LETTERS (MEN OF)
In the barbarous times when the Franks, Germans, Bretons, Lombards, and Spanish Mozarabians knew neither how to read nor write, we instituted schools and universities almost entirely composed of ecclesiastics, who, knowing only their own jargon, taught this jargon to those who would learn it. Academies were not founded until long after; the latter have despised the follies of the schools, but they have not always dared to oppose them, because there are follies which we respect when they are attached to respectable things.
Men of letters who have rendered the most service to the small number of thinking beings scattered over the earth are isolated scholars, true sages shut up in their closets, who have neither publicly disputed in the universities, nor said things by halves in the academies; and such have almost all been persecuted. Our miserable race is so created that those who walk in the beaten path always throw stones at those who would show them a new one.
Montesquieu says that the Scythians put out the eyes of their slaves that they might be more attentive to the making of their butter. It is thus that the Inquisition acts, and almost every one is blinded in the countries in which this monster reigns. In England people have had two eyes for more than a hundred years. The French are beginning to open one eye – but sometimes men in place will not even permit us to be one-eyed.
These miserable statesmen are like Doctor Balouard of the Italian comedy, who will only be served by the fool Harlequin, and who fears to have too penetrating a servant.
Compose odes in praise of Lord Superbus Fatus, madrigals for his mistress; dedicate a book of geography to his porter, and you will be well received. Enlighten men, and you will be crushed.
Descartes is obliged to quit his country; Gassendi is calumniated; Arnaud passes his days in exile; all the philosophers are treated as the prophets were among the Jews.
Who would believe that in the eighteenth century, a philosopher has been dragged before the secular tribunals, and treated as impious by reasoning theologians, for having said that men could not practise the arts if they had no hands? I expect that they will soon condemn to the galleys the first who shall have the insolence to say that a man could not think if he had no head; for a learned bachelor will say to him, the soul is a pure spirit, the head is only matter; God can place the soul in the heel as well as in the brain; therefore I denounce you as a blasphemer.
The great misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the object of the jealousy of his brothers, the victim of cabals, and the contempt of the powerful of the world – it is being judged by fools. Fools sometimes go very far, particularly when fanaticism is joined to folly, and folly to the spirit of vengeance. Further, the great misfortune of a man of letters is generally to hold to nothing. A citizen buys a little situation, and is maintained by his fellow-citizens. If any injustice is done to him, he soon finds defenders. The literary man is without aid; he resembles the flying fish; if he rises a little, the birds devour him; if he dives, the fishes eat him up. Every public man pays tribute to malignity; but he is repaid in deniers and honors.
LIBEL
Small, offensive books are termed libels. These books are usually small, because the authors, having few reasons to give, and usually writing not to inform, but mislead, if they are desirous of being read, must necessarily be brief. Names are rarely used on these occasions, for assassins fear being detected in the employment of forbidden weapons.
In the time of the League and the Fronde, political libels abounded. Every dispute in England produces hundreds; and a library might be formed of those written against Louis XIV.
We have had theological libels for sixteen hundred years; and what is worse, these are esteemed holy by the vulgar. Only see how St. Jerome treats Rufinus and Vigilantius. The latest libels are those of the Molinists and Jansenists, which amount to thousands. Of all this mass there remains only "The Provincial Letters."
Men of letters may dispute the number of their libels with the theologians. Boileau and Fontenelle, who attacked one another with epigrams, both said that their chambers would not contain the libels with which they had been assailed. All these disappear like the leaves in autumn. Some people have maintained that anything offensive written against a neighbor is a libel.
According to them, the railing attacks which the prophets occasionally sang to the kings of Israel, were defamatory libels to excite the people to rise up against them. As the populace, however, read but little anywhere, it is believed that these half-disclosed satires never did any great harm. Sedition is produced by speaking to assemblies of the people, rather than by writing for them. For this reason, one of the first things done by Queen Elizabeth of England on her accession, was to order that for six months no one should preach without express permission.
The "Anti-Cato" of Cæsar was a libel, but Cæsar did more harm to Cato by the battle of Pharsalia, than by his "Diatribes". The "Philippics" of Cicero were libels, but the proscriptions of the Triumvirs were far more terrible libels.
St. Cyril and St. Gregory Nazianzen compiled libels against the emperor Julian, but they were so generous as not to publish them until after his death.
Nothing resembles libels more than certain manifestoes of sovereigns. The secretaries of the sultan Mustapha made a libel of his declaration of war. God has punished them for it; but the same spirit which animated Cæsar, Cicero, and the secretaries of Mustapha, reigns in all the reptiles who spin libels in their garrets. "Natura est semper sibi consona." Who would believe that the souls of Garasse, Nonnotte, Paulian, Fréron, and he of Langliviet, calling himself La Beaumelle, were in this respect of the same temper as those of Cæsar, Cicero, St. Cyril, and of the secretary of the grand seignior? Nothing is, however, more certain.
LIBERTY
Either I am much deceived, or Locke has very well defined liberty to be "power". I am still further deceived, or Collins, a celebrated magistrate of London, is the only philosopher who has profoundly developed this idea, while Clarke has only answered him as a theologian. Of all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little dialogue has appeared to me the most comprehensive:
A. A battery of cannon is discharged at our ears; have you the liberty to hear it, or not to hear it, as you please?
B. Undoubtedly I cannot hinder myself from hearing it.
A. Are you willing that these cannon shall take off your head and those of your wife and daughter who walk with you?
B. What a question! I cannot, at least while I am in my right senses, wish such a thing; it is impossible.
A. Good; you necessarily hear these cannon, and you necessarily wish not for the death of yourself and your family by a discharge from them. You have neither the power of not hearing it, nor the power of wishing to remain here.
B. That is clear.
A. You have, I perceive, advanced thirty paces to be out of the reach of the cannon; you have had the power of walking these few steps with me.
B. That is also very clear.
A. And if you had been paralytic, you could not have avoided being exposed to this battery; you would necessarily have heard, and received a wound from the cannon; and you would have as necessarily died.
B. Nothing is more true.
A. In what then consists your liberty, if not in the power that your body has acquired of performing that which from absolute necessity your will requires?
B. You embarrass me. Liberty then is nothing more than the power of doing what I wish?
A. Reflect; and see whether liberty can be understood otherwise.
B. In this case, my hunting dog is as free as myself; he has necessarily the will to run when he sees a hare; and the power of running, if there is nothing the matter with his legs. I have therefore nothing above my dog; you reduce me to the state of the beasts.
A. These are poor sophisms, and they are poor sophists who have instructed you. You are unwilling to be free like your dog. Do you not eat, sleep, and propagate like him, and nearly in the same attitudes? Would you smell otherwise than by your nose? Why would you possess liberty differently from your dog?
B. But I have a soul which reasons, and my dog scarcely reasons at all. He has nothing beyond simple ideas, while I have a thousand metaphysical ideas.
A. Well, you are a thousand times more free than he is; you have a thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but still you are not free in any other manner than your dog is free.
B. What! am I not free to will what I like?
A. What do you understand by that?
B. I understand what all the world understands. Is it not every day said that the will is free?
A. An adage is not a reason; explain yourself better.
B. I understand that I am free to will as I please.
A. With your permission, that is nonsense; see you not that it is ridiculous to say – I will will? Consequently, you necessarily will the ideas only which are presented to you. Will you be married, yes or no?
B. Suppose I answer that I will neither the one nor the other.
A. In that case you would answer like him who said: Some believe Cardinal Mazarin dead, others believe him living; I believe neither the one nor the other.
B. Well, I will marry!
A. Aye, that is an answer. Why will you marry?
B. Because I am in love with a young, beautiful, sweet, well-educated, rich girl, who sings very well, whose parents are very honest people, and I flatter myself that I am beloved by her and welcome to the family.
A. There is a reason. You see that you cannot will without a motive. I declare to you that you are free to marry, that is to say, that you have the power of signing the contract, keeping the wedding, and sleeping with your wife.
B. How! I cannot will without a motive? Then what will become of the other proverb – "Sit pro ratione voluntas" – my will is my reason – I will because I will?
A. It is an absurd one, my dear friend; you would then have an effect without a cause.
B. What! when I play at odd or even, have I a reason for choosing even rather than odd?
A. Undoubtedly.
B. And what is the reason, if you please?
A. It is, that the idea of even is presented to your mind rather than the opposite idea. It would be extraordinary if there were cases in which we will because there is a motive, and others in which we will without one. When you would marry, you evidently perceive the predominant reason for it; you perceive it not when you play at odd or even, and yet there must be one.
B. Therefore, once more, I am not free.
A. Your will is not free, but your actions are. You are free to act when you have the power of acting.
B. But all the books that I have read on the liberty of indifference —
A. What do you understand by the liberty of indifference?
B. I understand spitting on the right or the left hand – sleeping on the right or left side – walking up and down four times or five.
A. That would be a pleasant liberty, truly! God would have made you a fine present, much to boast of, certainly! What use to you would be a power which could only be exercised on such futile occasions? But in truth it is ridiculous to suppose the will of willing to spit on the right or left. Not only is the will of willing absurd, but it is certain that several little circumstances determine these acts which you call indifferent. You are no more free in these acts than in others. Yet you are free at all times, and in all places, when you can do what you wish to do.
B. I suspect that you are right. I will think upon it.
LIBERTY OF OPINION
Towards the year 1707, the time at which the English gained the battle of Saragossa, protected Portugal, and for some time gave a king to Spain, Lord Boldmind, a general officer who had been wounded, was at the waters of Barèges. He there met with Count Medroso, who having fallen from his horse behind the baggage, at a league and a half from the field of battle, also came to take the waters. He was a familiar of the Inquisition, while Lord Boldmind was only familiar in conversation. One day after their wine, he held this dialogue with Medroso:
BOLDMIND
– You are then the sergeant of the Dominicans? You exercise a villainous trade.
MEDROSO
– It is true; but I would rather be their servant than their victim, and I have preferred the unhappiness of burning my neighbor to that of being roasted myself.
BOLDMIND
– What a horrible alternative! You were a hundred times happier under the yoke of the Moors, who freely suffered you to abide in all your superstitions, and conquerors as they were, arrogated not to themselves the strange right of sending souls to hell.
MEDROSO
– What would you have? It is not permitted us either to write, speak, or even to think. If we speak, it is easy to misinterpret our words, and still more our writings; and as we cannot be condemned in an auto-da-fé for our secret thoughts, we are menaced with being burned eternally by the order of God himself, if we think not like the Jacobins. They have persuaded the government that if we had common sense the entire state would be in combustion, and the nation become the most miserable upon earth.
BOLDMIND
– Do you believe that we English who cover the seas with vessels, and who go to gain battles for you in the south of Europe, can be so unhappy? Do you perceive that the Dutch, who have ravished from you almost all your discoveries in India, and who at present are ranked as your protectors, are cursed of God for having given entire liberty to the press, and for making commerce of the thoughts of men? Has the Roman Empire been less powerful because Tullius Cicero has written with freedom?
MEDROSO
– Who is this Tullius Cicero? I have never heard his name pronounced at St. Hermandad.
BOLDMIND
– He was a bachelor of the university of Rome, who wrote that which he thought, like Julius Cæsar, Marcus Aurelius, Titus Lucretius Carus, Plinius, Seneca, and other sages.
MEDROSO
– I know none of them; but I am told that the Catholic religion, Biscayan and Roman, is lost if we begin to think.
BOLDMIND
– It is not for you to believe it; for you are sure that your religion is divine, and that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. If that is the case, nothing will ever destroy it.
MEDROSO
– No; but it may be reduced to very little; and it is through having thought, that Sweden, Denmark, all your island, and the half of Germany groan under the frightful misfortune of not being subjects of the pope. It is even said that, if men continue to follow their false lights, they will soon have merely the simple adoration of God and of virtue. If the gates of hell ever prevail so far, what will become of the holy office?
BOLDMIND
– If the first Christians had not the liberty of thought, does it not follow that there would have been no Christianity?
MEDROSO
– I understand you not.
BOLDMIND
– I readily believe it. I would say, that if Tiberius and the first emperors had fostered Jacobins, they would have hindered the first Christians from having pens and ink; and had it not been a long time permitted in the Roman Empire to think freely, it would be impossible for the Christians to establish their dogmas. If, therefore, Christianity was only formed by liberty of opinion, by what contradiction, by what injustice, would you now destroy the liberty on which alone it is founded?
When some affair of interest is proposed to us, do we not examine it for a long time before we conclude upon it? What interest in the world is so great as our eternal happiness or misery? There are a hundred religions on earth which all condemn us if we believe your dogmas, which they call impious and absurd; why, therefore, not examine these dogmas?
MEDROSO
– How can I examine them? I am not a Jacobin.
BOLDMIND
– You are a man, and that is sufficient.
MEDROSO
– Alas! you are more of a man than I am.
BOLDMIND
– You have only to teach yourself to think; you are born with a mind, you are a bird in the cage of the Inquisition, the holy office has clipped your wings, but they will grow again. He who knows not geometry can learn it: all men can instruct themselves. Is it not shameful to put your soul into the hands of those to whom you would not intrust your money? Dare to think for yourself.
MEDROSO
– It is said that if the world thought for itself, it would produce strange confusion.
BOLDMIND
– Quite the contrary. When we assist at a spectacle, every one freely tells his opinion of it, and the public peace is not thereby disturbed; but if some insolent protector of a poet would force all people of taste to proclaim that to be good which appears to them bad, blows would follow, and the two parties would throw apples of discord at one another's heads, as once happened at London. Tyrants over mind have caused a part of the misfortunes of the world. We are happy in England only because every one freely enjoys the right of speaking his opinion.
MEDROSO
– We are all very tranquil at Lisbon, where no person dares speak his.
BOLDMIND
– You are tranquil, but you are not happy: it is the tranquillity of galley-slaves, who row in cadence and in silence.
MEDROSO
– You believe, then, that my soul is at the galleys?
BOLDMIND
– Yes, and I would deliver it.
MEDROSO
– But if I find myself well at the galleys?
BOLDMIND
– Why, then, you deserve to be there.
LIBERTY OF THE PRESS
What harm can the prediction of Jean Jacques do to Russia? Any? We allow him to explain it in a mystical, typical, allegorical sense, according to custom. The nations which will destroy the Russians will possess the belles-lettres, mathematics, wit, and politeness, which degrade man and pervert nature.
From five to six thousand pamphlets have been printed in Holland against Louis XIV., none of which contributed to make him lose the battles of Blenheim, Turin, and Ramillies.
In general, we have as natural a right to make use of our pens as our language, at our peril, risk, and fortune. I know many books which fatigue, but I know of none which have done real evil. Theologians, or pretended politicians, cry: "Religion is destroyed, the government is lost, if you print certain truths or certain paradoxes. Never attempt to think, till you have demanded permission from a monk or an officer. It is against good order for a man to think for himself. Homer, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Pliny, Horace, never published anything but with the approbation of the doctors of the Sorbonne and of the holy Inquisition."
"See into what horrible decay the liberty of the press brought England and Holland. It is true that they possess the commerce of the whole world, and that England is victorious on sea and land; but it is merely a false greatness, a false opulence: they hasten with long strides to their ruin. An enlightened people cannot exist."
None can reason more justly, my friends; but let us see, if you please, what state has been lost by a book. The most dangerous, the most pernicious of all, is that of Spinoza. Not only in the character of a Jew he attacks the New Testament, but in the character of a scholar he ruins the Old; his system of atheism is a thousand times better composed and reasoned than those of Straton and of Epicurus. We have need of the most profound sagacity to answer to the arguments by which he endeavors to prove that one substance cannot form another.
Like yourself, I detest this book, which I perhaps understand better than you, and to which you have very badly replied; but have you discovered that this book has changed the face of the world? Has any preacher lost a florin of his income by the publication of the works of Spinoza? Is there a bishop whose rents have diminished? On the contrary, their revenues have doubled since his time: all the ill is reduced to a small number of peaceable readers, who have examined the arguments of Spinoza in their closets, and have written for or against them works but little known.
For yourselves, it is of little consequence to have caused to be printed "ad usum Delphini," the atheism of Lucretius – as you have already been reproached with doing – no trouble, no scandal, has ensued from it: so leave Spinoza to live in peace in Holland. Lucretius was left in repose at Rome.
But if there appears among you any new book, the ideas of which shock your own – supposing you have any – or of which the author may be of a party contrary to yours – or what is worse, of which the author may not be of any party at all – then you cry out Fire! and let all be noise, scandal, and uproar in your small corner of the earth. There is an abominable man who has printed that if we had no hands we could not make shoes nor stockings. Devotees cry out, furred doctors assemble, alarms multiply from college to college, from house to house, and why? For five or six pages, about which there no longer will be a question at the end of three months. Does a book displease you? refute it. Does it tire you? read it not.
Oh! say you to me, the books of Luther and Calvin have destroyed the Roman Catholic religion in one-half of Europe? Why say not also, that the books of the patriarch Photius have destroyed this Roman religion in Asia, Africa, Greece, and Russia?
You deceive yourself very grossly, when you think that you have been ruined by books. The empire of Russia is two thousand leagues in extent, and there are not six men who are aware of the points disputed by the Greek and Latin Church. If the monk Luther, John Calvin, and the vicar Zuinglius had been content with writing, Rome would yet subjugate all the states that it has lost; but these people and their adherents ran from town to town, from house to house, exciting the women, and were maintained by princes. Fury, which tormented Amata, and which, according to Virgil, whipped her like a top, was not more turbulent. Know, that one enthusiastic, factious, ignorant, supple, vehement Capuchin, the emissary of some ambitious monks, preaching, confessing, communicating, and caballing, will much sooner overthrow a province than a hundred authors can enlighten it. It was not the Koran which caused Mahomet to succeed: it was Mahomet who caused the success of the Koran.
No! Rome has not been vanquished by books; it has been so by having caused Europe to revolt at its rapacity; by the public sale of indulgences; for having insulted men, and wishing to govern them like domestic animals; for having abused its power to such an extent that it is astonishing a single village remains to it. Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the duke of Saxe, the landgrave of Hesse, the princes of Orange, the Condés and Colignys, have done all, and books nothing. Trumpets have never gained battles, nor caused any walls to fall except those of Jericho.
You fear books, as certain small cantons fear violins. Let us read, and let us dance – these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.