Page images
PDF
EPUB

same benefice, though they have no benefice to hope for. But they still call themselves authors!

The misfortune of these men is, that their fathers did not make them learn a trade, which is a great defect in modern policy. Every man of the people, who can bring up his son in an useful art, and does not, merits punishment. The son of a mason becomes a jesuit at seventeen; he is chased from society at four and twenty, because the levity of his manners is too glaring. Behold him without bread! He turns journalist, he cultivates the lowest kind of literature, and becomes the contempt and horror of even the mob. And such as these again, call themselves authors!

The only authors, are they who haves ucceeded in a genuine art, be it epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, history, or philosophy, and who teach or delight mankind. The others, of whom we have spoken, are among men of letters, like bats among the birds. We cite, comment, criticise, neglect, forget, and above all, despise an author, who is an author only.

Apropos of citing an author: I must amuse myself with relating a singular mistake of the reverend father Viret, cordelier and professor of theology. He read in the" Philosophy of History" of the good abbé Bazin, that no author ever cited a passage of Moses before Longinus, who lived and died in the time of the emperor Aurelian. Forthwith, the zeal of St. Francis was kindled in him. Viret cries out that it is not true, for that several writers have said that there had been a Moses, that even Josephus has spoken at length upon him; and that the abbé Bazin is a wretch, who would destroy the seven sacraments. But, dear father Viret, you ought to inform yourself of the meaning of the word, to cite. There is a great deal of difference between mentioning an author and citing him. To speak, to make mention of an author, is to say, that he has lived, that he has written in such a time: to cite, is to give one of his passages-as Moses says in his Exodus-as Moses has written in his Genesis. Now the abbé Bazin affirms, that no foreign writers,-that none even of the Jewish prophets, have ever quoted a single passage of Moses,

though he was a divine author. Truly, father Viret, you are very malicious, but we shall know at least, by this little paragraph, that you have been an author.

The most voluminous authors that we have had in France, are the comptrollers-general of the finances. Ten great volumes might be made of their declarations, since the reign of Louis XIV. Parliaments have been sometimes the critics of these works, and have found erroneous propositions and contradictions in them. But where are the good authors, who have not been censured?

AUTHORITY.

MISERABLE human beings, whether in green robes, or in turbans; whether in black gowns or surplices, or in mantles and bands, never seek to employ authority where nothing is concerned but reason, or consent to be reviled in all ages as the most impertinent of men, as well as to endure public hatred as the most unjust.

You have been told a hundred times of the insolent absurdity with which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you of it for the hundred and first. I would have you keep the anniversary of it for ever. I would have it inscribed over the door of your holy office.

Seven cardinals, assisted by certain minorite friars, threw into prison the master of thinking in Italy at the age of seventy; and made him live upon bread and water because he instructed mankind in that of which they were ignorant.

Having passed a decree in favour of the categories of Aristotle, the above junto learnedly and equitably doomed to the penalty of the gallies whoever should dare to be of another opinion from the Stagyrite of whom two councils had burnt the books.

Further, a Faculty, which possessed very small faculties, made a decree against innate ideas, and afterwards another for them, without the said Faculty being informed, except by its beadles, of what an idea was. In neighbouring schools, legal proceedings were commenced against the circulation of the blood.

A process was issued against inoculation, and the parties cited by summons.

One-and-twenty volumes of thoughts in folio have been seized, in which it was wickedly and falsely said that triangles have always three angles; that a father was older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost her virginity before her accouchement; and that farina differs from oak leaves.

In another year, the following question was decided "Utrum chimæra bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones ?”—and decided in the affirmative.

These judges, of course, considered themselves much superior to Archimedes, Euclid, Cicero, or Pliny, and strutted about the Universities accordingly.

AXIS.

How is it that the axis of the earth is not perpendicular to the equator? Why is it raised towards the north and inclined towards the south pole, in a position which does not appear natural, and which seems the consequence of some derangement, or the result of a period of a prodigious number of years?

Is it true, that the ecliptic continually inclines by an insensible movement towards the equator, and that the angle formed by these two lines has a little diminished in two thousand years?

Is it true that the ecliptic has been formerly perpendicular to the equator, that the Egyptians have said so, and that Herodotus has related it? This motion of the ecliptic would form a period of about two millions of years. It is not that which astounds us; for the axis of the earth has an imperceptible movement in about twenty-six thousand which occasions the precesyears, sion of the equinoxes. It is as easy for nature to produce a rotation of twenty thousand, as of two hundred and sixty ages.

We are deceived when we are told that the Egyptians had, according to Herodotus, a tradition that the ecliptic had been formerly perpendicular to the equa

tor. The tradition of which Herodotus speaks has no relation to the coincidence of the equinoxial and eclip. tic lines; that is quite another affair.

The pretended scholars of Egypt said that the sun, in the space of eleven thousand years, had set twice in the east, and risen twice in the west. When the equator and the ecliptic coincided, and when the days were everywhere equal to the nights, the sun did not on that account change its setting and rising; but the earth turned on its axis from west to east, as at this day, This idea of making the sun set in the east is a chimera only worthy of the brains of the priests of Egypt, and shows the profound ignorance of those jugglers who have had so much reputation. The tale should be classed with those of the satyrs, who sang and danced in the train of Osiris;-with the little boys, whom they would not feed till after they had ran eight leagues, to teach them to conquer the world;-with the two children who cried bec in asking for bread, and who by that means discovered that the Phrygian was the original language;-with King Psammeticus, who gave his daughter to a thief who had dexterously stolen his money, &c. &c.

Ancient history, ancient astronomy, ancient physics, ancient medicine (up to Hippocrates), ancient geography, ancient metaphysics, all are nothing but ancient absurdities, which ought to make us feel the happiness of being born in later times.

There is, no doubt, more truth in two pages of the French Encyclopedia in relation to physics, than in all the library of Alexandria, the loss of which is so much regretted.

BABEL.

SECTION I.

BABEL signifies among the Orientals, God the Father, the power of God, the gate of God, according to the way in which the word is pronounced. It appears, therefore, that Babylon was the city of God, the holy city. Every capital of a state was a city of God, the sacred city. The Greeks called them all Hieropolis

The

and there were more than thirty of this name. tower of Babel, then, signifies the tower of God the Father.

Josephus says truly, that Babel signifies confusion; Calmet says, with others, that Bilba, in Chaldean, signifies confounded; but all the Orientals have been of a contrary opinion. The word confusion would be a strange etymon for the capital of a vast empire. I very much like the opinion of Rabelais, who pretends that Paris was formerly called Lutetia, on account of the ladies' white legs.

Be that as it may, commentators have tormented themselves to know to what height men had raised this famous tower of Babel. St. Jerome gives it twenty thousand feet. The ancient Jewish book, entitled "Jacult," gave it eighty-one thousand. Paul Lucas has seen the remains of it, and it is a fine thing to be as keen-sighted as Paul Lucas: but these dimensions are not the only difficulties which have exercised the learned.

People have wished to know how the children of Noah,* after having divided among themselves the islands of the nations and established themselves in divers lands, with each one his particular language, families and people, should all find themselves in the plain of Shinaar, to build there a tower, saying, “Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."t

The book of Genesis speaks of the states which the sons of Noah founded. It has related how the people of Europe, Africa, and Asia, all came to Shinaar speaking one language only, and purposing the same thing.

The vulgate places the Deluge in the year of the world 1656, and the construction of the tower of Babel 1771, that is to say, one hundred and fifteen years after the destruction of mankind, and even during the life of Noah.

Men then must have multiplied with prodigious celerity; all the arts revived in a very little time.

* Genesis, chap. x. v. 5. † Genesis, chap. xi. v. 2, 4.

« EelmineJätka »