Montesquieu.Montesquieu.
A judicious critic has remarked that this is as much as to say that the office of the mayors of the palace was a fundamental office. Constantine was highly despotic, yet had no grand vizier. Louis XIV. was less despotic, and had no first minister. The popes are sufficiently despotic, and yet seldom possess them.
"The sale of employments is good in monarchical states, because it makes it the profession of persons of family to undertake employments, which they would not fulfil from disinterested motives alone."
Is it Montesquieu who writes these odious lines? What! because the vices of Francis I. deranged the public finances, must we sell to ignorant young men the right of deciding upon the honor, fortune, and lives of the people? What! is it good in a monarchy, that the office of magistrate should become a family provision? If this infamy was salutary, some other country would have adopted it as well as France; but there is not another monarchy on earth which has merited the opprobrium. This monstrous anomaly sprang from the prodigality of a ruined and spendthrift monarch, and the vanity of certain citizens whose fathers possessed money; and the wretched abuse has always been weakly attacked, because it was felt that reimbursement would be difficult. It would be a thousand times better, said a great jurisconsult, to sell the treasure of all the convents, and the plate of all the churches, than to sell justice. When Francis I. seized the silver grating of St. Martin, he did harm to no one; St. Martin complained not, and parted very easily with his screen; but to sell the place of judge, and at the same time make the judge swear that he has not bought it, is a base sacrilege.
Let us complain that Montesquieu has dishonored his work by such paradoxes—but at the same time let us pardon him. His uncle purchased the office of a provincial president, and bequeathed it to him. Human nature is to be recognized in everything, and there are none of us without weakness.
"Behold how industriously the Muscovite government seeks to emerge from despotism."
Is it in abolishing the patriarchate and the active militia of the strelitzes; in being the absolute master of the troops, of the revenue, and of the church, of which the functionaries are paid from the public treasury alone? or is it proved by making laws to render that power as sacred as it is mighty? It is melancholy, that in so many citations and so many maxims, the contrary of what is asserted should be almost always the truth.
"The luxury of those who possess the necessaries of life only, will be zero; the luxury of those who possess as much again, will be equal to one; of those who possess double the means of the latter, three; and so on."
The latter will possess three times the excess beyond the necessaries of life; but it by no means follows that he will possess three times as many luxuries; for he may be thrice as avaricious, or may employ the superfluity in commerce, or in portions to his daughters. These propositions are not affairs of arithmetic, and such calculations are miserable quackery.
"The Samnites had a fine custom, which must have produced admirable results. The young man declared the most worthy chose a wife where he pleased; he who had the next number of suffrages in his favor followed, and so on throughout."
The author has mistaken the Sunites, a people of Scythia, for the Samnites, in the neighborhood of Rome. He quotes a fragment of Nicholas de Demas, preserved by Stobæus: but is the said Nicholas a sufficient authority? This fine custom would moreover be very injurious in a well-governed country; for if the judges should be deceived in the young man declared the most worthy; if the female selected should not like him; or if he were objectionable in the eyes of the girl's parents, very fatal results might follow.
"On reading the admirable work of Tacitus on the manners of the Germans, it will be seen that it is from them the English drew the idea of their political government. That admirable system originated in the woods."
The houses of peers and of commons, and the English courts of law and equity, found in the woods! Who would have supposed it? Without doubt, the English owe their squadrons and their commerce to the manners of the Germans; and the sermons of Tillotson to those pious German sorcerers who sacrificed their prisoners, and judged of their success in war by the manner in which the blood flowed. We must believe, also, that the English are indebted for their fine manufactures to the laudable practice of the Germans, who, as Tacitus observers, preferred robbery to toil.
"Aristotle ranked among monarchies the governments both of Persia and Lacedæmon; but who cannot perceive that the one was a despotism, the other a republic?"
Who, on the contrary, cannot perceive that Lacedæmon had a single king for four hundred years, and two kings until the extinction of the Heraclidæ, a period of about a thousand years? We know that no king was despotic of right, not even in Persia; but every bold and dissembling prince who amasses money, becomes despotic in a little time, either in Persia or Lacedæmon; and, therefore, Aristotle distinguishes every state possessing perpetual and hereditary chiefs, from republics.
"People of warm climates are timid, like old men; those of cold countries are courageous, like young ones."
We should take great care how general propositions escape us. No one has ever been able to make a Laplander or an Esquimaux warlike, while the Arabs in fourscore years conquered a territory which exceeded that of the whole Roman Empire. This maxim of M. Montesquieu is equally erroneous with all the rest on the subject of climate.
"Louis XIII. was extremely averse to passing a law which made the negroes of the French colonies slaves; but when he was given to understand that it was the most certain way of converting them, he consented."
Where did the author pick up this anecdote? The first arrangement for the treatment of the negroes was made in 1673, thirty years after the death of Louis XIII. This resembles the refusal of Francis I. to listen to the project of Christopher Columbus, who had discovered the Antilles before Francis I. was born.
"The Romans never exhibited any jealousy on the score of commerce. It was as a rival, not as a commercial nation, that they attacked Carthage."
It was both as a warlike and as a commercial nation, as the learned Huet proves in his "Commerce of the Ancients," when he shows that the Romans were addicted to commerce a long time before the first Punic war.
"The sterility of the territory of Athens established a popular government there, and the fertility of that of Lacedæmon an aristocratic one."
Whence this chimera? From enslaved Athens we still derive cotton, silk, rice, corn, oil, and skins; and from the country of Lacedæmon nothing. Athens was twenty times richer than Lacedæmon. With respect to the comparative fertility of the soil, it is necessary to visit those countries to appreciate it; but the form of a government is never attributed to the greater or less fertility. Venice had very little corn when her nobles governed. Genoa is assuredly not fertile, and yet is an aristocracy. Geneva is a more popular state, and has not the means of existing a fortnight upon its own productions. Sweden, which is equally poor, has for a long time submitted to the yoke of a monarchy; while fertile Poland is aristocratic. I cannot conceive how general rules can be established, which may be falsified upon the slightest appeal to experience.
"In Europe, empires have never been able to exist." Yet the Roman Empire existed for five hundred years, and that of the Turks has maintained itself since the year 1453.
"The duration of the great empires of Asia is principally owing to the prevalence of vast plains." M. Montesquieu forgets the mountains which cross Natolia and Syria, Caucasus, Taurus, Ararat, Imaus, and others, the ramifications of which extend throughout Asia.
After thus convincing ourselves that errors abound in the "Spirit of Laws"; after everybody is satisfied that this work wants method, and possesses neither plan nor order, it is proper to inquire into that which really forms its merit, and which has led to its great reputation.
In the first place, it is written with great wit, while the authors of all the other books on this subject are tedious. It was on this account that a lady, who possessed as much wit as Montesquieu, observed, that his book was "l'esprit sur les lois." It can never be more correctly defined.
A still stronger reason is that the book exhibits grand views, attacks tyranny, superstition, and grinding taxation—three things which mankind detest. The author consoles slaves in lamenting their fetters, and the slaves in return applaud him.
One of the most bitter and absurd of his enemies, who contributed most by his rage to exalt the name of Montesquieu throughout Europe, was the journalist of the Convulsionaries. He called him a Spinozist and deist; that is to say, he accused him at the same time of not believing in God and of believing in God alone.
He reproaches him with his esteem for Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and the Stoics; and for not loving Jansenists—the Abbé de St. Cyran and Father Quesnel. He asserts that he has committed an unpardonable crime in calling Bayle a great man.
He pretends that the "Spirit of Laws" is one of those monstrous works with which France has been inundated since the BullUnigenitus, which has corrupted the consciences of all people.
This tatterdemalion from his garret, deriving at least three hundred per cent. from his ecclesiastical gazette, declaimed like a fool against interest upon money at the legal rate. He was seconded by some pedants of his own sort; and the whole concluded in their resembling the slaves placed at the foot of the statue of Louis XIV.; they are crushed, and gnaw their own flesh in revenge.
Montesquieu was almost always in error with the learned, because he was not learned; but he was always right against the fanatics and promoters of slavery. Europe owes him eternal gratitude.
Our questions on Lent will merely regard the police. It appeared useful to have a time in the year in which we should eat fewer oxen, calves, lambs, and poultry. Young fowls and pigeons are not ready in February and March, the time in which Lent falls; and it is good to cease the carnage for some weeks in countries in which pastures are not so fertile as those of England and Holland.
The magistrates of police have very wisely ordered that meat should be a little dearer at Paris during this time, and that the profit should be given to the hospitals. It is an almost insensible tribute paid by luxury and gluttony to indigence; for it is the rich who are not able to keep Lent—the poor fast all the year.
There are very few farming men who eat meat once a month. If they ate of it every day, there would not be enough for the most flourishing kingdom. Twenty millions of pounds of meat a day would make seven thousand three hundred millions of pounds a year. This calculation is alarming.
The small number of the rich, financiers, prelates, principal magistrates, great lords, and great ladies who condescend to have maigre served at their tables, fast during six weeks on soles, salmon, turbots, sturgeons, etc.
One of our most famous financiers had couriers, who for a hundred crowns brought him fresh sea fish every day to Paris. This expense supported the couriers, the dealers who sold the horses, the fishermen who furnished the fish, the makers of nets, constructors of boats, and the druggists from whom were procured the refined spices which give to a fish a taste superior to that of meat. Lucullus could not have kept Lent more voluptuously.
It should further be remarked that fresh sea fish, in coming to Paris, pays a considerable tax. The secretaries of the rich, their valets de chambre, ladies' maids, and stewards, partake of the dessert of Crœsus, and fast as deliciously as he.
It is not the same with the poor; not only if for four sous they partake of a small portion of tough mutton do they commit a great sin, but they seek in vain for this miserable aliment. What do they therefore feed upon? Chestnuts, rye bread, the cheeses which they have pressed from the milk of their cows, goats or sheep, and some few of the eggs of their poultry.
There are churches which forbid them the eggs and the milk. What then remains for them to eat? Nothing. They consent to fast; but they consent not to die. It is absolutely necessary that they should live, if it be only to cultivate the lands of the fat rectors and lazy monks.
We therefore ask, if it belongs not to the magistrates of the police of the kingdom, charged with watching over the health of the inhabitants, to give them permission to eat the cheeses which their own hands have formed, and the eggs which their fowls have laid?
It appears that milk, eggs, cheese, and all which can nourish the farmer, are regulated by the police, and not by a religious rule.
We hear not that Jesus Christ forbade omelets to His apostles; He said to them: "Eat such things as are set before you."
The Holy Church has ordained Lent, but in quality of the Church it commands it only to the heart; it can inflict spiritual pains alone; it cannot as formerly burn a poor man, who, having only some rusty bacon, put a slice of it on a piece of black bread the day after Shrove Tuesday.
Sometimes in the provinces the pastors go beyond their duty, and forgetting the rights of the magistracy, undertake to go among the innkeepers and cooks, to see if they have not some ounces of meat in their saucepans, some old fowls on their hooks, or some eggs in a cupboard; for eggs are forbidden in Lent. They intimidate the poor people, and proceed to violence towards the unfortunates, who know not that it belongs alone to the magistracy to interfere. It is an odious and punishable inquisition.
The magistrates alone can be rightly informed of the more or less abundant provisions required by the poor people of the provinces. The clergy have occupations more sublime. Should it not therefore belong to the magistrates to regulate what the people eat in Lent? Who should pry into the legal consumption of a country if not the police of that country?
Did the first who were advised to fast put themselves under this regimen by order of the physician, for indigestion? The want of appetite which we feel in grief—was it the first origin of fast-days prescribed in melancholy religions?
Did the Jews take the custom of fasting from the Egyptians, all of whose rites they imitated, including flagellation and the scape-goat? Why fasted Jesus for forty days in the desert, where He was tempted by the devil—by the "Chathbull"? St. Matthew remarks that after this Lent He was hungry; He was therefore not hungry during the fast.
Why, in days of abstinence, does the Roman Church consider it a crime to eat terrestrial animals, and a good work to be served with soles and salmon? The rich Papist who shall have five hundred francs' worth of fish upon his table shall be saved, and the poor wretch dying with hunger, who shall have eaten four sous' worth of salt pork, shall be damned.
Why must we ask permission of the bishop to eat eggs? If a king ordered his people never to eat eggs, would he not be thought the most ridiculous of tyrants? How strange the aversion of bishops to omelets!
Can we believe that among Papists there have been tribunals imbecile, dull, and barbarous enough to condemn to death poor citizens, who had no other crimes than that of having eaten of horseflesh in Lent? The fact is but too true; I have in my hands a sentence of this kind. What renders it still more strange is that the judges who passed such sentences believed themselves superior to the Iroquois.
Foolish and cruel priests, to whom do you order Lent? Is it to the rich? they take good care to observe it. Is it to the poor? they keep Lent all the year. The unhappy peasant scarcely ever eats meat, and has not wherewithal to buy fish. Fools that you are, when will you correct your absurd laws?
This article relates to two powerful divinities, one ancient and the other modern, which have reigned in our hemisphere. The reverend father Dom Calmet, a great antiquarian, that is, a great compiler of what was said in former times and what is repeated at the present day, has confounded lues with leprosy. He maintains that it was the lues with which the worthy Job was afflicted, and he supposes, after a confident and arrogant commentator of the name of Pineida, that the lues and leprosy are precisely the same disorder. Calmet is not a physician, neither is he a reasoner, but he is a citer of authorities; and in his vocation of commentator, citations are always substituted for reasons. When Astruc, in his history of lues, quotes authorities that the disorder came in fact from San Domingo, and that the Spaniards brought it from America, his citations are somewhat more conclusive.
There are two circumstances which, in my opinion, prove that lues originated in America; the first is, the multitude of authors, both medical and surgical, of the sixteenth century, who attest the fact; and the second is, the silence of all the physicians and all the poets of antiquity, who never were acquainted with this disease, and never had even a name for it. I here speak of the silence of physicians and of poets as equally demonstrative. The former, beginning with Hippocrates, would not have failed to describe this malady, to state its symptoms, to apply to it a name, and suggest some remedy. The poets, equally as malicious and sarcastic as physicians are studious and investigative, would have detailed in their satires, with minute particularity, all the symptoms and consequences of this dreadful disorder; you do not find, however, a single verse in Horace or Catullus, in Martial or Juvenal, which has the slightest reference to lues, although they expatiate on all the effects of debauchery with the utmost freedom and delight.
It is very certain that smallpox was not known to the Romans before the sixth century; that the American lues was not introduced into Europe until the fifteenth century; and that leprosy is as different from those two maladies, as palsy from St. Guy's or St. Vitus' dance.
Leprosy was a scabious disease of a dreadful character. The Jews were more subject to it than any other people living in hot climates, because they had neither linen, nor domestic baths. These people were so negligent of cleanliness and the decencies of life that their legislators were obliged to make a law to compel them even to wash their hands.
All that we gained in the end by engaging in the crusades, was leprosy; and of all that we had taken, that was the only thing that remained with us. It was necessary everywhere to build lazarettos, in which to confine the unfortunate victims of a disease at once pestilential and incurable.
Leprosy, as well as fanaticism and usury, had been a distinguishing characteristic of the Jews. These wretched people having no physicians, the priests took upon themselves the management and regulation of leprosy, and made it a concern of religion. This has occasioned some indiscreet and profane critics to remark that the Jews were no better than a nation of savages under the direction of their jugglers. Their priests in fact never cured leprosy, but they cut off from society those who were infected by it, and thus acquired a power of the greatest importance. Every man laboring under this disease was imprisoned, like a thief or a robber; and thus a woman who was desirous of getting rid of her husband had only to secure the sanction of the priest, and the unfortunate husband was shut up—it was the "lettre de cachet" of the day. The Jews and those by whom they were governed were so ignorant that they imagined the moth-holes in garments, and the mildew upon walls, to be the effects of leprosy. They actually conceived their houses and clothes to have leprosy; thus the people themselves, and their very rags and hovels, were all brought under the rod of the priesthood.
One proof that, at the time of the first introduction of the lues, there was no connection between that disorder and leprosy, is that the few lepers that remained at the conclusion of the fifteenth century were offended at any kind of comparison between themselves and those who were affected by lues.
Some of the persons thus affected were in the first instance sent to the hospital for lepers, but were received by them with indignation. The lepers presented a petition to be separated from them; as persons imprisoned for debt or affairs of honor claim a right not to be confounded with the common herd of criminals.
We have already observed that the Parliament of Paris, on March 6, 1496, issued an order, by which all persons laboring under lues, unless they were citizens of Paris, were enjoined to depart within twenty-four hours, under pain of being hanged. This order was neither Christian, legal, nor judicious; but it proves that lues was regarded as a new plague which had nothing in common with leprosy; as lepers were not hanged for residing in Paris, while those afflicted by lues were so.
Men may bring the leprosy on themselves by their uncleanliness and filth, just as is done by a species of animals to which the very lowest of the vulgar may too naturally be compared; but with respect to lues, it was a present made to America by nature. We have already reproached this same nature, at once so kind and so malicious, so sagacious and yet so blind, with defeating her own object by thus poisoning the source of life; and we still sincerely regret that we have found no solution of this dreadful difficulty.
We have seen elsewhere that man in general, one with another, or (as it is expressed) on the average, does not live above two-and-twenty years; and during these two-and-twenty years he is liable to two-and-twenty thousand evils, many of which are incurable.
Yet even in this dreadful state men still strut and figure on the stage of life; they make love at the hazard of destruction; and intrigue, carry on war, and form projects, just as if they were to live in luxury and delight for a thousand ages.
In the barbarous times when the Franks, Germans, Bretons, Lombards, and Spanish Mozarabians knew neither how to read nor write, we instituted schools and universities almost entirely composed of ecclesiastics, who, knowing only their own jargon, taught this jargon to those who would learn it. Academies were not founded until long after; the latter have despised the follies of the schools, but they have not always dared to oppose them, because there are follies which we respect when they are attached to respectable things.
Men of letters who have rendered the most service to the small number of thinking beings scattered over the earth are isolated scholars, true sages shut up in their closets, who have neither publicly disputed in the universities, nor said things by halves in the academies; and such have almost all been persecuted. Our miserable race is so created that those who walk in the beaten path always throw stones at those who would show them a new one.
Montesquieu says that the Scythians put out the eyes of their slaves that they might be more attentive to the making of their butter. It is thus that the Inquisition acts, and almost every one is blinded in the countries in which this monster reigns. In England people have had two eyes for more than a hundred years. The French are beginning to open one eye—but sometimes men in place will not even permit us to be one-eyed.
These miserable statesmen are like Doctor Balouard of the Italian comedy, who will only be served by the fool Harlequin, and who fears to have too penetrating a servant.
Compose odes in praise of Lord Superbus Fatus, madrigals for his mistress; dedicate a book of geography to his porter, and you will be well received. Enlighten men, and you will be crushed.
Descartes is obliged to quit his country; Gassendi is calumniated; Arnaud passes his days in exile; all the philosophers are treated as the prophets were among the Jews.
Who would believe that in the eighteenth century, a philosopher has been dragged before the secular tribunals, and treated as impious by reasoning theologians, for having said that men could not practise the arts if they had no hands? I expect that they will soon condemn to the galleys the first who shall have the insolence to say that a man could not think if he had no head; for a learned bachelor will say to him, the soul is a pure spirit, the head is only matter; God can place the soul in the heel as well as in the brain; therefore I denounce you as a blasphemer.
The great misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the object of the jealousy of his brothers, the victim of cabals, and the contempt of the powerful of the world—it is being judged by fools. Fools sometimes go very far, particularly when fanaticism is joined to folly, and folly to the spirit of vengeance. Further, the great misfortune of a man of letters is generally to hold to nothing. A citizen buys a little situation, and is maintained by his fellow-citizens. If any injustice is done to him, he soon finds defenders. The literary man is without aid; he resembles the flying fish; if he rises a little, the birds devour him; if he dives, the fishes eat him up. Every public man pays tribute to malignity; but he is repaid in deniers and honors.
Small, offensive books are termed libels. These books are usually small, because the authors, having few reasons to give, and usually writing not to inform, but mislead, if they are desirous of being read, must necessarily be brief. Names are rarely used on these occasions, for assassins fear being detected in the employment of forbidden weapons.
In the time of the League and the Fronde, political libels abounded. Every dispute in England produces hundreds; and a library might be formed of those written against Louis XIV.
We have had theological libels for sixteen hundred years; and what is worse, these are esteemed holy by the vulgar. Only see how St. Jerome treats Rufinus and Vigilantius. The latest libels are those of the Molinists and Jansenists, which amount to thousands. Of all this mass there remains only "The Provincial Letters."
Men of letters may dispute the number of their libels with the theologians. Boileau and Fontenelle, who attacked one another with epigrams, both said that their chambers would not contain the libels with which they had been assailed. All these disappear like the leaves in autumn. Some people have maintained that anything offensive written against a neighbor is a libel.
According to them, the railing attacks which the prophets occasionally sang to the kings of Israel, were defamatory libels to excite the people to rise up against them. As the populace, however, read but little anywhere, it is believed that these half-disclosed satires never did any great harm. Sedition is produced by speaking to assemblies of the people, rather than by writing for them. For this reason, one of the first things done by Queen Elizabeth of England on her accession, was to order that for six months no one should preach without express permission.
The "Anti-Cato" of Cæsar was a libel, but Cæsar did more harm to Cato by the battle of Pharsalia, than by his "Diatribes". The "Philippics" of Cicero were libels, but the proscriptions of the Triumvirs were far more terrible libels.
St. Cyril and St. Gregory Nazianzen compiled libels against the emperor Julian, but they were so generous as not to publish them until after his death.
Nothing resembles libels more than certain manifestoes of sovereigns. The secretaries of the sultan Mustapha made a libel of his declaration of war. God has punished them for it; but the same spirit which animated Cæsar, Cicero, and the secretaries of Mustapha, reigns in all the reptiles who spin libels in their garrets. "Natura est semper sibi consona." Who would believe that the souls of Garasse, Nonnotte, Paulian, Fréron, and he of Langliviet, calling himself La Beaumelle, were in this respect of the same temper as those of Cæsar, Cicero, St. Cyril, and of the secretary of the grand seignior? Nothing is, however, more certain.
Either I am much deceived, or Locke has very well defined liberty to be "power". I am still further deceived, or Collins, a celebrated magistrate of London, is the only philosopher who has profoundly developed this idea, while Clarke has only answered him as a theologian. Of all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little dialogue has appeared to me the most comprehensive:
A. A battery of cannon is discharged at our ears; have you the liberty to hear it, or not to hear it, as you please?
B. Undoubtedly I cannot hinder myself from hearing it.
A. Are you willing that these cannon shall take off your head and those of your wife and daughter who walk with you?
B. What a question! I cannot, at least while I am in my right senses, wish such a thing; it is impossible.
A. Good; you necessarily hear these cannon, and you necessarily wish not for the death of yourself and your family by a discharge from them. You have neither the power of not hearing it, nor the power of wishing to remain here.
B. That is clear.
A. You have, I perceive, advanced thirty paces to be out of the reach of the cannon; you have had the power of walking these few steps with me.
B. That is also very clear.
A. And if you had been paralytic, you could not have avoided being exposed to this battery; you would necessarily have heard, and received a wound from the cannon; and you would have as necessarily died.
B. Nothing is more true.
A. In what then consists your liberty, if not in the power that your body has acquired of performing that which from absolute necessity your will requires?
B. You embarrass me. Liberty then is nothing more than the power of doing what I wish?
A. Reflect; and see whether liberty can be understood otherwise.
B. In this case, my hunting dog is as free as myself; he has necessarily the will to run when he sees a hare; and the power of running, if there is nothing the matter with his legs. I have therefore nothing above my dog; you reduce me to the state of the beasts.
A. These are poor sophisms, and they are poor sophists who have instructed you. You are unwilling to be free like your dog. Do you not eat, sleep, and propagate like him, and nearly in the same attitudes? Would you smell otherwise than by your nose? Why would you possess liberty differently from your dog?
B. But I have a soul which reasons, and my dog scarcely reasons at all. He has nothing beyond simple ideas, while I have a thousand metaphysical ideas.
A. Well, you are a thousand times more free than he is; you have a thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but still you are not free in any other manner than your dog is free.
B. What! am I not free to will what I like?
A. What do you understand by that?
B. I understand what all the world understands. Is it not every day said that the will is free?
A. An adage is not a reason; explain yourself better.
B. I understand that I am free to will as I please.
A. With your permission, that is nonsense; see you not that it is ridiculous to say—I will will? Consequently, you necessarily will the ideas only which are presented to you. Will you be married, yes or no?
B. Suppose I answer that I will neither the one nor the other.
A. In that case you would answer like him who said: Some believe Cardinal Mazarin dead, others believe him living; I believe neither the one nor the other.
B. Well, I will marry!
A. Aye, that is an answer. Why will you marry?
B. Because I am in love with a young, beautiful, sweet, well-educated, rich girl, who sings very well, whose parents are very honest people, and I flatter myself that I am beloved by her and welcome to the family.
A. There is a reason. You see that you cannot will without a motive. I declare to you that you are free to marry, that is to say, that you have the power of signing the contract, keeping the wedding, and sleeping with your wife.
B. How! I cannot will without a motive? Then what will become of the other proverb—"Sit pro ratione voluntas"—my will is my reason—I will because I will?
A. It is an absurd one, my dear friend; you would then have an effect without a cause.
B. What! when I play at odd or even, have I a reason for choosing even rather than odd?
A. Undoubtedly.
B. And what is the reason, if you please?
A. It is, that the idea of even is presented to your mind rather than the opposite idea. It would be extraordinary if there were cases in which we will because there is a motive, and others in which we will without one. When you would marry, you evidently perceive the predominant reason for it; you perceive it not when you play at odd or even, and yet there must be one.
B. Therefore, once more, I am not free.
A. Your will is not free, but your actions are. You are free to act when you have the power of acting.
B. But all the books that I have read on the liberty of indifference—
A. What do you understand by the liberty of indifference?
B. I understand spitting on the right or the left hand—sleeping on the right or left side—walking up and down four times or five.
A. That would be a pleasant liberty, truly! God would have made you a fine present, much to boast of, certainly! What use to you would be a power which could only be exercised on such futile occasions? But in truth it is ridiculous to suppose the will of willing to spit on the right or left. Not only is the will of willing absurd, but it is certain that several little circumstances determine these acts which you call indifferent. You are no more free in these acts than in others. Yet you are free at all times, and in all places, when you can do what you wish to do.
B. I suspect that you are right. I will think upon it.
Towards the year 1707, the time at which the English gained the battle of Saragossa, protected Portugal, and for some time gave a king to Spain, Lord Boldmind, a general officer who had been wounded, was at the waters of Barèges. He there met with Count Medroso, who having fallen from his horse behind the baggage, at a league and a half from the field of battle, also came to take the waters. He was a familiar of the Inquisition, while Lord Boldmind was only familiar in conversation. One day after their wine, he held this dialogue with Medroso:
BOLDMIND.
—You are then the sergeant of the Dominicans? You exercise a villainous trade.
MEDROSO.
—It is true; but I would rather be their servant than their victim, and I have preferred the unhappiness of burning my neighbor to that of being roasted myself.
BOLDMIND.
—What a horrible alternative! You were a hundred times happier under the yoke of the Moors, who freely suffered you to abide in all your superstitions, and conquerors as they were, arrogated not to themselves the strange right of sending souls to hell.
MEDROSO.
—What would you have? It is not permitted us either to write, speak, or even to think. If we speak, it is easy to misinterpret our words, and still more our writings; and as we cannot be condemned in anauto-da-féfor our secret thoughts, we are menaced with being burned eternally by the order of God himself, if we think not like the Jacobins. They have persuaded the government that if we had common sense the entire state would be in combustion, and the nation become the most miserable upon earth.
BOLDMIND.
—Do you believe that we English who cover the seas with vessels, and who go to gain battles for you in the south of Europe, can be so unhappy? Do you perceive that the Dutch, who have ravished from you almost all your discoveries in India, and who at present are ranked as your protectors, are cursed of God for having given entire liberty to the press, and for making commerce of the thoughts of men? Has the Roman Empire been less powerful because Tullius Cicero has written with freedom?
MEDROSO.
—Who is this Tullius Cicero? I have never heard his name pronounced at St. Hermandad.
BOLDMIND.
—He was a bachelor of the university of Rome, who wrote that which he thought, like Julius Cæsar, Marcus Aurelius, Titus Lucretius Carus, Plinius, Seneca, and other sages.
MEDROSO.
—I know none of them; but I am told that the Catholic religion, Biscayan and Roman, is lost if we begin to think.
BOLDMIND.
—It is not for you to believe it; for you are sure that your religion is divine, and that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. If that is the case, nothing will ever destroy it.
MEDROSO.
—No; but it may be reduced to very little; and it is through having thought, that Sweden, Denmark, all your island, and the half of Germany groan under the frightful misfortune of not being subjects of the pope. It is even said that, if men continue to follow their false lights, they will soon have merely the simple adoration of God and of virtue. If the gates of hell ever prevail so far, what will become of the holy office?
BOLDMIND.
—If the first Christians had not the liberty of thought, does it not follow that there would have been no Christianity?
MEDROSO.
—I understand you not.
BOLDMIND.
—I readily believe it. I would say, that if Tiberius and the first emperors had fostered Jacobins, they would have hindered the first Christians from having pens and ink; and had it not been a long time permitted in the Roman Empire to think freely, it would be impossible for the Christians to establish their dogmas. If, therefore, Christianity was only formed by liberty of opinion, by what contradiction, by what injustice, would you now destroy the liberty on which alone it is founded?
When some affair of interest is proposed to us, do we not examine it for a long time before we conclude upon it? What interest in the world is so great as our eternal happiness or misery? There are a hundred religions on earth which all condemn us if we believe your dogmas, whichtheycall impious and absurd; why, therefore, not examine these dogmas?
MEDROSO.
—How can I examine them? I am not a Jacobin.
BOLDMIND.
—You are a man, and that is sufficient.
MEDROSO.
—Alas! you are more of a man than I am.
BOLDMIND.
—You have only to teach yourself to think; you are born with a mind, you are a bird in the cage of the Inquisition, the holy office has clipped your wings, but they will grow again. He who knows not geometry can learn it: all men can instruct themselves. Is it not shameful to put your soul into the hands of those to whom you would not intrust your money? Dare to think for yourself.
MEDROSO.
—It is said that if the world thought for itself, it would produce strange confusion.
BOLDMIND.
—Quite the contrary. When we assist at a spectacle, every one freely tells his opinion of it, and the public peace is not thereby disturbed; but if some insolent protector of a poet would force all people of taste to proclaim that to be good which appears to them bad, blows would follow, and the two parties would throw apples of discord at one another's heads, as once happened at London. Tyrants over mind have caused a part of the misfortunes of the world. We are happy in England only because every one freely enjoys the right of speaking his opinion.
MEDROSO.
—We are all very tranquil at Lisbon, where no person dares speak his.
BOLDMIND.
—You are tranquil, but you are not happy: it is the tranquillity of galley-slaves, who row in cadence and in silence.
MEDROSO.
—You believe, then, that my soul is at the galleys?
BOLDMIND.
—Yes, and I would deliver it.
MEDROSO.
—But if I find myself well at the galleys?
BOLDMIND.
—Why, then, you deserve to be there.
What harm can the prediction of Jean Jacques do to Russia? Any? We allow him to explain it in a mystical, typical, allegorical sense, according to custom. The nations which will destroy the Russians will possess the belles-lettres, mathematics, wit, and politeness, which degrade man and pervert nature.
From five to six thousand pamphlets have been printed in Holland against Louis XIV., none of which contributed to make him lose the battles of Blenheim, Turin, and Ramillies.
In general, we have as natural a right to make use of our pens as our language, at our peril, risk, and fortune. I know many books which fatigue, but I know of none which have done real evil. Theologians, or pretended politicians, cry: "Religion is destroyed, the government is lost, if you print certain truths or certain paradoxes. Never attempt to think, till you have demanded permission from a monk or an officer. It is against good order for a man to think for himself. Homer, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Pliny, Horace, never published anything but with the approbation of the doctors of the Sorbonne and of the holy Inquisition."
"See into what horrible decay the liberty of the press brought England and Holland. It is true that they possess the commerce of the whole world, and that England is victorious on sea and land; but it is merely a false greatness, a false opulence: they hasten with long strides to their ruin. An enlightened people cannot exist."
None can reason more justly, my friends; but let us see, if you please, what state has been lost by a book. The most dangerous, the most pernicious of all, is that of Spinoza. Not only in the character of a Jew he attacks the New Testament, but in the character of a scholar he ruins the Old; his system of atheism is a thousand times better composed and reasoned than those of Straton and of Epicurus. We have need of the most profound sagacity to answer to the arguments by which he endeavors to prove that one substance cannot form another.
Like yourself, I detest this book, which I perhaps understand better than you, and to which you have very badly replied; but have you discovered that this book has changed the face of the world? Has any preacher lost a florin of his income by the publication of the works of Spinoza? Is there a bishop whose rents have diminished? On the contrary, their revenues have doubled since his time: all the ill is reduced to a small number of peaceable readers, who have examined the arguments of Spinoza in their closets, and have written for or against them works but little known.
For yourselves, it is of little consequence to have caused to be printed "ad usum Delphini," the atheism of Lucretius—as you have already been reproached with doing—no trouble, no scandal, has ensued from it: so leave Spinoza to live in peace in Holland. Lucretius was left in repose at Rome.
But if there appears among you any new book, the ideas of which shock your own—supposing you have any—or of which the author may be of a party contrary to yours—or what is worse, of which the author may not be of any party at all—then you cry out Fire! and let all be noise, scandal, and uproar in your small corner of the earth. There is an abominable man who has printed that if we had no hands we could not make shoes nor stockings. Devotees cry out, furred doctors assemble, alarms multiply from college to college, from house to house, and why? For five or six pages, about which there no longer will be a question at the end of three months. Does a book displease you? refute it. Does it tire you? read it not.
Oh! say you to me, the books of Luther and Calvin have destroyed the Roman Catholic religion in one-half of Europe? Why say not also, that the books of the patriarch Photius have destroyed this Roman religion in Asia, Africa, Greece, and Russia?
You deceive yourself very grossly, when you think that you have been ruined by books. The empire of Russia is two thousand leagues in extent, and there are not six men who are aware of the points disputed by the Greek and Latin Church. If the monk Luther, John Calvin, and the vicar Zuinglius had been content with writing, Rome would yet subjugate all the states that it has lost; but these people and their adherents ran from town to town, from house to house, exciting the women, and were maintained by princes. Fury, which tormented Amata, and which, according to Virgil, whipped her like a top, was not more turbulent. Know, that one enthusiastic, factious, ignorant, supple, vehement Capuchin, the emissary of some ambitious monks, preaching, confessing, communicating, and caballing, will much sooner overthrow a province than a hundred authors can enlighten it. It was not the Koran which caused Mahomet to succeed: it was Mahomet who caused the success of the Koran.
No! Rome has not been vanquished by books; it has been so by having caused Europe to revolt at its rapacity; by the public sale of indulgences; for having insulted men, and wishing to govern them like domestic animals; for having abused its power to such an extent that it is astonishing a single village remains to it. Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the duke of Saxe, the landgrave of Hesse, the princes of Orange, the Condés and Colignys, have done all, and books nothing. Trumpets have never gained battles, nor caused any walls to fall except those of Jericho.
You fear books, as certain small cantons fear violins. Let us read, and let us dance—these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
The following passage is found in the "Système de la Nature," London edition, page 84: "We ought to definelife, before we reason concerningsoul; but I hold it to be impossible to do so."
On the contrary, I think a definition of life quite possible. Life is organization with the faculty of sensation. Thus all animals are said to live. Life is attributed to plants, only by a species of metaphor or catachresis. They are organized and vegetate; but being incapable of sensation, do not properly possess life.
We may, however, live without actual sensation; for we feel nothing in a complete apoplexy, in a lethargy, or in a sound sleep without dreams; but yet possess the capacity of sensation. Many persons, it is too well known, have been buried alive, like Roman vestals, and it is what happens after every battle, especially in cold countries. A soldier lies without motion, and breathless, who, if he were duly assisted, might recover; but to settle the matter speedily, they bury him.
What is this capacity of sensation? Formerly, life and soul meant the same thing, and the one was no better understood than the other; at bottom, is it more understood at present?
In the sacred books of the Jews, soul is always used for life.
"Dixit etiam Deus, producant aquæ reptile animæ viventis." (And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature which hath a living soul.)
"Creavit Deus cete grandia, et omnem animam viventem, atque motabilem quam produxerant aquæ.(And God created great dragons (tannitiim), and every living soul that moveth, which the waters brought forth.) It is difficult to explain the creation of these watery dragons, but such is the text, and it is for us to submit to it.
"Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo, jumenta et reptilia." (Let the earth produce the living soul after its kind, cattle and creeping things.)
"Et in quibus est anima vivens, ad vescendum." (And to everything wherein there is a living soul [every green herb], for meat.)
"Et inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitæ, et factus est homo in animam viventem." (And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.)
"Sanguinem enim animarum vestrarum requiram de manu cunctarum betiarum, et de manu hominis," etc. (I shall require back your souls from the hands of man and beast.)
Souls here evidently signify lives. The sacred text certainly did not mean that beasts had swallowed the souls of men, but their blood, which is their life; and as to the hands given by this text to beasts, it signifies their claws.
In short, more than two hundred passages may be quoted in which the soul is used for the life, both of beasts and man; but not one which explains either life or soul.
If life be the faculty of sensation, whence this faculty? In reply to this question, all the learned quote systems, and these systems are destructive of one another. But why the anxiety to ascertain the source of sensation? It is as difficult to conceive the power which binds all things to a common centre as to conceive the cause of animal sensation. The direction of the needle towards the pole, the paths of comets, and a thousand other phenomena are equally incomprehensible.
Properties of matter exist, the principle of which will never be known to us; and that of sensation, without which there cannot be life, is among the number.
Is it possible to live without experiencing sensation? No. An infant which dies in a lethargy that has lasted from its birth has existed, but not lived.
Let us imagine an idiot unable to form complex ideas, but who possesses sensation; he certainly lives without thinking, forming simple ideas from his sensations. Thought, therefore, is not necessary to life, since this idiot has lived without thinking.
Hence, certain thinkersthinkthat thought is not of the essence of man. They maintain that many idiots who think not, are men; and so decidedly men as to produce other men, without the power of constructing a single argument.
The doctors who maintain the essentiality of thought, reply that these idiots have certain ideas from their sensation. Bold reasoners rejoin, that a well-taught mind possesses more consecutive ideas, and is very superior to these idiots, whence has sprung a grand dispute upon the soul, of which we shall speak—possibly at too great a length—in the article on "Soul."
There are so many kinds of love, that in order to define it, we scarcely know which to direct our attention to. Some boldly apply the name of "love" to a caprice of a few days, a connection without attachment, passion without affection, the affectations of cicisbeism, a cold usage, a romantic fancy, a taste speedily followed by a distaste. They apply the name to a thousand chimeras.
Should any philosophers be inclined profoundly to investigate a subject in itself so little philosophical, they may recur to the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, the decent and honorable lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on the metaphysics of love.
Lucretius speaks of it more as a natural philosopher; and Virgil follows the example of Lucretius. "Amor omnibus idem."
It is the embroidery of imagination on the stuff of nature. If you wish to form an idea of love, look at the sparrows in your garden; behold your doves; contemplate the bull when introduced to the heifer; look at that powerful and spirited horse which two of your grooms are conducting to the mare that quietly awaits him, and is evidently pleased at his approach; observe the flashing of his eyes, notice the strength and loudness of his neighings, the boundings, the curvetings, the ears erect, the mouth opening with convulsive gaspings, the distended nostrils, the breath of fire, the raised and waving mane, and the impetuous movement with which he rushes towards the object which nature has destined for him; do not, however, be jealous of his happiness; but reflect on the advantages of the human species; they afford ample compensation in love for all those which nature has conferred on mere animals—strength, beauty, lightness, and rapidity.
There are some classes, however, even of animals totally unacquainted with sexual association. Fishes are destitute of this enjoyment. The female deposits her millions of eggs on the slime of the waters, and the male that meets them passes over them and communicates the vital principle, never consorting with, or perhaps even perceiving the female to whom they belong.
The greater part of those animals which copulate are sensible of the enjoyment only by a single sense; and when appetite is satisfied, the whole is over. No animal, besides man, is acquainted with embraces; his whole frame is susceptible; his lips particularly experience a delight which never wearies, and which is exclusively the portion of his species; finally, he can surrender himself at all seasons to the endearments of love, while mere animals possess only limited periods. If you reflect on these high pre-eminences, you will readily join in the earl of Rochester's remark, that love would impel a whole nation of atheists to worship the divinity.
As men have been endowed with the talent of perfecting whatever nature has bestowed upon them, they have accordingly perfected the gift of love. Cleanliness, personal attention, and regard to health render the frame more sensitive, and consequently increase its capacity of gratification. All the other amiable and valuable sentiments enter afterwards into that of love, like the metals which amalgamate with gold; friendship and esteem readily fly to its support; and talents both of body and of mind are new and strengthening bonds.
Nam facit ipsa suis interdum femina factis,Morigerisque modis, et mundo corpore cultuUt facile insuescat secum vir degere vitam.—LUCRETIUS, iv, 1275.
Self-love, above all, draws closer all these various ties. Men pride themselves in the choice they have made; and the numberless illusions that crowd around constitute the ornament of the work, of which the foundation is so firmly laid by nature.
Such are the advantages possessed by man above the various tribes of animals. But, if he enjoys delights of which they are ignorant, howe many vexations and disgusts, on the other hand, is he exposed to, from which they are free! The most dreadful of these is occasioned by nature's having poisoned the pleasures of love and sources of life over three-quarters of the world by a terrible disease, to which man alone is subject; nor is it with this pestilence as with various other maladies, which are the natural consequences of excess. It was not introduced into the world by debauchery. The Phrynes and Laises, the Floras and Messalinas, were never attacked by it. It originated in islands where mankind dwelt together in innocence, and has thence been spread throughout the Old World.
If nature could in any instance be accused of despising her own work, thwarting her own plan, and counteracting her own views, it would be in this detestable scourge which has polluted the earth with horror and shame. And can this, then, be the best of all possible worlds? What! if Cæsar and Antony and Octavius never had this disease, was it not possible to prevent Francis the First from dying of it? No, it is said; things were so ordered all for the best; I am disposed to believe it; but it is unfortunate for those to whom Rabelais has dedicated his book.
Erotic philosophers have frequently discussed the question, whether Héloïse could truly love Abélard after he became a monk and mutilated? One of these states much wronged the other.
Be comforted, however, Abélard, you were really beloved; imagination comes in aid of the heart. Men feel a pleasure in remaining at table, although they can no longer eat. Is it love? is it simply recollection? is it friendship? It is a something compounded of all these. It is a confused feeling, resembling the fantastic passions which the dead retained in the Elysian Fields. The heroes who while living had shone in the chariot races, guided imaginary chariots after death. Héloïse lived with you on illusions and supplements. She sometimes caressed you, and with so much the more pleasure as, after vowing at Paraclet that she would love you no more, her caresses were become more precious to her in proportion as they had become more culpable. A woman can never form a passion for a eunuch, but she may retain her passion for her lover after his becoming one, if he still remains amiable.
The case is different with respect to a lover grown old in the service; the external appearance is no longer the same; wrinkles affright, grizzly eyebrows repel, decaying teeth disgust, infirmities drive away; all that can be done or expected is to have the virtue of being a patient and kind nurse, and bearing with the man that was once beloved, all which amounts to—burying the dead.
The disputes that have occurred about the love of God have kindled as much hatred as any theological quarrel. The Jesuits and Jansenists have been contending for a hundred years as to which party loved God in the most suitable and appropriate manner, and which should at the same time most completely harass and torment their neighbor.
When the author of "Telemachus," who was in high reputation at the court of Louis XIV., recommended men to love God in a manner which did not happen to coincide with that of the author of the "Funeral Orations", the latter, who was a complete master of the weapons of controversy, declared open war against him, and procured his condemnation in the ancient city of Romulus, where God was the very object most loved, after domination, ease, luxury, pleasure, and money.
If Madame Guyon had been acquainted with the story of the good old woman, who brought a chafingdish to burn paradise, and a pitcher of water to extinguish hell, that God might be loved for Himself alone, she would not perhaps have written so much as she did. She must inevitably have felt that she could herself never say anything better than that; but she loved God and nonsense so sincerely that she was imprisoned for four months, on account of her affectionate attachment; treatment decidedly rigorous and unjust. Why punish as a criminal a woman whose only offence was composing verse in the style of the Abbé Cotin, and prose in the taste of the popular favorite Punchinello? It is strange that the author of "Telemachus" and the frigid loves of Eucharis should have said in his "Maxims of Saints," after the blessed Francis de Sales: "I have scarcely any desires; but, were I to be born again, I should not have any at all. If God came to me, I would also go to Him; if it were not His will to come to me, I would stay where I was, and not go to Him."
His whole work turns upon this proposition. Francis de Sales was not condemned, but Fénelon was. Why should that have been? the reason is, that Francis de Sales had not a bitter enemy at the court of Turin, and that Fénelon had one at Versailles.
The most sensible thing that was written upon this mystical controversy is to be found perhaps in Boileau's satire, On the Love of God, although that is certainly by no means his best work.
Qui fait exactement ce que, ma loi commande,A pour moi, dit ce Dieu, l'amour que je demande.—EP. xii. 99.Attend exactly to my law's command,Such, says this God, the worship I demand.
If we must pass from the thorns of theology to those of philosophy, which are not so long and are less piercing, it seems clear that an object may be loved by any one without any reference to self, without any mixture of interested self-love. We cannot compare divine things to earthly ones, or the love of God to any other love. We have an infinity of steps to mount above our grovelling human inclinations before we can reach that sublime love. Since, however, we have nothing to rest upon except the earth, let us draw our comparisons from that. We view some masterpiece of art, in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, or eloquence; we hear a piece of music that absolutely enchants our ears and souls; we admire it, we love it, without any return of the slightest advantage to ourselves from this attachment; it is a pure and refined feeling; we proceed sometimes so far as to entertain veneration or friendship for the author; and were he present should cordially embrace him.
This is almost the only way in which we can explain our profound admiration and the impulses of our heart towards the eternal architect of the world. We survey the work with an astonishment made up of respect and a sense of our own nothingness, and our heart warms and rises as much as possible towards the divine artificer.
But what is this feeling? A something vague and indeterminate—an impression that has no connection with our ordinary affections. A soul more susceptible than another, more withdrawn from worldly business and cares, may be so affected by the spectacle of nature as to feel the most ardent as well as pious aspirations towards the eternal Lord who formed it. Could such an amiable affection of the mind, could so powerful a charm, so strong an evidence of feeling, incur censure? Was it possible in reality to condemn the affectionate and grateful disposition of the archbishop of Cambray? Notwithstanding the expressions of St. Francis de Sales, above given, he adhered steadily to this assertion, that the author may be loved merely and simply for the beauty of his works. With what heresy could he be reproached? The extravagances of style of a lady of Montargis, and a few unguarded expressions of his own, were not a little injurious to him.
Where was the harm that he had done? Nothing at present is known about the matter. This dispute, like numberless others, is completely annihilated. Were every dogmatist to say to himself: A few years hence no one will care a straw for my dogmas, there would be far less dogmatizing in the world than there is! Ah! Louis the Fourteenth! Louis the Fourteenth! when two men of genius had departed so far from the natural scope and direction of their talents, as to write the most obscure and tiresome works ever written in your dominions, how much better would it have been to have left them to their own wranglings!
Pour finir tous ces débats-là,Tu n'avais qu'à les laisser faire.To end debates in such a tone'Twas but to leave the men alone.
It is observable under all the articles of morality and history, by what an invisible chain, by what unknown springs, all the ideas that disturb our minds and all the events that poison our days are bound together and brought to co-operate in the formation of our destinies. Fénelon dies in exile in consequence of holding two or three mystical conversations with a pious but fanciful woman. Cardinal Bouillon, nephew of the great Turenne, is persecuted in consequence of not himself persecuting at Rome the archbishop of Cambray, his friend: he is compelled to quit France, and he also loses his whole fortune.
By a like chain of causes and effects, the son of a solicitor at Vire detects, in a dozen of obscure phrases of a book printed at Amsterdam, what is sufficient to fill all the dungeons of France with victims; and at length, from the depth of those dungeons arises a cry for redress and vengeance, the echo of which lays prostrate on the earth an able and tyrannical society which had been established by an ignorant madman.
If the love called Socratic and Platonic is only a becoming sentiment, it is to be applauded; if an unnatural license, we must blush for Greece.
It is as certain as the knowledge of antiquity can well be, that Socratic love was not an infamous passion. It is the word "love" which has deceived the world. Those called the lovers of a young man were precisely such as among us are called the minions of our princes—honorable youths attached to the education of a child of distinction, partaking of the same studies and the same military exercises—a warlike and correct custom, which has been perverted into nocturnal feasts and midnight orgies.
The company of lovers instituted by Laius was an invincible troop of young warriors, bound by oath each to preserve the life of any other at the expense of his own. Ancient discipline never exhibited anything more fine.
Sextus Empiricus and others have boldly affirmed that this vice was recommended by the laws of Persia. Let them cite the text of such a law; let them exhibit the code of the Persians; and if such an abomination be even found there, still I would disbelieve it, and maintain that the thing was not true, because it is impossible. No; it is not in human nature to make a law which contradicts and outrages nature itself—a law which would annihilate mankind, if it were literally observed. Moreover, I will show you the ancient law of the Persians as given in the "Sadder." It says, in article or gate 9, that the greatest sin must not be committed. It is in vain that a modern writer seeks to justify Sextus Empiricus and pederasty. The laws of Zoroaster, with which he is unacquainted, incontrovertibly prove that this vice was never recommended to the Persians. It might as well be said that it is recommended to the Turks. They boldly practise it, but their laws condemn it.
How many persons have mistaken shameful practices, which are only tolerated in a country, for its laws. Sextus Empiricus, who doubted everything, should have doubted this piece of jurisprudence. If he had lived in our days, and witnessed the proceedings of two or three young Jesuits with their pupils, would he have been justified in the assertion that such practices were permitted by the institutes of Ignatius Loyola?
It will be permitted to me here to allude to the Socratic love of the reverend father Polycarp, a Carmelite, who was driven away from the small town of Gex in 1771, in which place he taught religion and Latin to about a dozen scholars. He was at once their confessor, tutor, and something more. Few have had more occupations, spiritual and temporal. All was discovered; and he retired into Switzerland, a country very distant from Greece.
The monks charged with the education of youth have always exhibited a little of this tendency, which is a necessary consequence of the celibacy to which the poor men are condemned.
This vice was so common at Rome that it was impossible to punish a crime which almost every one committed. Octavius Augustus, that murderer, debauchee, and coward, who exiled Ovid, thought it right in Virgil to sing the charms of Alexis. Horace, his other poetical favorite, constructed small odes on Ligurinus; and this same Horace, who praised Augustus for reforming manners, speak in his satires in much the same way of both boys and girls. Yet the ancient law "Scantinia," which forbade pederasty, always existed, and was put in force by the emperor Philip, who drove away from Rome the boys who made a profession of it. If, however, Rome had witty and licentious students, like Petronius, it had also such preceptors as Quintilian; and attend to the precautions he lays down in his chapter of "The Preceptor," in order to preserve the purity of early youth. "Cavendum non solum crimine turpitudinis, sed etiam suspicione." We must not only beware of a shameful crime but even of the suspicion of it. To conclude, I firmly believe that no civilized nation ever existed which made formal laws against morals.
Observations By Another Hand.
We may be permitted to make a few additional reflections on an odious and disgusting subject, which however, unfortunately, forms a part of the history of opinions and manners.
This offence may be traced to the remotest periods of civilization. Greek and Roman history in particular allows us not to doubt it. It was common before people formed regular societies, and were governed by written laws.
The latter fact is the reason that the laws have treated it with so much indulgence. Severe laws cannot be proposed to a free people against a vice, whatever it may be, which is common and habitual. For a long time many of the German nations had written laws which admitted of composition and murder. Solon contented himself with forbidding these odious practices between the citizens and slaves. The Athenians might perceive the policy of this interdiction, and submit to it; especially as it operated against the slaves only, and was enacted to prevent them from corrupting the young free men. Fathers of families, however lax their morals, had no motive to oppose it.