[32] From "Gil Blas," which is perhaps as well known in English as in French, innumerable translations having been made. The best known is the one by Tobias Smollett, which has survived in favor to the present time. A translation by P. Proctor appeared in 1774, one by Martin Smart in 1807, and one by Benjamin H. Malkin in 1809.
I had been after dinner to get together my baggage, and take my horse from the inn where I had put up; and afterward returned to supper at the archbishop's palace, where a neatly furnished room was got ready for me, and such a bed as was more likely to pamper than to mortify the flesh. The day following his Grace sent for me quite as soon as I was ready to go to him. It was to give me a homily to transcribe. He made a point of having it copied with all possible accuracy. It was done to please him; for I omitted neither accent, nor comma, nor the minutest tittle of all he had marked down. His satisfaction at observing this was heightened by its being unexpected. "Eternal Father!" exclaimed he in a holy rapture, when he had glanced his eye over all the folios of my copy, "was ever anything seen so correct? You are too good a transcriber not to have some little smattering of the grammarian. Now tell me with the freedom of a friend: in writing it over, have you been struck with nothing that grated upon your feelings? Some little careless idiom, or some word used in an improper sense?" "Oh, may it please your Grace," answered I with a modest air, "it is not for me, with my confined education and coarse taste, to aim at making critical remarks. And tho ever so well qualified, I am satisfied that your Grace's works would come out pure from the essay." The successor of the apostles smiled at my answer. He made no observation on it; but it was easy to see through all his piety that he was an arrant author at the bottom: there is something in that dye that not heaven itself can wash out.
I seemed to have purchased the fee simple of his good graces by my flattery. Day after day did I get a step farther in his esteem; and Don Ferdinand, who came to see him very often, told me my footing was so firm that there could not be a doubt but my fortune was made. Of this my master himself gave me a proof some little time afterward; and the occasion was as follows: One evening in his closet he rehearsed before me, with appropriate emphasis and action, a homily which he was to deliver the next day in the cathedral. He did not content himself with asking me what I thought of it in the gross, but insisted on my telling him what passages struck me most. I had the good fortune to pick out those which were nearest to his own taste—his favorite commonplaces. Thus, as luck would have it, I passed in his estimation for a man who had a quick and natural relish of the real and less obvious beauties in a work. "This indeed," exclaimed he, "is what you may call having discernment and feeling in perfection! Well, well, my friend! it can not be said of you,
In a word, he was so highly pleased with me as to add in a tone of extraordinary emotion, "Never mind, Gil Bias! henceforward take no care about hereafter: I shall make it my business to place you among the favored children of my bounty. You have my best wishes; and to prove to you that you have them, I shall take you into my inmost confidence."
These words were no sooner out of his mouth than I fell at his Grace's feet, quite overwhelmed with gratitude. I embraced his elliptical legs with almost pagan idolatry, and considered myself as a man on the high-road to a very handsome fortune. "Yes, my child," resumed the archbishop, whose speech had been cut short by the rapidity of my prostration, "I mean to make you the receiver-general of all my inmost ruminations. Harken attentively to what I am going to say. I have a great pleasure in preaching. The Lord sheds a blessing on my homilies; they sink deep into the hearts of sinners; set up a glass in which vice sees its own image, and bring back many from the paths of error into the high-road of repentance. What a heavenly sight, when a miser, scared at the hideous picture of his avarice drawn by my eloquence, opens his coffers to the poor and needy, and dispenses the accumulated store with a liberal hand! The voluptuary, too, is snatched from the pleasures of the table; ambition flies at my command to the wholesome discipline of the monastic cell; while female frailty, tottering on the brink of ruin, with one ear open to the siren voice of the seducer and the other to my saintly correctives, is restored to domestic happiness and the approving smile of heaven, by the timely warnings of the pulpit.
"These miraculous conversions, which happen almost every Sunday, ought of themselves to goad me on in the career of saving souls. Nevertheless, to conceal no part of my weakness from my monitor, there is another reward on which my heart is intent—a reward which the seraphic scrupulousness of my virtue to little purpose condemns as too carnal—a literary reputation for a sublime and elegant style. The honor of being handed down to posterity as a perfect pulpit orator has its irresistible attractions. My compositions are generally thought to be equally powerful and persuasive; but I could wish of all things to steer clear of the rock on which good authors split who are too long before the public, and to retire from professional life with my reputation in undiminished luster. To this end, my dear Gil Blas," continued the prelate, "there is one thing requisite from your zeal and friendship. Whenever it shall strike you that my pen begins to contract, as it were, the ossification of old age, whenever you see my genius in its climateric, do not fail to give me a hint. There is no trusting to one's self in such a case: pride and conceit were the original sin of man. The probe of criticism must be entrusted to an impartial stander-by, of fine talents and unshaken probity. Both those requisites center in you: you are my choice, and I give myself up to your direction."
"Heaven be praised, my lord," said I, "there is no need to trouble yourself with any such thoughts yet. Besides, an understanding of your Grace's mold and caliber will last out double the time of a common genius; or to speak with more certainty and truth, it will never be the worse for wear, if you live to the age of Methusaleh. I consider you as a second Cardinal Ximenes, whose powers, superior to decay, instead of flagging with years, seemed to derive new vigor from their approximation with the heavenly regions." "No flattery, my friend!" interrupted he. "I know myself to be in danger of failing all at once. At my age one begins to be sensible of infirmities, and those of the body communicate with the mind, I repeat it to you, Gil Bias, as soon as you shall be of opinion that my head is not so clear as usual, give me warning of it instantly. Do not be afraid of offending by frankness and sincerity: to put me in mind of my own frailty will be the strongest proof of your affection for me. Besides, your very interest is concerned in it; for if it should, by any spite of chance toward you, come to my ears that the people say in town, 'His Grace's sermons produce no longer their accustomed impression; it is time for him to abandon his pulpit to younger candidates'—I do assure you, most seriously and solemnly, you will lose not only my friendship, but the provision for life that I have promised you. Such will be the result of your silly tampering with truth."
Here my patron left off to wait for my answer, which was an echo of his speech, and a promise of obeying him in all things. From that moment there were no secrets from me; I became the prime favorite. All the household, except Melchior de la Ronda, looked at me with an eye of envy. It was curious to observe the manner in which the whole establishment, from the highest to the lowest, thought it necessary to demean themselves toward his Grace's confidential secretary; there was no meanness to which they would not stoop to curry favor with me: I could scarcely believe they were Spaniards. I left no stone unturned to be of service to them, without being taken in by their interested assiduities.
[33] From "Gil Blas."
Born in France in 1675, died in 1755; served in the army in the time of Louis XIV; member of the Council of Regency in the reign of Louis XV; ambassador to Spain to 1721; his "Memoirs," first published in twenty volumes it 1829-30; not to be confounded with the Count of Saint-Simon, the philosopher and socialist, the memoir writer being a duke.
Monseigneur le Dauphin, ill and agitated by the most bitter grief, kept his chamber; but on Saturday morning of the 13th, being prest to go to Marly to avoid the horror of the noise where the Dauphine was lying dead, he set out for that place at seven o'clock in the morning. Shortly after arriving he heard mass in the chapel, and thence was carried in a chair to the window of one of his rooms. Madame de Maintenon came to see him there afterward. The anguish of the interview was speedily too much for her, and she went away. Early in the morning I went uninvited to see M. le Dauphin. He showed me that he perceived this with an air of gentleness and of affection which penetrated me. But I was terrified with his looks, constrained, fixt and with something wild about them; with the change of his looks and with the marks there, livid rather than red, that I observed in good number and large; marks observed by the others also.
The Dauphin was standing. In a few moments he was apprized that the King had awaked. The tears that he had restrained now rolled from his eyes; he turned round at the news, but said nothing, remaining stock still. His three attendants proposed to him once or twice that he should go to the King. He neither spoke nor stirred. I approached and made signs to him to go, then softly spoke to the same effect. Seeing that he still remained speechless and motionless, I made bold to take his arm, representing to him that sooner or later he must see the King, who expected him, and assuredly with the desire to see and embrace him. He cast upon me a look that pierced my soul and went away. I followed him some few steps and then withdrew to recover breath. I never saw him again. May I, by the mercy of God, see him eternally where God's goodness doubtless has placed him!
The Dauphin reached the chamber of the King, full just then of company. As soon as he appeared the King called him and embraced him tenderly again and again. These first moments, so touching, passed in words broken by sobs and tears. Shortly afterward the King, looking at the Dauphin, was terrified by the same things that had previously struck me with affright. Everybody around was so also, the doctors more than the others. The King ordered them to feel his pulse, that they found bad, so they said afterward; for the time they contented themselves with saying that it was not regular, and that the Dauphin would do wisely to go to bed. The King embraced him again, recommended him very tenderly to take care of himself, and ordered him to go to bed. He obeyed and rose no more!
It was now late in the morning. The King had passed a cruel night and had a bad headache; he saw at his dinner the few courtiers who presented themselves, and then after dinner went to the Dauphin. The fever had augmented, the pulse was worse than before. The King passed into the apartment of Madame de Maintenon, and the Dauphin was left with attendants and his doctors. He spent the day in prayers and holy reading.
On the morrow, Sunday, the uneasiness felt on account of the Dauphin augmented. He himself did not conceal his belief that he would never rise again, and that the plot Pondin had warned him of had been executed. He explained himself to this effect more than once and always with a disdain of earthly grandeur and an incomparable submission and love of God. It is impossible to describe the general consternation. On Monday the 15th the King was bled. The Dauphin was no better than before. The King and Madame de Maintenon saw him separately several times during the day, which was passed in prayers and reading.
On Tuesday, the 16th, the Dauphin was worse. He felt himself devoured by a consuming fire, which the external fever did not seem to justify, but the pulse was very extraordinary and exceedingly menacing. This was a deceptive day. The marks in the Dauphin's face extended all over the body. They were regarded as the marks of measles. Hope arose thereon, but the doctors and the most clear-sighted of the court could not forget that these same marks had shown themselves on the body of the Dauphine, a fact unknown out of her chamber until after death.
On Wednesday, the 17th, the malady considerably increased. I had news at all times of the Dauphin's state from Cheverney, an excellent apothecary of the King and of my family. He hid nothing from us. He had told us what he thought of the Dauphine's illness; he told us now what he thought of the Dauphin's. I no longer hoped therefore, or rather I hoped to the end against all hope.
On Wednesday the pains increased. They were like a devouring fire, but more violent than ever. Very late into the evening the Dauphin sent to the King for permission to receive the communion early the next morning and without display at the mass performed in his chamber. Nobody heard of this that evening; it was not known until the following morning. I was in extreme desolation. I scarcely saw the King once a day. I did nothing but go in quest of news several times a day, and to the house of M. de Chevreuse, where I was completely free. M. de Chevreuse—always calm, always sanguine—endeavored to prove to us by his medical reasonings that there was more reason to hope than to fear; but he did so with a tranquillity that roused my impatience. I returned home to pass a cruel night.
On Thursday morning, the 18th February, I learned that the Dauphin, who had waited for midnight with impatience, had heard mass immediately after the communion, had passed two hours in devout communication with God, and that his reason then became embarrassed. Madame de Saint-Simon told me afterward that he had received extreme unction; in fine that he had died at half-past eight.
These memoirs are not written to describe my private sentiments. But in reading them—if long after me they shall ever appear—my state and that of Madame de Saint-Simon will only too keenly be felt. I will content myself with saying that the first days after the Dauphin's death scarcely appeared to us more than moments; that I wished to quit all, to withdraw from the court and the world, and that I was only hindered by the wisdom, conduct and power over me of Madame de Saint-Simon, who yet had some trouble to subdue my sorrowful desire.
[34] From the "Memoirs on the Reign of Louis XIV and the Regency." Translated by Bayle St. John, traveler and Author, his "Village Life Egypt" appearing in 1852.
The King wished to show the court all the maneuvers of war; the siege of Compiègne was therefore undertaken, according to due form, with lines, trenches, batteries, mines, etc. On Saturday, the 13th of September, the assault took place. To witness it, the King, Madame de Maintenon,[36] all the ladies of the court, and a number of gentlemen, stationed themselves upon an old rampart, from which the plain and all the disposition of the troops could be seen. I was in the half-circle very close to the King. It was the most beautiful sight that can be imagined to see all that army, and the prodigious number of spectators on horse and foot, and that game of attack and defense so cleverly conducted.
But a spectacle of another sort—that I could paint forty years hence as well as to-day, so strongly did it strike me—was that which from the summit of this rampart the King gave to all his army, and to the innumerable crowd of spectators of all kinds in the plain below. Madame de Maintenon faced the plain and the troops in her sedan-chair, alone, between its three windows drawn up; her porters having retired to a distance. On the left pole in front sat Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne; and on the same side, in a semicircle, standing, were Madame la Duchesse, Madame la Princesse de Conti, and all the ladies—and behind them again, many men. At the right window was the King, standing, and a little in the rear a semicircle of the most distinguished men of the court. The King was nearly always uncovered; and every now and then stooped to speak to Madame de Maintenon, and explain to her what she saw, and the reason of each movement.
Each time that he did so she was obliging enough to open the window four or five inches, but never half-way; for I noticed particularly, and I admit that I was more attentive to this spectacle than to that of the troops. Sometimes she opened of her own accord to ask some question of him: but generally it was he who, without waiting for her, stooped down to instruct her of what was passing; and sometimes, if she did not notice him, he tapped at the glass to make her open it. He never spoke save to her, except when he gave a few brief orders, or just answered Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne, who wanted to make him speak, and with whom Madame de Maintenon carried on a conversation by signs, without opening the front window, through which the young princess screamed to her from time to time. I watched the countenance of every one carefully: all exprest surprize, tempered with prudence, and shame that was, as it were, ashamed of itself; every one behind the chair and in the semicircle watched this scene more than what was going on in the army. The King often put his hat on the top of the chair in order to get his head in to speak; and this continual exercise tired his loins very much. Monseigneur was on horseback in the plain with the young princes. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon, and the weather was as brilliant as could be desired.
Opposite the sedan-chair was an opening with some steps cut through the wall, and communicating with the plain below. It had been made for the purpose of fetching orders from the King, should they be necessary. The case happened. Crenan, who commanded, sent Conillac, an officer in one of the defending regiments, to ask for some instructions from the King. Conillac had been stationed at the foot of the rampart, where what was passing above could not be seen. He mounted the steps; and as soon as his head and shoulders were at the top, caught sight of the chair, the King, and all the assembled company. He was not prepared for such a scene; and it struck him with such astonishment that he stopt short, with mouth and eyes wide open—surprize painted upon every feature. I see him now as distinctly as I did then. The King, as well as the rest of the company, remarked the agitation of Conillac, and said to him with emotion, "Well, Conillac! come up." Conillac remained motionless, and the King continued, "Come up. What is the matter?" Conillac, thus addrest, finished his ascent, and came toward the King with slow and trembling steps, rolling his eyes from right to left like one deranged. Then he stammered something, but in a tone so low that it could not be heard. "What do you say?" cried the King. "Speak up." But Conillac was unable; and the King, finding he could get nothing out of him, told him to go away. He did not need to be told twice, but disappeared at once. As soon as he was gone, the King looking round said, "I don't know what is the matter with Conillac. He has lost his wits: he did not remember what he had to say to me." No one answered.
Toward the moment of the capitulation, Madame de Maintenon apparently asked permission to go away; for the King cried, "The chairmen of madame!" They came and took her away; in less than a quarter of an hour afterward the King retired also, and nearly everybody else. There was much interchange of glances, nudging with elbows, and then whisperings in the ear. Everybody was full of what had taken place on the ramparts between the King and Madame de Maintenon. Even the soldiers asked what meant that sedan-chair, and the King every moment stooping to put his head inside of it. It became necessary gently to silence these questions of the troops. What effect this sight had upon foreigners present, and what they said of it, may be imagined. All over Europe it was as much talked of as the camp of Compiègne itself, with all its pomp and prodigious splendor.
[35] From the "Memoirs."
[36] At the period of which Saint-Simon here writes, Madame de Maintenon had acquired that ascendency over Louis XIV which resulted in her marriage to him. She had been born in a prison, and was three years the senior of the King. Her first husband was the poet Scarron, at whose death, after a marriage of nine years, she had found herself in poverty. She secured a pension from Anne of Austria, the mother of the King, but at the queen-mother's death the pension was discontinued. She was placed in charge of the King's natural son, to whom she became much devoted, and was advanced through the King's favor to various positions at court, receiving in 1678 the title of marquise. Five years later the queen of Louis XIV died, and Louis married Madame de Maintenon, whose influence over him in matters of church and state became thereafter very great. She was a patroness of art and literature, intensely orthodox in religion, and has been held largely responsible for the King's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which occurred during the year of their marriage, tho she opposed the violent persecutions which followed.
Born near Bordeaux in 1689, died in Paris in 1755; studied law and became a councilor in 1716; president of the Bordeaux Parliament; devoted himself to a study of literature and jurisprudence; published "Persian Letters" in 1721, which secured him an election to the Academy in 1728; traveled in Austria, Italy, Germany, Holland and England; published "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans" in 1734, and "Spirit of the Laws" in 1748.[37]
While the sovereignty of Rome was confined to Italy, it was easy for the commonwealth to subsist: every soldier was at the same time a citizen; every Consul raised an army, and other citizens marched into the field under his successor: as their forces were not very numerous, such persons only were received among the troops as had possessions considerable enough to make them interested in the preservation of the city; the Senate kept a watchful eye over the conduct of the generals, and did not give them an opportunity of machinating anything to the prejudice of their country.
But after the legions had passed the Alps and crossed the sea, the soldiers whom the Romans had been obliged to leave during several campaigns in the countries they were subduing, lost insensibly that genius and turn of mind which characterized a Roman citizen; and the generals having armies and kingdoms at their disposal were sensible of their own strength, and would no longer obey.
The soldiers therefore began to acknowledge no superior but their general; to found their hopes on him only, and to view the city as from a great distance: they were no longer the soldiers of the republic, but of Sulla, of Marius, of Pompey, and of Cæsar. The Romans could no longer tell whether the person who headed an army in a province was their general or their enemy.
So long as the people of Rome were corrupted by their tribunes only, on whom they could bestow nothing but their power, the Senate could easily defend themselves, because they acted consistently and with one regular tenor, whereas the common people were continually shifting from the extremes of fury to the extremes of cowardice; but when they were enabled to invest their favorites with a formidable exterior authority, the whole wisdom of the Senate was baffled, and the commonwealth was undone.
The reason why free states are not so permanent as other forms of government is because the misfortunes and successes which happen to them generally occasion the loss of liberty; whereas the successes and misfortunes of an arbitrary government contribute equally to the enslaving of the people. A wise republic ought not to run any hazard which may expose it to good or ill fortune; the only happiness the several individuals of it should aspire after is to give perpetuity to their state.
If the unbounded extent of the Roman empire proved the ruin of the republic, the vast compass of the city was no less fatal to it.
The Romans had subdued the whole universe by the assistance of the nations of Italy, on whom they had bestowed various privileges at different times. Most of those nations did not at first set any great value on the freedom of the city of Rome, and some chose rather to preserve their ancient usages; but when this privilege became that of universal sovereignty—when a man who was not a Roman citizen was considered as nothing, and with this title was everything—the people of Italy resolved either to be Romans or die: not being able to obtain this by cabals and entreaties, they had recourse to arms; and rising in all that part of Italy opposite to the Ionian sea, the rest of the allies were going to follow their example. Rome, being now forced to combat against those who were, if I may be allowed the figure, the hands with which they shackled the universe, was upon the brink of ruin; the Romans were going to be confined merely to their walls: they therefore granted this so much wished-for privilege to the allies who had not yet been wanting in fidelity; and they indulged it, by insensible degrees, to all other nations.
But now Rome was no longer that city the inhabitants of which had breathed one and the same spirit, the same love for liberty, the same hatred of tyranny; a city in which a jealousy of the power of the Senate and of the prerogatives of the great (ever accompanied with respect) was only a love of equality. The nations of Italy being made citizens of Rome, every city brought thither its genius, its particular interests, and its dependence on some mighty protector: Rome, being now rent and divided, no longer formed one entire body, and men were no longer citizens of it but in a kind of fictitious way; as there were no longer the same magistrates, the same walls, the same gods, the same temples, the same burying-places, Rome was no longer beheld with the same eyes; the citizens were no longer fired with the same love for their country, and the Roman sentiments were obliterated.
Cities and nations were now invited to Rome by the ambitious, to disconcert the suffrages, or influence them in their own favor; the public assemblies were so many conspiracies against the state, and a tumultuous crowd of seditious wretches was dignified with the title of Comitia. The authority of the people and their laws—nay, that people themselves—were no more than so many chimeras; and so universal was the anarchy of those times that it was not possible to determine whether the people had made a law or not.
Authors enlarge very copiously on the divisions which proved the destruction of Rome; but their readers seldom discover those divisions to have been always necessary and inevitable. The grandeur of the republic was the only source of that calamity, and exasperated popular tumults into civil wars. Dissensions were not to be prevented; and those martial spirits which were so fierce and formidable abroad could not be habituated to any considerable moderation at home. Those who expect in a free state to see the people undaunted in war and pusillanimous in peace, are certainly desirous of impossibilities; and it may be advanced as a general rule that whenever a perfect calm is visible, in a state that calls itself a republic, the spirit of liberty no longer subsists.
Union, in a body politic, is a very equivocal term: true union is such a harmony as makes all the particular parts, as opposite as they may seem to us, concur to the general welfare of the society, in the same manner as discords in music contribute to the general melody of sound. Union may prevail in a state full of seeming commotions; or in other words, there may be a harmony from whence results prosperity, which alone is true peace; and may be considered in the same view as the various parts of this universe, which are eternally connected by the action of some and the reaction of others.
In a despotic state, indeed, which is every government where the power is immoderately exerted, a real division is perpetually kindled. The peasant, the soldier, the merchant, the magistrate, and the grandee, have no other conjunction than what arises from the ability of the one to oppress the other without resistance; and if at any time a union happens to be introduced, citizens are not then united, but dead bodies are laid in the grave contiguous to each other.
It must be acknowledged that the Roman laws were too weak to govern the republic; but experience has proved it to be an invariable fact that good laws, which raise the reputation and power of a small republic, become incommodious to it when once its grandeur is established, because it was their natural effect to make a great people but not to govern them.
The difference is very considerable between good laws and those which may be called convenient; between such laws as give a people dominion over others, and such as continue them in the possession of power when they have once acquired it.
There is at this time a republic in the world (the Canton of Berne), of which few persons have any knowledge, and which, by plans accomplished in silence and secrecy, is daily enlarging its power. And certain it is that if it ever rises to that height of grandeur for which it seems preordained by its wisdom, it must inevitably change its laws; and the necessary innovations will not be effected by any legislator, but must spring from corruption itself.
Rome was founded for grandeur, and her laws had an admirable tendency to bestow it; for which reason, in all the variations of her government, whether monarchy, aristocracy, or popular, she constantly engaged in enterprises which required conduct to accomplish them, and always succeeded. The experience of a day did not furnish her with more wisdom than all other nations, but she obtained it by a long succession of events. She sustained a small, a moderate, and an immense fortune with the same superiority, derived true welfare from the whole train of her prosperities, and refined every instance of calamity into beneficial instructions.
She lost her liberty because she completed her work too soon.
[37] Montesquieu is declared by Mr. Saintsbury to deserve the title of "the greatest man of letters of the French eighteenth century." He places him above Voltaire because "of his far greater originality and depth of thought."
[38] From the "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans," of which an English translation was issued as early as 1751.
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws; the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?
There is, then, a primitive reason; and laws are the relations subsisting between it and different beings, and the relations of these to one another.
God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves them. He acts according to these rules, because He knows them; He knows them, because He made them; and He made them, because they are relative to His wisdom and power.
Since we observe that the world, tho formed by the motion of matter, and void of understanding, subsists through so long a succession of ages, its motions must certainly be directed by invariable laws; and could we imagine another world, it must also have constant rules, or it would inevitably perish.
Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary net, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without these rules, since without them it could not subsist.
These rules are a fixt and variable relation. In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own making, but they have some likewise which they never made. Before they were intelligent beings, they were possible; they had therefore possible relations, and consequently possible laws. Before laws were made, there were relations of possible justice. To say that there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws is the same as saying that before the describing of a circle all the radii were not equal.
We must therefore acknowledge relations of justice antecedent to the positive law by which they are established: as for instance, that if human societies existed it would be right to conform to their laws; if there were intelligent beings that had received a benefit of another being, they ought to show their gratitude; if one intelligent being had created another intelligent being, the latter ought to continue in its original state of dependence; if one intelligent being injures another, it deserves a retaliation; and so on.
But the intelligent world is far from being so well governed as the physical. For tho the former has also its laws, which of their own nature are invariable, it does not conform to them so exactly as the physical world. This is because, on the one hand, particular intelligent beings are of a finite nature, and consequently liable to error; and on the other, their nature requires them to be free agents. Hence they do not steadily conform to their primitive laws; and even, those of their own instituting they frequently infringe.
Whether brutes be governed by the general laws of motion or by a particular movement we can not determine. Be that as it may, they have not a more intimate relation to God than the rest of the material world; and sensation is of no other use to them than in the relation they have either to other particular beings or to themselves.
By the allurements of pleasure they preserve the individual, and by the same allurements they preserve their species. They have natural laws, because they are united by sensation; positive laws they have none, because they are not connected by knowledge. And yet they do not invariably conform to their natural laws; these are better observed by vegetables, that have neither understanding nor sense.
Brutes are deprived of the high advantages which we have; but they have some which we have not. They have not our hopes, but they are without our fears; they are subject like us to death, but without knowing it; even most of them are more attentive than we to self-preservation, and do not make so bad a use of their passions.
Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies, governed by invariable laws. As an intelligent being, he incessantly transgresses the laws established by God, and changes those of his own instituting. He is left to his private direction, tho a limited being, and subject, like all finite intelligences, to ignorance and error; even his imperfect knowledge he loses; and as a sensible creature, he is hurried away by a thousand impetuous passions. Such a being might every instant forget his Creator; God has therefore reminded him of his duty by the laws of religion. Such a being is liable every moment to forget himself; philosophy has provided against this by the laws of morality. Formed to live in society, he might forget his fellow creatures; legislators have therefore by political and civil laws confined him to his duty.
[39] From "The Spirit of Laws." The translation of Thomas Nugent was published in 1756.
Born in Paris in 1694, died in 1778; his original name Arouet; educated at the College of Louis-le-Grand; exiled because of his freedom of speech; twice imprisoned in the Bastille; resided in England in 1726-29; went to Prussia at the invitation of Frederick the Great in 1750, remaining three years, the friendship ending in bitter enmity; wrote in Prussia his "Le Siècle de Louis XIV"; settled at Geneva in 1756, and two years later at Ferney, where he lived until his death in 1778; visited Paris in 1778, being received with great honors; his works very numerous, one edition comprizing seventy-two volumes.
Not long since the trite and frivolous question following was debated in a very polite and learned company, viz., Who was the greatest man, Cæsar, Alexander, Tamerlane, Cromwell, etc.?
Somebody answered that Sir Isaac Newton excelled them all. The gentleman's assertion was very just; for if true greatness consists in having received from heaven a mighty genius, and in having employed it to enlighten our own mind and that of others, a man like Sir Isaac Newton, whose equal is hardly found in a thousand years, is the truly great man. And those politicians and conquerors (and all ages produce some) were generally so many illustrious wicked men. That man claims our respect who commands over the minds of the rest of the world by the force of truth, not those who enslave their fellow creatures; he who is acquainted with the universe, not they who deface it.
The most singular and the best of all his pieces is that which, at this time, is the most useless and the least read. I mean his "Novum Scientiarum Organum." This is the scaffold with which the new philosophy was raised; and when the edifice was built, part of it, at least the scaffold was no longer of service.
Lord Bacon was not yet acquainted with nature, but then he knew, and pointed out the several paths that lead to it. He had despised in his younger years the thing called philosophy in the universities, and did all that lay in his power to prevent those societies of men instituted to improve human reason from depraving it by their quiddities, their horrors of the vacuum, their substantial forms, and all those impertinent terms which not only ignorance had rendered venerable, but which had been made sacred by their being ridiculously blended with religion.
He is the father of experimental philosophy. It must, indeed, be confest that very surprizing secrets had been found out before his time—the sea compass, printing, engraving on copper plates, oil painting, looking-glasses; the art of restoring, in some measure, old men to their sight by spectacles; gunpowder, etc., had been discovered. A new world had been fought for, found, and conquered. Would not one suppose that these sublime discoveries had been made by the greatest philosophers, and in ages much more enlightened than the present? But it was far otherwise; all these great changes happened in the most stupid and barbarous times. Chance only gave birth to most of those inventions; and it is very probable that what is called chance contributed very much to the discovery of America; at least it has been always thought that Christopher Columbus undertook his voyage merely on the relation of a captain of a ship which a storm had driven as far westward as the Caribbean Island. Be this as it will, men had sailed round the world, and could destroy cities by an artificial thunder more dreadful than the real one; but, then, they were not acquainted with the circulation of the blood, the weight of the air, the laws of motions, light, the number of our planets, etc. And a man who maintained a thesis on Aristotle's "Categories," on the universals a parte rei, or such-like nonsense, was looked upon as a prodigy.
The most astonishing, the most useful inventions, are not those which reflect the greatest honor on the human mind. It is to a mechanical instinct, which is found in many men, and not to true philosophy that most arts owe their origin.
The discovery of fire, the art of making bread, of melting and preparing metals, of building houses, and the invention of the shuttle are infinitely more beneficial to mankind than printing or the sea compass; and yet these arts were invented by uncultivated, savage men.
What a prodigious use the Greeks and Romans made afterward of mechanics! Nevertheless, they believed that there were crystal heavens, that the stars were small lamps which sometimes fell into the sea, and one of their greatest philosophers, after long researches, found that the stars were so many flints which had been detached from the earth.
In a word, no one before Lord Bacon was acquainted with experimental philosophy, nor with the several physical experiments which have been made since his time. Scarce one of them but is hinted at in his work, and he himself had made several. He made a kind of pneumatic engine, by which he guessed the elasticity of the air. He approached on all sides, as it were, to the discovery of its weight, and had very near attained it, but some time after Torricelli seized upon this truth. In a little time experimental philosophy began to be cultivated on a sudden in most parts of Europe. It was a hidden treasure which Lord Bacon had some notion of, and which all the philosophers, encouraged by his promises, endeavored to dig up.
But that which surprized me most was to read in his work, in express terms, the new attraction, the invention of which is ascribed to Sir Isaac Newton.
We must search, says Lord Bacon, whether there may not be a kind of magnetic power which operates between the earth and heavy bodies, between the moon and the ocean, between the planets, etc. In another place he says, either heavy bodies must be carried toward the center of the earth, or must be reciprocally attracted by it; and in the latter case it is evident that the nearer bodies in their falling, draw toward the earth, the stronger they will attract one another. We must, says he, make an experiment to see whether the same clock will go faster on the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; whether the strength of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine. It is probable that the earth has a true attractive power.
This forerunner in philosophy was also an elegant writer, a historian, and a wit.
His moral essays are greatly esteemed, but they were drawn up in the view of instructing rather than of pleasing; and, as they are not a satire upon mankind, like Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," nor written upon a skeptical plan, like Montaigne's "Essays," they are not so much read as those two ingenious authors.