Kitabı oku: «A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 04», sayfa 7
DIODORUS OF SICILY, AND HERODOTUS
We will commence with Herodotus as the most ancient. When Henry Stephens entitled his comic rhapsody "The Apology of Herodotus," we know that his design was not to justify the tales of this father of history; he only sports with us and shows that the enormities of his own times were worse than those of the Egyptians and Persians. He made use of the liberty which the Protestants assumed against those of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman churches. He sharply reproaches them with their debaucheries, their avarice, their crimes expiated by money, their indulgences publicly sold in the taverns, and the false relics manufactured by their own monks, calling them idolaters. He ventures to say that if the Egyptians adored cats and onions, the Catholics adore the bones of the dead. He dares to call them in his preliminary discourses, "theophages," and even "theokeses." We have fourteen editions of this book, for we relish general abuse, just as much as we resent that which we deem special and personal.
Henry Stephens made use of Herodotus only to render us hateful and ridiculous; we have quite a contrary design. We pretend to show that the modern histories of our good authors since Guicciardini are in general as wise and true as those of Herodotus and Diodorus are foolish and fabulous.
1. What does the father of history mean by saying in the beginning of his work, "the Persian historians relate that the Phoenicians were the authors of all the wars. From the Red Sea they entered ours," etc.? It would seem that the Phœnicians, having embarked at the Isthmus of Suez, arrived at the straits of Babel-Mandeb, coasted along Ethiopia, passed the line, doubled the Cape of Tempests, since called the Cape of Good Hope, returned between Africa and America, repassed the line and entered from the ocean into the Mediterranean by the Pillars of Hercules, a voyage of more than four thousand of our long marine leagues at a time when navigation was in its infancy.
2. The first exploit of the Phœnicians was to go towards Argos to carry off the daughter of King Inachus, after which the Greeks, in their turn, carried off Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre.
3. Immediately afterwards comes Candaules, king of Lydia, who, meeting with one of his guards named Gyges, said to him, "Thou must see my wife quite naked; it is absolutely essential." The queen, learning that she had been thus exposed, said to the soldier, "You shall either die or assassinate my husband and reign with me." He chose the latter alternative, and the assassination was accomplished without difficulty.
4. Then follows the history of Arion, carried on the back of a dolphin across the sea from the skirts of Calabria to Cape Matapan, an extraordinary voyage of about a hundred leagues.
5. From tale to tale – and who dislikes tales? – we arrive at the infallible oracle of Delphi, which somehow foretold that Crœsus would cook a quarter of lamb and a tortoise in a copper pan and that he would be dethroned by a mullet.
6. Among the inconceivable absurdities with which ancient history abounds is there anything approaching the famine with which the Lydians were tormented for twenty-eight years? This people, whom Herodotus describes as being richer in gold than the Peruvians, instead of buying food from foreigners, found no better expedient than that of amusing themselves every other day with the ladies without eating for eight-and-twenty successive years.
7. Is there anything more marvellous than the history of Cyrus? His grandfather, the Mede Astyages, with a Greek name, dreamed that his daughter Mandane – another Greek name – inundated all Asia; at another time, that she produced a vine, of which all Asia ate the grapes, and thereupon the good man Astyages ordered one Harpagos, another Greek, to murder his grandson Cyrus – for what grandfather would not kill his posterity after dreams of this nature?
8. Herodotus, no less a good naturalist than an exact historian, does not fail to tell us that near Babylon the earth produced three hundred ears of wheat for one. I know a small country which yields three for one. I should like to have been transported to Diabek when the Turks were driven from it by Catherine II. It has fine corn also but returns not three hundred ears for one.
9. What has always seemed to me decent and edifying in Herodotus is the fine religious custom established in Babylon of which we have already spoken – that of all the married women going to prostitute themselves in the temple of Mylitta for money, to the first stranger who presented himself. We reckon two millions of inhabitants in this city; the devotion must have been ardent. This law is very probable among the Orientals who have always shut up their women, and who, more than six ages before Herodotus, instituted eunuchs to answer to them for the chastity of their wives. I must no longer proceed numerically; we should very soon indeed arrive at a hundred.
All that Diodorus of Sicily says seven centuries after Herodotus is of the same value in all that regards antiquities and physics. The Abbé Terrasson said, "I translate the text of Diodorus in all its coarseness." He sometimes read us part of it at the house of de Lafaye, and when we laughed, he said, "You are resolved to misconstrue; it was quite the contrary with Dacier."
The finest part of Diodorus is the charming description of the island of Panchaica – "Panchaica Tellus," celebrated by Virgil: "There were groves of odoriferous trees as far as the eye could see, myrrh and frankincense to furnish the whole world without exhausting it; fountains, which formed an infinity of canals, bordered with flowers, besides unknown birds, which sang under the eternal shades; a temple of marble four thousand feet long, ornamented with columns, colossal statues," etc.
This puts one in mind of the Duke de la Ferté, who, to flatter the taste of the Abbé Servien, said to him one day, "Ah, if you had seen my son who died at fifteen years of age! What eyes! what freshness of complexion! what an admirable stature! the Antinous of Belvidere compared to him was only like a Chinese baboon, and as to sweetness of manners, he had the most engaging I ever met with." The Abbé Servien melted, the duke of Ferté, warmed by his own words, melted also, both began to weep, after which he acknowledged that he never had a son.
A certain Abbé Bazin, with his simple common sense, doubts another tale of Diodorus. It is of a king of Egypt, Sesostris, who probably existed no more than the island of Panchaica. The father of Sesostris, who is not named, determined on the day that he was born that he would make him the conqueror of all the earth as soon as he was of age. It was a notable project. For this purpose he brought up with him all the boys who were born on the same day in Egypt, and, to make them conquerors, he did not suffer them to have their breakfasts until they had run a hundred and eighty stadia, which is about eight of our long leagues.
When Sesostris was of age he departed with his racers to conquer the world. They were then about seventeen hundred and probably half were dead, according to the ordinary course of nature – and, above all, of the nature of Egypt, which was desolated by a destructive plague at least once in ten years.
There must have been three thousand four hundred boys born in Egypt on the same day as Sesostris, and as nature produces almost as many girls as boys, there must have been six thousand persons at least born on that day. But women were confined every day, and six thousand births a day produce, at the end of the year, two millions one hundred and ninety thousand children. If you multiply by thirty-four, according to the rule of Kersseboom, you would have in Egypt more than seventy-four millions of inhabitants in a country which is not so large as Spain or France.
All this appeared monstrous to the Abbé Bazin, who had seen a little of the world, and who judged only by what he had seen.
But one Larcher, who was never outside of the college of Mazarin arrayed himself with great animation on the side of Sesostris and his runners. He pretends that Herodotus, in speaking of the Greeks, does not reckon by the stadia of Greece, and that the heroes of Sesostris only ran four leagues before breakfast. He overwhelms poor Abbé Bazin with injurious names such as no scholar in us or es had ever before employed. He does not hold with the seventeen hundred boys, but endeavors to prove by the prophets that the wives, daughters, and nieces of the king of Babylon, of the satraps, and the magi, resorted, out of pure devotion, to sleep for money in the aisles of the temple of Babylon with all the camel-drivers and muleteers of Asia. He treats all those who defend the honor of the ladies of Babylon as bad Christians, condemned souls, and enemies to the state.
He also takes the part of the goat, so much in the good graces of the young female Egyptians. It is said that his great reason was that he was allied, by the female side, to a relation of the bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, the author of an eloquent discourse on "Universal History"; but this is not a peremptory reason.
Take care of the extraordinary stories of all kinds. Diodorus of Sicily was the greatest compiler of these tales. This Sicilian had not a grain of the temper of his countryman Archimedes, who sought and found so many mathematical truths.
Diodorus seriously examines the history of the Amazons and their queen Theaestris; the history of the Gorgons, who fought against the Amazons; that of the Titans, and that of all the gods. He searches into the history of Priapus and Hermaphroditus. No one could give a better account of Hercules: this hero wandered through half the earth, sometimes on foot and alone like a pilgrim, and sometimes like a general at the head of a great army, and all his labors are faithfully discussed, but this is nothing in comparison with the gods of Crete.
Diodorus justifies Jupiter from the reproach which other grave historians have passed upon him, of having dethroned and mutilated his father. He shows how Jupiter fought the giants, some in his island, others in Phrygia, and afterwards in Macedonia and Italy; the number of children which he had by his sister Juno and his favorites are not omitted.
He describes how he afterwards became a god, and the supreme god. It is thus that all the ancient histories have been written. What is more remarkable, they were sacred; if they had not been sacred, they would never have been read.
It is clear that it would be very useful if in all they were all different, and from province to province, and island to island, each had a different history of the gods, demi-gods, and heroes, from that of their neighbors. But it should also be observed that the people never fought for this mythology.
The respectable history of Thucydides, which has several glimmerings of truth, begins at Xerxes, but, before that epoch how much time was wasted.
DIRECTOR
It is neither of a director of finances, a director of hospitals, nor a director of the royal buildings that I pretend to speak, but of a director of conscience, for that directs all the others: it is the preceptor of human kind; it knows and teaches all that should be done or omitted in all possible cases.
It is clear that it would be very useful if in all courts there were one conscientious man whom the monarch secretly consulted on most occasions, and who would boldly say, "Non licet." Louis the Just would not then have begun his mischievous and unhappy reign by assassinating his first minister and imprisoning his mother. How many wars, unjust as fatal, a few good dictators would have spared! How many cruelties they would have prevented!
But often, while intending to consult a lamb, we consult a fox. Tartuffe was the director of Orgon. I should like to know who was the conscientious director of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
The gospel speaks no more of directors than of confessors. Among the people whom our ordinary courtesy calls Pagans we do not see that Scipio, Fabricius, Cato, Titus, Trajan, or the Antonines had directors. It is well to have a scrupulous friend to remind you of your duty. But your conscience ought to be the chief of your council.
A Huguenot was much surprised when a Catholic lady told him that she had a confessor to absolve her from her sins and a director to prevent her committing them. "How can your vessel so often go astray, madam," said he, "having two such good pilots?"
The learned observe that it is not the privilege of every one to have a director. It is like having an equerry; it only belongs to ladies of quality. The Abbé Gobelin, a litigious and covetous man, directed Madame de Maintenon only. The directors of Paris often serve four or five devotees at once; they embroil them with their husbands, sometimes with their lovers, and occasionally fill the vacant places.
Why have the women directors and the men none? It was possibly owing to this distinction that Mademoiselle de la Vallière became a Carmelite when she was quitted by Louis XIV., and that M. de Turenne, being betrayed by Madame de Coetquin, did not make himself a monk.
St. Jerome, and Rufinus his antagonist, were great directors of women and girls. They did not find a Roman senator or a military tribune to govern. These people profited by the devout facility of the feminine gender. The men had too much beard on their chins and often too much strength of mind for them. Boileau has given the portrait of a director in his "Satire on Women," but might have said something much more to the purpose.
DISPUTES
There have been disputes at all times, on all subjects: – "Mundum tradidit disputationi eorum." There have been violent quarrels about whether the whole is greater than a part; whether a body can be in several places at the same time; whether the whiteness of snow can exist without snow, or the sweetness of sugar without sugar; whether there can be thinking without a head, etc.
I doubt not that as soon as a Jansenist shall have written a book to demonstrate that one and two are three, a Molinist will start up and demonstrate that two and one are five.
We hope to please and instruct the reader by laying before him the following verses on "Disputation." They are well known to every man of taste in Paris, but they are less familiar to those among the learned who still dispute on gratuitous predestination, concomitant grace, and that momentous question – whether the mountains were produced by the sea.
ON DISPUTATION
Each brain its thought, each season has its mode;
Manners and fashions alter every day;
Examine for yourself what others say; —
This privilege by nature is bestowed; —
But, oh! dispute not – the designs of heaven
To mortal insight never can be given.
What is the knowledge of this world worth knowing?
What, but a bubble scarcely worth the blowing?
"Quite full of errors was the world before;"
Then, to preach reason is but one error more.
Viewing this earth from Luna's elevation,
Or any other convenient situation,
What shall we see? The various tricks of man.
Here is a synod —there is a divan;
Behold the mufti, dervish, iman, bonze,
The lama and the pope on equal thrones.
The modern doctor and the ancient rabbi,
The monk, the priest, and the expectant abbé:
If you are disputants, my friends, pray travel —
When you come home again, you'll cease to cavil.
That wild Ambition should lay waste the earth,
Or Beauty's glance give civil discord birth;
That, in our courts of equity, a suit
Should hang in doubt till ruin is the fruit;
That an old country priest should deeply groan,
To see a benefice he'd thought his own
Borne off by a court abbé; that a poet
Should feel most envy when he least should show it;
And, when another's play the public draws,
Should grin damnation while he claps applause;
With this, and more, the human heart is fraught —
But whence the rage to rule another's thought;
Say, wherefore – in what way – can you design
To make your judgment give the law to mine?
But chiefly I detest those tiresome elves,
Half-learned critics, worshipping themselves,
Who, with the utmost weight of all their lead,
Maintain against you what yourself have said;
Philosophers – and poets – and musicians —
Great statesmen – deep in third and fourth editions —
They know all – read all – and (the greatest curse)
They talk of all – from politics to verse;
On points of taste they'll contradict Voltaire;
In law e'en Montesquieu they will not spare;
They'll tutor Broglio in affairs of arms;
And teach the charming d'Egmont higher charms.
See them, alike in great and small things clever,
Replying constantly, though answering never;
Hear them assert, repeat, affirm, aver,
Wax wroth. And wherefore all this mighty stir?
This the great theme that agitates their breast —
Which of two wretched rhymesters rhymes the best?
Pray, gentle reader, did you chance to know
One Monsieur d'Aube, who died not long ago?
One whom the disputatious mania woke
Early each morning? If, by chance, you spoke
Of your own part in some well-fought affair,
Better than you he knew how, when, and where;
What though your own the deed and the renown?
His "letters from the army" put you down;
E'en Richelieu he'd have told – if he attended —
How Mahon fell, or Genoa was defended.
Although he wanted neither wit nor sense,
His every visit gave his friends offence;
I've seen him, raving in a hot dispute,
Exhaust their logic, force them to be mute,
Or, if their patience were entirely spent,
Rush from the room to give their passion vent.
His kinsmen, whom his property allured,
At last were wearied, though they long endured.
His neighbors, less athletic than himself,
For health's sake laid him wholly on the shelf.
Thus, 'midst his many virtues, this one failing
Brought his old age to solitary wailing; —
For solitude to him was deepest woe —
A sorrow which the peaceful ne'er can know
At length, to terminate his cureless grief,
A mortal fever came to his relief,
Caused by the great, the overwhelming pang,
Of hearing in the church a long harangue
Without the privilege of contradiction;
So, yielding to this crowning dire affliction,
His spirit fled. But, in the grasp of death,
'Twas some small solace, with his parting breath,
To indulge once more his ruling disposition
By arguing with the priest and the physician.
Oh! may the Eternal goodness grant him now
The rest he ne'er to mortals would allow!
If, even there, he like not disputation
Better than uncontested, calm salvation.
But see, my friends, this bold defiance made
To every one of the disputing trade,
With a young bachelor their skill to try;
And God's own essence shall the theme supply.
Come and behold, as on the theatric stage,
The pitched encounter, the contending rage;
Dilemmas, enthymemes, in close array —
Two-edged weapons, cutting either way;
The strong-built syllogism's pondering might,
The sophism's vain ignis fatuus light;
Hot-headed monks, whom all the doctors dread,
And poor Hibernians arguing for their bread,
Fleeing their country's miseries and morasses
To live at Paris on disputes and masses;
While the good public lend their strict attention
To what soars far above their sober comprehension.
Is, then, all arguing frivolous or absurd?
Was Socrates himself not sometimes heard
To hold an argument amidst a feast?
E'en naked in the bath he hardly ceased.
Was this a failing in his mental vision?
Genius is sure discovered by collision;
The cold hard flint by one quick blow is fired; —
Fit emblem of the close and the retired,
Who, in the keen dispute struck o'er and o'er,
Acquire a sudden warmth unfelt before.
All this, I grant, is good. But mark the ill:
Men by disputing have grown blinder still.
The crooked mind is like the squinting eye:
How can you make it see itself awry?
Who's in the wrong? Will any answer "I"?
Our words, our efforts, are an idle breath;
Each hugs his darling notion until death;
Opinions ne'er are altered; all we do
Is, to arouse conflicting passions, too.
Not truth itself should always find a tongue;
"To be too stanchly right, is to be wrong."
In earlier days, by vice and crime unstained,
Justice and Truth, two naked sisters, reigned;
But long since fled – as every one can tell —
Justice to heaven and Truth into a well.
Now vain Opinion governs every age,
And fills poor mortals with fantastic rage.
Her airy temple floats upon the clouds;
Gods, demons, antic sprites, in countless crowds,
Around her throne – a strange and motley mask —
Ply busily their never-ceasing task,
To hold up to mankind's admiring gaze
A thousand nothings in a thousand ways;
While, wafted on by all the winds that blow,
Away the temple and the goddess go.
A mortal, as her course uncertain turns,
To-day is worshipped, and to-morrow burns.
We scoff, that young Antinous once had priests;
We think our ancestors were worse than beasts;
And he who treats each modern custom ill,
Does but what future ages surely will.
What female face has Venus smiled upon?
The Frenchman turns with rapture to Brionne,
Nor can believe that men were wont to bow
To golden tresses and a narrow brow.
And thus is vagabond Opinion seen
To sway o'er Beauty – this world's other queen!
How can we hope, then, that she e'er will quit
Her vapory throne, to seek some sage's feet,
And Truth from her deep hiding-place remove,
Once more to witness what is done above?
And for the learned – even for the wise —
Another snare of false delusion lies;
That rage for systems, which, in dreamy thought,
Frames magic universes out of naught;
Building ten errors on one truth's foundation.
So he who taught the art of calculation,
In one of these illusive mental slumbers,
Foolishly sought the Deity in numbers;
The first mechanic, from as wild a notion,
Would rule man's freedom by the laws of motion.
This globe, says one, is an extinguished sun;
No, says another, 'tis a globe of glass;
And when the fierce contention's once begun,
Book upon book – a vast and useless mass – On
Science's altar are profusely strewn,
While Disputation sits on Wisdom's throne.
And then, from contrarieties of speech,
What countless feuds have sprung! For you may teach,
In the same words, two doctrines different quite
As day from darkness, or as wrong from right.
This has indeed been man's severest curse;
Famine and pestilence have not been worse,
Nor e'er have matched the ills whose aggravations
Have scourged the world through misinterpretations.
How shall I paint the conscientious strife?
The holy transports of each heavenly soul —
Fanaticism wasting human life
With torch, with dagger, and with poisoned bow;
The ruined hamlet and the blazing town,
Homes desolate, and parents massacred,
And temples in the Almighty's honor reared
The scene of acts that merit most his frown!
Rape, murder, pillage, in one frightful storm,
Pleasure with carnage horribly combined,
The brutal ravisher amazed to find
A sister in his victim's dying form!
Sons by their fathers to the scaffold led;
The vanquished always numbered with the dead.
Oh, God, permit that all the ills we know
May one day pass for merely fabled woe!
But see, an angry disputant steps forth —
His humble mien a proud heart ill conceals
In holy guise inclining to the earth,
Offering to God the venom he distils.
"Beneath all this a dangerous poison lies;
So – every man is neither right nor wrong,
And, since we never can be truly wise,
By instinct only should be driven along."
"Sir, I've not said a word to that effect."
"It's true, you've artfully disguised your meaning."
"But, Sir, my judgment ever is correct."
"Sir, in this case, 'tis rather overweening.
Let truth be sought, but let all passion yield;
'Discussion's right, and disputation's wrong;'
This have I said – and that at court, in field,
Or town, one often should restrain one's tongue."
"But, my dear Sir, you've still a double sense;
I can distinguish – " "Sir, with all my heart;
I've told my thoughts with all due deference,
And crave the like indulgence on your part."
"My son, all 'thinking' is a grievous crime;
So I'll denounce you without loss of time."
Blest would be they who, from fanatic power,
From carping censors, envious critics, free,
O'er Helicon might roam in liberty,
And unmolested pluck each fragrant flower!
So does the farmer, in his healthy fields,
Far from the ills in swarming towns that spring,
Taste the pure joys that our existence yields,
Extract the honey and escape the sting.
