Chapter IV (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MARCUS AURELIUS AND A RECOLLET FRIAR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A BRAHMIN
AND A JESUIT, ON NECESSITY AND
FREE-WILL, AND THE GENERAL
CONCATENATION OF CAUSES AND
EFFECTS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

JESUIT.—How so, prithee? For, as to our society, who were accused with having had a large share in that affair, we had not the least knowledge of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DIALOGUES BETWEEN
LUCRETIUS AND
POSIDONIUS.

FIRST COLLOQUY.

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

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

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

LUCRETIUS.—My principles are so.

_Ex nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti._ _Tangere enim & tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res._

From nothing nought can spring, to nothing nought return. Nought but a body can a body touch.

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

LUCRETIUS.—But who then could make the world?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SECOND COLLOQUY.

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

POSIDONIUS.—You say: “_Idque situm media regione in pectoris hæret._”—“The mind is in the middle of the breast.”—But, when you composed your beautiful verses, did you never make any effort of the head? When you speak of the orators Cicero and Mark Antony, do you not say that they had good heads? And were you to say that they had good breasts, would not people imagine that you were talking of their voice and lungs?

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

_Hic exultat enim pavor ac metus; hæc loca circum Lætitiæ mulcent._

For there our passions live, our joy, our fear, And hope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POSIDONIUS.—Neither you nor I know aught of the matter. I will tell you plainly what it is not; but I cannot tell you what it actually is. I see that it is a power lodged in my body; that I did not give myself this power; and, in consequence, that it must have come from a Being superior to myself.

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

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

LUCRETIUS.—Notwithstanding this reasoning, which you repeat, it is certain that a father communicates a soul to his son at the same time that he forms his body. This soul and this body grow together; they gradually acquire strength; they are subject to calamities, and to the infirmities of old age. The decay of our strength draws along with it that of our judgment; the effect at last ceases with the cause, and the soul vanishes like smoke into air.

_Præterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, & una_ _Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem._ _Nam velet infirmo pueri, teneroque vagantur_ _Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis._ _Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus ætas,_ _Consilium quoque majus, & auctior est animi vis._ _Post ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi_ _Corpus, & obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus:_ _Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque, mensque;_ _Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt,_ _Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai_ _Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras:_ _Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus_ _Crescere, & (ut docui) simul ævo fessa fatiscit._

Besides, ’tis plain that souls are born, and grow; And all by age decay, as bodies do; To prove this truth: in infants, minds appear Infirm, and tender as their bodies are: In man, the mind is strong; when age prevails, And the quick vigor of each member fails, The mind’s powers, too, decrease, and waste apace; And grave and reverend folly takes the place. ’Tis likely then the soul and mind must die; Like smoke in air, its scattered atoms fly; Since all these proofs have shown, these reasons told, ’Tis with the body born, grows strong, and old. —CREECH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LUCRETIUS.—Who ever thought so?

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

LUCRETIUS.—I am forced to allow it.

POSIDONIUS.—Tell me next what life is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

LUCRETIUS.—I must own that I do not.

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

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

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

DIALOGUE BETWEEN
A CLIENT AND
HIS LAWYER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLIENT.—But these same men of Poictou, Auvergne, with your Guignes gentry, are they not all dressed in the same manner? Is it a harder matter to use the same laws than it is to wear the same clothes? And since it is evident the tailors and cobblers understand one another from one end of the kingdom to the other, why cannot the judges learn of them, and follow so excellent an example?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DIALOGUE BETWEEN MADAME DE
MAINTENON AND MADEMOISELLE
DE L’ENCLOS.[1]

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

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