Вольтер
A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 09
SENTENCES OF DEATH
In reading history, and seeing its course continually interrupted with innumerable calamities heaped upon this globe, which some call the best of all possible worlds, I have been particularly struck with the great quantity of considerable men in the State, in the Church, and in society, who have suffered death like robbers on the highway. Setting aside assassinations and poisonings, I speak only of massacres in a juridical form, performed with loyalty and ceremony; I commence with kings and queens; England alone furnishes an ample list; but for chancellors, knights, and esquires, volumes are required. Of all who have thus perished by justice, I do not believe that there are four in all Europe who would have undergone their sentence if their suits had lasted some time longer, or if the adverse parties had died of apoplexy during the preparation.
If fistula had gangrened the rectum of Cardinal Richelieu some months longer, the virtuous de Thou, Cinq-Mars, and so many others would have been at liberty. If Barneveldt had had as many Arminians for his judges as Gomerists, he would have died in his bed; if the constable de Luynes had not demanded the confiscation of the property of the lady of the Marshal d'Ancre, she would not have been burned as a witch. If a really criminal man, an assassin, a public thief, a poisoner, a parricide, be arrested, and his crime be proved, it is certain that in all times and whoever the judges, he will be condemned. But it is not the same with statesmen; only give them other judges, or wait until time has changed interests, cooled passions, and introduced other sentiments, and their lives will be in safety.
Suppose Queen Elizabeth had died of an indigestion on the eve of the execution of Mary Stuart, then Mary Stuart would have been seated on the throne of England, Ireland, and Scotland, instead of dying by the hand of an executioner in a chamber hung with black. If Cromwell had only fallen sick, care would have been taken how Charles I.'s head was cut off. These two assassinations – disguised, I know not how, in the garb of the laws – scarcely entered into the list of ordinary injustice. Figure to yourself some highwaymen who, having bound and robbed two passengers, amuse themselves with naming in the troop an attorney-general, a president, an advocate and counsellors, and who, having signed a sentence, cause the two victims to be hanged in ceremony; it was thus that the Queen of Scotland and her grandson were judged.
But of common judgments, pronounced by competent judges against princes or men in place, is there a single one which would have been either executed, or even passed, if another time had been chosen? Is there a single one of the condemned, immolated under Cardinal Richelieu, who would not have been in favor if their suits had been prolonged until the regency of Anne of Austria? The Prince of Condé was arrested under Francis II., he was condemned to death by commissaries; Francis II. died, and the Prince of Condé again became powerful.
These instances are innumerable; we should above all consider the spirit of the times. Vanini was burned on a vague suspicion of atheism. At present, if any one was foolish and pedantic enough to write such books as Vanini, they would not be read, and that is all which could happen to them. A Spaniard passed through Geneva in the middle of the sixteenth century; the Picard, John Calvin, learned that this Spaniard was lodged at an inn; he remembered that this Spaniard had disputed with him on a subject which neither of them understood. Behold! my theologian, John Calvin, arrested the passenger, contrary to all laws, human or divine, contrary to the right possessed by people among all nations; immured him in a dungeon, and burned him at a slow fire with green faggots, that the pain might last the longer. Certainly this infernal manœuvre would never enter the head of any one in the present day; and if the fool Servetus had lived in good times, he would have had nothing to fear; what is called justice is therefore as arbitrary as fashion. There are times of horrors and follies among men, as there are times of pestilence, and this contagion has made the tour of the world.
SERPENTS
"I certify that I have many times killed serpents by moistening in a slight degree, with my spittle, a stick or a stone, and giving them a slight blow on the middle of the body, scarcely sufficient to produce a small contusion. January 19, 1757. Figuier, Surgeon."
The above surgeon having given me this certificate, two witnesses, who had seen him kill serpents in this manner, attested what they had beheld. Notwithstanding, I wished to behold the thing myself; for I confess that, in various parts of these queries, I have taken St. Thomas of Didymus for my patron saint, who always insisted on an examination with his own hands.
For eighteen hundred years this opinion has been perpetuated among the people, and it might possibly be even eighteen thousand years old, if Genesis had not supplied us with the precise date of our enmity to this reptile. It may be asserted that if Eve had spit on the serpent when he took his place at her ear, a world of evil would have been spared human nature.
Lucretius, in his fourth book, alludes to this manner of killing serpents as very well known:
Est utique ut serpens hominis contacta salivis.
Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa.
– LIB., iv, v. 642-643.
Spit on a serpent, and his vigor flies,
He straight devours himself, and quickly dies.
There is some slight contradiction in painting him at once deprived of vigor and self-devouring, but my surgeon Figuier asserts not that the serpents which he killed were self-devouring. Genesis says wisely that we kill them with our heels, and not with spittle.
We are in the midst of winter on January 19, which is the time when serpents visit us. I cannot find any at Mount Krapak; but I exhort all philosophers to spit upon every serpent they meet with in the spring. It is good to know the extent of the power of the saliva of man.
It is certain that Jesus Christ employed his spittle to cure a man who was deaf and dumb. He took him aside, placed His fingers on his ears, and looking up to heaven, sighed and said to him: "Ephphatha" – "be opened" – when the deaf and dumb person immediately began to speak.
It may therefore be true that God has allowed the saliva of man to kill serpents; but He may have also permitted my surgeon to assail them with heavy blows from a stick or a stone, in such a way that they would die whether he spat upon them or not.
I beg of all philosophers to examine the thing with attention. For example, should they meet Freron in the street, let them spit in his face, and if he die, the fact will be confirmed, in spite of all the reasoning of the incredulous.
I take this opportunity also to beg of philosophers not to cut off the heads of any more snails; for I affirm that the head has returned to snails which I have decapitated very effectively. But it is not enough that I know it by experience, others must be equally satisfied in order that the fact be rendered probable; for although I have twice succeeded, I have failed thirty times. Success depends upon the age of the snail, the time in which the head is cut off, the situation of the incision, and the manner in which it is kept until the head grows again.
If it is important to know that death may be inflicted by spitting, it is still more important to know that heads may be renewed. Man is of more consequence than a snail, and I doubt not that in due time, when the arts are brought to perfection, some means will be found to give a sound head to a man who has none at all.
SHEKEL
A weight and denomination of money among the Jews; but as they never coined money, and always made use of the coinage of other people, all gold coins weighing about a guinea, and all silver coins of the weight of a small French crown, were called a shekel; and these shekels were distinguished into those of the weight of the sanctuary, and those of the weight of the king.
It is said in the Book of Samuel that Absalom had very fine hair, from which he cut a part every year. Many profound commentators assert that he cut it once a month, and that it was valued at two hundred shekels. If these shekels were of gold, the locks of Absalom were worth two thousand four hundred guineas per annum. There are few seigniories which produce at present the revenue that Absalom derived from his head.
It is said that when Abraham bought a cave in Hebron from the Canaanite Ephron, Ephron sold him the cave for four hundred shekels of silver, of current money with the merchant —probatæ monetæ publicæ.
We have already remarked that there was no coined money in these days, and thus these four hundred shekels of silver became four hundred shekels in weight, which, valued at present at three livres four sous each, are equal to twelve hundred and eighty livres of France.
It follows that the little field, which was sold with this cavern, was excellent land, to bring so high a price.
When Eleazar, the servant of Abraham, met the beautiful Rebecca, the daughter of Bethnel, carrying a pitcher of water upon her shoulder, from which she gave him and his camels leave to drink, he presented her with earrings of gold, which weighed two shekels, and bracelets which weighed ten, amounting in the whole to a present of the value of twenty-four guineas.
In the laws of Exodus it is said that if an ox gored a male or female slave, the possessor of the ox should give thirty shekels of silver to the master of the slave, and that the ox should be stoned. It is apparently to be understood that the ox in this case has produced a very dangerous wound, otherwise thirty-two crowns was a large sum for the neighborhood of Mount Sinai, where money was uncommon. It is for the same reason that many grave, but too hasty, persons suspect that Exodus as well as Genesis was not written until a comparatively late period.
What tends to confirm them in this erroneous opinion is a passage in the same Exodus: "Take of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half as much; of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels; of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; and of olive-oil a ton, to form an ointment to annoint the tabernacle"; and whosoever anointed himself or any stranger with a similar composition, was to be put to death.
It is added that with all these aromatics were to be united stacte, onyx, galbanum, and frankincense; and that a perfume was to be mixed up according to the art of the apothecary or perfumer.
But I cannot perceive anything in this composition which ought to excite the doubt of the incredulous. It is natural to imagine that the Jews – who, according to the text, stole from the Egyptians all which they could bring away – had also taken frankincense, galbanum, onyx, stacte, olive-oil, cassia, sweet calamus, cinnamon, and myrrh. They also, without doubt, stole many shekels; indeed, we have seen, that one of the most zealous partisans of this Hebrew horde estimates what they stole, in gold alone, at nine millions. I abide by his reckoning.
SIBYL
The first woman who pronounced oracles at Delphos was called Sibylla. According to Pausanias, she was the daughter of Jupiter, and of Lamia, the daughter of Neptune, and she lived a long time before the siege of Troy. From her all women were distinguished by the name of sibyls, who, without being priestesses, or even attached to a particular oracle, announced the future, and called themselves inspired. Different ages and countries have had their sibyls, or preserved predictions which bear their name, and collections were formed of them.
The greatest embarrassment to the ancients was to explain by what happy privilege these sibyls had the gift of predicting the future. Platonists found the cause of it in the intimate union which the creature, arrived at a certain degree of perfection, might have with the Divinity. Others attribute this divine property of the sibyls to the vapors and exhalations of the caves which they inhabited. Finally others attributed the prophetic spirit of the sibyls to their sombre and melancholy humor, or to some singular malady.
St. Jerome maintained that this gift was to them a recompense for their chastity; but there was at least one very celebrated one who boasted of having had a thousand lovers without being married. It would have been much more sensible in St. Jerome and other fathers of the Church to have denied the prophetic spirit of the sibyls, and to have said that by means of hazarding predictions at a venture, they might sometimes have been fulfilled, particularly with the help of a favorable commentary, by which words, spoken by chance, have been turned into facts which it was impossible they could have predicted.
It is singular that their predictions were collected after the event. The first collection of sibylline leaves, bought by Tarquin, contained three books; the second was compiled after the fire of the capitol, but we are ignorant how many books it contained; and the third is that which we possess in eight books, and in which it is doubtful whether the author has not inserted several predictions of the second. This collection is the fruit of the pious fraud of some Platonic Christians, more zealous than clever, who in composing it thought to lend arms to the Christian religion, and to put those who defended it in a situation to combat paganism with the greatest advantage.
This confused compilation of different prophecies was printed for the first time in the year 1545 from manuscripts, and published several times after, with ample commentaries, burdened with an erudition often trivial, and almost always foreign to the text, which they seldom enlightened. The number of works composed for and against the authenticity of these sibylline books is very great, and some even very learned; but there prevails so little order and reasoning, and the authors are so devoid of all philosophic spirit that those who might have courage to read them would gain nothing but ennui and fatigue. The date of the publication is found clearly indicated in the fifth and eighth books. The sibyl is made to say that the Roman Empire will have only fifteen emperors, fourteen of which are designated by the numeral value of the first letter of their names in the Greek alphabet. She adds that the fifteenth, who would be a man with a white head, would bear the name of a sea near Rome. The fifteenth of the Roman emperors was Adrian, and the Asiatic gulf is the sea of which he bears the name.
From this prince, continues the sibyl, three others will proceed who will rule the empire at the same time; but finally one of them will remain the possessor. These three shoots were Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus. The sibyl alludes to the adoptions and associations which united them. Marcus Aurelius found himself sole master of the empire at the death of Lucius Verus, at the commencement of the year 169; and he governed it without any colleague until the year 177, when he associated with his son Commodus. As there is nothing which can have any relation to this new colleague of Marcus Aurelius, it is evident that the collection must have been made between the years 169 and 177 of the vulgar era.
Josephus, the historian, quotes a work of the sibyl, in which the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues are spoken of nearly as in Genesis; which proves that the Christians are not the first authors of the supposition of the sibylline books. Josephus not relating the exact words of the sibyl, we cannot ascertain whether what is said of the same event in our collection was extracted from the work quoted by Josephus; but it is certain that several lines, attributed to the sibyl, in the exhortations found in the works of St. Justin, of Theophilus of Antioch, of Clement of Alexandria, and in some other fathers, are not in our collection; and as most of these lines bear no stamp of Christianity, they might be the work of some Platonic Jew.
In the time of Celsus, sibyls had already some credit among the Christians, as it appears by two passages of the answer of Origen. But in time sibylline prophecies appearing favorable to Christianity, they were commonly made use of in works of controversy with much more confidence than by the pagans themselves, who, acknowledging sibyls to be inspired women, confined themselves to saying that the Christians had falsified their writings, a fact which could only be decided by a comparison of the two manuscripts, which few people are in a situation to make.
Finally, it was from a poem of the sibyl of Cumea that the principal dogmas of Christianity were taken. Constantine, in the fine discourse which he pronounced before the assembly of the saints, shows that the fourth eclogue of Virgil is only a prophetic description of the Saviour; and if that was not the immediate object of the poet, it was that of the sibyl from whom he borrowed his ideas, who, being filled with the spirit of God, announced the birth of the Redeemer.
He believed that he saw in this poem the miracle of the birth of Jesus of a virgin, the abolition of sin by the preaching of the gospel, and the abolition of punishment by the grace of the Redeemer. He believed he saw the old serpent overthrown, and the mortal venom with which he poisoned human nature entirely deadened. He believed that he saw that the grace of the Lord, however powerful it might be, would nevertheless suffer the dregs and traces of sin to remain in the faithful; in a word, he believed that he saw Jesus Christ announced under the great character of the Son of God.
In this eclogue there are many other passages which might have been said to be copies of the Jewish prophets, who apply it themselves to Jesus Christ; it is at least the general opinion of the Church. St. Augustine, like others, has been persuaded of it, and has pretended that the lines of Virgil can only be applied to Jesus Christ. Finally, the most clever moderns maintain the same opinion.
SINGING
Questions on Singing, Music, Modulation, Gesticulation, etc
Could a Turk conceive that we have one kind of singing for the first of our mysteries when we celebrate it in music, another kind which we call "motetts" in the same temple, a third kind at the opera, and a fourth at the theatre?
In like manner, can we imagine how the ancients blew their flutes, recited on their theatres with their heads covered by enormous masks, and how their declamation was written down.
Law was promulgated in Athens nearly as in Paris we sing an air on the Pont-Neuf. The public crier sang an edict, accompanying himself on the lyre.
It is thus that in Paris the rose in bud is cried in one tone; old silver lace to sell in another; only in the streets of Paris the lyre is dispensed with.
After the victory of Chæronea, Philip, the father of Alexander, sang the decree by which Demosthenes had made him declare war, and beat time with his foot. We are very far from singing in our streets our edicts, or finances, or upon the two sous in the livre.
It is very probable that the melopée, or modulation, regarded by Aristotle in his poetic art as an essential part of tragedy, was an even, simple chant, like that which we call the preface to mass, which in my opinion is the Gregorian chant, and not the Ambrosian, and which is a true melopée.
When the Italians revived tragedy in the sixteenth century the recitative was a melopée which could not be written; for who could write inflections of the voice which are octaves and sixths of tone? They were learned by heart. This custom was received in France when the French began to form a theatre, more than a century after the Italians. The "Sophonisba" of Mairet was sung like that of Trissin, but more grossly; for throats as well as minds were then rather coarser at Paris. All the parts of the actors, but particularly of the actresses, were noted from memory by tradition. Mademoiselle Bauval, an actress of the time of Corneille, Racine, and Molière, recited to me, about sixty years ago or more, the commencement of the part of Emilia, in "Cinna," as it had been played in the first representations by La Beaupré. This modulation resembled the declamation of the present day much less than our modern recitative resembles the manner of reading the newspaper.
I cannot better compare this kind of singing, this modulation, than to the admirable recitative of Lulli, criticised by adorers of double crochets, who have no knowledge of the genius of our language, and who are ignorant what help this melody furnishes to an ingenious and sensible actor.
Theatrical modulation perished with the comedian Duclos, whose only merit being a fine voice without spirit and soul, finally rendered that ridiculous which had been admired in Des Œuillets, and in Champmeslé.
Tragedy is now played dryly; if we were not heated by the pathos of the spectacle and the action, it would be very insipid. Our age, commendable in other things, is the age of dryness.
It is true that among the Romans one actor recited and another made gestures. It was not by chance that the abbé Dubos imagined this pleasant method of declaiming. Titus Livius, who never fails to instruct us in the manners and customs of the Romans, and who, in that respect is more useful than the ingenious and satirical Tacitus, informs us, I say, that Andronicus, being hoarse while singing in the interludes, got another to sing for him while he executed the dance; and thence came the custom of dividing interludes between dancers and singers: "Dicitur cantum egisse magis vigente motu quum nihil vocis usis impediebat." The song is expressed by the dance. "Cantum egisse magis vigente motu." With more vigorous movements.
But they divided not the story of the piece between an actor who only gesticulates and another who only sings. The thing would have been as ridiculous as impracticable.
The art of pantomimes, which are played without speaking, is quite different, and we have seen very striking examples of it; but this art can please only when a marked action is represented, a theatrical event which is easily presented to the imagination of the spectator. It can represent Orosmanes killing Zaïre and killing himself; Semiramis wounded, dragging herself on the frontiers to the tomb of Ninus, and holding her son in her arms. There is no occasion for verses to express these situations by gestures to the sound of a mournful and terrible symphony. But how would two pantomimes paint the dessertation of Maximus and Cinna on monarchical and popular governments?
Apropos of the theatrical execution of the Romans, the abbé Dubos says that the dancers in the interludes were always in gowns. Dancing requires a closer dress. In the Pays de Vaud, a suite of baths built by the Romans, is carefully preserved, the pavement of which is mosaic. This mosaic, which is not decayed, represents dancers dressed like opera dancers. We make not these observations to detect errors in Dubos; there is no merit in having seen this antique monument which he had not seen; and besides, a very solid and just mind might be deceived by a passage of Titus Livius.
