council in place of secretaries of State, and for saying that the finances had been shamefully managed towards the close of that glorious reign. The author of the Persian Letters' made mention of Louis XIV. only to tell the world that the King was a magician who undertook to persuade his subjects that paper was gold and silver; who preferred the Turkish to all other forms. of government; who held a man that handed him a napkin in higher esteem than one who had won him battles; who had given a pension to a runaway who had fled a matter of two leagues from the field of battle without once looking behind him, and a considerable position to another who had run four leagues; who was miserably poor, although his finances are inexhaustible. What did this same author say of Louis XIV., the protector of the French Academy? for on the reputation of this book he was admitted into their number. We may add to this, what crowns the inconsistency, that this body received him amongst them chiefly for having made them ridiculous; for of all the books in which authors have laughed at their company, in none are they worse handled than in the 'Persian Letters.' Listen: "The members who compose this body have nothing to do but to prate everlastingly; panegyric flows naturally out of that babbling of theirs, which is truly world without end," etc. After being treated in this manner, they praised him for his skill in drawing a strong likeness.

Were I disposed to treat the contrarieties of the republic of letters, I must write the history of all the literati, and of all the wits who have ever existed. Or had I a mind to consider the inconsistencies of society, I must write a history of the human race. An Asiatic traveling in Europe might take us all for pagans. The very days of our week pay tribute to Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus; the marriage of Cupid and Psyche is painted in a palace belonging to the Pope! If this Asiatic attended our opera, he could not doubt that it was a festival in honor of the heathen gods. Were he to study our manners, he would be still more astonished. Spain excludes all foreigners from the smallest commerce, directly or indirectly, with her American settlements, whilst those very Americans carry on, through Spanish factors, a trade to the amount of fifty millions per annum; so that Spain could never grow rich were it not for the violation of that law, which still stands though perpetually trampled upon. Another government encourages an India company, while its theologians declare its dividends criminal before

God. Our Asiatic would behold the seats of judges, the command of armies, the places of counselors of State, bought with money: nor could he comprehend the assertion of the patents entitling them to hold these places, that these have been granted without caballing, fee, or reward, and purely on the score of merit, whilst the valuable consideration given is plainly disclosed in their letters of provision! What would he think to see our players at the same instant paid by the sovereign and excommunicated by the clergy? Suppose he were to ask why a lieutenant-generalwho is only a roturier, a man of the common class, though he may have won battles should, in the estimation of the court, be ranked with a peasant, whilst an echevin or city sheriff is held as noble as the Montmorencies? Why, when all regular shows are prohibited in the week consecrated to edification, should mountebanks be tolerated whose language is offensive to the least delicate ear? In short, he would see our laws in direct opposition to our customs. Yet were we to travel into Asia, we should come upon like inconsistencies.

Men are everywhere fools: they make laws much as we repair breaches in walls. In one place the elder brothers contrive to leave the younger mere beggars; in others they share alike. At one time the Church authorizes duels, at another she anathematizes them. The partisans and enemies of Aristotle have been excommunicated each in turn; as have the wearers of long hair or short hair. In the known world no law has been discovered able to redress a very silly piece of folly, which is gaming. The laws of play are the only ones which admit of neither exception, relaxation, imposition, nor variation. An ex-lackey, if he plays at lansquenet with a king, and happens to win, is paid without the least hesitation; in every other respect the law is a sword, with which the stronger cuts the weaker in pieces.

Yet the world gets on as if it were constituted in the wisest manner imaginable! Irregularity is a part of ourselves. Our political world is much like our globe: though ugly enough, it manages to get on. It would be folly to wish that all the mountains, seas, and rivers were drawn in regular geometrical figures: it would be a still greater folly to expect consummate wisdom from men; as if one should suggest giving wings to dogs, or horns to eagles. Indeed, these pretended oppositions that we call contradictions are necessary ingredients in the composition of man; who like the rest of nature is what he has to be.

THE

ON READING

From the Philosophical Dictionary>

HERE is this good in a large library, that it frightens the beholder! Two hundred thousand volumes are enough to discourage a man tempted to print a book. But unfortunately he very soon says to himself, "Most of those books are not read, and perhaps mine will be!" He compares himself to the drop of water that complained of being confounded and lost. in the ocean; a génie took pity on it, and made an oyster swallow it. It became one of the finest pearls in the ocean, and in time the chief ornament of the great Mogul's throne. Those who are mere compilers, imitators, commentators, pickers of phrases, critics by the week,-in short, those on whom no génie will take pity, will forever remain the drop of water.

Our man, then, is working in his garret in hopes of becoming the pearl.

It is true that in that immense collection of books there are about one hundred and ninety-nine thousand that will never be read, at least never read through; but one may need to consult some of them once in his life. And it is a great advantage to the seeker to find without delay, under his hand, in the palace of kings, the volume and the page he is looking for. The library is one of the noblest of institutions. There has never been an expense more magnificent and more useful.

The public library of the French king is the finest in the world; less indeed as to number and rarity of volumes, than in the facility and politeness with which the librarians lend them to all the learned. That collection is unquestionably the most precious monument there is in France.

Let not that astonishing multitude of books daunt the student. Paris contains seven hundred thousand people; one cannot live with them all, and must make choice of three or four friends, and we ought not to complain more of a superfluity of books than of men.

A man who wishes to know something of his own being, and who has no time to lose, is much puzzled. He feels that he ought at once to read Hobbes and Spinoza; Bayle, who has written against them; Leibnitz, who has opposed Bayle; Clarke, who has disputed the theories of Leibnitz; Malebranche, who differs

with all of them; Locke, who is supposed to have confounded Malebranche; Stillingfleet, who thinks he has vanquished Locke; Cudworth, who sets himself up above all because no one can understand him! One would die of old age before he could go through a hundredth part of the metaphysical romance!

WHO

THE IGNORANT PHILOSOPHER

From the Philosophical Dictionary>

HO art thou? Whence art thou? What is thy business here ? What will become of thee?-These are questions which confront us all, but which not a man of us can answer. I ask the plants what power occasions their growth; and how the same soil produces fruits so different. Insensible and mute, these leave me to my ignorance. I interrogate that crowd of animals endowed with motion, able to communicate, who enjoy my very sensations; who possess some ideas, some memory, all the passions. They know even less than I what they are, why they are, what they shall be. I am a weak animal: I come into the world without knowledge, strength, or instinct. I cannot even crawl to my mother's breast, as can other animals. I acquire a few ideas, as I acquire a little strength, when my organs begin to develop. This strength increases to a certain degree, and then daily decreases. So the power of conceiving ideas increases to a certain degree, and then insensibly disappears. What is the nature of that crescent force? I know not; and those who have spent their lives in search of this unsearchable cause know no more than I. What is that other power which creates images in my brain? which preserves them in my memory? Those who spend their lives in seeking for this knowledge have sought it in vain. We are as ignorant of first principles as we were in our cradles. Have I learned anything from the books of the past two thousand years? Sometimes a desire arises in us to understand in what manner we think. I have interrogated my reason, imploring it to explain. The question confounds it. I have tried to discover if the same springs of action which enable me to digest or to walk are those whereby I develop ideas. I cannot conceive how or wherefore these ideas flee, when hunger makes my body languish, and how they spring up again when I have eaten I have observed so

great a difference in my thinking when I am well fed or ill fed, that I have believed there was a substance in me which reasoned, and another substance which digested. But on endeavoring to prove to myself that we are two, I have been sure that I am only one; and the contradiction confuses me.

I have asked some of my fellow-creatures who with great industry cultivate the earth, our common source of life, if they felt themselves to be double beings; if they had discovered in their philosophy that they possessed an immortal substance that was yet formed of nothing, existed without extent, acted on their nerves without touching them, and actually preceded their creation. They thought I was laughing at them, and went about their business with not so much as a reply. Seeing then that an immense number of men had not the least idea of the difficulties that distressed me, nor perplexed themselves with what was said in the schools,-of Being in the abstract, of matter and spirit, etc.,-observing too that they often diverted themselves with my eagerness to learn, I suspected it to be unnecessary that we should know these things. I concluded that nature gives to every being what is proper for him; and I came to think that those things which we could not obtain were not designed for us. Notwithstanding this depressing conclusion, however, I cannot suppress the desire of being instructed; and my disappointed curiosity is ever insatiable.

We must renounce common-sense, or else concede that we know nothing save by experience; and certainly if it be by experience alone - by a series of trials and through long reflection -that we acquire some feeble and slight ideas of body, of space, of time, of infinity, even of God, it is not likely that the author of our nature placed these ideas in the brain of every fœtus, in order that only a small number of men should afterwards make use of them.

Having no ideas, then, save by experience, it is not possible that we should ever know what matter is. We touch and we see the properties of that substance. But even the word substance, that which is beneath, hints to us that this thing beneath will be unknown to us forever. Whatever we discover of its appearance, this substance, this foundation, will ever elude us. For the same reason we shall never of ourselves know what spirit is. The word originally signified breath, and by its use we express vaguely and grossly that which inspires thinking. But if, even

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