SECTION II.

Baptism, immersion in water, abstersion, purification by water, is of the highest antiquity. To be cleanly was to be pure before the gods. No priest ever dared to approach the altar with a soil upon his body. The natural inclination to transfer to the soul that which appertains to the body led to the belief that lustrations and ablutions took away the stains of the soul as they removed those of the garments and that washing the body washed the soul also. Hence the ancient custom of bathing in the Ganges, the waters of which were thought to be sacred; hence the lustrations so frequent among every people. The Oriental nations, inhabiting hot countries, were the most religiously attached to these customs.

The Jews were obliged to bathe after any pollution--after touching an unclean animal, touching a corpse, and on many other occasions.

When the Jews received among them a stranger converted to their religion they baptized, after circumcising him, and if it was a woman she was simply baptized--that is, dipped in water in the presence of three witnesses. This immersion was reputed to give the persons baptized a new birth, a new life; they became at once Jewish and pure. Children born before this baptism had no share in the inheritance of their brethren, born after them of a regenerated father and mother. So that, with the Jews, to be baptized and to be born again were the same thing, and this idea has remained attached to baptism down to the present day. Thus, when John, the forerunner, began to baptize in the Jordan he did but follow an immemorial usage. The priests of the law did not call him to account for this baptizing as for anything new, but they accused him of arrogating to himself a right which belonged exclusively to them --as Roman Catholic priests would have a right to complain if a layman took upon himself to say mass. John was doing a lawful thing but was doing it unlawfully.

John wished to have disciples, and he had them. He was chief of a sect among the lower orders of the people and it cost him his life. It even appears that Jesus was at first among his disciples, since he was baptized by him in the Jordan, and John sent some of his own party to Him a short time before His death.

The historian Josephus speaks of John but not of Jesus--an incontestable proof that in his time John the Baptist had a greater reputation than He whom he baptized. A great multitude followed him, says that celebrated historian, and the Jews seemed disposed to undertake whatever he should command them.

From this passage it appears that John was not only the chief of a sect, but the chief of a party. Josephus adds that he caused Herod some uneasiness. He did indeed make himself formidable to Herod, who, at length, put him to death, but Jesus meddled with none but the Pharisees. Josephus, therefore, mentions John as a man who had stirred up the Jews against King Herod; as one whose zeal had made him a state criminal, but Jesus, not having approached the court, was unknown to the historian Josephus.

The sect of John the Baptist differed widely in discipline from that of Jesus. In the Acts of the Apostles we see that twenty years after the execution of Jesus, Apollos of Alexandria, though become a Christian, knew no baptism but that of John, nor had any idea of the Holy Ghost. Several travellers, and among others Chardin, the most accredited of all, say that in Persia there still are disciples of John, called Sabis, who baptize in his name and acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, but not as a god.

As for Jesus Christ Himself He received baptism but conferred it on no one; His apostles baptized the catechumens, or circumcised them as occasion required; this is evident from the operation of circumcision performed by Paul on his disciple Timothy.

It also appears that when the apostles baptized it was always in the name of Jesus Christ alone. The Acts of the Apostles do not mention any one baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--whence it may be concluded that the author of the Acts of the Apostles knew nothing of Matthew's gospel, in which it is said: "Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The Christian religion had not yet received its form. Even the Symbol, which was called the Symbol of the Apostles, was not made until after their time, of this no one has any doubt. In Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians we find a very singular custom which was then introduced--that of baptizing the dead, but the rising Church soon reserved baptism for the living alone; at first none were baptized but adults, and the ceremony was often deferred until the age of fifty, or the last sickness, that the individual might carry with him into the other world the unimpaired virtue of a baptism recently performed.

Now, all children are baptized: none but the Anabaptists reserve this ceremony for the mature age; they plunge their whole bodies into the water. The Quakers, who compose a very numerous society in England and in America, do not use baptism: the reason is that Jesus Christ did not baptize any of His disciples, and their aim is to be Christians only as His disciples were--which occasions a very wide difference between them and other communions.

Addition to the Article "Baptism" by Abbé Nicaise.

The Emperor Julian, the philosopher, in his immortal "Satire on the Cæsars," puts these words into the mouth of Constantius, son of Constantine: "Whosoever feels himself guilty of rape, murder, plunder, sacrilege, and every most abominable crime, so soon as I have washed him with this water, he shall be clean and pure."

It was, indeed, this fatal doctrine that occasioned the Christian emperors, and the great men of the empire, to defer their baptism until death. They thought they had found the secret of living criminal and dying virtuous.

How strange an idea--that a pot of water should wash away every crime! Now, all children are baptized because an idea no less absurd supposes them all criminal; they are all saved until they have the use of reason and the power to become guilty! Cut their throats, then, as quickly as possible, to insure their entrance into paradise. This is so just a consequence that there was once a devout sect that went about poisoning and killing all newly-baptized infants. These devout persons reasoned with perfect correctness, saying: "We do these little innocents the greatest possible good; we prevent them from being wicked and unhappy in this life and we give them life eternal."

BARUCH, OR BARAK, AND DEBORAH;

AND, INCIDENTALLY, ON CHARIOTS OF WAR.

We have no intention here to inquire at what time Baruch was chief of the Jewish people; why, being chief, he allowed his army to be commanded by a woman; whether this woman, named Deborah, had married Lapidoth; whether she was the friend or relative of Baruch, or perhaps his daughter or his mother; nor on what day the battle of Tabor, in Galilee, was fought between this Deborah and Sisera, captain-general of the armies of King Jabin--which Sisera commanded in Galilee an army of three hundred thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and three thousand chariots of war, according to the historian Josephus.

We shall at present leave out of the question this Jabin, king of a village called Azor, who had more troops than the Grand Turk. We very much pity the fate of his grand-vizier Sisera, who, having lost the battle in Galilee, leaped from his chariot and four that he might fly more swiftly on foot. He went and begged the hospitality of a holy Jewish woman, who gave him some milk and drove a great cart-nail through his head while he was asleep. We are very sorry for it, but this is not the matter to be discussed. We wish to speak of chariots of war.

The battle was fought at the foot of Mount Tabor, near the river Kishon. Mount Tabor is a steep mountain, the branches of which, somewhat less in height, extend over a great part of Galilee. Between this mountain and the neighboring rocks there is a small plain, covered with great flint-stones and impracticable for cavalry. The extent of this plain is four or five hundred paces. We may venture to believe that Sisera did not here draw up his three hundred thousand men in order of battle; his three thousand chariots would have found it difficult to manœuvre on such a field.

We may believe that the Hebrews had no chariots of war in a country renowned only for asses, but the Asiatics made use of them in the great plains. Confucius, or rather Confutze, says positively that, from time immemorial, each of the viceroys of the provinces was expected to furnish to the emperor a thousand war-chariots, each drawn by four horses. Chariots must have been in use long before the Trojan war, for Homer does not speak of them as a new invention, but these chariots were not armed like those of Babylon, neither the wheels nor the axles were furnished with steel blades.

At first this invention must have been very formidable on large plains, especially when the chariots were numerous, driven with impetuosity, and armed with long pikes and scythes, but when they became familiar it seemed so easy to avoid their shock that they fell into general disuse.

In the war of 1741 it was proposed to renew and reform this ancient invention. A minister of state had one of these chariots constructed and it was tried. It was asserted that in large plains, like that of Lützen, they might be used with advantage by concealing them behind the cavalry, the squadrons of which would open to let them pass and then follow them, but the generals judged that this manœuvre would be useless, and even dangerous, now that battles are gained by cannon only. It was replied that there would be as many cannon hi the army using the chariots of war to defend them as in the enemy's army to destroy them. It was added that these chariots would, in the first instance, be sheltered from the cannon behind the battalions or squadrons, that the latter would open and let the chariots run with impetuosity and that this unexpected attack might have a prodigious effect. The generals advanced nothing in opposition to these arguments, but they would not revive this game of the ancient Persians.

BATTALION.

Let us observe that the arrangements, the marching, and the evolutions of battalions, nearly as they are now practised, were revived in Europe by one who was not a military man--by Machiavelli, a secretary at Florence. Battalions three, four, and five deep; battalions advancing upon the enemy; battalions in square to avoid being cut off in a rout; battalions four deep sustained by others in column; battalions flanked by cavalry--all are his. He taught Europe the art of war; it had long been practised without being known.

The grand duke would have had his secretary teach his troops their exercises according to his new method. But Machiavelli was too prudent to do so; he had no wish to see the officers and soldiers laugh at a general in a black cloak; he reserved himself for the council.

There is something singular in the qualities which he requires in a soldier. He must first have gagliardia, which signifies alert vigor; he must have a quick and sure eye--in which there must also be a little gayety; a strong neck, a wide breast, a muscular arm, round loins, but little belly, with spare legs and feet--all indicating strength and agility. But above all the soldier must have honor, and must be led by honor alone. "War," says he, "is but too great a corrupter of morals," and he reminds us of the Italian proverb: War makes thieves, and peace finds them gibbets.

Machiavelli had but a poor opinion of the French infantry, and until the battle of Rocroi it must be confessed that it was very bad. A strange man this Machiavelli! He amused himself with making verses, writing plays, showing his cabinet the art of killing with regularity, and teaching princes the art of perjuring themselves, assassinating, and poisoning as occasion required--a great art which Pope Alexander VI., and his bastard Cæsar Borgia, practised in wonderful perfection without the aid of his lessons.

Be it observed that in all Machiavelli's works on so many different subjects there is not one word which renders virtue amiable--not one word proceeding from the heart. The same remark has been made on Boileau. He does not, it is true, make virtue lovely, but he represents it as necessary.

BAYLE.

Why has Louis Racine treated Bayle like a dangerous man, with a cruel heart, in an epistle to Jean Baptiste Rousseau, which, although printed, is but little known?

He compares Bayle, whose logical acuteness detected the errors of opposing systems, to Marius sitting upon the ruins of Carthage:

Ainsi d'un œil content Marius, dans sa fuite, Contemplait les débris de Carthage détruite. Thus exiled Marius, with contented gaze, Thy ruins, Carthage, silently surveys.

Here is a simile which exhibits very little resemblance, or, as Pope says, a simile dissimilar. Marius had not destroyed reason and arguments, nor did he contentedly view its ruins, but, on the contrary, he was penetrated with an elevated sentiment of melancholy on contemplating the vicissitudes of human affairs, when he made the celebrated answer: "Say to the proconsul of Africa that thou hast seen Marius seated on the ruins of Carthage."

We ask in what Marius resembled Bayle? Louis Racine, if he thinks fit, may apply the epithets "hard-hearted" and "cruel" to Marius, to Sulla, to the triumvirs, but, in reference to Bayle the phrases "detestable pleasure," "cruel heart," "terrible man," should not be put in a sentence written by Louis Racine against one who is only proved to have weighed the arguments of the Manichæans, the Paulicians, the Arians, the Eutychians, against those of their adversaries. Louis Racine proportions not the punishment to the offence. He should remember that Bayle combated Spinoza, who was too much of a philosopher, and Jurieu, who was none at all. He should respect the good manners of Bayle and learn to reason from him. But he was a Jansenist, that is to say, he knew the words of the language of Jansenism and employed them at random. You may properly call cruel and terrible a powerful man who commands his slaves, on pain of death, to go and reap corn where he has sown thistles; who gives to some of them too much food, and suffers others to die of hunger; who kills his eldest son to leave a large fortune to the younger. All that is frightful and cruel, Louis Racine! It is said that such is the god of thy Jansenists, but I do not believe it. Oh slaves of party, people attacked with the jaundice, you constantly see everything yellow!

And to whom has the unthinking heir of a father who had a hundred times more taste than he has philosophy, addressed this miserable epistle against the virtuous Bayle? To Rousseau--a poet who thinks still less; to a man whose principal merit has consisted in epigrams which are revolting to the most indulgent reader; to a man to whom it was alike whether he sang Jesus Christ or Giton. Such was the apostle to whom Louis Racine denounced Bayle as a miscreant. What motive could the author of "Phædra" and "Iphigenia" have for falling into such a prodigious error? Simply this, that Rousseau had made verses for the Jansenists, whom he then believed to be in high credit.

Such is the rage of faction let loose upon Bayle, but you do not hear any of the dogs who have howled against him bark against Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Epicurus, nor against the numerous philosophers of antiquity. It is all reserved for Bayle; he is their fellow citizen--he is of their time--his glory irritates them. Bayle is read and Nicole is not read; behold the source of the Jansenist hatred! Bayle is studied, but neither the reverend Father Croiset, nor the reverend Father Caussin; hence Jesuitical denouncement!

In vain has a Parliament of France done him the greatest honor in rendering his will valid, notwithstanding the severity of the law. The madness of party knows neither honor nor justice. I have not inserted this article to make the eulogy of the best of dictionaries, which would not be becoming here, and of which Bayle is not in need; I have written it to render, if I can, the spirit of party odious and ridiculous.

BDELLIUM.

We are very much puzzled to know what this Bdellium is which is found near the shores of the Pison, a river of the terrestrial paradise which turns into the country of the Havilah, where there is gold. Calmet relates that, according to several commentators, Bdellium is the carbuncle, but that it may also be crystal. Then it is the gum of an Arabian tree and afterwards we are told that capers are intended. Many others affirm that it signifies pearls. Nothing but the etymologies of Bochart can throw a light on this question. I wish that all these commentators had been upon the spot.

The excellent gold which is obtained in this country, says Calmet, shows evidently that this is the country of Colchis and the golden fleece is a proof of it. It is a pity that things have changed so much for Mingrelia; that beautiful country, so famous for the loves of Medea and Jason, now produces gold and Bdellium no more than bulls which vomit fire and flame, and dragons which guard the fleece. Everything changes in this world; and if we do not skilfully cultivate our lands, and if the state remain always in debt, we shall become a second Mingrelia.

BEARD.

Certain naturalists assure us that the secretion which produces the beard is the same as that which perpetuates mankind. An entire hemisphere testifies against this fraternal union. The Americans, of whatever country, color, or stature they may be, have neither beards on their chins, nor any hair on their bodies, except their eyebrows and the hair of their heads, I have legal attestations of official men who have lived, conversed, and combated with thirty nations of South America, and they attest that they have never seen a hair on their bodies; and they laugh, as they well may, at writers who, copying one another, say that the Americans are only without hair because they pull it out with pincers; as if Christopher Columbus, Fernando Cortes, and the other adventurers had loaded themselves with the little tweezers with which our ladies remove their superfluous hairs, and had distributed them in all the countries of America.

I believed for a long time that the Esquimaux were excepted from the general laws of the new world; but I am assured that they are as free from hair as the others. However, they have children in Chile, Peru, and Canada, as well as in our bearded continent. There is, then, a specific difference between these bipeds and ourselves, in the same way as their lions, which are divested of the mane, and in other respects differ from the lions of Africa.

It is to be remarked that the Orientals have never varied in their consideration for the beard. Marriage among them has always existed, and that period is still the epoch of life from which they no longer shave the beard. The long dress and the beard impose respect. The Westerns have always been changing the fashion of the chin. Mustaches were worn under Louis XIV. towards the year 1672. Under Louis XIII. a little pointed beard prevailed. In the time of Henry IV. it was square. Charles V., Julius II., and Francis I. restored the large beard to honor in their courts, which had been a long time in fashion. Gownsmen, through gravity and respect for the customs of their fathers, shaved themselves; while the courtiers, in doublets and little mantles, wore their beards as long as they could. When a king in those days sent a lawyer as an ambassador, his comrades would laugh at him if he suffered his beard to grow, besides mocking him in the chamber of accounts or of requests,--But quite enough upon beards.

BEASTS.

What a pity and what a poverty of spirit to assert that beasts are machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which effect all their operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, etc.

What is this bird, who makes its nest in a semicircle when he attaches it to a wall; and in a circle on a tree--this bird does all in the same blind manner! The hound, which you have disciplined for three months, does he not know more at the end of this time than he did before? Does the canary, to which you play an air, repeat ft directly? Do you not employ a considerable time in teaching it? Have you not seen that he sometimes mistakes it, and that be corrects himself?

Is it because I speak to you that you judge I have sentiment, memory, and ideas? Well, suppose I do not speak to you; you see me enter my room with an afflicted air, I seek a paper with disquietude, I open the bureau in which I recollect to have shut it, I hid it and read it with joy. You pronounce that I have felt the sentiment of affliction and of joy; that I have memory and knowledge.

Extend the same judgment to the dog who has lost his master, who has sought hum everywhere with grievous cries, and who enters the house agitated and restless, goes upstairs and down, from room to room, and at last finds in the closet the master whom he loves, and testifies his joy by the gentleness of his cries, by his leaps and his caresses.

Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in friendship, they nail him to a table and dissect him living to show the mesenteric veins. You discover in him the same organs of sentiment which are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he nerves, and is he incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in mature.

But the masters of this school ask, what is the soul of beasts? I do not understand tins question. A tree has the faculty of receiving in its fibres the sap which circulates, of evolving its buds, its leaves, and its fruits. You will ask me what is the soul of this tree? It has received these gifts. The animal has received those of sentiment, memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts; who has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.

The souls of beasts are substantial forms, says Aristotle; and after Aristotle, the Arabian school; and after the Arabian school, the Angelical school; and after the Angelical school, the Sorbonne; and after the Sorbonne, every one in the world.

The souls of beasts are material, exclaim other philosophers. These have not been more fortunate than the former. They are in vain asked what is a material soul? They say that it is a matter which has sensation; but who has given it this sensation? It is a material soul, that is to say, it is composed of a matter which gives sensation to matter. They cannot get out of this circle.

Listen to one kind of beasts reasoning upon another; their soul is a spiritual being, which dies with the body; but what proof have you of it? What idea have you of this spiritual being, which has sentiment, memory, and its share of ideas and combinations, but which can never tell what made a child of six years old? On what ground do you imagine that this being, which is not corporeal, perishes with the body? The greatest beasts are those who have suggested that this soul is neither body nor spiritan excellent system! We can only understand by spirit something unknown, which is not body. Thus the system of these gentlemen amounts to this, that the soul of beasts is a substance which is neither body, nor something which is not body. Whence can proceed so many contradictory errors? From the custom which men have of examining what a thing is before they know whether it exists. They call the speech the effect of a breath of mind, the soul of a sigh. What is the soul? It is a name which I have given to this valve which rises and falls, which lets the air in, relieves itself, and sends it through a pipe when I move the lungs.

There is not, then, a soul distinct from the machine. But what moves the lungs of animals? I have already said, the power that moves the stars. The philosopher who said, "Deus est animâ brutorum."--God is the soul of the brutes--is right; but he should have gone much further.

BEAUTIFUL (THE).

Since we have quoted Plato on love, why should we not quote him on "the beautiful," since beauty causes love. It is curious to know how a Greek spoke of the beautiful more than two thousand years since.

"The man initiated into the sacred mysteries, when he sees a beautiful face accompanied by a divine form, a something more than mortal, feels a secret emotion, and I know not what respectful fear. He regards this figure as a divinity.... When the influence of beauty enters into his soul by his eyes he burns; the wings of his soul are bedewed; they lose the hardness which retains their germs and liquefy themselves; these germs, swelling beneath the roots of its wings, they expand from every part of the soul (for soul had wings formerly)," etc.

I am willing to believe that nothing is finer than this discourse of the divine Plato; but it does not give us very clear ideas of the nature of the beautiful.

Ask a toad what is beauty--the great beauty To Kalon; he will answer that it is the female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, her large flat mouth, her yellow belly, and brown back. Ask a negro of Guinea; beauty is to him a black, oily skin, sunken eyes, and a flat nose. Ask the devil; he will tell you that the beautiful consists in a pair of horns, four claws, and a tail. Then consult the philosophers; they will answer you with jargon; they must have something conformable to the archetype of the essence of the beautiful--to the To Kalon.

I was once attending a tragedy near a philosopher. "How beautiful that is," said he. "What do you find beautiful?" asked I. "It is," said he, "that the author has attained his object." The next day he took his medicine, which did him some good. "It has attained its object," cried I to him; "it is a beautiful medicine." He comprehended that it could not be said that a medicine is beautiful, and that to apply to anything the epithet beautiful it must cause admiration and pleasure. He admitted that the tragedy had inspired him with these two sentiments, and that it was the To Kalon, the beautiful.

We made a journey to England. The same piece was played, and, although ably translated, it made all the spectators yawn. "Oh, oh!" said he, "the To Kalon is not the same with the English as with the French." He concluded after many reflections that "the beautiful" is often merely relative, as that which is decent at Japan is indecent at Rome; and that which is the fashion at Paris is not so at Pekin; and he was thereby spared the trouble of composing a long treatise on the beautiful.

There are actions which the whole world considers fine. A challenge passed between two of Cæsar's officers, mortal enemies, not to shed each other's blood behind a thicket by tierce and quarte, as among us, but to decide which of them would best defend the camp of the Romans, about to be attacked by the barbarians. One of the two, after having repulsed the enemy, was near falling; the other flew to his assistance, saved his life, and gained the victory. A friend devotes himself to death for his friend, a son for his father. The Algonquin, the French, the Chinese, will mutually say that all this is very beautiful, that such actions give them pleasure, and that they admire them.

They will say the same of great moral maxims; of that of Zoroaster: "If in doubt that an action be just, desist;" of that of Confucius: "Forget injuries; never forget benefits."

The negro, with round eyes and flattened nose, who would not give the ladies of our court the name of beautiful, would give it without hesitation to these actions and these maxims. Even the wicked man recognizes the beauty of the virtues which he cannot imitate. The beautiful, which only strikes the senses, the imagination, and what is called the spirit, is then often uncertain; the beauty which strikes the heart is not. You will find a number of people who will tell you they have found nothing beautiful in three-fourths of the "Iliad"; but nobody will deny that the devotion of Codrus for his people was fine, supposing it was true.

Brother Attinet, a Jesuit, a native of Dijon, was employed as designer in the country house of the Emperor Camhi, at the distance of some leagues from Pekin.

"This country house," says he, in one of his letters to M. Dupont, "is larger than the town of Dijon. It is divided into a thousand habitations on one line; each one has its courts, its parterres, its gardens, and its waters; the front of each is ornamented with gold varnish and paintings. In the vast enclosures of the park, hills have been raised by hand from twenty to sixty feet high. The valleys are watered by an infinite number of canals, which run a considerable distance to join and form lakes and seas. We float on these seas in boats varnished and gilt, from twelve to thirteen fathoms long and four wide. These barks have magnificent saloons, and the borders of the canals are covered with houses, all in different tastes. Every house has its gardens and cascades. You go from one valley to another by alleys, alternately ornamented with pavilions and grottoes. No two valleys are alike; the largest of all is surrounded by a colonnade, behind which are gilded buildings. All the apartments of these houses correspond in magnificence with the outside. All the canals have bridges at stated distances; these bridges are bordered with balustrades of white marble sculptured in basso-relievo.

"In the middle of the great sea is raised a rock, and on this rock is a square pavilion, in which are more than a hundred apartments. From this square pavilion there is a view of all the palaces, all the houses, and all the gardens of this immense enclosure, and there are more than four hundred of them.

"When the emperor gives a fête all these buildings are illuminated in an instant, and from every house there are fireworks.

"This is not all; at the end of what they call the sea is a great fair, held by the emperor's officers. Vessels come from the great sea to arrive at this fair. The courtiers disguise themselves as merchants and artificers of all sorts; one keeps a coffee house, another a tavern; one takes the profession of a thief, another that of the officer who pursues him. The emperor and all the ladies of the court come to buy stuffs, the false merchants cheat them as much as they can; they tell them that it is shameful to dispute so much about the price, and that they are poor customers. Their majesties reply that the merchants are knaves; the latter are angry and affect to depart; they are appeased; the emperor buys all and makes lotteries of it for all his court. Farther on are spectacles of all sorts."

When brother Attinet came from China to Versailles he found it small and dull. The Germans, who were delighted to stroll about its groves, were astonished that brother Attinet was so difficult. This is another reason which determines me not to write a treatise on the beautiful.

BEES.

The bees may be regarded as superior to the human race in this, that from their own substance they produce another which is useful; while, of all our secretions, there is not one good for anything; nay, there is not one which does not render mankind disagreeable.

I have been charmed to find that the swarms which turn out of the hive are much milder than our sons when they leave college. The young bees then sting no one; or at least but rarely and in extraordinary cases. They suffer themselves to be carried quietly in the bare hand to the hive which is destined for them. But no sooner have they learned in their new habitation to know their interests than they become like us and make war. I have seen very peaceable bees go for six months to labor in a neighboring meadow covered with flowers which secreted them. When the mowers came they rushed furiously from their hive upon those who were about to steal their property and put them to flight.

We find in the Proverbs attributed to Solomon that "there are four things, the least upon earth, but which are wiser than the wise men--the ants, a little people who lay up food during the harvest; the hares, a weak people who lie on stones; the grasshoppers, who have no kings and who journey in flocks; and the lizards, which work with their hands and dwell in the palaces of kings." I know not how Solomon forgot the bees, whose instinct seems very superior to that of hares, which do not lie on stone; or of lizards, with whose genius I am not acquainted. Moreover, I shall always prefer a bee to a grasshopper.

The bees have, in all ages, furnished the poet with descriptions, comparisons, allegories, and fables. Mandeville's celebrated "Fable of the Bees" made a great noise in England. Here is a short sketch of it:

Once the bees, in worldly things, Had a happy government; And their laborers and their kings Made them wealthy and content; But some greedy drones at last Found their way into their hive; Those, in idleness to thrive, Told the bees they ought to fast. Sermons were their only labors; Work they preached unto their neighbors. In their language they would say, "You shall surely go to heaven, When to us you've freely given Wax and honey all away."-- Foolishly the bees believed, Till by famine undeceived; When their misery was complete, All the strange delusion vanished! Now the drones are killed or banished, And the bees again may eat.

Mandeville goes much further; he asserts that bees cannot live at their ease in a great and powerful hive without many vices. "No kingdom, no state," says he, "can flourish without vices. Take away the vanity of ladies of quality, and there will be no more fine manufactures of silk, no more employment for men and women in a thousand different branches; a great part of the nation will be reduced to beggary. Take away the avarice of our merchants, and the fleets of England will be annihilated. Deprive artists of envy, and emulation will cease; we shall sink back into primitive rudeness and ignorance."

It is quite true that a well-governed society turns every vice to account; but it is not true that these vices are necessary to the well-being of the world. Very good remedies may be made from poisons, but poisons do not contribute to the support of life. By thus reducing the "Fable of the Bees" to its just value, it might be made a work of moral utility.

BEGGAR--MENDICANT

Every country where begging, where mendicity, is a profession, is ill governed. Beggary, as I have elsewhere said, is a vermin that clings to opulence. Yes; but let it be shaken off; let the hospitals be for sickness and age alone, and let the shops be for the young and vigorous.

The following is an extract from a sermon composed by a preacher ten years ago for the parish of St. Leu and St. Giles, which is the parish of the beggars and the convulsionaries: "Pauper es evangelicantur"--"the gospel is preached to the poor."

"My dear brethren the beggars, what is meant by the word gospel? It signifies good news. It is, then, good news that I come to tell you; and what is it? It is that if you are idlers you will die on a dung-hill. Know that there have been idle kings, so at least we are told, and they at last had not where to lay their heads. If you work, you will be as happy as other men.

"The preachers at St. Eustache and St. Roche may deliver to the rich very fine sermons in a flowery style, which procure for the auditors a light slumber with an easy digestion, and for the orator a thousand crowns; but I address those whom hunger keeps awake. Work for your bread, I say; for the Scripture says that he who does not work deserves not to eat. Our brother in adversity, Job, who was for some time in your condition, says that man is born to labor as the bird is to fly. Look at this immense city; every one is busy; the judges rise at four in the morning to administer justice to you and send you to the galleys when your idleness has caused you to thieve rather awkwardly.

"The king works; he attends his council every day; and he has made campaigns. Perhaps you will say he is none the richer. Granted; but that is not his fault. The financiers know, better than you or I do, that not one-half his revenue ever enters his coffers. He has been obliged to sell his plate in order to defend us against our enemies. We should aid him in our turn. The Friend of Man (l'Ami des Hommes) allows him only seventy-five millions per annum. Another friend all at once gives him seven hundred and forty. But of all these Job's comforters, not one will advance him a single crown. It is necessary to invent a thousand ingenious ways of drawing this crown from our pockets, which, before it reaches his own, is diminished by at least one-half.

"Work, then, my dear brethren; act for yourselves, for I forewarn you that if you do not take care of yourselves, no one will take care of you; you will be treated as the king has been in several grave remonstrances; people will say, 'God help you.'

"We will go into the provinces, you will answer; we skill be fed by the lords of the land, by the farmers, by the curates. Do not flatter yourselves, my dear brethren, that you shall eat at their tables; they have for the most part enough to do to feed themselves, notwithstanding the 'Method of Rapidly Getting Rich by Agriculture' and fifty other works of the same kind, published every day at Paris for the use of the people in the country, with the cultivation of which the authors never had anything to do.

"I behold among you young men of some talent, who say that they will make verses, that they will write pamphlets, like Chisiac, Normotte, or Patouillet; that they will work for the 'Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques' that they will write sheets for Fréron, funeral orations for bishops, songs for the comic opera. Any of these would at least be an occupation. When a man is writing for the 'Année Littéraire,' he is not robbing on the highway, he is only robbing his creditors. But do better, my dear brethren in Jesus Christ--my dear beggars, who, by passing your lives in asking charity, run the risk of the galleys; do better; enter one of the four mendicant orders; you will then be not only rich, but honored also."

BEKKER,

"THE WORLD BEWITCHED," THE DEVIL, THE BOOK OF ENOCH, AND SORCERERS.

This Balthazar Bekker, a very good man, a great enemy of the everlasting hell and the devil, and a still greater of precision, made a great deal of noise in his time by his great book, "The World Bewitched."

One Jacques-George de Chaufepied, a pretended continuator of Bayle, assures us that Bekker learned Greek at Gascoigne. Niceron has good reasons for believing that it was at Franeker. This historical point has occasioned much doubt and trouble at court.

The fact is that in the time of Bekker, a minister of the Holy Gospel--as they say in Holland--the devil was still in prodigious credit among divines of all sorts in the middle of the seventeenth century, in spite of the good spirits which were beginning to enlighten the world. Witchcraft, possessions, and everything else attached to that fine divinity, were in vogue throughout Europe and frequently had fatal results.

A century had scarcely elapsed since King James himself--called by Henry IV. Master James--that great enemy of the Roman communion and the papal power, had published his "Demonology" (what a book for a king!) and in it had admitted sorceries, incubuses, and succubuses, and acknowledged the power of the devil, and of the pope, who, according to him, had just as good a right to drive Satan from the bodies of the possessed as any other priest. And we, miserable Frenchmen, who boast of having recovered some small part of our senses, in what a horrid sink of stupid barbarism were we then immersed! Not a parliament, not a presidential court, but was occupied in trying sorcerers; not a great jurisconsult who did not write memorials on possessions by the devil. France resounded with the cries of poor imbecile creatures whom the judges, after making them believe that they had danced round a cauldron, tortured and put to death without pity, in horrible torments. Catholics and Protestants were alike infected with this absurd and frightful superstition; the pretext being that in one of the Christian gospels it is said that disciples were sent to cast out devils. It was a sacred duty to put girls to the torture in order to make them confess that they had lain with Satan, and that they had fallen in love with him in the form of a goat. All the particulars of the meetings of the girls with this goat were detailed in the trials of the unfortunate individuals. They were burned at last, whether they confessed or denied; and France was one vast theatre of judicial carnage.

I have before me a collection of these infernal proceedings, made by a counsellor of the Parliament of Bordeaux, named De Langre, and addressed to Monseigneur Silleri, chancellor of France, without Monseigneur Silleri's having ever thought of enlightening those infamous magistrates. But, indeed, it would have been necessary to begin by enlightening the chancellor himself. What was France at that time? A continual St. Bartholomew--from the massacre of Vassy to the assassination of Marshal d'Ancre and his innocent wife.

Will it be believed that in the time of this very Bekker, a poor girl named Magdalen Chaudron, who had been persuaded that she was a witch, was burned at Geneva?

The following is a very exact summary of the procès-verbal of this absurd and horrid act, which is not the last monument of the kind:

"Michelle, having met the devil as she was going out of the town, the devil gave her a kiss, received her homage, and imprinted on her upper lip and her right breast the mark which it is his custom to affix on all persons whom he recognizes as his favorites. This seal of the devil is a small sign-manual, which, as demonological jurisconsults affirm, renders the skin insensible.

"The devil ordered Michelle Chaudron to bewitch two girls; and she immediately obeyed her lord. The relatives of the young women judicially charged her with devilish practices, and the girls themselves were interrogated and confronted with the accused. They testified that they constantly felt a swarming of ants in certain parts of their bodies, and that they were possessed. The physicians were then called in, or at least those who then passed as physicians. They visited the girls and sought on Michelle's body for the devil's seal, which the procès-verbal calls the satanic marks. They thrust a large needle into the spot, and this of itself was a grievous torture. Blood flowed from the puncture; and Michelle made known by her cries that satanic marks do not produce insensibility. The judges, seeing no satisfactory evidence that Michelle Chaudron was a witch, had her put to the torture, which never fails to bring forth proofs. The unfortunate girl, yielding at length to the violence of her tortures, confessed whatever was required of her.

"The physicians again sought for the satanic mark. They found it in a small dark spot on one of her thighs. They applied the needle; but the torture had been so excessive that the poor, expiring creature scarcely felt the wound; she did not cry out; therefore the crime was satisfactorily proved. But, as manners were becoming less rude, she was not burned until she had been hanged."

Every tribunal in Christian Europe still rings with similar condemnations; so long did this barbarous imbecility endure, that even in our own day, at Würzburg, in Franconia, there was a witch burned in 1750. And what a witch! A young woman of quality, the abbess of a convent! and in our own times, under the empire of Maria Theresa of Austria!

These horrors, by which Europe was so long filled, determined Bekker to fight against the devil. In vain was he told, in prose and verse, that he was doing wrong to attack him, seeing that he was extremely like him, being horribly ugly; nothing could stop him. He began with absolutely denying the power of Satan; and even grew so bold as to maintain that he does not exist. "If," said he, "there were a devil, he would revenge the war which I make upon him."

Bekker reasoned but too well in saying that if the devil existed he would punish him. His brother ministers took Satan's part and suspended Bekker; for heretics will also excommunicate; and in the article of cursing, Geneva mimics Rome.

Bekker enters on his subject in the second volume. According to him, the serpent which seduced our first parents was not a devil, but a real serpent; as Balaam's ass was a real ass, and as the whale that swallowed Jonah was a real whale. It was so decidedly a real serpent, that all its species, which had before walked on their feet, were condemned to crawl on their bellies. No serpent, no animal of any kind, is called Satan, or Beelzebub, or devil, in the Pentateuch. There is not so much as an allusion to Satan. The Dutch destroyer of Satan does, indeed, admit the existence of angels; but at the same time he assures us that it cannot be proved by reasoning. "And if there are any," says he, in the eighth chapter of his second volume, "it is hard to say what they are. The Scripture tells us nothing about their nature, nor in what the nature of a spirit consists. The Bible was made, not for angels, but for men; Jesus was made a man for us, not an angel."

If Bekker has so many scruples concerning angels, it is not to be wondered at that he has some concerning devils; and it is very amusing to see into what contortions he puts his mind in order to avail himself of such texts as appear to be in his favor and to evade such as are against him.

He does his utmost to prove that the devil had nothing to do with the afflictions of Job; and here he is even more prolix than the friends of that holy man.

There is great probability that he was condemned only through the ill-humor of his judges at having lost so much time in reading his work. If the devil himself had been forced to read Bekker's "World Bewitched" he could never have forgiven the fault of having so prodigiously wearied him.

One of our Dutch divine's greatest difficulties is to explain these words: "Jesus was transported by the spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil." No text can be clearer. A divine may write against Beelzebub as much as he pleases, but he must of necessity admit his existence; he may then explain the difficult texts if he can.

Whoever desires to know precisely what the devil is may be informed by referring to the Jesuit Scott; no one has spoken of him more at length; he is much worse than Bekker.

Consulting history, where the ancient origin of the devil is to be found in the doctrine of the Persians, Ahrimanes, the bad principle, corrupts all that the good principle had made salutary. Among the Egyptians, Typhon does all the harm he can; while Oshireth, whom we call Osiris, does, together with Isheth, or Isis, all the good of which he is capable.

Before the Egyptians and Persians, Mozazor, among the Indians, had revolted against God and become the devil, but God had at last pardoned him. If Bekker and the Socinians had known this anecdote of the fall of the Indian angels and their restoration, they would have availed themselves of it to support their opinion that hell is not perpetual, and to give hopes of salvation to such of the damned as read their books.

The Jews, as has already been observed, never spoke of the fall of the angels in the Old Testament; but it is mentioned in the New.

About the period of the establishment of Christianity a book was attributed to "Enoch, the seventh man after Adam," concerning the devil and his associates. Enoch gives us the names of the leaders of the rebellious and the faithful angels, but he does not say that war was in heaven; on the contrary, the fight was upon a mountain of the earth, and it was for the possession of young women.

St. Jude cites this book in his Epistle: "And the angels, which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.... Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain.... And Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these...."

St. Peter in his second Epistle alludes to the Book of Enoch when he says: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness...."

Bekker must have found it difficult to resist passages so formal. However, he was even more inflexible on the subject of devils than on that of angels; he would not be subdued by the Book of Enoch, the seventh man from Adam; he maintained that there was no more a devil than there was a book of Enoch. He said that the devil was imitated from ancient mythology, that it was an old story revived, and that we are nothing more than plagiarists.

We may at the present day be asked why we call that Lucifer the evil spirit, whom the Hebrew version, and the book attributed to Enoch, named Samyaza. It is because we understand Latin better than Hebrew.

But whether Lucifer be the planet Venus, or the Samyaza of Enoch, or the Satan of the Babylonians, or the Mozazor of the Indians, or the Typhon of the Egyptians, Bekker was right in saying that so enormous a power ought not to be attributed to him as that with which, even down to our own times, he has been believed to be invested. It is too much to have immolated to him a woman of quality of Würzburg, Magdalen Chaudron, the curate of Gaupidi, the wife of Marshal d'Ancre, and more than a hundred thousand other wizards and witches, in the space of thirteen hundred years, in Christian states. Had Belthazar Bekker been content with paring the devil's nails, he would have been very well received; but when a curate would annihilate the devil he loses his cure.

BELIEF.

We shall see at the article "Certainty" that we ought often to be very uncertain of what we are certain of; and that we may fail in good sense when deciding according to what is called common sense. But what is it that we call believing?

A Turk comes and says to me, "I believe that the angel Gabriel often descended from the empyrean, to bring Mahomet leaves of the Koran, written on blue vellum."

Well, Mustapha, and on what does thy shaven head found its belief of this incredible thing?

"On this: That there are the greatest probabilities that I have not been deceived in the relation of these improbable prodigies; that Abubeker, the father-in-law, Ali, the son-in-law, Aisha, or Aisse, the daughter, Omar, and Osman, certified the truth of the fact in the presence of fifty thousand men--gathered together all the leaves, read them to the faithful, and attested that not a word had been altered.

"That we have never had but one Koran, which has never been contradicted by another Koran. That God has never permitted the least alteration to be made in this book.

"That its doctrine and precepts are the perfection of reason. Its doctrine consists in the unity of God, for Whom we must live and die; in the immortality of the soul; the eternal rewards of the just and punishments of the wicked; and the mission of our great prophet Mahomet, proved by victories.

"Its precepts are: To be just and valiant; to give alms to the poor; to abstain from that enormous number of women whom the Eastern princes, and in particular the petty Jewish kings, took to themselves without scruple; to renounce the good wines of Engaddi and Tadmor, which those drunken Hebrews have so praised in their books; to pray to God five times a day, etc.

"This sublime religion has been confirmed by the miracle of all others the finest, the most constant, and best verified in the history of the world; that Mahomet, persecuted by the gross and absurd scholastic magistrates who decreed his arrest, and obliged to quit his country, returned victorious; that he made his imbecile and sanguinary enemies his footstool; that he all his life fought the battles of the Lord; that with a small number he always triumphed over the greater number; that he and his successors have converted one-half of the earth; and that, with God's help, we shall one day convert the other half."

Nothing can be arrayed in more dazzling colors. Yet Mustapha, while believing so firmly, always feels some small shadows of doubt arising in his soul when he hears any difficulties started respecting the visits of the angel Gabriel; the sura or chapter brought from heaven to declare that the great prophet was not a cuckold; or the mare Borak, which carried him in one night from Mecca to Jerusalem. Mustapha stammers; he makes very bad answers, at which he blushes; yet he not only tells you that he believes, but would also persuade you to believe. You press Mustapha; he still gapes and stares, and at last goes away to wash himself in honor of Allah, beginning his ablution at the elbow and ending with the forefinger.

Is Mustapha really persuaded--convinced of all that he has told us? Is he perfectly sure that Mahomet was sent by God, as he is sure that the city of Stamboul exists? as he is sure that the Empress Catherine II. sent a fleet from the remotest seas of the North to land troops in Peloponnesus--a thing as astonishing as the journey from Mecca to Jerusalem in one night--and that this fleet destroyed that of the Ottomans in the Dardanelles?

The truth is that Mustapha believes what he does not believe. He has been accustomed to pronounce, with his mollah, certain words which he takes for ideas. To believe is very often to doubt.

"Why do you believe that?" says Harpagon. "I believe it because I believe it," answers Master Jacques; and most men might return the same answer.

Believe me fully, my dear reader, when I say one must not believe too easily. But what shall we say of those who would persuade others of what they themselves do not believe? and what of the monsters who persecute their brethren in the humble and rational doctrine of doubt and self-distrust?

BETHSHEMESH.

Of the Fifty Thousand and Seventy Jews Struck with Sudden Death for Having Looked Upon the Ark; of the Five Golden Emeroids Paid by the Philistines; and of Dr. Kennicott's Incredulity.

Men of the world will perhaps be astonished to find this word the subject of an article; but we here address only the learned and ask their instruction.

Bethshemesh was a village belonging to God's people, situated, according to commentators, two miles north of Jerusalem. The Phœnicians having, in Samuel's time, beaten the Jews, and taken from them their Ark of alliance in the battle, in which they killed thirty thousand of their men, were severely punished for it by the Lord:

"Percussit eos in secretiori parte natium, et ebullierunt villæ et agri.... et nati sunt mures, et facta est confusio mortis magna in civitate." Literally: "He struck them in the most secret part of the buttocks; and the fields and the farmhouses were troubled.... and there sprung up mice; and there was a great confusion of death in the city."

The prophets of the Phœnicians, or Philistines, having informed them that they could deliver themselves from the scourge only by giving to the Lord five golden mice and five golden emeroids, and sending him back the Jewish Ark, they fulfilled this order, and, according to the express command of their prophets sent back the Ark with the mice and emeroids on a wagon drawn by two cows, with each a sucking calf and without a driver.

These two cows of themselves took the Ark straight to Bethshemesh. The men of Bethshemesh approached the Ark in order to look at it, which liberty was punished yet more severely than the profanation by the Phœnicians had been. The Lord struck with sudden death seventy men of the people, and fifty thousand of the populace.

The reverend Doctor Kennicott, an Irishman, printed in 1768 a French commentary on this occurrence and dedicated it to the bishop of Oxford. At the head of this commentary he entitles himself Doctor of Divinity, member of the Royal Society of London, of the Palatine Academy, of the Academy of Göttingen, and of the Academy of Inscriptions at Paris. All that I know of the matter is that he is not of the Academy of Inscriptions at Paris. Perhaps he is one of its correspondents. His vast erudition may have deceived him, but titles are distinct from things.

He informs the public that his pamphlet is sold at Paris by Saillant and Molini, at Rome by Monaldini, at Venice by Pasquali, at Florence by Cambiagi, at Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Rey, at The Hague by Gosse, at Leyden by Jaquau, and in London by Beckett, who receives subscriptions.

In this pamphlet he pretends to prove that the Scripture text has been corrupted. Here we must be permitted to differ with him. Nearly all Bibles agree in these expressions: seventy men of the people and fifty thousand of the populace--"De populo septuaginta viros, et quinquaginta millia plebis." The reverend Doctor Kennicott says to the right reverend the lord bishop of Oxford that formerly there were strong prejudices in favor of the Hebrew text, but that for seventeen years his lordship and himself have been freed from their prejudices, after the deliberate and attentive perusal of this chapter.

In this we differ from Dr. Kennicott, and the more we read this chapter the more we reverence the ways of the Lord, which are not our ways. It is impossible, says Kennicott, for the candid reader not to feel astonished and affected at the contemplation of fifty thousand men destroyed in one village--men, too, employed in gathering the harvest.

This does, it is true, suppose a hundred thousand persons, at least, in that village, but should the doctor forget that the Lord had promised Abraham that his posterity should be as numerous as the sands of the sea?

The Jews and the Christians, adds he, have not scrupled to express their repugnance to attach faith to this destruction of fifty thousand and seventy men.

We answer that we are Christians and have no repugnance to attach faith to whatever is in the Holy Scriptures. We answer, with the reverend Father Calmet, that "if we were to reject whatever is extraordinary and beyond the reach of our conception we must reject the whole Bible." We are persuaded that the Jews, being under the guidance of God himself, could experience no events but such as were stamped with the seal of the Divinity and quite different from what happened to other men. We will even venture to advance that the death of these fifty thousand and seventy men is one of the least surprising things in the Old Testament.

We are struck with astonishment still more reverential when Eve's serpent and Balaam's ass talk; when the waters of the cataracts are swelled by rain fifteen cubits above all the mountains; when we behold the plagues of Egypt, and the six hundred and thirty thousand fighting Jews flying on foot through the divided and suspended sea; when Joshua stops the sun and moon at noonday; when Samson slays a thousand Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass.... In those divine times all was miracle, without exception, and we have the profoundest reverence for all these miracles--for that ancient world which was not our world; for that nature which was not our nature; for a divine book, in which there can be nothing human.

But we are astonished at the liberty which Dr. Kennicott takes of calling those deists and atheists, who, while they revere the Bible more than he does, differ from him in opinion. Never will it be believed that a man with such ideas is of the Academy of Medals and Inscriptions. He is, perhaps, of the Academy of Bedlam, the most ancient of all, and whose colonies extend throughout the earth.

BILHAH--BASTARDS

Bilhah, servant to Rachel, and Zilpah, servant to Leah, each bore the patriarch Jacob two children, and, be it observed, that they inherited like legitimate sons, as well as the eight other male children whom Jacob had by the two sisters Leah and Rachel. It is true that all their inheritance consisted in a blessing; whereas, William the Bastard inherited Normandy.

Thierri, a bastard of Clovis, inherited the best part of Gaul, invaded by his father. Several kings of Spain and Naples have been bastards. In Spain bastards have always inherited. King Henry of Transtamare was not considered as an illegitimate king, though he was an illegitimate child, and this race of bastards, founded in the house of Austria, reigned in Spain until Philip V.

The line of Aragon, who reigned in Naples in the time of Louis XII., were bastards. Count de Dunois signed himself "the bastard of Orleans," and letters were long preserved of the duke of Normandy, king of England, which were signed "William the Bastard."

In Germany it is otherwise; the descent must be pure; bastards never inherit fiefs, nor have any estate. In France, as has long been the case, a king's bastard cannot be a priest without a dispensation from Rome, but he becomes a prince without any difficulty as soon as the king acknowledges him to be the offspring of his sire, even though he be the bastard of an adulterous father and mother. It is the same in Spain. The bastard of a king of England may be a duke but not a prince. Jacob's bastards were neither princes nor dukes; they had no lands, the reason being that their father had none, but they were afterwards called patriarchs, which may be rendered arch-fathers.

It has been asked whether the bastards of the popes might be popes in turn. Pope John XI. was, it is true, a bastard of Pope Sergius III., and of the famous Marozia; but an instance is not a law.

BISHOP.

Samuel Ornik, a native of Basle, was, as is well known, a very amiable young man, who, moreover, knew his German and Greek New Testament by heart. At the age of twenty his parents sent him to travel. He was commissioned to carry books to the coadjutor at Paris in the time of the Fronde. He arrived at the archbishop's gate and was told by the Swiss that monseigneur saw no one. "My dear fellow," said Ornik, "you are very rude to your countrymen; the apostles allowed every one to approach, and Jesus Christ desired that little children should come unto him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I bring him something." "Enter, then," said the Swiss.

He waited an hour in the first ante-chamber. Being quite artless he attacked with questions a domestic who was very fond of telling all he knew about his master. "He must be pretty rich," said Ornik, "to have such a swarm of pages and footmen running in and out of the house." "I don't know," answered the other, "what his income is, but I hear Joli and the Abbé Charier say that he is two millions in debt." "But who is that lady who came out of a cabinet and is passing by?" "That is Madame de Pomereu, one of his mistresses." "She is really very pretty, but I have not read that the apostles had such company in their bedchambers in a morning." "Ah! that, I believe, is monsieur, about to give audience." "Say sa grandeur, monseigneur." "Well, with all my heart...." Ornik saluted sa grandeur, presented his books, and was received with a most gracious smile. Sa grandeur said three words to him, and stepped into his carriage, escorted by fifty horsemen. In stepping in, monseigneur dropped a sheath and Ornik was astonished that monseigneur should carry so large an inkhorn. "Do you not see," said the talker, "that it is his dagger? every one that goes to parliament wears his dagger?" Ornik uttered an exclamation of astonishment, and departed.

He went through France and was edified by town after town. From thence he passed into Italy. In the papal territories he met a bishop with an income of only a thousand crowns, who went on foot. Ornik, being naturally kind, offered him a place in his cambiatura. "Signor, you are no doubt going to comfort the sick?" "Sir, I am going to my master." "Your master? He, no doubt, is Jesus Christ." "Sir, he is Cardinal Azolino; I am his almoner. He gives me a very poor salary, but he has promised to place me with Donna Olimpia, the favorite sister-in-law of nostro signore." "What! are you in the pay of a cardinal? But do you not know that there were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and St. John?" "Is it possible!" exclaimed the Italian prelate. "Nothing is more true; you have read it in the Gospel." "I have never read it," replied the bishop; "I know only the office of Our Lady." "I tell you there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there were bishops the priests were almost their equals, as St. Jerome, in several places, assures us." "Holy Virgin" said the Italian, "I knew nothing about it; and what of the popes?" "There were no popes either." The good bishop crossed himself, thinking he was with the evil one, and leaped from the side of his companion.

BLASPHEMY.

This is a Greek word signifying an attack on reputation. We find blasphemia in Demosthenes. In the Greek Church it was used only to express an injury done to God. The Romans never made use of this expression, apparently not thinking that God's honor could be offended like that of men.

There scarcely exists one synonym. Blasphemy does not altogether convey the idea of sacrilege. We say of a man who has taken God's name in vain, who, in the violence of anger, has sworn--as it is expressed--by the name of God, that he has blasphemed; but we do not say that he has committed sacrilege. The sacrilegious man is he who perjures himself on the gospel, who extends his rapacity to sacred things, who imbrues his hands in the blood of priests.

Great sacrileges have always been punished with death in all nations, especially those accompanied by bloodshed. The author of the "Institutes au Droit Criminel" reckons among divine high treasons in the second degree, the non-observance of Sundays and holidays. He should have said the non-observance attended with marked contempt, for simple negligence is a sin, but not, as he calls it, a sacrilege. It is absurd to class together, as this author does, simony, the carrying off of a nun, and the forgetting to go to vespers on a holiday. It is one great instance of the errors committed by writers on jurisprudence, who, not having been called upon to make laws, take upon themselves to interpret those of the state.

Blasphemies uttered in intoxication, in anger, in the excess of debauchery, or in the heat of unguarded conversation have been subjected by legislators to much lighter penalties. For instance, the advocate whom we have already cited says that the laws of France condemn simple blasphemers to a fine for the first offence, which is doubled for the second, tripled for the third, and quadrupled for the fourth offence; for the fifth relapse the culprit is set in the pillory, for the sixth relapse he is pilloried, and has his upper lip burned off with a hot iron, and for the seventh he loses his tongue. He should have added that this was an ordinance of the year 1666.

Punishments are almost always arbitrary, which is a great defect in jurisprudence. But this defect opens the way for clemency and compassion, and this compassion is no other than the strictest justice, for it would be horrible to punish a youthful indiscretion as poisoners and parricides are punished. A sentence of death for an offence which deserves nothing more than correction is no other than an assassination committed with the sword of justice.

Is it not to the purpose here to remark that what has been blasphemy in one country has often been piety in another?

Suppose a Tyrian merchant landed at the port of Canope: he might be scandalized on seeing an onion, a cat, or a goat carried in procession; he might speak indecorously of Isheth, Oshireth, and Horeth, or might turn aside his head and not fall on his knees at the sight of a procession with the parts of human generation larger than life; he might express his opinion at supper, or even sing some song in which the Tyrian sailors made a jest of the Egyptian absurdities. He might be overheard by the maid of the inn, whose conscience would not suffer her to conceal so enormous a crime; she would run and denounce the offender to the nearest shoen that bore the image of the truth on his breast, and it is known how this image of truth was made. The tribunal of the shoens, or shotim, would condemn the Tyrian blasphemer to a dreadful death, and confiscate his vessel. Yet this merchant might be considered at Tyre as one of the most pious persons in Phœnicia.

Numa sees that his little horde of Romans is a Collection of Latin freebooters who steal right and left all they can find--oxen, sheep, fowls, and girls. He tells them that he has spoken with the nymph Egeria in a cavern, and that the nymph has been employed by Jupiter to give him laws. The senators treat him at first as a blasphemer and threaten to throw him headlong from the Tarpeian rock. Numa makes himself a powerful party; he gains over some seniors who go with him into Egeria's grotto. She talks to them and converts them; they convert the senate and the people. In a little time Numa is no longer a blasphemer, the name is given only to such as doubt the existence of the nymph.

In our own times it is unfortunate that what is blasphemy at Rome, at our Lady of Loretto, and within the walls of San Gennaro, is piety in London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin, Copenhagen, Berne, Basel, and Hamburg. It is yet more unfortunate that even in the same country, in the same town, in the same street, people treat one another as blasphemers.

Nay, of the ten thousand Jews living at Rome there is not one who does not regard the pope as the chief of the blasphemers, while the hundred thousand Christians who inhabit Rome, in place of two millions of Jovians who filled it in Trajan's time, firmly believe that the Jews meet in their synagogues on Saturday for the purpose of blaspheming.

A Cordelier has no hesitation in applying the epithet of blasphemer to a Dominican who says that the Holy Virgin was born in original sin, notwithstanding that the Dominicans have a bull from the pope which permits them to teach the maculate conception in their convents, and that, besides this bull, they have in their forum the express declaration of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The first origin of the schism of three-fourths of Switzerland and a part of Lower Germany was a quarrel in the cathedral church of Frankfort between a Cordelier, whose name I forget, and a Dominican named Vigand.

Both were drunk, according to the custom of that day. The drunken Cordelier, who was preaching, thanked God that he was not a Jacobin, swearing that it was necessary to exterminate the blaspheming Jacobins who believed that the Holy Virgin had been born in mortal sin, and delivered from sin only by the merits of her son. The drunken Jacobin cried out: "Thou hast lied; thou thyself art a blasphemer." The Cordelier descended from the pulpit with a great iron crucifix in his hand, laid it about his adversary, and left him almost dead on the spot.

To revenge this outrage the Dominicans worked many miracles in Germany and Switzerland; these miracles were designed to prove their faith. They at length found means to imprint the marks of our Lord Jesus Christ on one of their lay brethren named Jetzer. This operation was performed at Berne by the Holy Virgin herself, but she borrowed the hand of the sub-prior, who dressed himself in female attire and put a glory round his head. The poor little lay brother, exposed all bloody to the veneration of the people on the altar of the Dominicans at Berne, at last cried out murder! sacrilege! The monks, in order to quiet him as quickly as possible administered to him a host sprinkled with corrosive sublimate, but the excess of the dose made him discharge the host from his stomach.

The monks then accused him to the bishop of Lausanne of horrible sacrilege. The indignant people of Berne in their turn accused the monks, and four of them were burned at Berne on the 13th of May, 1509, at the Marsilly gate. Such was the termination of this abominable affair, which determined the people of Berne to choose a religion, bad indeed in Catholic eyes, but which delivered them from the Cordeliers and the Jacobins. The number of similar sacrileges is incredible. Such are the effects of party spirit.

The Jesuits maintained for a hundred years that the Jansenists were blasphemers, and proved it by a thousand lettres-de-cachet; the Jansenists by upwards of four thousand volumes demonstrated that it was the Jesuits who blasphemed. The writer of the "Gazettes Ecclésiastiques" pretends that all honest men blaspheme against him, while he himself blasphemes from his garret on high against every honest man in the kingdom. The gazette-writer's publisher blasphemes in return and complains that he is starving. He would find it better to be honest and polite.

One thing equally remarkable and consoling is that never in any country of the earth, among the wildest idolaters, has any man been considered as a blasphemer for acknowledging one supreme, eternal, and all-powerful God. It certainly was not for having acknowledged this truth that Socrates was condemned to the hemlock, for the doctrine of a Supreme God was announced in all the Grecian mysteries. It was a faction that destroyed Socrates; he was accused, at a venture, of not recognizing the secondary gods, and on this point it was that he was accused as a blasphemer.

The first Christians were accused of blasphemy for the same reason, but the partisans of the ancient religion of the empire, the Jovians, who reproached the primitive Christians with blasphemy, were at length condemned as blasphemers themselves, under Theodosius II. Dryden says:

This side to-day, to-morrow t'other burns, And they're all Gods Almighty in their turns.

BODY.

Body and matter are here the same thing although there is hardly any such thing as synonym in the most rigorous sense of the word. There have been persons who by this word "body" have understood "spirit" also. They have said spirit originally signifies breath; only a body can breathe, therefore body and spirit may, after all, be the same thing. In this sense La Fontaine said to the celebrated Duke de la Rochefoucauld: "J'entens les esprits corps et pétris de matière." In the same sense he says to Madame Sablière:

Je subtiliserais un morceau de matière, Quintessence d'atome, extrait de la lumière, je ne sais quoiplus vif et plus subtil encor....

No one thought of harassing good Monsieur La Fontaine, or bringing him to trial for his expressions. Were a poor philosopher, or even a poet, to say as much nowadays, how many would there be to fall on him! How many scribblers to sell their extracts for sixpence! How many knaves, for the sole purpose of making mischief, to cry philosopher! peripatetic! disciple of Gassendi! pupil of Locke, and the primitive fathers! damnable!

As we know not what a spirit is, so also we are ignorant of what a body is; we see various properties, but what is the subject in which those properties reside? "There is nothing but body," said Democritus and Epicurus; "there is no such thing as body," said the disciples of Zeno, of Elia.

Berkeley, bishop of Cloyne, is the last who, by a hundred captious sophisms, has pretended to prove that bodies do not exist. They have, says he, neither color, nor smell, nor heat; all these modalities are in your sensations, not in the objects. He might have spared himself the trouble of proving this truth for it was already sufficiently known. But thence he passed to extent and solidity, which are essential to body, and thinks he proves that there is no extent in a piece of green cloth because the cloth is not in reality green, the sensation of green being in ourselves only, therefore the sensation of extent is likewise in ourselves only. Having thus destroyed extent he concludes that solidity, which is attached to it, falls of itself, and therefore that there is nothing in the world but our ideas. So that, according to this doctor, ten thousand men killed by ten thousand cannon shots are in reality nothing more than ten thousand apprehensions of our understanding, and when a female becomes pregnant it is only one idea lodged in another idea from which a third idea will be produced.

Surely, the bishop of Cloyne might have saved himself from falling into this excessive absurdity. He thinks he shows that there is no extent because a body has appeared to him four times as large through a glass as to his naked eye, and four times as small through another glass. Hence he concludes, that, since a body cannot be at the same time four feet, sixteen feet, and but one foot in extent, there is no extent, therefore there is nothing. He had only to take any measure and say: of whatever extent this body may appear to me to be, it extends to so many of these measures.

We might very easily see that extent and solidity were quite different from sound, color, taste, smell. It is quite clear that these are sensations excited in us by the configuration of parts, but extent is not a sensation. When this lighted coal goes out, I am no longer warm; when the air is no longer struck, I cease to hear; when this rose withers, I no longer smell it: but the coal, the air, and the rose have extent without me. Berkeley's paradox is not worth refuting.

Thus argued Zeno and Parmenides of old, and very clever they were; they would prove to you that a tortoise went along as swiftly as Achilles, for there was no such thing as motion; they discussed a hundred other questions equally important. Most of the Greeks made philosophy a juggle, and they transmitted their art to our schoolmen. Bayle himself was occasionally one of the set and embroidered cobwebs like the rest. In his article, "Zeno," against the divisible extent of matter and the contiguity of bodies he ventures to say what would not be tolerated in any six-months geometrician.

It is worth knowing how Berkeley was drawn into this paradox. A long while ago I had some conversation with him, and he told me that his opinion originated in our being unable to conceive what the subject of this extension is, and certainly, in his book, he triumphs when he asks Hylas what this subject, this substratum, this substance is? It is the extended body, answers Hylas. Then the bishop, under the name of Philonous, laughs at him, and poor Hylas, finding that he has said that extension is the subject of extension, and has therefore talked nonsense, remains quite confused, acknowledges that he understands nothing at all of the matter; that there is no such thing as body; that the natural world does not exist, and that there is none but an intellectual world.

Hylas should only have said to Philonous: We know nothing of the subject of this extension, solidity, divisibility, mobility, figure, etc.; I know no more of it than I do of the subject of thought, feeling, and will, but the subject does not the less exist for it has essential properties of which it cannot be deprived.

We all resemble the greater part of the Parisian ladies who live well without knowing what is put in their ragouts; just so do we enjoy bodies without knowing of what they are composed. Of what does a body consist? Of parts, and these parts resolve themselves into other parts. What are these last parts? They, too, are bodies; you divide incessantly without making any progress.

In short, a subtle philosopher, observing that a picture was made of ingredients of which no single ingredient was a picture, and a house of materials of which no one material was a house, imagined that bodies are composed of an infinity of small things which are not bodies, and these are called monads. This system is not without its merits, and, were it revealed, I should think it very possible. These little beings would be so many mathematical points, a sort of souls, waiting only for a tenement: here would be a continual metempsychosis. This system is as good as another; I like it quite as well as the declination of atoms, the substantial forms, the versatile grace, or the vampires.

BOOKS.