TRUTH
"Pilate therefore said unto him, 'Art thou a king then?' Jesus answered, 'Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto truth: every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.' Pilate saith unto him, 'What is truth?' and when he had said this, he went out," etc. – St. John, chap. xviii.
It is a pity for mankind that Pilate went out, without hearing the reply: we should then have known what truth is. Pilate was not very curious. The accused, brought before him, told him that he was a king, that he was born to be a king, and he informs himself not how this can be. He was supreme judge in the name of Cæsar, he had the power of the sword, his duty was to penetrate into the meaning of these words. He should have said: Tell me what you understand by being king? how are you born to be king, and to bear witness unto the truth? It is said that you can only arrive at the ear of kings with difficulty; I, who am a judge, have always had extreme trouble in reaching it. Inform me, while your enemies cry outside against you; and you will render me the greatest service ever rendered to a judge. I would rather learn to know the truth, than condescend to the tumultuous demand of the Jews, who wish me to hang you.
We doubtless dare not pretend to guess what the Author of all truth would have said to Pilate. Would he have said: "Truth is an abstract word which most men use indifferently in their books and judgments, for error and falsehood"? This definition would be wonderfully convenient to all makers of systems. Thus the word wisdom is often taken for folly, and wit for nonsense. Humanly speaking, let us define truth, to better understand that which is declared – such as it is.
Suppose that six months only had been taken to teach Pilate the truths of logic he would doubtless have made this concluding syllogism: A man's life should not have been taken away who has only preached a good doctrine; now he who is brought before me, according even to his enemies, has often preached an excellent doctrine; therefore, he should not be punished with death.
He might also have inferred this other argument: My duty is to dissipate the riots of a seditious people, who demand the death of a man without reason or juridical form; now such are the Jews on this occasion; therefore I should send them away, and break up their assembly. We take for granted that Pilate knew arithmetic; we will not therefore speak of these kinds of truths.
As to mathematical truths, I believe that he would have required three years at least before he would have been acquainted with transcendent geometry. The truths of physics, combined with those of geometry, would have required more than four years. We generally consume six years in studying theology; I ask twelve for Pilate, considering that he was a Pagan, and that six years would not have been too many to root out all his old errors, and six more to put him in a state worthy to receive the bonnet of a doctor. If Pilate had a well organized head, I would only have demanded two years to teach him metaphysical truths, and as these truths are necessarily united with those of morality, I flatter myself that in less than nine years Pilate would have become a truly learned and perfectly honest man.
Historical Truths.
I should afterwards have said to Pilate: Historical truths are but probabilities. If you have fought at the battle of Philippi, it is to you a truth, which you know by intuition, by sentiment; but to us who live near the desert of Syria, it is merely a probable thing, which we know by hearsay. How can we, from report, form a persuasion equal to that of a man, who having seen the thing, can boast of feeling a kind of certainty?
He who has heard the thing told by twelve thousand ocular witnesses, has only twelve thousand probabilities equal to one strong one, which is not equal to certainty. If you have the thing from only one of these witnesses, you are sure of nothing – you must doubt. If the witness is dead, you must doubt still more, for you can enlighten yourself no further. If from several deceased witnesses, you are in the same state. If from those to whom the witnesses have only spoken, the doubt is still augmented. From generation to generation the doubt augments, and the probability diminishes, and the probability is soon reduced to zero.
Of the Degrees of Truth, According to Which the Accused are Judged.
We can be made accountable to justice either for deeds or words. If for deeds, they must be as certain as will be the punishment to which you will condemn the prisoner; if, for example, you have but twenty probabilities against him, these twenty probabilities cannot equal the certainty of his death. If you would have as many probabilities as are required to be sure that you shed not innocent blood, they must be the fruit of the unanimous evidences of witnesses who have no interest in deposing. From this concourse of probabilities, a strong opinion will be formed, which will serve to excuse your judgment; but as you will never have entire certainty, you cannot flatter yourself with knowing the truth perfectly. Consequently you should always lean towards mercy rather than towards rigor. If it concerns only facts, from which neither manslaughter nor mutilation have resulted, it is evident that you should neither cause the accused to be put to death nor mutilated.
If the question is only of words, it is still more evident that you should not cause one of your fellow-creatures to be hanged for the manner in which he has used his tongue; for all the words in the world being but agitated air, at least if they have not caused murder, it is ridiculous to condemn a man to death for having agitated the air. Put all the idle words which have been uttered into one scale, and into the other the blood of a man, and the blood will weigh down. Now, if he who has been brought before you is only accused of some words which his enemies have taken in a certain sense, all that you can do is to repeat these words to him, which he will explain in the sense he intended; but to deliver an innocent man to the most cruel and ignominious punishment, for words that his enemies do not comprehend, is too barbarous. You make the life of a man of no more importance than that of a lizard; and too many judges resemble you.
TYRANNY
The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice; who takes the property of his subjects, and afterwards enlists them to go and take that of his neighbors. We have none of these tyrants in Europe. We distinguish the tyranny of one and that of many. The tyranny of several is that of a body which would invade the rights of other bodies, and which would exercise despotism by favor of laws which it corrupts. Neither are there any tyrannies of this kind in Europe.
Under what tyranny should you like best to live? Under none; but if I must choose, I should less detest the tyranny of a single one, than that of many. A despot has always some good moments; an assemblage of despots, never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his mistress, his confessor, or his page; but a company of tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions. When they are not unjust, they are harsh, and they never dispense favors. If I have but one despot, I am at liberty to set myself against a wall when I see him pass, to prostrate myself, or to strike my forehead against the ground, according to the custom of the country; but if there is a company of a hundred tyrants, I am liable to repeat this ceremony a hundred times a day, which is very tiresome to those who have not supple joints. If I have a farm in the neighborhood of one of our lords, I am crushed; if I complain against a relative of the relatives of any one of our lords, I am ruined. How must I act? I fear that in this world we are reduced to being either the anvil or the hammer; happy at least is he who escapes this alternative.
TYRANT
"Tyrannos," formerly "he who had contrived to draw the principal authority to himself"; as "king," "Basileus," signified "he who was charged with relating affairs to the senate." The acceptations of words change with time. "Idiot" at first meant only a hermit, an isolated man; in time it became synonymous with fool. At present the name of "tyrant" is given to a usurper, or to a king who commits violent and unjust actions.
Cromwell was a tyrant of both these kinds. A citizen who usurps the supreme authority, who in spite of all laws suppresses the house of peers, is without doubt a usurper. A general who cuts the throat of a king, his prisoner of war, at once violates what is called the laws of nations, and those of humanity.
Charles I. was not a tyrant, though the victorious faction gave him that name; he was, it is said, obstinate, weak, and ill-advised. I will not be certain, for I did not know him; but I am certain that he was very unfortunate.
Henry VIII. was a tyrant in his government as in his family, and alike covered with the blood of two innocent wives, and that of the most virtuous citizens; he merits the execrations of posterity. Yet he was not punished, and Charles I. died on a scaffold.
Elizabeth committed an act of tyranny, and her parliament one of infamous weakness, in causing Queen Mary Stuart to be assassinated by an executioner; but in the rest of her government she was not tyrannical; she was clever and manœuvering, but prudent and strong.
Richard III. was a barbarous tyrant; but he was punished. Pope Alexander VI. was a more execrable tyrant than any of these, and he was fortunate in all his undertakings. Christian II. was as wicked a tyrant as Alexander VI., and was punished, but not sufficiently so.
If we were to reckon Turkish, Greek, and Roman tyrants, we should find as many fortunate as the contrary. When I say fortunate, I speak according to the vulgar prejudice, the ordinary acceptation of the word, according to appearances; for that they can be really happy, that their minds can be contented and tranquil, appears to me to be impossible.
Constantine the Great was evidently a tyrant in a double sense. In the north of England he usurped the crown of the Roman Empire, at the head of some foreign legions, notwithstanding all the laws, and in spite of the senate and the people, who legitimately elected Maxentius. He passed all his life in crime, voluptuousness, fraud, and imposture. He was not punished, but was he happy? God knows; but I know that his subjects were not so.
The great Theodosius was the most abominable of tyrants, when, under pretence of giving a feast, he caused fifteen thousand Roman citizens to be murdered in the circus, with their wives and children, and when he added to this horror the facetiousness of passing some months without going to tire himself at high mass. This Theodosius has almost been placed in the ranks of the blessed; but I should be very sorry if he were happy on earth. In all cases it would be well to assure tyrants that they will never be happy in this world, as it is well to make our stewards and cooks believe that they will be eternally damned if they rob us.
The tyrants of the Lower Greek Empire were almost all dethroned or assassinated by one another. All these great offenders were by turns the executioners of human and divine vengeance. Among the Turkish tyrants, we see as many deposed as those who die in possession of the throne. With regard to subaltern tyrants, or the lower order of monsters who burden their masters with the execration with which they are loaded, the number of these Hamans, these Sejanuses, is infinite.
UNIVERSITY
Du Boulay, in his "History of the University of Paris," adopts the old, uncertain, not to say fabulous tradition, which carries its origin to the time of Charlemagne. It is true that such is the opinion of Guagin and of Gilles de Beauvais; but in addition to the fact that contemporary authors, as Eginhard, Almon, Reginon, and Sigebert make no mention of this establishment; Pasquier and Du Tillet expressly assert that it commenced in the twelfth century under the reigns of Louis the Young and of Philip Augustus.
Moreover, the first statutes of the university were drawn up by Robert de Coceon, legate of the pope, in the year 1215, which proves that it received from the first the form it retains at present; because a bull of Gregory IX., of the year 1231, makes mention of masters of theology, masters of law, physicians, and lastly, artists. The name "university" originated in the supposition that these four bodies, termed faculties, constituted a universality of studies; that is to say, that they comprehended all which could be cultivated.
The popes, by the means of these establishments, of the decisions of which they made themselves judges, became masters of the instruction of the people; and the same spirit which made the permission granted to the members of the Parliament of Paris to inter themselves in the habits of Cordeliers, be regarded as an especial favor – as related in the article on "Quête" – dictated the decrees pronounced by that sovereign court against all who dared to oppose an unintelligible scholastic system, which, according to the confession of the abbé Triteme, was only a false science that had vitiated religion. In fact, that which Constantine had only insinuated with respect to the Cumæan Sibyl, has been expressly asserted of Aristotle. Cardinal Pallavicini supported the maxim of I know not what monk Paul, who pleasantly observed, that without Aristotle the Church would have been deficient in some of her articles of faith.
Thus the celebrated Ramus, having composed two works in which he opposed the doctrine of Aristotle taught in the universities, would have been sacrificed to the fury of his ignorant rival, had not King Francis I. referred to his own judgment the process commenced in Paris between Ramus and Anthony Govea. One of the principal complaints against Ramus related to the manner in which he taught his disciples to pronounce the letter Q.
Ramus was not the only disputant persecuted for these grave absurdities. In the year 1624, the Parliament of Paris banished from its district three persons who wished to maintain theses openly against Aristotle. Every person was forbidden to sell or to circulate the propositions contained in these theses, on pain of corporal punishment, or to teach any opinion against ancient and approved authors, on pain of death.
The remonstrances of the Sorbonne, in consequence of which the same parliament issued a decision against the chemists, in the year 1629, testified that it was impossible to impeach the principles of Aristotle, without at the same time impeaching those of the scholastic theology received by the Church. In the meantime, the faculty having issued, in 1566, a decree forbidding the use of antimony, and the parliament having confirmed the said decree, Paumier de Caen, a great chemist and celebrated physician of Paris, for not conforming to it, was degraded in the year 1609. Lastly, antimony being afterwards inserted in the books of medicines, composed by order of the faculty in the year 1637, the said faculty permitted the use of it in 1666, a century after having forbidden it, which decision the parliament confirmed by a new decree. Thus the university followed the example of the Church, which finally proscribed the doctrine of Arius, under pain of death, and approved the word "consubstantial," which it had previously condemned – as we have seen in the article on "Councils."
What we have observed of the university of Paris, may serve to give us an idea of other universities, of which it was regarded as the model. In fact, in imitation of it, eighty universities passed the same decree as the Sorbonne in the fourteenth century; to wit, that when the cap of a doctor was bestowed, the candidate should be made to swear that he will maintain the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary; which he did not regard, however, as an article of faith, but as a Catholic and pious opinion.
USAGES
Contemptible Customs do not Always Imply a Contemptible Nation
There are cases in which we must not judge of a nation by its usages and popular superstitions. Suppose Cæsar, after having conquered Egypt, wishing to make commerce flourish in the Roman Empire, had sent an embassy to China by the port of Arsinoë, the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. The emperor Yventi, the first of the name, then reigned in China; the Chinese annals represent him to us as a very wise and learned prince. After receiving the ambassadors of Cæsar with all Chinese politeness, he secretly informs himself through his interpreter of the customs, the usages, sciences, and religion of the Roman people, as celebrated in the West as the Chinese people are in the East. He first learns that their priests have regulated their years in so absurd a manner, that the sun has already entered the celestial signs of Spring when the Romans celebrate the first feasts of Winter. He learns that this nation at a great expense supports a college of priests, who know exactly the time in which they must embark, and when they should give battle, by the inspection of a bullock's liver, or the manner in which fowls eat grain. This sacred science was formerly taught to the Romans by a little god named Tages, who came out of the earth in Tuscany. These people adore a supreme and only God, whom they always call a very great and very good God; yet they have built a temple to a courtesan named Flora, and the good women of Rome have almost all little gods – Penates – in their houses, about four or five inches high. One of these little divinities is the goddess of bosoms, another that of posteriors. They have even a divinity whom they call the god Pet. The emperor Yventi began to laugh; and the tribunals of Nankin at first think with him that the Roman ambassadors are knaves or impostors, who have taken the title of envoys of the Roman Republic; but as the emperor is as just as he is polite, he has particular conversations with them. He then learns that the Roman priests were very ignorant, but that Cæsar actually reformed the calendar. They confess to him that the college of augurs was established in the time of their early barbarity, that they have allowed this ridiculous institution, become dear to a people long ignorant, to exist, but that all sensible people laugh at the augurs; that Cæsar never consulted them; that, according to the account of a very great man named Cato, no augur could ever look another in the face without laughing; and finally, that Cicero, the greatest orator and best philosopher of Rome, wrote a little work against the augurs, entitled "Of Divination," in which he delivers up to eternal ridicule all the predictions and sorceries of soothsayers with which the earth is infatuated. The emperor of China has the curiosity to read this book of Cicero; the interpreters translate it; and in consequence he admires at once the book and the Roman Republic.
VAMPIRES
What! is it in our eighteenth century that vampires exist? Is it after the reigns of Locke, Shaftesbury, Trenchard, and Collins? Is it under those of d'Alembert, Diderot, St. Lambert, and Duclos that we believe in vampires, and that the reverend father Dom Calmet, Benedictine priest of the congregation of St. Vannes, and St. Hidulphe, abbé of Senon – an abbey of a hundred thousand livres a year, in the neighborhood of two other abbeys of the same revenue – has printed and reprinted the history of vampires, with the approbation of the Sorbonne, signed Marcilli?
These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer. We never heard a word of vampires in London, nor even at Paris. I confess that in both these cities there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces.
Who would believe that we derive the idea of vampires from Greece? Not from the Greece of Alexander, Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus, and Demosthenes; but from Christian Greece, unfortunately schismatic. For a long time Christians of the Greek rite have imagined that the bodies of Christians of the Latin church, buried in Greece, do not decay, because they are excommunicated. This is precisely the contrary to that of us Christians of the Latin church, who believe that corpses which do not corrupt are marked with the seal of eternal beatitude. So much so, indeed, that when we have paid a hundred thousand crowns to Rome, to give them a saint's brevet, we adore them with the worship of "dulia."
The Greeks are persuaded that these dead are sorcerers; they call them "broucolacas," or "vroucolacas," according as they pronounce the second letter of the alphabet. The Greek corpses go into houses to suck the blood of little children, to eat the supper of the fathers and mothers, drink their wine, and break all the furniture. They can only be put to rights by burning them when they are caught. But the precaution must be taken of not putting them into the fire until after their hearts are torn out, which must be burned separately. The celebrated Tournefort, sent into the Levant by Louis XIV., as well as so many other virtuosi, was witness of all the acts attributed to one of these "broucolacas," and to this ceremony.
After slander, nothing is communicated more promptly than superstition, fanaticism, sorcery, and tales of those raised from the dead. There were "broucolacas" in Wallachia, Moldavia, and some among the Polanders, who are of the Romish church. This superstition being absent, they acquired it, and it went through all the east of Germany. Nothing was spoken of but vampires, from 1730 to 1735; they were laid in wait for, their hearts torn out and burned. They resembled the ancient martyrs – the more they were burned, the more they abounded.
Finally, Calmet became their historian, and treated vampires as he treated the Old and New Testaments, by relating faithfully all that has been said before him.
The most curious things, in my opinion, were the verbal suits juridically conducted, concerning the dead who went from their tombs to suck the little boys and girls of their neighborhood. Calmet relates that in Hungary two officers, delegated by the emperor Charles VI., assisted by the bailiff of the place and an executioner, held an inquest on a vampire, who had been dead six weeks, and who had sucked all the neighborhood. They found him in his coffin, fresh and jolly, with his eyes open, and asking for food. The bailiff passed his sentence; the executioner tore out the vampire's heart, and burned it, after which he feasted no more.
Who, after this, dares to doubt of the resuscitated dead, with which our ancient legends are filled, and of all the miracles related by Bollandus, and the sincere and revered Dom Ruinart? You will find stories of vampires in the "Jewish Letters" of d'Argens, whom the Jesuit authors of the "Journal of Trévoux" have accused of believing nothing. It should be observed how they triumph in the history of the vampire of Hungary; how they thanked God and the Virgin for having at last converted this poor d'Argens, the chamberlain of a king who did not believe in vampires. "Behold," said they, "this famous unbeliever, who dared to throw doubts on the appearance of the angel to the Holy Virgin; on the star which conducted the magi; on the cure of the possessed; on the immersion of two thousand swine in a lake; on an eclipse of the sun at the full moon; on the resurrection of the dead who walked in Jerusalem – his heart is softened, his mind is enlightened; he believes in vampires."
There no longer remained any question, but to examine whether all these dead were raised by their own virtue, by the power of God, or by that of the devil. Several great theologians of Lorraine, of Moravia, and Hungary, displayed their opinions and their science. They related all that St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and so many other saints, had most unintelligibly said on the living and the dead. They related all the miracles of St. Stephen, which are found in the seventh book of the works of St. Augustine. This is one of the most curious of them: In the city of Aubzal in Africa, a young man was crushed to death by the ruins of a wall; the widow immediately invoked St. Stephen, to whom she was very much devoted. St. Stephen raised him. He was asked what he had seen in the other world. "Sirs," said he, "when my soul quitted my body, it met an infinity of souls, who asked it more questions about this world than you do of the other. I went I know not whither, when I met St. Stephen, who said to me, 'Give back that which thou hast received.' I answered, 'What should I give back? you have given me nothing.' He repeated three times, 'Give back that which thou hast received.' Then I comprehended that he spoke of the credo; I repeated my credo to him, and suddenly he raised me." Above all, they quoted the stories related by Sulpicius Severus, in the life of St. Martin. They proved that St. Martin, with some others, raised up a condemned soul.
But all these stories, however true they might be, had nothing in common with the vampires who rose to suck the blood of their neighbors, and afterwards replaced themselves in their coffins. They looked if they could not find in the Old Testament, or in the mythology, some vampire whom they could quote as an example; but they found none. It was proved, however, that the dead drank and ate, since in so many ancient nations food was placed on their tombs.
The difficulty was to know whether it was the soul or the body of the dead which ate. It was decided that it was both. Delicate and unsubstantial things, as sweetmeats, whipped cream, and melting fruits, were for the soul, and roast beef and the like were for the body.
The kings of Persia were, said they, the first who caused themselves to be served with viands after their death. Almost all the kings of the present day imitate them; but they are the monks who eat their dinner and supper, and drink their wine. Thus, properly speaking, kings are not vampires; the true vampires are the monks, who eat at the expense of both kings and people.
It is very true that St. Stanislaus, who had bought a considerable estate from a Polish gentleman, and not paid him for it, being brought before King Boleslaus by his heirs, raised up the gentleman; but this was solely to get quittance. It is not said that he gave a single glass of wine to the seller, who returned to the other world without having eaten or drunk. They afterwards treated of the grand question, whether a vampire could be absolved who died excommunicated, which comes more to the point.
I am not profound enough in theology to give my opinion on this subject; but I would willingly be for absolution, because in all doubtful affairs we should take the mildest part. "Odia restringenda, favores ampliandi."
The result of all this is that a great part of Europe has been infested with vampires for five or six years, and that there are now no more; that we have had Convulsionaries in France for twenty years, and that we have them no longer; that we have had demoniacs for seventeen hundred years, but have them no longer; that the dead have been raised ever since the days of Hippolytus, but that they are raised no longer; and, lastly, that we have had Jesuits in Spain, Portugal, France, and the two Sicilies, but that we have them no longer.