inquisitors, in virtue of the authority of his office.

A short time after the invention of printing, an edition of this work was printed at Barcelona, and soon conveyed to all the inquisitions in the Christian world. A second edition appeared at Rome in 1578, in folio, with scholia and commentaries by Francois Pegna, doctor in theology and canonist.

The following eulogium on the work is given by the editor in an epistle dedicatory to Gregory XIII.: “While Christian princes are everywhere engaged in combating with arms the enemies of the Catholic religion, and pouring out the blood of their soldiers to support the unity of the Church and the authority of the apostolic see, there are also zealous and devoted writers, who toil in obscurity, either to refute the opinions of innovators or to arm and direct the power of the laws against their persons, in order that the severity of punishments, and the solemnity and torture attending executions, keeping them within the bounds of duty, may produce that effect upon them which cannot be produced in them by the love of virtue.

“Although I fill only the lowest place among these defenders of religion, I am nevertheless animated with the same zeal for repressing the impious audacity and horrible depravity of the broachers of innovation. The labor which I here present to you on the ‘Directory of Inquisitions,’ will be a proof of my assertion. This work of Nicolas Eymeric, respectable for its antiquity, contains a summary of the principal articles of faith, and an elaborate and methodical code of instruction for the tribunals of the Holy Inquisition, on the means which they ought to employ for the repression and extirpation of heretics; on which account I felt it my duty to offer it in homage to your holiness, as the chief of the Christian republic.”

He declares, elsewhere, that he had it reprinted for the instruction of inquisitors; that the work is as much to be admired as respected, and teaches with equal piety and learning the proper means of repressing and exterminating heretics. He acknowledges, however, that he is in possession of other useful and judicious methods, for which he refers to practice, which will instruct much more effectually than any lessons, and that he more readily thus silently refers to practice, as there are certain matters relating to the subject which it is of importance not to divulge, and which, at the same time, are generally well known to inquisitors. He cites a vast number of writers, all of whom have followed the doctrines of the “Directory”; and he even complains Edition: current; Page: [230] that many have availed themselves of it without ascribing any honor to Eymeric for the good things they have in fact stolen from him.

We will secure ourselves from any reproach of this description, by pointing out exactly what we mean to borrow both from the author and the editor. Eymeric says, in the fifty-eighth page, “Commiseration for the children of the criminal, who by the severity used towards him are reduced to beggary, should never be permitted to mitigate that severity, since both by divine and human laws children are punished for the faults of their fathers.”

Page 123. “If a charge entered for prosecution were destitute of every appearance of truth, the inquisitor should not on that account expunge it from his register, because what at one period has not been discovered, may be so at another.”

Page 291. “It is necessary for the inquisitor to oppose cunning and stratagem to those employed by heretics, that he may thus pay the offenders in their own coin, and be enabled to adopt the language of the apostle, ‘Being crafty, I caught you with guile.’ ”

Page 296. “The information and depositions (procés-verbal) may be read over to the accused, completely suppressing the names of the accusers; and then it is for him to conjecture who the persons are that have brought against him any particular charges, to challenge them as incompetent witnesses, or to weaken their testimony by contrary evidence. This is the method generally used. The accused Edition: current; Page: [231] must not be permitted to imagine that challenges of witnesses will be easily allowed in cases of heresy, for it is of no consequence whether witnesses are respectable or infamous, accomplices in the prisoner’s offence, excommunicated, heretical, or in any manner whatever guilty, or perjured, etc. This has been so ruled in favor of the faith.”

Page 202. “The appeal which a prisoner makes from the Inquisition does not preclude that tribunal from trial and sentence of him upon other heads of accusation.”

Page 313. “Although the form of the order for applying the torture may suppose variation in the answers of the accused, and also in addition sufficient presumptive evidence against him for putting him to the question; both these circumstances are not necessary, and either will be sufficient for the purpose without the other.”

Pegna informs us, in the hundred and eighteenth scholium on the third book, that inquisitors generally employ only five kinds of torture when putting to the question, although Marsilius mentions fifteen kinds, and adds, that he has imagined others still—such, for example, as precluding the possibility of sleep, in which he is approved by Grillandus and Locatus.

Eymeric continues, page 319: “Care should be taken never to state in the form of absolution, that the prisoner is innocent, but merely that there was not sufficient evidence against him; a precaution Edition: current; Page: [232] necessary to prevent the prisoner, absolved in one case, from pleading that absolution in defence against any future charge that may be brought against him.”

Page 324. “Sometimes abjuration and canonical purgation are prescribed together. This is done, when, to a bad reputation of an individual in point of doctrine are joined inconsiderable presumptions, which, were they a little stronger, would tend to convict him of having really said or done something injurious to the faith. The prisoner who stands in these circumstances is compelled to abjure all heresy in general; and after that, if he falls into any heresy of any description whatever, however different from those which may have constituted the matter of the present charge or suspicion against him, he is punished as a relapsed person, and delivered over to the secular arm.”

Page 331. “Relapsed persons, when the relapse is clearly proved, must be delivered up to secular justice, whatever protestation they may make as to their future conduct, and whatever contrition they may express. The inquisitor will, in such circumstances, inform the secular authorities, that on such a particular day and hour, and in such a particular place, a heretic will be delivered up to them and should provide that notice be given to the public that they will be expected to be present at the ceremony, as the inquisitor will deliver a sermon on the occasion in defence of the true faith, and those who attend will obtain the usual indulgences.”

These indulgences are accordingly detailed: after the form of sentence given against the penitent heretic, the inquisitor will grant forty days’ indulgence to all persons present; three years to those who contributed to the apprehension, abjuration, condemnation, etc., of the said heretic; and finally, three years also will be granted by our holy father, the pope, to all who will denounce any other heretic.

Page 332. “When the culprit has been delivered over to the secular authority, it shall pronounce its sentence, and the criminal shall be conveyed to the place of punishment; some pious persons shall accompany him, and associate him in their prayers, and even pray with him; and not leave him till he has rendered up his soul to his Creator. But it is their duty to take particular care neither to say or to do anything which may hasten the moment of his death, for fear of falling into some irregularity. Accordingly, they should not exhort the criminal to mount the scaffold, or present himself to the executioner, or advise the executioner to get ready and arrange his instruments of punishment, so that the death may take place more quickly, and the prisoner be prevented from lingering; all for the sake of avoiding irregularity.”

Page 335. “Should it happen that the heretic, when just about to be fixed to the stake to be burned, were to give signs of conversion, he might, perhaps, out of singular lenity and favor, be allowed to be received and shut up, like penitent heretics, within Edition: current; Page: [234] four walls, although it would be weak to place much reliance on a confession of this nature, and the indulgence is not authorized by any express law; such lenity, however, is very dangerous. I was witness of an example in point at Barcelona: A priest who was condemned, with two other impenitent heretics, to be burned, and who was actually in the midst of the flames, called on the bystanders to pull him out instantly, for he was willing to be converted; he was accordingly extricated, dreadfully scorched on one side. I do not mean to decide whether this was well or ill done; but I know that, fourteen years afterwards, he was still dogmatizing, and had corrupted a considerable number of persons; he was therefore once more given up to justice, and was burned to death.”

“No person doubts,” says Pegna, scholium 47, “that heretics ought to be put to death; but the particular method of execution may well be a topic of discussion.” Alphonso de Castro, in the second book of his work, “On the Just Punishment of Heretics,” considers it a matter of great indifference whether they are destroyed by the sword, by fire, or any other method; but Hostiensis Godofredus, Covarruvias, Simancas, Roxas, etc., maintain that they ought decidedly to be burned. In fact, as Hostiensis very well expressed it, execution by fire is the punishment appropriate to heresy. We read in St. John, “If any one remain not in me, he shall be cast forth, as a branch, and wither, and men shall gather it and cast Edition: current; Page: [235] it into the fire and burn it.” “It may be added, continued Pegna, “that the universal custom of the Christian republic is in support of this opinion. Simancas and Roxas decide that heretics ought to be burned alive; but one precaution should always be taken in burning them, which is tearing out the tongue and keeping the mouth perfectly closed, in order to prevent their scandalizing the spectators by their impieties.”

Finally, page 369, Eymeric enjoins those whom he addresses to proceed in matters of heresy straight forward, without any wranglings of advocates, and without so many forms and solemnities as are generally employed in criminal cases; that is, to make the process as short as possible, by cutting off useless delays, by going on with the hearing and trial of such causes, even on days when the labors of the other judges are suspended; by disallowing every appeal which has for its apparent object merely a postponement of final judgment; and by not admitting an unnecessary multitude of witnesses, etc.

This revolting system of jurisprudence has simply been put under some restriction in Spain and Portugal; while at Milan the Inquisition itself has at length been entirely suppressed.

SECTION II.

The Inquisition is well known to be an admirable and truly Christian invention for increasing the power of the pope and monks, and rendering the population of a whole kingdom hypocrites.

St. Dominic is usually considered as the person to whom the world is principally indebted for this institution. In fact, we have still extant a patent granted by that great saint, expressed precisely in the following words: “I, brother Dominic, reconcile to the Church Roger, the bearer of these presents, on condition of his being scourged by a priest on three successive Sundays from the entrance of the city to the church doors; of his abstaining from meat all his life; of his fasting for the space of three Lents in a year; of his never drinking wine; of his carrying about him the ‘san benito’ with crosses; of his reciting the breviary every day, and ten paternosters in the course of the day, and twenty at midnight; of his preserving perfect chastity, and of his presenting himself every month before the parish priest, etc.; the whole under pain of being treated as heretical, perjured, and impenitent.”

Although Dominic was the real founder of the Inquisition, yet Louis de Paramo, one of the most respectable writers and most brilliant luminaries of the Holy Office, relates, in the second chapter of his second book, that God was the first institutor of the Holy Office, and that he exercised the power of the preaching brethren, that is of the Dominican Order, against Adam. In the first place Adam is cited before the tribunal: “Adam ubi es?”—Adam, where art thou? “And in fact,” adds Paramo, “the want of this citation would have rendered the whole procedure of God null.”

The dresses formed of skins, which God made for Adam and Eve, were the model of the “san benito,” which the Holy Office requires to be worn by heretics. It is true that, according to this argument, God was the first tailor; it is not, however, the less evident, on account of that ludicrous and profane inference, that he was the first inquisitor.

Adam was deprived of the immovable property he possessed in the terrestrial paradise, and hence the Holy Office confiscates the property of all whom it condemns.

Louis de Paramo remarks, that the inhabitants of Sodom were burned as heretics because their crime is a formal heresy. He thence passes to the history of the Jews: and in every part of it discovers the Holy Office.

Jesus Christ is the first inquisitor of the new law; the popes were inquisitors by divine right; and they afterwards communicated their power to St. Dominic.

He afterwards estimates the number of all those whom the Inquisition has put to death; he states it to be considerably above a hundred thousand.

His book was printed in 1589, at Madrid, with the approbation of doctors, the eulogiums of bishops, and the privilege of the king. We can, at the present day, scarcely form any idea of horrors at once so extravagant and abominable; but at that period nothing appeared more natural and edifying. All men resemble Louis de Paramo when they are fanatics.

Paramo was a plain, direct man, very exact in dates, omitting no interesting fact, and calculating with precision the number of human victims immolated by the Holy Office throughout the world.

He relates, with great naïveté, the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, and coincides perfectly with four other historians who have treated of that subject. The following account they unanimously agree in: