ment, criticise, neglect, forget, and above all, despise an author, who is an author only. and bands, never seek to emp oy authority where nothing is concerned but reason, or consent to be reviled in all ages as the most impertinent of men, as well as to endure public hatred as the most unjust. You have been told a hundred times of the insolent absurdity with which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you of it for the hundred and first. I would have you keep the anniversary of it for ever. I would have it inscribed over the door of your holy office. Seven cardinals, assisted by certain minorite friars, threw into prison the master of thinking in Italy at the age of seventy; and made him live upon bread and water because he instructed mankind in that of which they were ignorant. Apropos of citing an author: I must amuse myself with relating a singular mistake of the reverend Father Viret, cordelier and professor of theology. He read in the Philosophy of History" of the good Abbé Bazin, that no author ever cited a passage of Moses before Longinus, who lived and died in the time of the Emperor Aurelian. Forthwith, the zeal of St. Francis was kindled in him. Viret cries out that it is not true, for that several writers have said that there had been a Moses, that even Josephus has spoken at length upon him, and that the Abbé Bazin is a wretch, who would destroy the seven sacraments. But, dear Father Viret, you ought to inform yourself of the meaning of the word, to cite. There is a great deal of difference between mentioning an author and citing him. To speak, to make mention of an author, is to say, that he has lived-that he has written in such a time; to cite, is to give one of his passages-as Moses says in his Exodus-as Moses has written in his Genesis. Now the Abbé Bazin affirms, that no foreign writers that none even of the Jewish prophets, have ever quoted a single passage of Moses, though he was a divine author. In neighbouring schools, legal proceedTruly, Father Viret, you are very mali-ings were commenced against the circucious, but we shall know at least, by this {lation of the blood. little paragraph, that you have been an author. Having passed a decree in favour of the categories of Aristotle, the above junto learnedly and equitably doomed to the penalty of the gallies whoever should dare to be of another opinion from the Stagyrite, of whom two councils had burnt the books. Further, a Faculty, which possessed very small faculties, made a decree against innate ideas, and afterwards another for them, without the said Faculty being informed, except by its beadles, of what an idea was. A process was issued against inoculation, and the parties cited by summons. The most voluminous authors that we One and twenty volumes of thoughts in have had in France, are the comptrollers-folio have been seized, in which it was general of the finances. Ten great vo-wickedly and falsely said that triangles lumes might be made of their declarations, have always three angles; that a father since the reign of Louis XIV. Parlia- was older than his son; that Rhea Silvia ments have been sometimes the critics of lost her virginity before her accouchethese works, and have four erroneous ment; and that farina differs from oak propositions and contradictions in them. leaves. But where are the good authors, who have not been censured? AUTHORITY. MISERABLE human beings, whether in green robes, or in turbans-whether in black gowns or surplices, or in mantles { These judges, of course, considered themselves much superior to Archimedes, 182 Euclid, Cicero, or Pliny, and strutted about the Universities accordingly. AXIS. jugglers who have had so much reputation. The tale should be classed with those of the satyrs, who sang and danced in the train of Osiris; with the little boys, How is it that the axis of the earth is whom they would not feed till after they not perpendicular to the equator? Why had run eight leagues, to teach them to is it raised towards the north and inclined conquer the world; with the two children towards the south pole, in a position who cried bec in asking for bread, and which does not appear natural, and which who by that means discovered that the seems the consequence of some derange-Phrygian was the original language; with ment, or the result of a period of a prodigious number of years! Is it true, that the ecliptic continually inclines by an insensible movement towards the equator, and that the angle formed by these two lines has a little diminished in two thousand years? Is it true that the ecliptic has been formerly perpendicular to the equator, that the Egyptians have said so, and that Herodotus has related it? This motion of the ecliptic would form a period of about two millions of years. It is not that which astounds us; for the axis of the earth has an imperceptible movement in about twenty-six thousand years, which occasions the precession of the equinoxes. It is as easy for nature to produce a rotation of twenty thousand, as of two hundred and sixty ages. We are deceived when we are told that the Egyptians had, according to Herodotus, a tradition that the ecliptic had been formerly perpendicular to the equa tor. The tradition of which Herodotus speaks has no relation to the coincidence of the equinoxial and ecliptic lines; that is quite another affair. King Psammeticus, who gave his daughter to a thief who had dexterously stolen his money, &c. &c. Ancient history, ancient astronomy, ancient physics, ancient medicine (up to Hippocrates), ancient geography, ancient metaphysics, all are nothing but ancien: absurdities, which ought to make us feel the happiness of being born in later times. There is, no doubt, more truth in two pages of the French Encyclopedia in re{lation to physics, than in all the library of Alexandria, the loss of which is so much regretted. BABEL. SECTION I. BABEL signifies among the Orientals, God the Father, the power of God, the gate of God, according to the way in which the word is pronounced. It appears, therefore, that Babylon was the city of God, the holy city. Every capital of a state was a city of God, the sacred city. The Greeks called them all Hieropolis, and there were more than thirty of The tower of Babel, then, this name. signifies the tower of God the Father. Josephus says truly, that Babel signiThe pretended scholars of Egypt said that the sun, in the space of eleven thou-fies confusion; Calmet says, with others, sand years, had set twice in the east, and risen twice in the west. When the equator and the ecliptic coincided, and when the days were everywhere equal to the mights, the sun did not on that account change its setting and rising; but the earth turned on its axis from west to east, as at this day. This idea of making the sun set in the east is a chimera only worthy of the brains of the priests of Egypt, and shows the profound ignorance of those that Bilba, in Chaldean, signifies con- Be that as it may, commentators have tormented themselves to know to what height men had raised this famous tower of Babel. St. Jerome gives it twenty thousand feet. The ancient Jewish book, entitled, "Jacult," gave it eighty-one thousand. Paul Lucas has seen the reinains of it, and it is a fine thing to be as keen-sighted as Paul Lucas: but these dimensions are not the only difficulties which have exercised the learned. People have wished to know how the children of Noah, after having divided among themselves the islands of the nations and established themselves in divers lands, with each one his particular language, families, and people, should all find themselves in the plain of Shinaar, to build there a tower, saying, "Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." The book of Genesis speaks of the states which the sons of Noah founded. It has related how the people of Europe, Africa, and Asia, all came to Shinaar speaking one language only, and purposing the same thing. The Vulgate places the Deluge in the year of the world 1656, and the construction of the tower of Babel 1771; that is to say, one hundred and fifteen years after the destruction of mankind, and even during the life of Noah. Men then must have multiplied with prodigious celerity; all the arts revived in a very little time. When we reflect on the great number of trades which must have been employed to raise a tower so high, we are amazed at so stupendous a work. The Patriarch Abraham was born, according to the Bible, about four hundred years after the Deluge, and already we see a line of powerful kings in Egypt and in Asia. Bochart, and other sages, have pleasantly filled their great books with Phoenician and Chaldean words and systems which they do not understand. They have learnedly taken Thrace for Cappadocia, Greece for Crete, and the island of Cyprus for Tyre; they sport in an ocean of ignorance, which has neither bottom nor shore. It would have been shorter for them to have avowed that God, after several ages, has given us sacred books to render us better men, and not to make us geographers, chronologists, or etymologists. Babel is Babylon: it was founded, according to the Persian historians, by a prince named Tamurath. The only knowledge we have of its antiquities, consists in the astronomical observations of nineteen hundred and three years, sent by Callisthenes, by order of Alexander, to his preceptor Aristotle. To this certainty is joined the extreme probability, that a nation which had made a series of celestial observations for nearly two thousand years, had congregated and formed a considerable power several ages before the first of these observations. It is a pity, that none of the calcula{tions of the ancient profane authors agree with our sacred ones; and that none of the names of the princes who reigned after the different epochs assigned to the Deluge, have been known by either Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, or Greeks. It is no less a pity, that there remains not on the earth, among the profane authors, one vestige of the famous tower of Babel: nothing of this story of the confusion of tongues is found in any book. This memorable adventure was as unknown to the whole universe, as the names of Noah, Methusalem, Cain, and Adam and Eve. This difficulty tantalises our curiosity. Herodotus, who travelled so much, speaks neither of Noah, or Shem, Reu, Salah, or Nimrod. The name of Nimrod is unknown to all profane antiquity; there are only a few Arabs, and some modern Persians, who have made mention of Nimrod, in falsifying the books of the Jews. Nothing remains to conduct us through these ancient ruins, unknown to all the { nations of the universe during so many ages, but faith in the Bible; and happily, that is an infallible guide. Herodotus, who has mingled many fables with some truths, pretends that in his time, which was that of greatest power of the Persian sovereigns of Babylon, all 184 the women of the immense city were obliged to go once in their lives to the temple of Mylitta, a goddess which was thought to be the same as Aphrodite, or Venus, in order to prostitute themselves to strangers; and that the law commanded them to receive money as a sacred tribute, which was paid over to the priesthood of the goddess. But even this Arabian tale is more likely than that which the same author tells of Cyrus dividing the Indus into three hundred and sixty canals, which all discharged themselves into the Caspian Sea! What should we say of Mezerai, if he had told us that Charlemagne divided the Rhine into three hundred and sixty canals, which fell into the Mediterranean; { and that all the ladies of his court were obliged once in their lives to present themselves at the church of St. Genevieve, to prostitute themselves to all comers for money? was not, then, a duty for them to prostitute themselves to the first comer, nor Babylon, the city of God, a vast brothel, as it has been pretended. These tales of Herodotus, as well as all others in the same taste, are now so decried by all people of sense-reason has made so great a progress, that even old women and children will no longer believe such extravagancies-" Non vetula quæ credat nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur." est There is in our days only one man who, not partaking of the spirit of the age in which he lives, would justify the fable of Herodotus. The infamy appears to him a very simple affair. He would prove, that the Babylonian princesses prostituted themselves through piety to the first passengers, because it is said in the holy writing, that the Ammonites made their children pass through the fire in presenting them to Moloch. But what relation has this custom of some barbarous hordes ren through the flames, or even of burning them on piles, in honour of I know not who-of Moloch; these Iroquois horrors of a petty infamous people, to a prostitution so incredible, in a nation of the East? Would what passes among the Iroquois be among us a proof of the customs of the Courts of France and of Spain? It must be remarked, that such a fable is still more absurd in relation to the time—this superstition of passing their childof Xerxes, in which Herodotus lived, than it would be in that of Charlemagne. The Orientals were a thousand times more jealous than the Franks and Gauls. The wives of all the great lords were carefully guarded by eunuchs. This custom sub-known to be the most jealous and orderly sisted from time immemorial. It is seen even in the Jewish history, that when that little nation wished like the others to have a king, Samuel, to dissuade them from it, He also brings, in further proof, the and to retain his authority, said, "that a king would tyrannise over them, and that Lupercal feast among the Romans, durhe would take the tenths of their vinesing which, he says, that the young people and corn to give to his eunuchs." The of quality, and respectable magistrates, kings accomplished this prediction; for ran naked through the city with whips in it is written in the first book of kings, that their hands, with which they struck the King Ahab had eunuchs, and in the se- pregnant women of quality, who unblushcond that Joram, Jehu, Jehoiakim, and ingly presented themselves to them, in the hope of thereby obtaining a happy Zedekias, had them also. deliverance. The eunuchs of Pharoah are spoken of a long time previously, in the book of Genesis; and it is said that Potiphar, to whom Joseph was sold, was one of the king's eunuchs. It is clear, therefore, that there were great numbers of eunuchs at Babylon to guard the women. It was Now, in the first place, it is not said that these Romans of quality ran quite naked; on the contrary, Plutarch expressly observes, in his remarks on the custom, that they were covered from the waist downwards.. Secondly, it seems by the manner in which this defender of infamous customs expresses himself, that the Roman ladies stripped naked to receive these blows of the whip, which is absolutely false. Thirdly, the Lupercal feast has no relation whatever to the pretended law of Babylon, which commands the wives and daughters of the king, the satraps, and the magi, to sell and prostitute themselves to strangers out of pure devotion. When an author, without knowing either the human mind or the manners of nations, has the misfortune to be obliged to compile from passages of old authors, who are almost all contradictory, he should advance his opinions with modesty, and know how to doubt, and to shake off the dust of the college. Above all, he should never express himself with outrageous insolence. Herodotus, or Cetesias, or Diodorus of Sicily, relate a fact: you have read it in Greek, therefore this fact is true. This manner of reasoning, which is not that of Euclid, is surprising enough in the time in which we live; but all minds will not be instructed with equal facility; and there are always more persons who compile than people who think. the Greek served for amusement, whilst the barbarous jargon of each province was only for the populace. They pleaded in Latin, at once in the tribunals of Africa and of Rome. An inhabitant of Cornwall departed for Asia Minor, sure of being understood everywhere in his route. It was at least one good effected by the rapacity of the Romans, that people found themselves as well understood on the Danube as on the Guadalquiver. At the present time, a Bergamask, who travels into the small Swiss cantons, from which he is only separated by a mountain, has the same need of an interpreter as if he were at China. This is one of the greatest plagues of modern life. SECTION II: Vanity has always raised stately monu ments. It was through vanity that men built the lofty tower of Babel. "Let us go and raise a tower, the summit of which shall touch the skies, and render our name celebrated before we are scattered upon the face of the earth." The enterprise was undertaken in the time of a patriarch named Phaleg, who counted the good man Noah for his fifth ancestor. will be seen that architecture, and all the It We will say nothing here of the confu-arts which accompany it, had made great sion of tongues which took place during the construction of the tower of Babel. It is a miracle, related in the Holy Scriptures. We neither explain, nor even examine any miracles; and as the authors of that great work, the Encyclopedia, believed them, we also believe them with a lively and sincere faith. We will simply affirm, that the fall of the Roman empire has produced more confusion, and a greater number of new languages than that of the tower of Babel. From the reign of Augustus to the time of the Attilas, the Clovises, and the Gondiberts, during six ages, 66 terra erat unius labii,"—"the known earth was of one language." They spoke the same Latin at the Euphrates as at Mount Atlas. The laws which governed a hundred nations were written in Latin, and progress in five generations. St. Jerome, the same who has seen fauns and satyrs, has not seen the tower of Babel any more than I have, but he assures us that it was twenty thousand feet high. This is a trifle. The ancient book "Jacult," written by one of the most learned Jews, demonstrates the height to be eighty-one thousand Jewish feet; and every one knows that the Jewish foot was nearly as long as the Greek. These dimensions are still more likely than those of Jerome. This tower remains, but it is no longer quite so high; several very veracious travellers have seen it. I, who have not seen it, will talk as little of it as of my grandfather Adam, with whom I never had the honour of conversing. But consult the reverend father Calmet; he is a man of fine wit, and a profound philoso |