Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

servant to ask Rebecca for his son Isaac,
the servant placed his hand on Abraham's
genitals, which has been translated by the
word thigh.

By this we see how much the manners
of remote antiquity differed from ours.
In the eyes of a philosopher, it is no more
astonishing that men should formerly have
Sworn by that part, than by the head; nor
is it astonishing that those who wished to
distinguish themselves from other men,
should have testified by this venerated
portion of the human person.

The Book of Genesis tells us, that circumcision was a covenant between God and Abraham; and expressly adds, that whosoever shall not be circumcised in his house, shall be put to death. Yet we are not told that Isaac was circumcised; nor is circumcision again spoken of, until the

time of Moses.

ABUSE OF WORDS.

Books, like conversation, rarely give us any precise ideas: nothing is so common as to read and converse unprofitably. We must here repeat what Locke has so strongly urged-Define your terms. A jurisconsult, in his criminal institute, announces that the non-observance of Sundays and holidays is treason against the Divine Majesty. Treason against the Divine Majesty gives an idea of the most

enormous of crimes, and the most dread

ful of chastisements. But what constitutes the offence? To have missed vespers-a thing which may happen to the best man in the world.

In all disputes on liberty, one reasoner generally understands one thing, and his adversary another. A third comes in who understands neither the one nor the other, nor is himself understood. In these dis

We shall conclude this article with one ham, after having by Sarah and Hagar acting; a second, the power of willing; more observation, which is, that Abra-putes, one has in his head the power of two sons, who became each the father of a third, the desire of executing; each rewho settled in Arabia; but their posterity meet. a great nation, had six sons by Keturah, volves in his own circle, and they never

were not famous.

ABUSE.

effectual.

It is the same with quarrels about grace. Who can understand its nature, AVICE attached to all the customs; to sufficient, and the efficacy which is inits operations, the sufficiency which is not all the laws, to all the institutions of man: the detail is too vast to be contained in? mas ille est qui minimis urgetur. It might plastic natures have been substituted, but States are governed by abuses. Mari- suggesting the least notion. For these, be said to the Chinese, to the Japanese, still without any thing being gained.

any library.

to the English-Your government swarms

The words substantial form were pronounced for two thousand years without

with abuses, which you do not correct! torrent, asks a villager on the opposite The Chinese will reply-We have existed bank to show him the ford :-"Go to at this day are perhaps the most fortunate takes the right and is drowned. The as 4 people for five thousand years, and the right," shouts the countryman :---He

A traveller, stopped in his way by a

tranquil. The Japanese will say nearly fortunate! I did not tell him to go to his the same. The English will answer-We right, but to mine!"

are powerful at sea, and prosperous on

land; perhaps in ten thousand years we standings. How will a Norwegian, when shall bring our usages to perfection. The reading this formula, Servant of the Sergrand secret is, to be in a better condi- vants of God, discover that it is the rbu, than others, even with enormous Bishop of Bishops, and King of Kings

The world is full of these misunder

abases.

who speaks?

that Love has various lodgings: and that the same word does not always signify the same thing. There is a prodigious differ

At the time when the Fragments of Petronius made a great noise in the literary world, Meibomius, a noted learned man of Lubeck, read in the printed letterence between the love of Tarquin and that of another learned man of Bologna:- of Celadon-between David's love for "We have here an entire Petronius, Jonathan, which was stronger than that which I have seen with my own eyes and of women, and the abbé Desfontaines' admired;"-Habemus hic Petronium in- { love for little chimney-sweepers. tegrum, quem vidi meis oculis non sine The most singular instance of this abuse admiratione. He immediately set out for of words-these voluntary equivoques— Italy, hastened to Bologna, went to the these misunderstandings which have causlibrarian Capponi, and asked him if it ed so many_quarrels,-is the Chinese were true that they had the entire Petro-King-tien. The missionaries having vionius at Bologna. Capponi answered that lent disputes about the meaning of this it was a fact which had long been public. word, the Court of Rome sent a French"Can I see this Petronius?-Be so goodman, named Maigrot, whom they made as to show him to me.' "Nothing is the imaginary bishop of a province in more easy," said Capponi. He then took China, to adjust the difference. Maigrot him to the church in which the body of did not know a word of Chinese; but the St. Petronius was laid Meibomius or- emperor deigned to grant that he should dered horses and fled. be told what he understood by King-tien. Maigrot would not believe what was told him, but caused the emperor of China to be condemned at Rome!

[ocr errors]

If the Jesuit Daniel took a warlike abbot, abbatem martialem, for the abbot Martial, a hundred historians have fallen into still greater mistakes. The Jesuit d'Orleans, in his Revolutions of England, { wrote indifferently Northampton or Southampion, only mistaking the north for the south, or vice versa.

pro

Metaphysical terms, taken in their per sense, have sometimes determined the

The abuse of words is an inexhaustible subject. In history, in morality, in juris. prudence, in medicine, but especially in theology, beware of ambiguity.

ACADEMY.

Academies are to universities, as ma

opinion of twenty nations. Every oneturity is to childhood, oratory to grammar, knows the metaphor of Isaiah, How hast or politeness to the first lessons in civility. thou fallen from heaven, thou star which Academies, not being stipendiary, ought rose in the morning? This discourse was to be entirely free: such were the acaimagined to have been addressed to the demies of Italy; such is the French AcaDevil; and as the Hebrew word an-demy; and such, more particularly, is the swering to the planet Venus was rendered Royal Society of London. in Latin by the word Lucifer, the Devil The French Academy, which formed has ever since been called Lucifer. itself, received, it is true, letters patent Much ridicule has been bestowed on the from Louis XIII., but without any sa Chart of the Tender Passion by Madlle.lary, and consequently without any subCuderi. The lovers embark on the riverjection: hence it was that the first men Tendre; they dine at Tendre sur Estime, in the kingdom, and even princes, sought sup at Tendre sur Inclination, sleep at admission into this illustrious body. The Tendre sur Désir, find themselves the Society of London has possessed the same next morning at Tendre sur Pussion, and advantage. lastly at Tendre sur Tendre. These ideas may be ridiculous, especially when Clelia, Horatius Cocles, and other rude and austere Romans, set out on the voyage: but this geographical chart at least shows us

The celebrated Colbert, being a member of the French Academy, employed some of his brethren to compose inscriptions and devices for the public buildings. This assembly, to which Boileau

[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

and Racine afterwards belonged, soon be- It is known that the word Academy,
came an academy of itself. The esta- borrowed from the Greeks, originally
blishment of this Academy of Inscrip-signified a society or school of philosophy
tions, now called that of the Belles-Lettres, at Athens, which met in a garden be-
may, indeed, be dated from the year 1661, queathed to it by Academus.
and that of the Academy of Sciences from
1666. We are indebted for both esta-
blishments to the same minister, who con-
tributed in so many ways to the splendour
of the age of Louis XIV.

The Italians were the first who instituted such societies after the revival of letters; the academy Della Crusca is of the sixteenth century. Academies were afterwards established in every town where the sciences were cultivated.

After the deaths of Jean Baptiste Colbert and the Marquis de Louvois, when Count de Pontchartrain, secretary of state, had the department of Paris, he entrusted The provincial academies have been of the government of the new academies to signal advantage. They have given birth his nephew, the abbé Bignon. Then to emulation, forced youth to labour, inwere first devised honorary fellowships troduced them to a course of good readrequiring no learning, and without re-ing, dissipated the ignorance and premuneration; places with salaries dis- {judices of some of our towns, fostered a agreeably distinguished from the former; spirit of politeness, and, as far as it is fellowships without salaries; and scholar-possible, destroyed pedantry. ships, a a title still more disagreeable, which bas since been suppressed. The Academy of the Belles-lettres was put on the same footing; both submitted to the immediate control of the secretary of state, and to the revolting distinction of honoraries, pensionaries, and pupils.

The Society of London has never taken the title of Academy.

The abbé Bignon ventured to propose the same regulation to the French Academy, of which he was a member; but he was heard with unanimous indignation. The least opulent in the Academy were the first to reject his offers, and to prefer liberty to pensions and honours. The abbé Bignon, who, in the laudable intention of doing good, had dealt too freely with the noble sentiments of his brethren, never again set his foot in the

French Academy.

The word Academy became so celebrated, that when Lulli, who was a sort of favorite obtained the establishment of his Open, in 1692, he had interest enough to get inserted in the patent, that it was a Royal Academy of Music, in which Ladies and Gentlemen might sing without demeaning themselves. He did not confer the same honour on the dancers; the public, however, have always continued to go to the Opera, but never to the Academy of Music.

Scarcely anything has been written against the French Academy, except frivolous and insipid pleasantries. St. Evremond's comedy of The Academicians had some reputation in its time; but a proof of the little merit it possessed is, that it is now forgotten; whereas, the good satires of Boileau are immortal.

ADAM.

SECTION I.

So much has been said and so much

written concerning Adam, his wife, the Preadamites, &c., and the Rabbis have put forth so many idle stories respecting Adam, and it is so dull to repeat what others have said before, that I shall here hazard an idea entirely new,-one, at

least, which is not to be found in any ancient author, father of the church, preacher, theologian, critic, or scholiast, with whom I am acquainted. I mean the profound secresy with respect to Adam which was observed throughout the habitable earth, Palestine only excepted, until the time when the Jewish books began to be known in Alexandria, and were translated into Greek under one of the Ptolemies. Still they were very little known; for large books were very rare and very

[ocr errors]

dear. Besides, the Jews of Jerusalem that the father and mother of the human were so incensed against those of Alex-race have ever been totally unknown to andria, loaded them with so many re- their descendants; so that the names of proaches for having translated their Bible Adam and Eve are to be found in no into a profane tongue, called them so ancient author, either of Greece, of Rome, many ill names, and cried so loudly to the of Persia, or of Syria, nor even amongst Lord, that the Alexandrian Jews concealed the Arabs, until near the time of Mahotheir translation as much as possible: it met It was God's pleasure, that the was so secret, that no Greek or Roman origin of the great family of the world author speaks of it before the time of the should be concealed from all but the emperor Aurelian. smallest and most unfortunate part of that family.

[ocr errors]

The historian Josephus confesses, in his answer to Appian, that the Jews had How is it that Adam and Eve have not long had any intercourse with other been unknown to all their children? nations:-"We inhabit," says he, a How could it be, that neither in Egypt country distant from the sea; we do not nor in Babylon was any trace-any traapply ourselves to commerce, nor have{dition of our first parents to be found? we any communication with other nations. Why were they not mentioned by Orpheus, Is it to be wondered at that our people, by Linus, or by Thamyris?-for if they dwelling so far from the sea, and affecting had said but one word of them, it would never to write, have been so little known?" undoubtedly have been caught by Hesiod, Here it will probably be asked, how and especially by Homer, who speak of Josephus could say that his nation affected everything except the authors of the never to write anything, when they had human race. Clement of Alexandria, twenty-two canonical books, without who collected so many ancient testimoreckoning the Targum by Onkelos. But nies, would not have failed to quote any it must be considered that twenty-two passage in which mention had been made small volumes were very little when com- of Adam and Eve. Eusebius, in his pared with the multitude of books pre- Universal History, has examined even served in the library of Alexandria, half the most doubtful testimonies, and would of which were burned in Cæsar's war. assuredly have made the most of the smallest allusion, or appearance of an allusion, to our first parents. It is, then, sufficiently clear, that they were always utterly unknown to the nations.

It is certain that the Jews had written and read very little; that they were profoundly ignorant of astronomy, geometry, geography, and physics; that they knew nothing of the history of other nations; and that in Alexandria they first began to learn. Their language was a barbarous mixture of ancient Phoenician and corrupted Chaldee; it was so poor, that several moods were wanting in the conjugation of their verbs.

We do, it is true, find among the Brahmins, in the book entitled the Ezourveidam, the names of Adimo and of Procriti his wife. But though Adimo has some little resemblance to our Adam, the Indians reply—“We were a great people established on the banks of the

Moreover, as they communicated nei-Indus and the Ganges many ages before ther their books nor the titles of them to any foreigner, no one on earth except themselves had ever heard of Adam, or Eve, or Abel, or Cain, or Noah. Abraham alone was, in course of time, known to the Oriental nations: but no ancient people allowed that Abraham was the root of the Jewish nation.

Such are the secrets of Providence,

the Hebrew horde moved towards the Jordan. The Egyptians, the Persians, and the Arabs, came to us for wisdom and spices when the Jews were unknown to the rest of mankind. We cannot have taken our Adimo from their Adam; our Procriti does not in the least resemble Eve; besides, their history and ours are entirely different.

"Moreover, the Veidam, on which the Exourveidam is a commentary, is believed by us to have been composed at a more remote period of antiquity than the Jewish books; and the Veidam itself is a newer law given to the Brahmins, fifteen hundred years after their first law, called Shasta or Shasta-bad."

Such, or nearly such, are the answers which the Brahimins of the present day have often made to the chaplains of merchant vessels who have talked to them of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, when the traders of Europe have gone, with arms in their hands, to buy their spices and lay waste their country.

The Phoenician Sanchoniathon, who certamly lived before the period at which we place Moses, and who is quoted by Eusebras as an authentic author, gives tep generations to the human race, as does Moses down to the time of Noah; but, in these ten generations, he mentions Beither Adam nor Eve, nor any of their descendants, not even Noah himself. The names, according to the Greek translation by Philo of Biblos, are Eon, Gao, Phox, Liban, Usou, Halieus, Chriser, Tecnites. Agrove, Amine; these are the first ten generations.

We do not see the name of Noah or of Adas in any of the ancient dynastics of Egypt: they are not to be found among the Chaldeans; in a word, the whole Earth has been silent respecting them.

It must be owned that such a silence 13 unparelleled. Every people has attributed to itself some imaginary origin, { yet none has approached the true one. We cannot comprehend how the father of all nations has so long been unknown, while, in the natural course of things, his hame should have been carried from mouth to mouth to the farthest corners of the earth.

Let us humble ourselves to the decrees of that Providence which has permitted astonishing an oblivion. All was mysterious and concealed in the nation guided by God himself, which prepared the way for Christianity, and was the wild

olive on which the fruitful one has been grafted. That the names of the authors of mankind should be unknown to mankind, is a mystery of the highest order.

I will venture to affirm, that it has required a miracle thus to shut the eyes and ears of all nations-to destroy every monument, every memorial of their first father. What would Cæsar, Anthony, Crassus, Pompey, Cicero, Marcellus, or Metellus have thought, if a poor Jew, while selling them balm, had said, “We all descend from one father, named Adam." All the Roman senate would have cried, "Show us our genealogical tree." Then the Jew would have displayed his ten generations, down to the time of Noah, and the secret of the universal deluge. The senate would have asked him, how many persons there were in the Ark, to feed all the animals for ten whole months, and during the following year in which no food would be produced? The pedlar would have said, "We were eight-Noah and his wife, their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their wives. All this family descended in a right line from Adam.

Cicero, would, doubtless, have enquired for the great monuments, the indisputable testimonies which Noah and his children had left of our common father. After the deluge, he would have said, the whole world would have resounded with the names of Adam and Noah, one the father, the other the restorer of every race. These names would have been in every mouth as soon as men could speak, on every parchment as soon as they could write, on the door of every house as soon as they could build, on every temple, on every statue, and have you known so great a secret, yet concealed it from us! The Jew would have answered-It is because we are pure and you are impure. The Roman senate would have laughed and the Jew would have been whipped: so much are men attached to their prejudices!

« AnteriorContinuar »