LIFE
The following passage is found in the "Système de la Nature," London edition, page 84: "We ought to define life, before we reason concerning soul; but I hold it to be impossible to do so."
On the contrary, I think a definition of life quite possible. Life is organization with the faculty of sensation. Thus all animals are said to live. Life is attributed to plants, only by a species of metaphor or catachresis. They are organized and vegetate; but being incapable of sensation, do not properly possess life.
We may, however, live without actual sensation; for we feel nothing in a complete apoplexy, in a lethargy, or in a sound sleep without dreams; but yet possess the capacity of sensation. Many persons, it is too well known, have been buried alive, like Roman vestals, and it is what happens after every battle, especially in cold countries. A soldier lies without motion, and breathless, who, if he were duly assisted, might recover; but to settle the matter speedily, they bury him.
What is this capacity of sensation? Formerly, life and soul meant the same thing, and the one was no better understood than the other; at bottom, is it more understood at present?
In the sacred books of the Jews, soul is always used for life.
"Dixit etiam Deus, producant aquæ reptile animæ viventis." (And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature which hath a living soul.)
"Creavit Deus cete grandia, et omnem animam viventem, atque motabilem quam produxerant aquæ. (And God created great dragons (tannitiim), and every living soul that moveth, which the waters brought forth.) It is difficult to explain the creation of these watery dragons, but such is the text, and it is for us to submit to it.
"Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo, jumenta et reptilia." (Let the earth produce the living soul after its kind, cattle and creeping things.)
"Et in quibus est anima vivens, ad vescendum." (And to everything wherein there is a living soul [every green herb], for meat.)
"Et inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitæ, et factus est homo in animam viventem." (And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.)
"Sanguinem enim animarum vestrarum requiram de manu cunctarum betiarum, et de manu hominis," etc. (I shall require back your souls from the hands of man and beast.)
Souls here evidently signify lives. The sacred text certainly did not mean that beasts had swallowed the souls of men, but their blood, which is their life; and as to the hands given by this text to beasts, it signifies their claws.
In short, more than two hundred passages may be quoted in which the soul is used for the life, both of beasts and man; but not one which explains either life or soul.
If life be the faculty of sensation, whence this faculty? In reply to this question, all the learned quote systems, and these systems are destructive of one another. But why the anxiety to ascertain the source of sensation? It is as difficult to conceive the power which binds all things to a common centre as to conceive the cause of animal sensation. The direction of the needle towards the pole, the paths of comets, and a thousand other phenomena are equally incomprehensible.
Properties of matter exist, the principle of which will never be known to us; and that of sensation, without which there cannot be life, is among the number.
Is it possible to live without experiencing sensation? No. An infant which dies in a lethargy that has lasted from its birth has existed, but not lived.
Let us imagine an idiot unable to form complex ideas, but who possesses sensation; he certainly lives without thinking, forming simple ideas from his sensations. Thought, therefore, is not necessary to life, since this idiot has lived without thinking.
Hence, certain thinkers think that thought is not of the essence of man. They maintain that many idiots who think not, are men; and so decidedly men as to produce other men, without the power of constructing a single argument.
The doctors who maintain the essentiality of thought, reply that these idiots have certain ideas from their sensation. Bold reasoners rejoin, that a well-taught mind possesses more consecutive ideas, and is very superior to these idiots, whence has sprung a grand dispute upon the soul, of which we shall speak – possibly at too great a length – in the article on "Soul."
LOVE
There are so many kinds of love, that in order to define it, we scarcely know which to direct our attention to. Some boldly apply the name of "love" to a caprice of a few days, a connection without attachment, passion without affection, the affectations of cicisbeism, a cold usage, a romantic fancy, a taste speedily followed by a distaste. They apply the name to a thousand chimeras.
Should any philosophers be inclined profoundly to investigate a subject in itself so little philosophical, they may recur to the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, the decent and honorable lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on the metaphysics of love.
Lucretius speaks of it more as a natural philosopher; and Virgil follows the example of Lucretius. "Amor omnibus idem."
It is the embroidery of imagination on the stuff of nature. If you wish to form an idea of love, look at the sparrows in your garden; behold your doves; contemplate the bull when introduced to the heifer; look at that powerful and spirited horse which two of your grooms are conducting to the mare that quietly awaits him, and is evidently pleased at his approach; observe the flashing of his eyes, notice the strength and loudness of his neighings, the boundings, the curvetings, the ears erect, the mouth opening with convulsive gaspings, the distended nostrils, the breath of fire, the raised and waving mane, and the impetuous movement with which he rushes towards the object which nature has destined for him; do not, however, be jealous of his happiness; but reflect on the advantages of the human species; they afford ample compensation in love for all those which nature has conferred on mere animals – strength, beauty, lightness, and rapidity.
There are some classes, however, even of animals totally unacquainted with sexual association. Fishes are destitute of this enjoyment. The female deposits her millions of eggs on the slime of the waters, and the male that meets them passes over them and communicates the vital principle, never consorting with, or perhaps even perceiving the female to whom they belong.
The greater part of those animals which copulate are sensible of the enjoyment only by a single sense; and when appetite is satisfied, the whole is over. No animal, besides man, is acquainted with embraces; his whole frame is susceptible; his lips particularly experience a delight which never wearies, and which is exclusively the portion of his species; finally, he can surrender himself at all seasons to the endearments of love, while mere animals possess only limited periods. If you reflect on these high pre-eminences, you will readily join in the earl of Rochester's remark, that love would impel a whole nation of atheists to worship the divinity.
As men have been endowed with the talent of perfecting whatever nature has bestowed upon them, they have accordingly perfected the gift of love. Cleanliness, personal attention, and regard to health render the frame more sensitive, and consequently increase its capacity of gratification. All the other amiable and valuable sentiments enter afterwards into that of love, like the metals which amalgamate with gold; friendship and esteem readily fly to its support; and talents both of body and of mind are new and strengthening bonds.
Nam facit ipsa suis interdum femina factis,
Morigerisque modis, et mundo corpore cultu
Ut facile insuescat secum vir degere vitam.
– LUCRETIUS, iv, 1275.
Self-love, above all, draws closer all these various ties. Men pride themselves in the choice they have made; and the numberless illusions that crowd around constitute the ornament of the work, of which the foundation is so firmly laid by nature.
Such are the advantages possessed by man above the various tribes of animals. But, if he enjoys delights of which they are ignorant, howe many vexations and disgusts, on the other hand, is he exposed to, from which they are free! The most dreadful of these is occasioned by nature's having poisoned the pleasures of love and sources of life over three-quarters of the world by a terrible disease, to which man alone is subject; nor is it with this pestilence as with various other maladies, which are the natural consequences of excess. It was not introduced into the world by debauchery. The Phrynes and Laises, the Floras and Messalinas, were never attacked by it. It originated in islands where mankind dwelt together in innocence, and has thence been spread throughout the Old World.
If nature could in any instance be accused of despising her own work, thwarting her own plan, and counteracting her own views, it would be in this detestable scourge which has polluted the earth with horror and shame. And can this, then, be the best of all possible worlds? What! if Cæsar and Antony and Octavius never had this disease, was it not possible to prevent Francis the First from dying of it? No, it is said; things were so ordered all for the best; I am disposed to believe it; but it is unfortunate for those to whom Rabelais has dedicated his book.
Erotic philosophers have frequently discussed the question, whether Héloïse could truly love Abélard after he became a monk and mutilated? One of these states much wronged the other.
Be comforted, however, Abélard, you were really beloved; imagination comes in aid of the heart. Men feel a pleasure in remaining at table, although they can no longer eat. Is it love? is it simply recollection? is it friendship? It is a something compounded of all these. It is a confused feeling, resembling the fantastic passions which the dead retained in the Elysian Fields. The heroes who while living had shone in the chariot races, guided imaginary chariots after death. Héloïse lived with you on illusions and supplements. She sometimes caressed you, and with so much the more pleasure as, after vowing at Paraclet that she would love you no more, her caresses were become more precious to her in proportion as they had become more culpable. A woman can never form a passion for a eunuch, but she may retain her passion for her lover after his becoming one, if he still remains amiable.
The case is different with respect to a lover grown old in the service; the external appearance is no longer the same; wrinkles affright, grizzly eyebrows repel, decaying teeth disgust, infirmities drive away; all that can be done or expected is to have the virtue of being a patient and kind nurse, and bearing with the man that was once beloved, all which amounts to – burying the dead.
LOVE OF GOD
The disputes that have occurred about the love of God have kindled as much hatred as any theological quarrel. The Jesuits and Jansenists have been contending for a hundred years as to which party loved God in the most suitable and appropriate manner, and which should at the same time most completely harass and torment their neighbor.
When the author of "Telemachus," who was in high reputation at the court of Louis XIV., recommended men to love God in a manner which did not happen to coincide with that of the author of the "Funeral Orations", the latter, who was a complete master of the weapons of controversy, declared open war against him, and procured his condemnation in the ancient city of Romulus, where God was the very object most loved, after domination, ease, luxury, pleasure, and money.
If Madame Guyon had been acquainted with the story of the good old woman, who brought a chafingdish to burn paradise, and a pitcher of water to extinguish hell, that God might be loved for Himself alone, she would not perhaps have written so much as she did. She must inevitably have felt that she could herself never say anything better than that; but she loved God and nonsense so sincerely that she was imprisoned for four months, on account of her affectionate attachment; treatment decidedly rigorous and unjust. Why punish as a criminal a woman whose only offence was composing verse in the style of the Abbé Cotin, and prose in the taste of the popular favorite Punchinello? It is strange that the author of "Telemachus" and the frigid loves of Eucharis should have said in his "Maxims of Saints," after the blessed Francis de Sales: "I have scarcely any desires; but, were I to be born again, I should not have any at all. If God came to me, I would also go to Him; if it were not His will to come to me, I would stay where I was, and not go to Him."
His whole work turns upon this proposition. Francis de Sales was not condemned, but Fénelon was. Why should that have been? the reason is, that Francis de Sales had not a bitter enemy at the court of Turin, and that Fénelon had one at Versailles.
The most sensible thing that was written upon this mystical controversy is to be found perhaps in Boileau's satire, On the Love of God, although that is certainly by no means his best work.
Qui fait exactement ce que, ma loi commande,
A pour moi, dit ce Dieu, l'amour que je demande.
– EP. xii. 99.
Attend exactly to my law's command,
Such, says this God, the worship I demand.
If we must pass from the thorns of theology to those of philosophy, which are not so long and are less piercing, it seems clear that an object may be loved by any one without any reference to self, without any mixture of interested self-love. We cannot compare divine things to earthly ones, or the love of God to any other love. We have an infinity of steps to mount above our grovelling human inclinations before we can reach that sublime love. Since, however, we have nothing to rest upon except the earth, let us draw our comparisons from that. We view some masterpiece of art, in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, or eloquence; we hear a piece of music that absolutely enchants our ears and souls; we admire it, we love it, without any return of the slightest advantage to ourselves from this attachment; it is a pure and refined feeling; we proceed sometimes so far as to entertain veneration or friendship for the author; and were he present should cordially embrace him.
This is almost the only way in which we can explain our profound admiration and the impulses of our heart towards the eternal architect of the world. We survey the work with an astonishment made up of respect and a sense of our own nothingness, and our heart warms and rises as much as possible towards the divine artificer.
But what is this feeling? A something vague and indeterminate – an impression that has no connection with our ordinary affections. A soul more susceptible than another, more withdrawn from worldly business and cares, may be so affected by the spectacle of nature as to feel the most ardent as well as pious aspirations towards the eternal Lord who formed it. Could such an amiable affection of the mind, could so powerful a charm, so strong an evidence of feeling, incur censure? Was it possible in reality to condemn the affectionate and grateful disposition of the archbishop of Cambray? Notwithstanding the expressions of St. Francis de Sales, above given, he adhered steadily to this assertion, that the author may be loved merely and simply for the beauty of his works. With what heresy could he be reproached? The extravagances of style of a lady of Montargis, and a few unguarded expressions of his own, were not a little injurious to him.
Where was the harm that he had done? Nothing at present is known about the matter. This dispute, like numberless others, is completely annihilated. Were every dogmatist to say to himself: A few years hence no one will care a straw for my dogmas, there would be far less dogmatizing in the world than there is! Ah! Louis the Fourteenth! Louis the Fourteenth! when two men of genius had departed so far from the natural scope and direction of their talents, as to write the most obscure and tiresome works ever written in your dominions, how much better would it have been to have left them to their own wranglings!
Pour finir tous ces débats-là,
Tu n'avais qu'à les laisser faire.
To end debates in such a tone
'Twas but to leave the men alone.
It is observable under all the articles of morality and history, by what an invisible chain, by what unknown springs, all the ideas that disturb our minds and all the events that poison our days are bound together and brought to co-operate in the formation of our destinies. Fénelon dies in exile in consequence of holding two or three mystical conversations with a pious but fanciful woman. Cardinal Bouillon, nephew of the great Turenne, is persecuted in consequence of not himself persecuting at Rome the archbishop of Cambray, his friend: he is compelled to quit France, and he also loses his whole fortune.
By a like chain of causes and effects, the son of a solicitor at Vire detects, in a dozen of obscure phrases of a book printed at Amsterdam, what is sufficient to fill all the dungeons of France with victims; and at length, from the depth of those dungeons arises a cry for redress and vengeance, the echo of which lays prostrate on the earth an able and tyrannical society which had been established by an ignorant madman.
LOVE (SOCRATIC LOVE)
If the love called Socratic and Platonic is only a becoming sentiment, it is to be applauded; if an unnatural license, we must blush for Greece.
It is as certain as the knowledge of antiquity can well be, that Socratic love was not an infamous passion. It is the word "love" which has deceived the world. Those called the lovers of a young man were precisely such as among us are called the minions of our princes – honorable youths attached to the education of a child of distinction, partaking of the same studies and the same military exercises – a warlike and correct custom, which has been perverted into nocturnal feasts and midnight orgies.
The company of lovers instituted by Laius was an invincible troop of young warriors, bound by oath each to preserve the life of any other at the expense of his own. Ancient discipline never exhibited anything more fine.
Sextus Empiricus and others have boldly affirmed that this vice was recommended by the laws of Persia. Let them cite the text of such a law; let them exhibit the code of the Persians; and if such an abomination be even found there, still I would disbelieve it, and maintain that the thing was not true, because it is impossible. No; it is not in human nature to make a law which contradicts and outrages nature itself – a law which would annihilate mankind, if it were literally observed. Moreover, I will show you the ancient law of the Persians as given in the "Sadder." It says, in article or gate 9, that the greatest sin must not be committed. It is in vain that a modern writer seeks to justify Sextus Empiricus and pederasty. The laws of Zoroaster, with which he is unacquainted, incontrovertibly prove that this vice was never recommended to the Persians. It might as well be said that it is recommended to the Turks. They boldly practise it, but their laws condemn it.
How many persons have mistaken shameful practices, which are only tolerated in a country, for its laws. Sextus Empiricus, who doubted everything, should have doubted this piece of jurisprudence. If he had lived in our days, and witnessed the proceedings of two or three young Jesuits with their pupils, would he have been justified in the assertion that such practices were permitted by the institutes of Ignatius Loyola?
It will be permitted to me here to allude to the Socratic love of the reverend father Polycarp, a Carmelite, who was driven away from the small town of Gex in 1771, in which place he taught religion and Latin to about a dozen scholars. He was at once their confessor, tutor, and something more. Few have had more occupations, spiritual and temporal. All was discovered; and he retired into Switzerland, a country very distant from Greece.
The monks charged with the education of youth have always exhibited a little of this tendency, which is a necessary consequence of the celibacy to which the poor men are condemned.
This vice was so common at Rome that it was impossible to punish a crime which almost every one committed. Octavius Augustus, that murderer, debauchee, and coward, who exiled Ovid, thought it right in Virgil to sing the charms of Alexis. Horace, his other poetical favorite, constructed small odes on Ligurinus; and this same Horace, who praised Augustus for reforming manners, speak in his satires in much the same way of both boys and girls. Yet the ancient law "Scantinia," which forbade pederasty, always existed, and was put in force by the emperor Philip, who drove away from Rome the boys who made a profession of it. If, however, Rome had witty and licentious students, like Petronius, it had also such preceptors as Quintilian; and attend to the precautions he lays down in his chapter of "The Preceptor," in order to preserve the purity of early youth. "Cavendum non solum crimine turpitudinis, sed etiam suspicione." We must not only beware of a shameful crime but even of the suspicion of it. To conclude, I firmly believe that no civilized nation ever existed which made formal laws against morals.
Observations By Another Hand.
We may be permitted to make a few additional reflections on an odious and disgusting subject, which however, unfortunately, forms a part of the history of opinions and manners.
This offence may be traced to the remotest periods of civilization. Greek and Roman history in particular allows us not to doubt it. It was common before people formed regular societies, and were governed by written laws.
The latter fact is the reason that the laws have treated it with so much indulgence. Severe laws cannot be proposed to a free people against a vice, whatever it may be, which is common and habitual. For a long time many of the German nations had written laws which admitted of composition and murder. Solon contented himself with forbidding these odious practices between the citizens and slaves. The Athenians might perceive the policy of this interdiction, and submit to it; especially as it operated against the slaves only, and was enacted to prevent them from corrupting the young free men. Fathers of families, however lax their morals, had no motive to oppose it.
The severity of the manners of women in Greece, the use of public baths, and the passion for games in which men appeared altogether naked, fostered this turpitude, notwithstanding the progress of society and morals. Lycurgus, by allowing more liberty to the women, and by certain other institutions, succeeded in rendering this vice less common in Sparta than in the other towns of Greece.
When the manners of a people become less rustic, as they improve in arts, luxury, and riches, if they retain their former vices, they at least endeavor to veil them. Christian morality, by attaching shame to connections between unmarried people, by rendering marriage indissoluble, and proscribing concubinage by ecclesiastical censures, has rendered adultery common. Every sort of voluptuousness having been equally made sinful, that species is naturally preferred which is necessarily the most secret; and thus, by a singular contradiction, absolute crimes are often made more frequent, more tolerated, and less shameful in public opinion, than simple weaknesses. When the western nations began a course of refinement, they sought to conceal adultery under the veil of what is called gallantry. Then men loudly avowed a passion in which it was presumed the women did not share. The lovers dared demand nothing; and it was only after more than ten years of pure love, of combats and victories at tournaments that a cavalier might hope to discover a moment of weakness in the object of his adoration. There remains a sufficient number of records of these times to convince us that the state of manners fostered this species of hypocrisy. It was similar among the Greeks, when they had become polished. Connections between males were not shameful; young people united themselves to each other by oaths, but it was to live and die for their country. It was usual for a person of ripe age to attach himself to a young man in a state of adolescence, ostensibly to form, instruct, and guide him; and the passion which mingled in these friendships was a sort of love – but still innocent love. Such was the veil with which public decency concealed vices which general opinion tolerated.
In short, in the same manner as chivalric gallantry is often made a theme for eulogy in modern society, as proper to elevate the soul and inspire courage, was it common among the Greeks to eulogize that love which attached citizens to each other.
Plato said that the Thebans acted laudably in adopting it, because it was necessary to polish their manners, supply greater energy to their souls and to their spirits, which were benumbed by the nature of their climate. We perceive by this, that a virtuous friendship alone was treated of by Plato. Thus, when a Christian prince proclaimed a tournament, at which every one appeared in the colors of his mistress, it was with the laudable intention of exciting emulation among its knights, and to soften manners; it was not adultery, but gallantry, that he would encourage within his dominions. In Athens, according to Plato, they set bounds to their toleration. In monarchical states, it was politic to prevent these attachments between men, but in republics they materially tended to prevent the double establishment of tyranny. In the sacrifice of a citizen, a tyrant knew not whose vengeance he might arm against himself, and was liable, without ceasing, to witness conspiracies grow out of the resolutions which this ambiguous affection produced among men.
In the meantime, in spite of ideas so remote from our sentiments and manners, this practice was regarded as very shameful among the Greeks, every time it was exhibited without the excuse of friendship or political ties. When Philip of Macedon saw extended on the field of battle of Chæronea, the soldiers who composed the sacred battalion or band of friends at Thebes, all killed in the ranks in which they had combated: "I will never believe," he exclaimed, "that such brave men have committed or suffered anything shameful." This expression from a man himself soiled with this infamy furnishes an indisputable proof of the general opinion of Greece.
At Rome, this opinion was still stronger. Many Greek heroes, regarded as virtuous men, have been supposed addicted to the vice; but among the Romans it was never attributed to any of those characters in whom great virtue was acknowledged. It only seems, that with these two nations no idea of crime or even dishonor was attached to it unless carried to excess, which renders even a passion for women disgraceful.
Pederasty is rare among us, and would be unknown, but for the defects of public education.
Montesquieu pretends that it prevails in certain Mahometan nations, in consequence of the facility of possessing women. In our opinion, for "facility" we should read difficulty.