---
type: article
status: Published
slug: "lettres"
title: "Letters on the English (Lettres philosophiques)"
author: "Voltaire"
tradition: "european"
language: "fr"
genre: "essays"
period: "1734"
source_url: "https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_philosophiques"
certainty: observed
source: "https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_philosophiques"
unknowns: none known
---
# Letters on the English (Lettres philosophiques)

## Original

### Letter I

SUR LES QUAKERS.

J’ai cru que la doctrine et l’histoire d’un peuple aussi extraordinaire que les quakers méritaient la curiosité d’un homme raisonnable. Pour m’en instruire, j’allai trouver un des plus célèbres quakers d’Angleterre, qui, après avoir été trente ans dans le commerce, avait su mettre des bornes à sa fortune et à ses désirs, et
s’était retiré dans une campagne auprès de Londres. J’allai le chercher dans sa retraite: c’était une maison petite, mais bien bâtie et ornée de sa seule propreté. Le quaker était un vieillard frais qui n’avait jamais eu de maladie parce qu’il n’avait jamais connu les passions ni l’intempérance: je n’ai point vu en ma vie d’air plus noble ni plus engageant que le sien. Il était vêtu, comme tous ceux de sa religion, d’un habit sans plis dans les côtés, et sans boutons sur les poches ni sur les manches, et portait un grand chapeau à bords rabattus comme nos ecclésiastiques. Il me reçut avec son chapeau sur la tête, et s’avança vers moi sans faire la moindre inclination de corps; mais il y avait plus de politesse dans l’air ouvert et humain de son visage qu’il n’y en a dans l’usage de tirer une jambe derrière l’autre, et de porter à la main ce qui est fait pour couvrir la tête. « Ami, me dit-il, je vois que tu es étranger; si je puis t’être de quelque utilité, tu n’as qu’à parler. — Monsieur, lui dis-je, en me courbant le corps et en glissant un pied vers lui, selon notre coutume, je me flatte que ma juste curiosité ne vous déplaira pas, et que vous voudrez bien me faire l’honneur de m’instruire de votre religion. — Les gens de ton pays, me répondit-il, font trop de compliments et de révérences; mais je n’en ai encore vu aucun qui ait eu la même curiosité que toi. Entre, et dînons d’abord ensemble. » Je fis encore quelques mauvais compliments, parce qu’on ne se défait pas de ses habitudes tout d’un coup; et, après un repas sain et frugal, qui commença et qui finit par une prière à Dieu, je me mis à interroger mon homme. Je débutai par la question que de bons catholiques ont faite plus d’une fois aux huguenots. « Mon cher monsieur, dis-je, êtes-vous baptisé? — Non, me répondit le quaker, et mes confrères ne le sont point. — Comment, morbleu, repris-je, vous n’êtes donc pas chrétiens? — Mon ami, repartit-il d’un ton doux, ne jure point, nous sommes chrétiens; mais nous ne pensons pas que le christianisme consiste à jeter de l’eau sur la tête avec un peu de sel. — Eh! bon Dieu! repris-je, outré de cette impiété, vous avez donc oublié que Jésus-Christ fut baptisé par Jean? — Ami, point de jurements encore un coup, dit le bénin quaker. Le Christ reçut le baptême de Jean,
 mais il ne baptisa jamais personne; nous ne sommes pas les disciples de Jean, mais du Christ. — Ah! comme vous seriez brûlé par la sainte Inquisition, m’écriai-je… Au nom de Dieu, cher homme, que je vous baptise! — S’il ne fallait que cela pour condescendre à ta faiblesse, nous le ferions volontiers, repartit-il gravement; nous ne condamnons personne pour user de la cérémonie du Baptême, mais nous croyons que ceux qui professent une religion toute sainte et toute spirituelle doivent s’abstenir, autant qu’ils le peuvent, des cérémonies judaïques. — En voici bien d’une autre, m’écriai-je; Des cérémonies judaïques! — Oui, mon ami, continua-t-il, et si judaïques que plusieurs juifs encore aujourd’hui usent quelquefois du Baptême de Jean. Consulte l’Antiquité; elle t’apprendra que Jean ne fit que renouveler cette pratique, laquelle était en usage longtemps avant lui parmi les Hébreux, comme le pèlerinage de la Mecque l’était parmi les ismaélites. Jésus voulut bien recevoir le Baptême de Jean, de même qu’il était soumis à la Circoncision; mais, et la Circoncision, et le lavement d’eau doivent être tous deux abolis par le Baptême du Christ, ce Baptême de l’esprit, cette ablution de l’âme qui sauve les hommes. Aussi le précurseur Jean disait: Je vous baptise à la vérité avec de l’eau, mais un autre viendra après moi, plus puissant que moi, et dont je ne suis pas digne de porter les sandales; celui−là vous baptisera avec le feu et le Saint-Esprit. Aussi le grand Apôtre des Gentils, Paul, écrit aux Corinthiens: Le Christ ne m’a pas envoyé pour baptiser, mais pour prêcher l’Évangile; aussi ce même Paul ne baptisa jamais avec de l’eau que deux personnes, encore fut-ce malgré lui; il circoncit son disciple Timothée; les autres Apôtres circoncisaient aussi tous ceux qui voulaient l’être. Es-tu circoncis? ajouta-t-il. Je lui répondis que je n’avais pas cet honneur. « Eh bien, dit−il, ami, tu es chrétien sans être circoncis, et moi, sans être baptisé.

Voilà comme mon saint homme abusait assez spécieusement de trois ou quatre passages de la Sainte Écriture, qui semblaient favoriser sa secte; il oubliait de la meilleure foi du monde une centaine de passages qui l’écrasaient. Je me gardai bien de lui rien contester; il n’y a rien à gagner avec un enthousiaste: il ne faut point s’aviser de dire à un homme les défauts de sa maîtresse, ni à un plaideur le faible de sa cause, ni des raisons à un illuminé; ainsi je passai à d’autres questions.

« À l’égard de la Communion, lui dis−je, comment en usez−vous? − Nous n’en usons point, dit−il. − Quoi! point de Communion? − Non, point d’autre que celle des cœurs. Alors il me cita encore les Écritures. Il me fit un fort beau sermon contre la Communion, et me parla d’un ton inspiré pour me prouver que tous les Sacrements étaient tous d’invention humaine, et que le mot de Sacrement ne se trouvait pas une seule fois dans l’Évangile. « Pardonne, dit−il, à mon ignorance, je ne t’ai pas apporté la centième partie des preuves de ma religion; mais tu peux les voir dans l’Exposition de notre foi par Robert Barclay: c’est un des meilleurs livres qui soient jamais sortis de la main des hommes. Nos ennemis conviennent qu’il est très dangereux, cela prouve combien il est raisonnable. Je lui promis de lire ce livre, et mon quaker me crut déjà converti.

Ensuite il me rendit raison en peu de mots de quelques singularités qui exposent cette secte au mépris des autres. « Avoue, dit−il, que tu as bien eude la peine à t’empêcher de rire quand j’ai répondu à toutes tes civilités avec mon chapeau sur la tête et en te tutoyant; cependant tu me parais trop instruit pour ignorer que du temps du Christ aucune nation ne tombait dans le ridicule de substituer le pluriel au singulier. On disait à César Auguste: je t’aime, je te prie, je te remercie; il ne souffrait pas même qu’on l’appelât monsieur, dominus. Ce ne fut que très longtemps après lui que les hommes s’avisèrent de se faire appeler vous au lieu de tu, comme s’ils étaient doubles, et d’usurper les titres impertinents de Grandeur, d’Éminence, de Sainteté, de divinité même, que des vers de terre donnent à d’autres vers de terre, en les assurant qu’ils sont, avec un profond respect et une fausseté infâme, leurs très humbles et très obéissants serviteurs. C’est pour être plus sur nos gardes contre cet indigne commerce de mensonges et de flatteries que nous tutoyons également les rois et les charbonniers, que nous ne saluons personne, n’ayant pour les hommes que de la charité, et du respect que pour les lois.

« Nous portons aussi un habit un peu différent des autres
hommes, afin que ce soit pour nous un avertissement continuel
de ne leur pas ressembler. Les autres portent les marques de leurs
dignités, et nous celles de l’humilité chrétienne; nous fuyons les
assemblées de plaisir, les spectacles, le jeu, car nous serions bien
à plaindre de remplir de ces bagatelles des cœurs en qui Dieu
doit habiter: nous ne faisons jamais de serments, pas même en
justice; nous pensons que le nom du Très-Haut ne doit pas être
prostitué dans les débats misérables des hommes. Lorsqu’il faut
que nous comparaissions devant les magistrats pour les affaires
des autres (car nous n’avons jamais de procès), nous affirmons la
vérité par un oui ou par un non, et les juges nous en croient sur
notre simple parole, tandis que tant d’autres chrétiens se parjurent
sur l’Évangile. Nous n’allons jamais à la guerre: ce n’est pas que
nous craignions la mort: au contraire, nous bénissons le moment
qui nous unit à l’Être des êtres; mais c’est que nous ne sommes
ni loups, ni tigres, ni dogues, mais hommes, mais chrétiens. Notre
dieu, qui nous a ordonné d’aimer nos ennemis et de souffrir sans
murmure, ne veut pas sans doute que nous passions la mer pour
aller égorger nos frères, parce que des meurtriers vêtus de rouge,
coiffés d’un bonnet haut de deux pieds, enrôlent des citoyens en
faisant du bruit avec deux petits bâtons sur une peau d’âne bien
tendue. Et lorsque, après des batailles gagnées, tout Londres brille
d’illuminations, que le ciel est enflammé de fusées, que l’air retentit
du bruit des actions de grâces, des cloches, des orgues, des canons,
nous gémissons en silence sur ces meurtres qui causent la publique
allégresse. »

### Letter II

sur les quakers.

Telle fut à peu près la conversation que j’eus avec cet homme singulier; mais je fus bien plus surpris quand, le dimanche suivant, il me mena à l’église des quakers. Ils ont plusieurs chapelles à Londres; celle où j’allai est près de ce fameux pilier qu’on appelle le Monument. On était déjà assemblé lorsque j’entrai avec mon conducteur. Il y avait environ quatre cents hommes dans
 l’église, et trois cents femmes: les femmes se cachaient le visage;
les hommes étaient couverts de leurs larges chapeaux; tous
étaient assis, tous dans un profond silence. Je passai au milieu
d’eux sans qu’un seul levât les yeux sur moi. Le silence dura un
quart d’heure. Enfin un d’eux se leva, ôta son chapeau, et, après
quelques soupirs, débita, moitié avec la bouche, moitié avec le
nez, un galimatias tiré, à ce qu’il croyait, de l’Évangile, où ni
lui ni personne n’entendait rien. Quand ce faiseur de contorsions
eut fini son beau monologue, et que l’assemblée se fut
séparée tout édifiée et toute stupide, je demandai à mon homme
pourquoi les plus sages d’entre eux souffraient de pareilles sottises,
« Nous sommes obligés de les tolérer, me dit-il, parce que
nous ne pouvons pas savoir si un homme qui se lève pour parler
sera inspiré par l’esprit ou par la folie; dans le doute, nous écoutons
tout patiemment, nous permettons même aux femmes de
parler. Deux ou trois de nos dévotes se trouvent souvent inspirées
à la fois, et c’est alors qu’il se fait un beau bruit dans la maison
du Seigneur. — Vous n’avez donc point de prêtres? lui dis-je.
— Non, mon ami, dit le quaker, et nous nous en trouvons bien. »
Alors, ouvrant un livre de sa secte, il lut avec emphase ces
paroles: « À Dieu ne plaise que nous osions ordonner à quelqu’un
de recevoir le Saint-Esprit le dimanche à l’exclusion de tous les
autres fidèles! Grâce au ciel, nous sommes les seuls sur la terre
qui n’ayons point de prêtres. Voudrais-tu nous ôter une distinction
si heureuse? Pourquoi abandonnerions-nous notre enfant à
des nourrices mercenaires, quand nous avons du lait à lui donner?
Ces mercenaires domineraient bientôt dans la maison, et
opprimeraient la mère et l’enfant. Dieu a dit: Vous avez reçu
gratis, donnez gratis. Irons-nous, après cette parole, marchander
l’Évangile, vendre l’Esprit-Saint, et faire d’une assemblée de chrétiens
une boutique de marchands? Nous ne donnons point d’argent
à des hommes vêtus de noir pour assister nos pauvres, pour
enterrer nos morts, pour prêcher les fidèles: ces saints emplois
nous sont trop chers pour nous en décharger sur d’autres.

— Mais comment pouvez-vous discerner, insistai-je, si c’est
l’esprit de Dieu qui vous anime dans vos discours? — Quiconque,
dit-il, priera Dieu de l’éclairer, et qui annoncera des vérités évangéliques
qu’il sentira, que celui-là soit sûr que Dieu l’inspire. » Alors il m’accabla de citations de l’Écriture qui démontraient,
selon lui, qu’il n’y a point de christianisme sans une révélation
immédiate, et il ajouta ces paroles remarquables: « Quand tu
fais mouvoir un de tes membres, est-ce ta propre force qui le
remue? Non, sans doute, car ce membre a souvent des mouvements
involontaires. C’est donc celui qui a créé ton corps qui
meut ce corps de terre. Et les idées que reçoit ton âme, est-ce toi
qui les formes? Encore moins, car elles viennent malgré toi.
C’est donc le Créateur de ton âme qui te donne ces idées; mais,
comme il a laissé à ton cœur la liberté, il donne à ton esprit les
idées que ton cœur mérite; tu vis dans Dieu, tu agis, tu penses
dans Dieu: tu n’as donc qu’à ouvrir les yeux à cette lumière qui
éclaire tous les hommes, alors tu verras la vérité, et la feras voir.
— Eh! voilà le P. Malebranche tout pur! m’écriai-je. — Je connais
ton Malebranche, dit-il, il était un peu quaker, mais il ne
l’était pas assez. »

Ce sont là les choses les plus importantes que j’ai apprises
touchant la doctrine des quakers. Dans la première lettre, vous
aurez leur histoire, que vous trouverez encore plus singulière
que leur doctrine.

### Letter III

sur les quakers.

Vous avez déjà vu que les quakers datent depuis Jésus-Christ,
qui, selon eux, est le premier quaker, La religion,
disent-ils, fut corrompue presque après sa mort, et resta dans
cette corruption environ seize cents années; mais il y avait toujours
quelques quakers cachés dans le monde, qui prenaient soin
de conserver le feu sacré éteint partout ailleurs, jusqu’à ce qu’enfin
cette lumière s’étendit en Angleterre en l’an 1642.

Ce fut dans le temps que trois ou quatre sectes déchiraient la
Grande-Bretagne par des guerres civiles entreprises au nom de
Dieu qu’un nommé George Fox, du comté de Leicester fils d’un
ouvrier en soie, s’avisa de prêcher en vrai apôtre, à ce qu’il prétendait,
c’est-à-dire sans savoir ni lire ni écrire; c’était un jeune homme de vingt-cinq ans, de mœurs irréprochables, et saintement
fou. Il était vêtu de cuir depuis les pieds jusqu’à la tête; il
allait de village en village criant contre la guerre et contre le
clergé. S’il n’avait prêché que contre les gens de guerre, il n’avait
rien à craindre; mais il attaquait les gens d’église: il fut bientôt
mis en prison. Ou le mena à Darby devant le juge de paix. Fox
se présenta au juge avec son bonnet de cuir sur la tête. Un sergent
lui donna un grand soufflet, en lui disant: « Gueux, ne
sais-tu pas qu’il faut paraître tête nue devant monsieur le juge? »
Fox tendit l’autre joue, et pria le sergent de vouloir bien lui donner
un autre soufflet pour l’amour de Dieu. Le juge de Darby voulut
lui faire prêter serment avant de l’interroger. « Mon ami, sache,
dit-il au juge, que je ne prends jamais le nom de Dieu en vain. »
Le juge, en colère d’être tutoyé, et voulant qu’on jurât, l’envoya
aux petites-maisons de Darby pour y être fouetté. Fox alla, en
louant Dieu, à l’hôpital des fous, où l’on ne manqua pas d’exécuter
la sentence à la rigueur. Ceux qui lui infligèrent la pénitence
du fouet furent bien surpris quand il les pria de lui appliquer
encore quelques coups de verges pour le bien de son âme. Ces
messieurs ne se firent pas prier; Fox eut sa double dose, dont il
les remercia très-cordialement; puis il se mit à les prêcher.
D’abord on rit, ensuite on l’écouta; et, comme l’enthousiasme est
une maladie qui se gagne, plusieurs furent persuadés, et ceux qui
l’avaient fouetté devinrent ses premiers disciples.

Délivré de la prison, il courut les champs avec une douzaine
de prosélytes, prêchant toujours contre le clergé, et fouetté de
temps en temps. Un jour, étant mis au pilori, il harangua tout le
peuple avec tant de force qu’il convertit une cinquantaine
d’auditeurs, et mit le reste tellement dans ses intérêts qu’on le
tira en tumulte du trou où il était; on alla chercher le curé
anglican dont le crédit avait fait condamner Fox à ce supplice,
et on le piloria à sa place.

Il osa bien convertir quelques soldats de Cromwell, qui renoncèrent au métier de tuer, et refusèrent de prêter le serment.
Cromwell ne voulait pas d’une secte où l’on ne se battait point,
de même que Sixte-Quint augurait mal d’une secte dove non si chiavava.
Il se servit de son pouvoir pour persécuter ces nouveaux
venus. On en remplissait les prisons; mais les persécutions ne
servent presque jamais qu’à faire des prosélytes. Ils sortaient de
leurs prisons affermis dans leur créance, et suivis de leurs geôliers,
qu’ils avaient convertis. Mais voici ce qui contribua le plus
à étendre la secte. Fox se croyait inspiré. Il crut par conséquent
devoir parler d’une manière différente des autres hommes. Il se
mit à trembler, à faire des contorsions et des grimaces, à retenir
son haleine, à la pousser avec violence; la prêtresse de Delphes
n’eût pas mieux fait. En peu de temps il acquit une grande habitude
d’inspiration, et bientôt après il ne fut guère en son pouvoir
de parler autrement. Ce fut le premier don qu’il communiqua
à ses disciples. Ils firent de bonne foi toutes les grimaces de leur
maître, ils tremblaient de toutes leurs forces au moment de l’inspiration.
De là ils eurent le nom de quakers, qui signifie trembleurs.
Le petit peuple s’amusait à les contrefaire. On tremblait, on parlait
du nez, on avait des convulsions, et on croyait avoir le Saint-Esprit.
Il leur fallait quelques miracles, ils en firent.

Le patriarche Fox dit publiquement à un juge de paix, en
présence d’une grande assemblée: « Ami, prends garde à toi,
Dieu te punira bientôt de persécuter les saints. » Ce juge était un
ivrogne qui s’enivrait tous les jours de mauvaise bière et d’eau-de-vie:
il mourut d’apoplexie deux jours après, précisément
comme il venait de signer un ordre pour envoyer quelques quakers
en prison. Cette mort soudaine ne fut point attribuée à
l’intempérance du juge; tout le monde la regarda comme un
effet des prédictions du saint homme.

Cette mort fit plus de quakers que mille sermons et autant de
convulsions n’en auraient pu faire. Cromwell, voyant que leur
nombre augmentait tous les jours, voulut les attirer à son parti:
il leur fit offrir de l’argent, mais ils furent incorruptibles; et il dit
un jour que cette religion était la seule contre laquelle il n’avait
pu prévaloir avec des guinées.

Ils furent quelquefois persécutés sous Charles II, non pour
leur religion, mais pour ne vouloir pas payer les dîmes au clergé, pour tutoyer les magistrats, et refuser de prêter les serments
prescrits par la loi.

Enfin Robert Barclay, Écossais, présenta au roi, en 1675, son
Apologie des Quakers, ouvrage aussi bon qu’il pouvait l’être.
L’épître dédicatoire à Charles II contient, non de basses flatteries.
mais des vérités hardies et des conseils justes, « Tu as goûté,
dit-il à Charles à la fin de cette épître, de la douceur et de l’amertume,
de la prospérité et des plus grands malheurs; tu as été
chassé des pays où tu règnes; tu as senti le poids de l’oppression,
et tu dois savoir combien l’oppresseur est détestable devant Dieu
et devant les hommes. Que si, après tant d’épreuves et de bénédictions,
ton cœur s’endurcissait et oubliait le Dieu qui s’est souvenu
de toi dans tes disgrâces, ton crime en serait plus grand, et
ta condamnation plus terrible. Au lieu donc d’écouter les flatteurs
de ta cour, écoute la voix de ta conscience, qui ne te flattera
jamais. Je suis ton fidèle ami et sujet Barclay, »

Ce qui est plus étonnant, c’est que cette lettre, écrite à un roi
par un particulier obscur, eut son effet, et que la persécution
cessa.

### Letter IV

sur les quakers.

Environ ce temps parut l’illustre Guillaume Penn, qui établit
la puissance des quakers en Amérique, et qui les aurait rendus
respectables en Europe si les hommes pouvaient respecter la
vertu sous les apparences ridicules: il était fils unique du chevalier
Penn, vice-amiral d’Angleterre, et favori du duc d’York,
depuis Jacques II.

Guillaume Penn, à l’âge de quinze ans, rencontra un quaker à
Oxford, où il faisait ses études; ce quaker le persuada, et le jeune
homme, qui était vif, naturellement éloquent, et qui avait de
l’ascendant dans sa physionomie et dans ses manières, gagna
bientôt quelques-uns de ses camarades. Il établit insensiblement une société de jeunes quakers qui s’assemblaient chez lui; de
sorte qu’il se trouva chef de la secte à l’âge de seize ans.

De retour chez le vice-amiral son père au sortir du collège,
au lieu de se mettre à genoux devant lui, et de lui demander sa
bénédiction, selon l’usage des Anglais, il l’aborda le chapeau sur
la tête, et lui dit: « Je suis fort aise, l’ami, de te voir en bonne
santé. » Le vice-amiral crut que son fils était devenu fou; il s’aperçut
bientôt qu’il était quaker. Il mit en usage tous les moyens que la
prudence humaine peut employer pour l’engager à vivre comme
un autre; le jeune homme ne répondit à son père qu’en l’exhortant
à se faire quaker lui-même.

Enfin le père se relâcha à ne lui demander autre chose sinon
qu’il allât voir le roi et le duc d’York le chapeau sous le bras, et
qu’il ne les tutoyât point. Guillaume répondit que sa conscience ne
le lui permettait pas, et le père, indigné et au désespoir, le chassa
de sa maison. Le jeune Penn remercia Dieu de ce qu’il souffrait
déjà pour sa cause: il alla prêcher dans la cité, il y fit beaucoup
de prosélytes.

Les prêches des ministres s’éclaircissaient tous les jours, et
comme Penn était jeune, beau et bien fait, les femmes de la cour
et de la ville accouraient dévotement pour l’entendre. Le patriarche
George Fox vint, du fond de l’Angleterre, le voir à Londres sur
sa réputation; tous deux résolurent de faire des missions dans
les pays étrangers. Ils s’embarquèrent pour la Hollande, après
avoir laissé des ouvriers en assez bon nombre pour avoir soin de
la vigne de Londres. Leurs travaux eurent un heureux succès à
Amsterdam; mais ce qui leur fit le plus d’honneur, et ce qui mit
le plus leur humilité en danger fut la réception que leur fit la
princesse palatine Elisabeth, tante de George Ier, roi d’Angleterre,
femme illustre par son esprit et par son savoir, et à qui Descartes
avait dédié son roman de philosophie.

Elle était alors retirée à la Haye, où elle vit les amis, car c’est
ainsi qu’on appelait alors les quakers en Hollande; elle eut plusieurs
conférences avec eux; ils prêchèrent souvent chez elle, et
s’ils ne firent pas d’elle une parfaite quakeresse, ils avouèrent
au moins qu’elle n’était pas loin du royaume des cieux.

Les amis semèrent aussi en Allemagne, mais ils y recueillirent
peu. On ne goûta pas la mode de tutoyer dans un pays où il faut
prononcer toujours les termes d’altesse et d’excellence, Penn
repassa bientôt en Angleterre, sur la nouvelle de la maladie de
son père; il vint recueillir ses derniers soupirs. Le vice-amiral
se réconcilia avec lui, et l’embrassa avec tendresse, quoiqu’il fût
d’une différente religion; mais Guillaume l’exhorta en vain à
ne point recevoir le sacrement, et à mourir quaker; et le vieux
bonhomme recommanda inutilement à Guillaume d’avoir des
boutons sur ses manches et des ganses à son chapeau,

Guillaume hérita de grands biens, parmi lesquels il se trouvait
des dettes de la couronne pour des avances faites par le
vice-amiral dans des expéditions maritimes. Rien n’était moins
assuré alors que l’argent dû par le roi: Penn fut obligé d’aller
tutoyer Charles II et ses ministres plus d’une fois pour son
paiement. Le gouvernement lui donna, en 1680, au lieu d’argent,
la propriété et la souveraineté d’une province d’Amérique, au sud
de Maryland: voilà un quaker devenu souverain. Il partit pour
ses nouveaux États avec deux vaisseaux chargés de quakers qui
le suivirent. On appela dès lors le pays Pensylvanie, du nom de
Penn; il y fonda la ville de Philadelphie, qui est aujourd’hui
très-florissante. Il commença par faire une ligue avec les Américains
ses voisins: c’est le seul traité entre ces peuples et les chrétiens
qui n’ait point été juré et qui n’ait point été rompu. Le
nouveau souverain fut aussi le législateur de la Pensylvanie: il
donna des lois très-sages, dont aucune n’a été changée depuis
lui, La première est de ne maltraiter personne au sujet de la religion,
et de regarder comme frères tous ceux qui croient un dieu.

À peine eut-il établi son gouvernement que plusieurs marchands
de l’Amérique vinrent peupler cette colonie. Les naturels
du pays, au lieu de fuir dans les forêts, s’accoutumèrent insensiblement
avec les pacifiques quakers: autant ils détestaient les
autres chrétiens conquérants et destructeurs de l’Amérique, autant
ils aimaient ces nouveaux venus. En peu de temps ces prétendus
sauvages, charmés de leurs nouveaux voisins, vinrent en
foule demander à Guillaume Penn de les recevoir au nombre de
ses vassaux. C’était un spectacle bien nouveau qu’un souverain
que tout le monde tutoyait, et à qui on parlait le chapeau sur la tête, un gouvernement sans prêtres, un peuple sans armes, des
citoyens tous égaux, à la magistrature près, et des voisins sans
jalousie.

Guillaume Penn pouvait se vanter d’avoir apporté sur la terre
l’âge d’or dont on parle tant, et qui n’a vraisemblablement existé
qu’en Pensylvanie. Il revint en Angleterre pour les affaires de son
nouveau pays, après la mort de Charles II. Le roi Jacques, qui
avait aimé son père, eut la même affection pour le fils, et ne le
considéra plus comme un sectaire obscur, mais comme un très-grand
homme. La politique du roi s’accordait en cela avec son
goût; il avait envie de flatter les quakers, en abolissant les lois
contre les non-conformistes, afin de pouvoir introduire la religion
catholique à la faveur de cette liberté. Toutes les sectes d’Angleterre
virent le piège, et ne s’y laissèrent pas prendre; elles sont
toujours réunies contre le catholicisme, leur ennemi commun.
Mais Penn ne crut pas devoir renoncer à ses principes pour favoriser
des protestants qui le haïssaient, contre un roi qui l’aimait.
Il avait établi la liberté de conscience en Amérique, il n’avait pas
envie de paraître vouloir la détruire en Europe; il demeura donc
fidèle à Jacques II, au point qu’il fut généralement accusé d’être
jésuite. Cette calomnie l’affligea sensiblement; il fut obligé de
s’en justifier par des écrits publics. Cependant le malheureux
Jacques II, qui, comme presque tous les Stuart, était un composé
de grandeur et de faiblesse, et qui, comme eux, en fit trop et
trop peu, perdit son royaume sans qu’il y eût une épée de tirée,
et sans qu’on pût dire comment la chose arriva.

Toutes les sectes anglaises reçurent de Guillaume III et de son
parlement cette même liberté qu’elles n’avaient pas voulu tenir
des mains de Jacques. Ce fut alors que les quakers commencèrent
à jouir, par la force des lois, de tous les privilèges dont ils
sont en possession aujourd’hui. Penn, après avoir vu enfin sa
secte établie sans contradiction dans le pays de sa naissance,
retourna en Pensylvanie. Les siens et les Américains le reçurent
avec des larmes de joie, comme un père qui revenait voir ses
enfants. Toutes ses lois avaient été religieusement observées pendant
son absence, ce qui n’était arrivé à aucun législateur avant
lui. Il resta quelques années à Philadelphie; il en partit enfin
malgré lui pour aller solliciter à Londres de nouveaux  avantages en faveur du commerce des Pensylvains: il ne les revit
plus; il mourut à Londres en 1718. Ce fut sous le règne de Charles II
qu’ils obtinrent le noble privilège de ne jamais jurer, et
d’être crus en justice sur leur parole. Le chancelier, homme
d’esprit, leur parla ainsi: « Mes amis, Jupiter ordonna un jour
que toutes les bêtes de somme vinssent se faire ferrer. Les ânes
représcntèrent que leur loi ne le permettait pas. — Eh bien! dit
Jupiter, on ne vous ferrera point; mais au premier faux pas que
vous ferez, vous aurez cent coups d’étrivières. »

Je ne puis deviner quel sera le sort de la religion des quakers
en Amérique; mais je vois qu’elle dépérit tous les jours à Londres.
Pour tout pays, la religion dominante, quand elle ne persécute
point, engloutit à la longue toutes les autres. Les quakers
ne peuvent être membres du parlement, ni posséder aucun office,
parce qu’il faudrait prêter serment, et qu’ils ne veulent point
jurer. Ils sont réduits à la nécessité de gagner de l’argent par le
commerce; leurs enfants, enrichis par l’industrie de leurs pères,
veulent jouir, avoir des honneurs, des boutons, et des manchettes;
ils sont honteux d’être appelés quakers, et se font protestants,
pour être à la mode.

### Letter V

sur la religion anglicane.

L’Angleterre est le pays des sectes:
Multæ sunt mansiones in domo patris mei. Un Anglais, comme homme libre, va au ciel
par le chemin qui lui plaît.

Cependant, quoique chacun puisse ici servir Dieu à sa mode, leur véritable religion, celle où l’on fait fortune, est la secte des
épiscopaux, appelée l’Église anglicane, ou l’Église par excellence.
On ne peut avoir d’emploi, ni en Angleterre ni en Irlande, sans
être du nombre des fidèles anglicans; cette raison, qui est une
excellente preuve, a converti tant de non-conformistes qu’aujourd’hui
il n’y a pas la vingtième partie de la nation qui soit
hors du giron de l’Église dominante.

Le clergé anglican a retenu beaucoup de cérémonies catholiques,
et surtout celle de recevoir les dîmes avec une attention
très-scrupuleuse. Ils ont aussi la pieuse ambition d’être les
maîtres: car quel vicaire de village ne voudrait pas être pape!

De plus ils fomentent autant qu’ils peuvent dans leurs ouailles
un saint zèle contre les non-conformistes. Ce zèle était assez vif
sous le gouvernement des torys dans les dernières années de la
reine Anne; mais il ne s’étendait pas plus loin qu’à casser quelquefois
les vitres des chapelles hérétiques: car la rage des sectes
a fini en Angleterre avec les guerres civiles, et ce n’était plus sous
la reine Anne que les bruits sourds d’une mer encore agitée longtemps
après la tempête. Quand les whigs et les torys déchirèrent
leur pays, comme autrefois les guelfes et les gibelins désolèrent
l’Italie, il fallut bien que la religion entrât dans les partis. Les torys
étaient pour l’épiscopat; les whigs le voulaient abolir, mais ils
se sont contentés de l’abaisser quand ils ont été les maîtres.

Du temps que le comte Harley d’Oxford et milord Bolingbroke
faisaient boire la santé des torys, l’Église anglicane les regardait
comme les défenseurs de ses saints privilèges. L’assemblée du bas
clergé, qui est une espèce de chambre des communes composée
d’ecclésiastiques, avait alors quelque crédit; elle jouissait au
moins de la liberté de s’assembler, de raisonner de controverse,
et de faire brûler de temps en temps quelques livres impies,
c’est-à-dire écrits contre elle. Le ministère, qui est whig aujourd’hui,
ne permet pas à ces messieurs de tenir leur assemblée; ils
sont réduits dans l’obscurité de leur paroisse au triste emploi de
prier Dieu pour le gouvernement, qu’ils ne seraient pas fâchés
de troubler. Quant aux évêques, qui sont vingt-six en tout, ils ont
séance dans la chambre haute en dépit des whigs, parce que la
coutume ou l’abus de les regarder comme barons subsiste encore. » Il y a une clause dans le serment que l’on prête à l’État, laquelle
exerce bien la patience chrétienne de ces messieurs.

On y promet d’être de l’Église, comme elle est établie par la
loi. Il n’y a guère d’évêque, de doyen, d’archiprêtre, qui ne pense
être de droit divin; c’est donc un grand sujet de mortification
pour eux d’être obligés d’avouer qu’ils tiennent tout d’une misérable
loi faite par des profanes laïques. Un savant religieux (le
P. Courayer) a écrit depuis peu un livre pour prouver la validité
et la succession des ordinations anglicanes. Cet ouvrage a été
proscrit en France; mais croyez-vous qu’il ait plu au ministère
d’Angleterre? Point du tout. Les maudits whigs se soucient très-peu
que la succession épiscopale ait été interrompue chez eux
ou non, et que l’évêque Parker ait été consacré dans un cabaret
(comme on le veut) ou dans une église; ils aiment mieux même
que les évêques tirent leur autorité du parlement que des apôtres.
Le lord B. dit que cette idée du droit divin ne servirait qu’à
faire des tyrans en camail et en rochet, mais que la loi fait des
citoyens,

À l’égard des mœurs, le clergé anglican est plus réglé que celui
de France; et en voici la cause. Tous les ecclésiastiques sont
élevés dans l’université d’Oxford ou dans celle de Cambridge, loin
de la corruption de la capitale: ils ne sont appelés aux dignités
de l’Église que très-tard, et dans un âge où les hommes n’ont
d’autres passions que l’avarice, lorsque leur ambition manque
d’aliment. Les emplois sont ici la récompense des longs services
dans l’Église aussi bien que dans l’armée; on n’y voit point de
jeunes gens évêques ou colonels au sortir du collège. De plus,
les prêtres sont presque tous mariés. La mauvaise grâce contractée
dans l’université, et le peu de commerce qu’on a ici avec
les femmes, font que d’ordinaire un évêque est forcé de se contenter
de la sienne. Les prêtres vont quelquefois au cabaret, parce
que l’usage le leur permet; et s’ils s’enivrent, c’est sérieusement
et sans scandale.

Cet être indéfinissable, qui n’est ni ecclésiastique ni séculier, en un mot, ce que l’on appelle un abbé, est une espèce inconnue
en Angleterre; les ecclésiastiques sont tous ici réservés et presque
tous pédants. Quand ils apprennent qu’en France de jeunes gens
connus par leurs débauches, et élevés à la prélature par des intrigues
de femmes, font publiquement l’amour, s’égayent à composer
des chansons tendres, donnent tous les jours des soupers délicats
et longs, et de là vont implorer les lumières du Saint-Esprit, et se
nomment hardiment les successeurs des apôtres, ils remercient
Dieu d’être protestants. Mais ce sont de vilains hérétiques à brûler
à tous les diables, comme dit maître François Rabelais; c’est
pourquoi je ne me mêle point de leurs affaires.

### Letter VI

sur les presbytériens.

La religion anglicane ne règne qu’en Angleterre et en Irlande.
Le presbytérianisme est la religion dominante en Écosse. Ce
presbytérianisme n’est autre chose que le calvinisme pur, tel qu’il
avait été établi en France et qu’il subsiste à Genève. Comme les
prêtres de cette secte ne reçoivent de leurs églises que des gages
très-médiocres, et que par conséquent ils ne peuvent vivre dans
le même luxe que les évêques, ils ont pris le parti naturel de
crier contre les honneurs où ils ne peuvent atteindre. Figurez-vous
l’orgueilleux Diogène qui foulait aux pieds l’orgueil de Platon:
les presbytériens d’Écosse ne ressemblent pas mal à ce fier
et gueux raisonneur. Ils traitèrent le roi Charles II avec bien
moins d’égards que Diogène n’avait traité Alexandre. Car lorsqu’ils
prirent les armes pour lui contre Cromwell, qui les avait
trompés, ils firent essuyer à ce pauvre roi quatre sermons par
jour; ils lui défendaient de jouer; ils le mettaient en pénitence;
si bien que Charles se lassa bientôt d’être roi de ces pédants, et
s’échappa de leurs mains comme un écolier se sauve du collège.

Devant un jeune et vif bachelier français, dans les écoles de théologie, et le soir chantant avec les dames,
un théologien anglican est un Caton; mais ce Caton paraît un
galant devant un presbytérien d’Écosse. Ce dernier affecte une
démarche grave, un air fâché, porte un vaste chapeau, un long
manteau par-dessus un habit court, prêche du nez, et donne le
nom de prostituée de Babylone à toutes les églises où quelques
ecclésiastiques sont assez heureux pour avoir cinquante mille
livres de rente, et où le peuple est assez bon pour le souffrir, et
pour les appeler Monseigneur, votre Grandeur, votre Éminence.

Ces messieurs, qui ont aussi quelques églises en Angleterre,
ont mis les airs graves et sévères à la mode en ce pays. C’est à
eux qu’on doit la sanctification du dimanche dans les trois
royaumes; il est défendu ce jour-là de travailler et de se divertir,
ce qui est le double de la sévérité des églises catholiques; point
d’opéra, point de comédie, point de concerts à Londres le
dimanche; les cartes même y sont si expressément défendues
qu’il n’y a que les personnes de qualité, et ce qu’on appelle les
honnêtes gens qui jouent ce jour-là. Le reste de la nation va au
sermon, au cabaret, et chez des filles de joie.

Quoique la secte épiscopale et la presbytérienne soient les
deux dominantes dans la Grande-Bretagne, toutes les autres y
sont bien venues et vivent assez bien ensemble, pendant que la
plupart de leurs prédicants se détestent réciproquement avec
presque autant de cordialité qu’un janséniste damne un jésuite.

Entrez dans la bourse de Londres, cette place plus respectable
que bien des cours, vous y voyez rassemblés les députés de toutes
les nations pour l’utilité des hommes. Là le juif, le mahométan,
et le chrétien, traitent l’un avec l’autre comme s’ils étaient de la
même religion, et ne donnent le nom d’infidèles qu’à ceux qui
font banqueroute; là le presbytérien se fie à l’anabaptiste, et l’anglican
reçoit la promesse du quaker. Au sortir de ces pacifiques et
libres assemblées, les uns vont à la synagogue, les autres vont
boire: celui-ci va se faire baptiser dans une grande cuve au nom
du Père, par le Fils, au Saint-Esprit; celui-là fait couper le prépuce
de son fils, et fait marmotter sur l’enfant des paroles hébraïques
qu’il n’entend point; ces autres vont dans leur église
attendre l’inspiration de Dieu leur chapeau sur la tête: et tous
sont contents.

S’il n’y avait en Angleterre qu’une religion, son despotisme serait à craindre; s’il n’y en avait que deux, elles se couperaient
la gorge; mais il y en a trente, et elles vivent en paix et heureuses.

### Letter VII

sur les sociniens, ou ariens, ou anti-trinitaires.

Il y a en Angleterre une petite secte composée d’ecclésiastiques
et de quelques séculiers très-savants qui ne prennent ni le nom
d’ariens ni celui de sociniens, mais qui ne sont point du tout de
l’avis de saint Athanase sur le chapitre de la Trinité, et qui vous
disent nettement que le Père est plus grand que le Fils.

Vous souvenez-vous d’un certain évêque orthodoxe qui, pour
convaincre un empereur de la consubstantialité s’avisa de
prendre le fils de l’empereur sous le menton, et de lui tirer le nez
en présence de Sa sacrée Majesté? L’empereur allait faire jeter
l’évêque par les fenêtres, quand le bonhomme lui dit ces belles
et convaincantes paroles: « Seigneur, si Votre Majesté est si
fâchée que l’on manque de respect à son fils, comment pensez-vous
que Dieu le Père traitera ceux qui refusent à Jésus-Christ les
titres qui lui sont dus? » Les gens dont je vous parle disent que
le saint évêque était fort malavisé, que son argument n’était rien
moins que concluant, et que l’empereur devait lui répondre:
« Apprenez qu’il y a deux façons de me manquer de respect: la
première, de ne rendre pas assez d’honneur à mon fils; et la
seconde, de lui en rendre autant qu’à moi. »

Quoi qu’il en soit, le parti d’Arius commence à revivre en
Angleterre aussi bien qu’en Hollande et en Pologne. Le grand
Newton faisait à cette opinion l’honneur de la favoriser. Ce philosophe
pensait que les unitaires raisonnaient plus géométriquement
que nous. Mais le plus ferme patron de la doctrine arienne
est l’illustre docteur Clarke. Cet homme est d’une vertu rigide
et d’un caractère doux, plus amateur de ses opinions que passionné
pour faire des prosélytes, uniquement occupé de calculs et de démonstrations, aveugle et sourd pour tout le reste, une
vraie machine à raisonnements.

C’est lui qui est l’auteur d’un livre assez peu entendu, mais
estimé, sur l’existence de Dieu, et d’un autre plus intelligible,
mais assez méprisé, sur la vérité de la religion chrétienne.

Il ne s’est point engagé dans les belles disputes scolastiques
que notre ami… appelle de vénérables billevesées; il s’est contenté
de faire imprimer un livre qui contient tous les témoignages
des premiers siècles pour et contre les unitaires, et a laissé au
lecteur le soin de compter les voix et de juger. Ce livre du docteur
lui a attiré beaucoup de partisans, mais l’a empêché d’être archevêque
de Cantorbéry; car lorsque la reine Anne voulut lui
donner ce poste, un docteur nommé Gibson, qui avait sans doute ses raisons, dit à la reine: « Madame, M. Clarke est le plus savant
et le plus honnête homme du royaume; il ne lui manque qu’une
chose. — Et quoi? dit la reine. — C’est d’être chrétien », dit le
docteur bénévole. Je crois que Clarke s’est trompé dans son
calcul, et qu’il valait mieux être primat orthodoxe d’Angleterre
que curé arien.

Vous voyez quelles révolutions arrivent dans les opinions
comme dans les empires. Le parti d’Arius, après trois cents ans
de triomphe et douze siècles d’oubli, renaît enfin de sa cendre;
mais il prend très-mal son temps de reparaître dans un âge où
tout le monde est rassasié de disputes et de sectes: celle-ci est
encore trop petite pour obtenir la liberté des assemblées publiques:
elle l’obtiendra sans doute si elle devient plus nombreuse;
mais on est si tiède à présent sur tout cela qu’il n’y a plus guère
de fortune à faire pour une religion nouvelle ou renouvelée.
N’est-ce pas une chose plaisante que Luther, Calvin, Zuingle, tous
écrivains qu’on ne peut lire, aient fondé des sectes qui partagent
l’Europe; que l’ignorant Mahomet ait donné une religion à l’Asie
et à l’Afrique, et que MM. Newton, Clarke, Locke, Leclerc, les plus grands philosophes et les meilleures plumes de leur temps,
aient pu à peine venir à bout d’établir un petit troupeau!

Voilà ce que c’est que de venir au monde à propos. Si le cardinal
de Retz reparaissait aujourd’hui, il n’ameuterait pas dix
femmes dans Paris.

Si Cromwell renaissait, lui qui a fait couper la tête à son roi
et s’est fait souverain, il serait un simple citoyen de Londres.

### Letter VIII

sur le parlement.

Les membres du parlement d’Angleterre aiment à se comparer
aux anciens Romains autant qu’ils le peuvent.

Il n’y a pas longtemps que M. Shipping, dans la chambre des
communes, commença son discours par ces mots: « La majesté
du peuple anglais serait blessée, etc. » La singularité de l’expression
causa un grand éclat de rire; mais, sans se déconcerter, il
répéta les mêmes paroles d’un air ferme, et on ne rit plus. J’avoue
que je ne vois rien de commun entre la majesté du peuple anglais
et celle du peuple romain, encore moins entre leurs gouvernements;
il y a un sénat à Londres dont quelques membres sont
soupçonnés, quoique à tort sans doute, de vendre leurs voix dans
l’occasion, comme on faisait à Rome: voilà toute la ressemblance.
D’ailleurs les deux nations me paraissent entièrement différentes,
soit en bien, soit en mal. On n’a jamais connu chez les Romains
la folie horrible des guerres de religion: cette abomination était
réservée à des dévots prêcheurs d’humilité et de patience. Marius
et Sylla, Pompée et César, Antoine et Auguste, ne se battaient
point pour décider si le flamen devait porter sa chemise par-dessus
sa robe, ou sa robe par-dessus sa chemise, et si les poulets sacrés
devaient manger et boire, ou bien manger seulement, pour qu’on
prît les augures. Les Anglais se sont fait pendre autrefois réciproquement
à leurs assises, et se sont détruits en bataille rangée
pour des querelles de pareille espèce; la secte des épiscopaux et
le presbytérianisme ont tourné pour un temps ces têtes  mélancoliques. Je m’imagine que pareille sottise ne leur arrivera plus;
ils me paraissent devenir sages à leurs dépens, et je ne leur vois
nulle envie de s’égorger dorénavant pour des syllogismes. Toutefois,
qui peut répondre des hommes?

Voici une différence plus essentielle entre Rome et l’Angleterre,
qui met tout l’avantage du côté de la dernière: c’est que le fruit
des guerres civiles de Rome a été l’esclavage, et celui des troubles
d’Angleterre, la liberté. La nation anglaise est la seule de la terre
qui soit parvenue à régler le pouvoir des rois en leur résistant,
et qui d’efforts en efforts ait enfin établi ce gouvernement sage où
le prince, tout-puissant pour faire du bien, aies mains liées pour
faire du mal; où les seigneurs sont grands sans insolence et sans
vassaux, et où le peuple partage le gouvernement sans confusion.

La chambre des pairs et celle des communes sont les arbitres
de la nation, le roi est le surarbitre. Cette balance manquait aux
Romains: les grands et le peuple étaient toujours en division à
Rome, sans qu’il y eût un pouvoir mitoyen qui pût les accorder.
Le sénat de Rome, qui avait l’injuste et punissable orgueil de ne
vouloir rien partager avec les plébéiens, ne connaissait d’autre
secret, pour les éloigner du gouvernement, que de les occuper
toujours dans les guerres étrangères. Il regardait le peuple comme
une bête féroce qu’il fallait lâcher sur leurs voisins de peur qu’elle
ne dévorât ses maîtres: ainsi le plus grand défaut du gouvernement
des Romains en fit des conquérants; c’est parce qu’ils étaient
malheureux chez eux qu’ils devinrent les maîtres du monde,
jusqu’à ce qu’enfin leurs divisions les rendirent esclaves.

Le gouvernement d’Angleterre n’est point fait pour un si
grand éclat, ni pour une fin si funeste; son but n’est point la
brillante folie de faire des conquêtes, mais d’empêcher que ses
voisins n’en fassent; ce peuple n’est pas seulement jaloux de sa
liberté, il l’est encore de celle des autres. Les Anglais étaient
acharnés contre Louis XIV, uniquement parce qu’ils lui croyaient
de l’ambition.

Il en a coûté sans doute pour établir la liberté en Angleterre;
c’est dans des mers de sang qu’on a noyé l’idole du pouvoir despotique;
mais les Anglais ne croient point avoir acheté trop cher
leurs lois. Les autres nations n’ont pas eu moins de troubles,
n’ont pas versé moins de sang qu’eux: mais ce sang qu’elles ont
répandu pour la cause de leur liberté n’a fait que cimenter leur
servitude.

Ce qui devient une révolution en Angleterre n’est qu’une sédition
dans les autres pays. Une ville prend les armes pour défendre
ses privilèges, soit en Espagne, soit en Barbarie, soit en Turquie:
aussitôt des soldats mercenaires la subjuguent, des bourreaux la
punissent, et le reste de la nation baise ses chaînes. Les Français
pensent que le gouvernement de cette île est plus orageux que la
mer qui l’environne, et cela est vrai: mais c’est quand le roi
commence la tempête, c’est quand il veut se rendre le maître du
vaisseau dont il n’est que le premier pilote. Les guerres civiles de
France ont été plus longues, plus cruelles, plus fécondes eu
crimes, que celles d’Angleterre; mais de toutes ces guerres civiles
aucune n’a eu une liberté sage pour objet.

Dans les temps détestables de Charles IX et de Henri III, il
s’agissait seulement de savoir si on serait l’esclave des Guises. Pour
la dernière guerre de Paris, elle ne mérite que des sifflets; il me
semble que je vois des écoliers qui se mutinent contre le préfet
d’un collège, et qui finissent par être fouettés; le cardinal de
Retz, avec beaucoup d’esprit et de courage mal employés, rebelle
sans aucun sujet, factieux sans dessein, chef de parti sans armée,
cabalait pour cabaler, et semblait faire la guerre civile pour son
plaisir. Le parlement ne savait ce qu’il voulait, ni ce qu’il ne
voulait pas; il levait des troupes par arrêt, il les cassait, il menaçait
et demandait pardon; il mettait à prix la tête du cardinal
Mazarin, et ensuite venait le complimenter en cérémonie: nos
guerres civiles sous Charles VI avaient été cruelles, celles de la
Ligue furent abominables, celle de la Fronde fut ridicule.

Ce qu’on reproche le plus en France aux Anglais, c’est le supplice
de Charles Ier monarque digne d’un meilleur sort, qui
fut traité par ses vainqueurs comme il les eût traités s’il eût été
heureux.

Après tout, regardez d’un côté Charles Ier vaincu en bataille
rangée, prisonnier, jugé, condamné dans Westminster, et décapité;
et de l’autre l’empereur Henri VII empoisonné par son
chapelain en communiant, Henri III assassiné par un moine,
trente assassinats médités contre Henri IV, plusieurs exécutés, et
le dernier privant enfin la France de ce grand roi. Pesez ces
attentats, et jugez.

### Letter IX

sur le gouvernement.

Ce mélange dans le gouvernement d’Angleterre, ce concert
entre les communes, les lords, et le roi, n’a pas toujours subsisté,
L’Angleterre a été longtemps esclave; elle l’a été des Romains,
des Saxons, des Danois, des Français. Guillaume le Conquérant
la gouverna surtout avec un sceptre de fer: il disposait des
biens, de la vie de ses nouveaux sujets comme un monarque
de l’Orient; il défendit, sous peine de mort, qu’aucun Anglais
osât avoir du feu et de la lumière chez lui passé huit heures du
soir, soit qu’il prétendît par là prévenir leurs assemblées nocturnes,
soit qu’il voulût essayer, par une défense si bizarre,
jusqu’où peut aller le pouvoir des hommes sur d’autres hommes.

Il est vrai qu’avant et après Guillaume le Conquérant les
Anglais ont eu des parlements: ils s’en vantent comme si ces
assemblées, appelées alors parlements, composées de tyrans
ecclésiastiques, et de pillards nommés barons, avaient été les
gardiens de la liberté et de la félicité publique.

Les barbares qui des bords de la mer Baltique fondirent dans le reste de l’Europe, apportèrent avec eux l’usage des états
ou parlements dont on fait tant de bruit, et qu’on connaît si peu.
Les rois alors n’étaient point despotiques, cela est vrai: et c’est
précisément par cette raison que les peuples gémissaient dans
une servitude misérable. Les chefs de ces sauvages qui avaient
ravagé la France, l’Italie, l’Espagne, et l’Angleterre, se firent
monarques; leurs capitaines partagèrent entre eux les terres des
vaincus: de là ces margraves, ces lairds, ces barons, ces sous-tyrans,
qui disputaient souvent avec des rois mal affermis les
dépouilles des peuples. C’étaient des oiseaux de proie combattant
contre un aigle pour sucer le sang des colombes: chaque peuple
avait cent tyrans au lieu d’un bon maître. Des prêtres se mirent
bientôt de la partie. De tout temps le sort des Gaulois, des Germains,
des insulaires d’Angleterre, avait été d’être gouvernés par
leurs druides et par les chefs de leurs villages, ancienne espèce
de barons, mais moins tyrans que leurs successeurs. Ces druides
se disaient médiateurs entre la Divinité et les hommes; ils faisaient
des lois, ils excommuniaient, ils condamnaient à mort. Les
évêques succédèrent peu à peu à leur autorité temporelle dans le
gouvernement goth et vandale. Les papes se mirent à leur tête;
et, avec des brefs, des bulles, et des moines, ils firent trembler
les rois, les déposèrent, les firent assassiner, et tirèrent à eux tout
l’argent qu’ils purent de l’Europe. L’imbécile Inas, l’un des
tyrans de l’heptarchie d’Angleterre, fut le premier qui dans un
pèlerinage à Rome se soumit à payer le denier de saint Pierre
(ce qui était environ un écu de notre monnaie) pour chaque maison
de son territoire. Toute l’île suivit bientôt cet exemple: l’Angleterre
devint petit à petit une province du pape, le saint-père
y envoyait de temps en temps ses légats pour y lever des impôts
exorbitants. Jean sans Terre fit enfin une cession en bonne forme
de son royaume à Sa Sainteté, qui l’avait excommunié; et les
barons, qui n’y trouvèrent pas leur compte, chassèrent ce misérable
roi et mirent à sa place Louis VIII, père de saint Louis,
roi de France; mais ils se dégoûtèrent bientôt de ce nouveau
venu, et lui firent repasser la mer.

Tandis que les barons, les évêques, les papes, déchiraient
tous ainsi l’Angleterre, où tous voulaient commander, le peuple,
la plus nombreuse, la plus utile, et même la plus vertueuse partie
des hommes, composée de ceux qui étudient les lois et les
sciences, des négociants, des artisans, des laboureurs enfin, qui
exercent la première et la plus méprisée des professions; le peuple,
dis-je, était regardé par eux comme des animaux au-dessous de
l’homme. Il s’en fallait bien que les communes eussent alors part
au gouvernement: c’étaient des vilains; leur travail, leur sang,
appartenaient à leurs maîtres, qui s’appelaient nobles. Le plus
grand nombre des hommes était en Europe ce qu’ils sont encore
en plusieurs endroits du monde, serfs d’un seigneur, espèce de
bétail qu’on vend et qu’on achète avec la terre. Il a fallu des
siècles pour rendre justice à l’humanité, pour sentir qu’il était
horrible que le grand nombre semât et que le petit recueillît;
et n’est-ce pas un bonheur pour les Français que l’autorité de
ces petits brigands ait été éteinte en France par la puissance légitime
des rois, comme elle l’a été en Angleterre par celle du roi
et de la nation?

Heureusement, dans les secousses que les querelles des rois
et des grands donnaient aux empires, les fers des nations se sont
plus ou moins relâchés; la liberté est née en Angleterre des querelles
des tyrans; les barons forcèrent Jean sans Terre et Henri III
à accorder cette fameuse charte dont le principal but était à la
vérité de mettre les rois dans la dépendance des lords, mais dans
laquelle le reste de la nation fut un peu favorisé, afin que dans
l’occasion elle se rangeât du parti de ses prétendus protecteurs.
Cette grande charte, qui est regardée comme l’origine sacrée des
libertés anglaises, fait bien voir elle-même combien peu la liberté
était connue. Le titre seul prouve que le roi se croyait absolu de
droit, et que les barons et le clergé même ne le forçaient à se
relâcher de ce droit prétendu que parce qu’ils étaient les plus
forts.

Voici comme commence la grande charte: « Nous accordons de notre libre volonté les priviléges suivants aux archevêques, évêques, abbés, prieurs, et barons de notre royaume, etc. »

Dans les articles de cette charte il n’est pas dit un mot de la chambre des communes, preuve qu’elle n’existait pas encore, ou qu’elle existait sans pouvoir. On y spécifie les hommes libres d’Angleterre: triste démonstration qu’il y en avait qui ne l’étaient pas. On voit par l’article 32 que les hommes prétendus libres devaient le service à leur seigneur. Une telle liberté tenait encore beaucoup de l’esclavage.

Par l’article 21, le roi ordonne que ses officiers ne pourront dorénavant prendre de force les chevaux et les charrettes des hommes libres qu’en payant. Ce règlement parut au peuple une vraie liberté, parce qu’il ôtait une plus grande tyrannie,

Henri VII, conquérant et politique heureux, qui faisait semblant d’aimer les barons, mais qui les haïssait et les craignait, s’avisa de procurer l’aliénation de leurs terres. Par là les vilains, qui, dans la suite, acquirent du bien par leurs travaux, achetèrent les châteaux des illustres pairs qui s’étaient ruinés par leurs folies. Peu à peu toutes les terres changèrent de maîtres.

La chambre des communes devint de jour en jour plus puissante, les familles des anciens pairs s’éteignirent avec le temps; et, comme il n’y a proprement que les pairs qui soient nobles en Angleterre dans la rigueur de la loi, il n’y aurait presque plus de noblesse en ce pays-là si les rois n’avaient pas créé de nouveaux barons de temps en temps, et conservé le corps des pairs, qu’ils avaient tant craint autrefois, pour l’opposer à celui des communes, devenu trop redoutable.

Tous ces nouveaux pairs, qui composent la chambre haute, reçoivent du roi leur titre, et rien de plus, puisque aucun d’eux n’a la terre dont il porte le nom: l’un est duc de Dorset, et n’a pas un pouce de terre en Dorsetshire; l’autre est comte d’un village, qui sait à peine où ce village est situé; ils ont du pouvoir dans le parlement, non ailleurs.

Vous n’entendez point ici parler de haute, moyenne, et basse justice, ni du droit de chasser sur les terres d’un citoyen, lequel n’a pas la liberté de tirer un coup de fusil sur son propre champ.

Un homme, parce qu’il est noble ou parce qu’il est prêtre, n’est point ici exempt de payer certaines taxes; tous les impôts sont réglés par la Chambre des Communes, qui, n’étant que la seconde par son rang, est la première par son crédit.

Les seigneurs et les évêques peuvent bien rejeter le bill des Communes lorsqu’il s’agit de lever de l’argent, mais il ne leur est pas permis d’y rien changer; il faut ou qu’ils le reçoivent ou qu’ils le rejettent sans restriction. Quand le bill est confirmé par les lords et approuvé par le roi, alors tout le monde paye; chacun donne, non selon sa qualité (ce qui serait absurde), mais selon son revenu; il n’y a point de taille ni de capitation arbitraire, mais une taxe réelle sur les terres; elles ont été évaluées toutes sous le fameux roi Guillaume III, et mises au-dessous de leur prix.

La taxe subsiste toujours la même, quoique les revenus des terres aient augmenté; ainsi personne n’est foulé, et personne ne se plaint. Le paysan n’a point les pieds meurtris par des sabots, il mange du pain blanc, il est bien vêtu, il ne craint point d’augmenter le nombre de ses bestiaux ni de couvrir son toit de tuiles, de peur que l’on ne hausse ses impôts l’année d’après. On y voit beaucoup de paysans qui ont environ cinq ou six cent livres sterling de revenu, et qui ne dédaignent pas de continuer à cultiver la terre qui les a enrichis, et dans laquelle ils vivent libres.

### Letter X

SUR LE COMMERCE.

 Depuis le malheur de Carthage, aucun peuple ne fut puissant à la fois par le commerce et par où Venise donna cet exemple. Les Portugais, pour avoir passé le cap de Bonne-Espérance, ont quelque temps été de grands seigneurs sur les côtes de l’Inde, et jamais redoutables en Europe. Les Provinces-Unies n’ont été guerrières que malgré elles; et ce n’est pas comme unies entre elles, mais comme unies avec l’Angleterre, qu’elles ont prêté la main pour tenir la balance de l’Europe au commencement du XVIIIe siècle.

Carthage, Venise et Amsterdam, ont été puissantes; mais elles ont fait comme ceux qui, parmi nous, ayant amassé de l’argent par le négoce, achètent des terres seigneuriales. Ni Carthage, ni Venise, ni la Hollande, ni aucun peuple, n’a commencé par être guerrier, et même conquérant, pour finir par être marchand. Les Anglais sont les seuls; ils se sont battus longtemps avant de savoir compter. Ils ne savaient pas, quand ils gagnaient les batailles d’Azincourt, de Crécy, et de Poitiers, qu’ils pouvaient vendre beaucoup de blé et fabriquer de beaux draps qui leur vaudraient bien davantage. Ces seules connaissances ont augmenté, enrichi, fortifié la nation. Londres était pauvre et agreste lorsque Édouard III conquérait la moitié de la France. C’est uniquement parce que les Anglais sont devenus négociants que Londres l’emporte sur Paris par l’étendue de la ville et le nombre des citoyens; qu’ils peuvent mettre en mer deux cents vaisseaux de guerre, et soudoyer des rois alliés. Les peuples d’Écosse sont nés guerriers et spirituels: d’où vient que leur pays est devenu, sous le nom d’union, une province d’Angleterre? C’est que l’Écosse n’a que du charbon, et que l’Angleterre a de l’étain fin, de belles laines, d’excellents blés, des manufactures, et des compagnies de commerce.

Quand Louis XIV faisait trembler l’Italie, et que ses armées, déjà maîtresses de la Savoie et du Piémont, étaient prêtes de prendre Turin, il fallut que le prince Eugène marchât du fond de l’Allemagne au secours du duc de Savoie; il n’avait point

d’argent, sans quoi on ne prend ni ne défend les villes. Il eut recours à des marchands anglais: en une demi-heure de temps on lui prêta cinq millions; avec cela il délivra Turin, battit les Français, et écrivit à ceux qui avaient prêté cette somme ce petit billet: « Messieurs, j’ai reçu votre argent, et je me flatte de l’avoir bien employé à votre satisfaction. »

Tout cela donne un juste orgueil à un marchand anglais, et fait qu’il ose se comparer, non sans quelque raison, à un citoyen romain. Aussi le cadet d’un pair du royaume ne dédaigne point le négoce. Milord Townshend, ministre d’État, a un frère qui se contente d’être marchand dans la Cité. Dans le temps que milord Orford gouvernait l’Angleterre, son cadet était facteur à Alep, d’où il ne voulut pas revenir, et où il est mort.

Cette coutume, qui pourtant commence trop à se passer, paraît monstrueuse à des Allemands entêtés de leurs quartiers; ils ne sauraient concevoir que le fils d’un pair d’Angleterre ne soit qu’un riche et puissant bourgeois, au lieu qu’en Allemagne tout est prince; on a vu jusqu’à trente altesses du même nom n’ayant pour tout bien que des armoiries et une noble fierté.

En France, est marquis qui veut; et quiconque arrive à Paris du fond d’une province avec de l’argent à dépenser, et un nom en ac ou en ille, peut dire: Un homme comme moi, un homme de ma qualité, et mépriser souverainement un négociant. Le négociant entend lui-même parler si souvent avec dédain de sa profession qu’il est assez sot pour en rougir; je ne sais pourtant lequel est le plus utile à un État, ou un seigneur bien poudré qui sait précisément à quelle heure le roi se lève, à quelle heure il se couche, et qui se donne des airs de grandeur en jouant le rôle d’esclave dans l’antichambre d’un ministre, ou un négociant qui enrichit son pays, donne de son cabinet des ordres à Surate et au Caire, et contribue au bonheur du monde.

### Letter XI

SUR L’INSERTION DE LA PETITE VÉROLE.

On dit doucement dans l’Europe chrétienne que les Anglais sont des fous et des enragés: des fous, parce qu’ils donnent la petite vérole à leurs enfants pour les empêcher de l’avoir; des
enragés, parce qu’ils communiquent de gaieté de cœur à ces enfants
une maladie certaine et affreuse, dans la vue de prévenir un mal
incertain. Les Anglais, de leur côté, disent: Les autres Européans
sont des lâches et des dénaturés: ils sont lâches, en ce qu’ils craignent de faire un peu de mal à leurs enfants; dénaturés, en ce
qu’ils les exposent à mourir un jour de la petite vérole. Pour juger
laquelle des deux nations a raison, voici l’histoire de cette fameuse insertion dont on parle en France avec tant d’effroi.

Les femmes de Circassie sont, de temps immémorial, dans
l’usage de donner la petite vérole à leurs enfants même à l’âge de
six mois, en leur faisant une incision au bras, et en insérant dans
cette incision une pustule qu’elles ont soigneusement enlevée du
corps d’un autre enfant. Cette pustule fait, dans le bras où elle
est insinuée, l’effet du levain dans un morceau de pâte; elle y
fermente, et répand dans la masse du sang les qualités dont elle
est empreinte. Les boutons de l’enfant à qui l’on a donné cette
petite vérole artificielle servent à porter la même maladie à d’autres.
C’est une circulation presque continuelle en Circassie; et quand
malheureusement il n’y a point de petite vérole dans le pays, on est
aussi embarrassé qu’on l’est ailleurs dans une mauvaise année.

Ce qui a introduit en Circassie cette coutume, qui paraît si étrange à d’autres peuples, est pourtant une cause commune à tous les peuples de la terre: c’est la tendresse maternelle et l’intérêt. Les Circassiens sont pauvres, et leurs filles sont belles; aussi ce sont elles dont ils font le plus de trafic. Ils fournissent de beautés les harems du Grand Seigneur, du sophi de Perse, et de ceux qui sont assez riches pour acheter et pour entretenir cette marchandise précieuse. Ils élèvent ces filles en tout bien et en tout honneur à caresser les hommes, à former des danses pleines de lasciveté et de mollesse, à rallumer, par tous les artifices les plus voluptueux, le goût des maîtres très-dédaigneux à qui elles sont destinées. Ces pauvres créatures répètent tous les jours leur leçon avec leur mère, comme nos petites filles répètent leur catéchisme sans y rien comprendre. Or il arrivait souvent qu’un père et une mère, après avoir bien pris des peines pour donner une bonne éducation à leurs enfants, se voyaient tout d’un coup frustrés de leur espérance. La petite vérole se mettait dans la famille, une fille en mourait, une autre perdait un œil, une troisième relevait avec un gros nez; et les pauvres gens étaient ruinés sans ressource. Souvent même, quand la petite vérole devenait épidémique, le commerce était interrompu pour plusieurs années, ce qui causait une notable diminution dans les sérails de Perse et de Turquie.

Une nation commerçante est toujours fort alerte sur ses intérêts, et ne néglige rien des connaissances qui peuvent être utiles à son négoce. Les Circassiens s’aperçurent que sur mille personnes il s’en trouvait à peine une seule qui fût attaquée deux fois d’une petite vérole bien complète; qu’à la vérité on essuie quelquefois trois ou quatre petites véroles légères, mais jamais deux qui soient décidées et dangereuses; qu’en un mot jamais on n’a véritablement cette maladie deux fois en sa vie. Ils remarquèrent encore que quand les petites véroles sont très-bénignes, et que leur éruption ne trouve à percer qu’une peau délicate et fine, elles ne laissent aucune impression sur le visage. De ces observations naturelles ils conclurent que, si un enfant de six mois ou d’un an avait une petite vérole bénigne, il n’en mourrait pas, il n’en serait pas marqué, et serait quitte de cette maladie pour le reste de ses jours. Il restait donc, pour conserver la vie et la beauté de leurs enfants, de leur donner la petite vérole de bonne heure: c’est ce que l’on fit en insérant dans le corps d’un enfant un bouton que l’on prit de la petite vérole la plus complète, et en même temps la plus favorable qu’on pût trouver. L’expérience ne pouvait pas manquer de réussir. Les Turcs, qui sont gens sensés, adoptèrent bientôt après cette coutume, et aujourd’hui il n’y a point de bacha à Constantinople qui ne donne la petite vérole à son fils et à sa fille en les faisant sevrer.

Quelques gens prétendent que les Circassiens prirent autrefois cette coutume des Arabes; mais nous laissons ce point d’histoire à éclaircir par quelque bénédictin, qui ne manquera pas de composer là-dessus plusieurs volumes in-folio avec les preuves. Tout ce que j’ai à dire sur cette matière, c’est que dans le commencement du règne de George Ier, Mme de Wortley-Montague, une des femmes d’Angleterre qui ont le plus d’esprit et le plus de force dans l’esprit, étant avec son mari en ambassade à Constantinople, s’avisa de donner sans scrupule la petite vérole à un enfant dont elle était accouchée en ce pays. Son chapelain eut beau lui dire que cette expérience n’était pas chrétienne, et ne pouvait réussir que chez des infidèles, le fils de Mme Wortley s’en trouva à merveille. Cette dame, de retour à Londres, fit part de son expérience à la princesse de Galles, qui est aujourd’hui reine; il faut avouer que, titres et couronnes à part, cette princesse est née pour encourager tous les arts et pour faire du bien aux hommes: c’est un philosophe aimable sur le trône; elle n’a jamais perdu ni une occasion de s’instruire, ni une occasion d’exercer sa générosité. C’est elle qui, ayant entendu dire qu’une fille de Milton vivait encore, et vivait dans la misère, lui envoya sur-le-champ un présent considérable; c’est elle qui protége le savant P. Courayer; c’est elle qui daigna être la médiatrice entre le docteur Clarke et M. Leibnitz. Dès qu’elle eut entendu parler de l’inoculation ou insertion de la petite vérole, elle en fit faire l’épreuve sur quatre criminels condamnés à mort, à qui elle sauva doublement la vie: car non-seulement elle les tira de la potence, mais, à la faveur de cette petite vérole artificielle, elle prévint la naturelle, qu’ils auraient probablement eue, et dont ils seraient morts peut-être dans un âge plus avancé. La princesse, assurée de l’utilité de cette épreuve, fit inoculer ses enfants: l’Angleterre suivit son exemple, et, depuis ce temps, dix mille enfants de famille au moins doivent ainsi la vie à la reine et à Mme Wortley-Montague, et autant de filles leur beauté.

Sur cent personnes dans le monde, soixante au moins ont la petite vérole; de ces soixante, dix en meurent dans les années les plus favorables, et dix en conservent pour toujours de fâcheux restes. Voilà donc la cinquième partie des hommes que cette maladie tue ou enlaidit sûrement. De tous ceux qui sont inoculés en Turquie ou en Angleterre, aucun ne meurt, s’il n’est infirme et condamné à mort d’ailleurs; personne n’est marqué, aucun n’a la petite vérole une seconde fois, supposé que l’inoculation ait été parfaite. Il est donc certain que, si quelque  ambassadrice française avait rapporté ce secret de Constantinople à Paris, elle aurait rendu un service éternel à la nation; le duc de Villequier, père du duc d’Aumont d’aujourd’hui, l’homme de France le mieux constitué et le plus sain, ne serait pas mort à la fleur de son âge; le prince de Soubise, qui avait la santé la plus brillante, n’aurait pas été emporté à l’âge de vingt-cinq ans; Monseigneur, grand-père de Louis XV, n’aurait pas été enterré dans sa cinquantième année; vingt-mille personnes mortes à Paris de la petite vérole en 1723 vivraient encore. Quoi donc! est-ce que les Français n’aiment point la vie? est-ce que leurs femmes ne se soucient point de leur beauté? En vérité, nous sommes d’étranges gens! Peut-être dans dix ans prendra-t-on cette méthode anglaise, si les curés et les médecins le permettent; ou bien les Français, dans trois mois, se serviront de l’inoculation par fantaisie, si les Anglais s’en dégoûtent par inconstance.

J’apprends que depuis cent ans les Chinois sont dans cet usage; c’est un grand préjugé que l’exemple d’une nation qui passe pour être la plus sage et la mieux policée de l’univers. Il est vrai que les Chinois s’y prennent d’une façon différente: ils ne font point d’incision, ils font prendre la petite vérole par le nez comme du tabac en poudre: cette façon est plus agréable, mais elle revient au même, et sert également à confirmer que, si on avait pratiqué l’inoculation en France, on aurait sauvé la vie à des milliers d’hommes.

Il y a quelques années qu’un missionnaire jésuite, ayant lu cet article, et se trouvant dans un canton de l’Amérique où la petite vérole exerçait des ravages affreux, s’avisa de faire inoculer tous les petits sauvages qu’il baptisait: ils lui durent ainsi la vie présente et la vie éternelle. Quels dons pour des sauvages!

Un évêque de Worcester a depuis peu prêché à Londres l’inoculation: il a démontré en citoyen combien cette pratique avait conservé de sujets à l’État; il l’a recommandée en pasteur charitable. On prêcherait à Paris contre cette invention salutaire, comme on a écrit vingt ans contre les expériences de Newton: tout prouve que les Anglais sont plus philosophes et plus hardis que nous. Il faut bien du temps pour qu’une certaine raison et un certain courage d’esprit franchissent le pas de Calais.

Il ne faut pourtant pas s’imaginer que depuis Douvres
jusqu’aux îles Orcades on ne trouve que des philosophes; l’espèce contraire compose toujours le grand nombre: l’inoculation fut d’abord combattue à Londres; et, longtemps avant que l’évêque de Worcester annonçât cet évangile en chaire, un curé s’était avisé de prêcher contre: il dit que Job avait été inoculé par le diable. Ce prédicateur était fait pour être capucin, il n’était guère digne d’être né en Angleterre. Le préjugé monta donc en chaire le premier, et la raison n’y monta qu’ensuite: c’est la marche ordinaire de l’esprit humain.

### Letter XII

Sur le chancelier Bacon.

Il n’y a pas longtemps que l’on agitait dans une compagnie célèbre cette question usée et frivole, quel était le plus grand homme, de César, d’Alexandre, de Tamerlan, ou de Cromwell. Quelqu’un répondit que c’était sans contredit Isaac Newton. Cet homme avait raison: car, si la vraie grandeur consiste à avoir reçu du ciel un puissant génie, et à s’en être servi pour s’éclairer soi-même et les autres, un homme comme M. Newton, tel qu’il s’en trouve à peine en dix siècles, est véritablement le grand homme; et ces politiques et ces conquérants dont aucun siècle n’a manqué ne sont d’ordinaire que d’illustres méchants. C’est à celui qui domine sur les esprits par la force de la vérité, non à ceux qui font des esclaves par violence c’est à celui qui connaît l’univers, non à ceux qui le défigurent, que nous devons nos respects.

Le fameux comte de Verulam, connu en Europe sous le nom de Bacon, qui était son nom de famille. Il était fils d’un garde des Sceaux, et fut longtemps chancelier sous le roi Jacques Ier. Cependant, au milieu des intrigues de la cour et des occupations de sa charge, qui demandaient un homme tout entier, il trouva le temps d’être grand philosophe, bon historien et écrivain élégant; et ce qui est encore plus étonnant, c’est qu’il vivait dans un siècle où l’on ne connaissait guère l’art de bien écrire, encore moins la bonne philosophie. Il a été, comme c’est l’usage parmi les hommes, plus estimé après sa mort que de son vivant: ses ennemis étaient à la cour de Londres; ses admirateurs étaient les étrangers.
Lorsque le marquis d’Effiat amena en Angleterre la princesse Marie, fille de Henri le Grand, qui devait épouser le roi Charles, ce ministre alla visiter Bacon, qui, alors étant malade au lit, le reçut les rideaux fermés. « Vous ressemblez aux anges, lui dit d’Effiat; on entend toujours parler d’eux, on les croit bien supérieurs aux hommes, et on n’a jamais la consolation de les voir. »

On sait comment Bacon fut accusé d’un crime qui n’est guère d’un philosophe, de s’être laissé corrompre par argent. On sait comment il fut condamné par la Chambre des Pairs à une amende d’environ quatre cent mille livres de notre monnaie, à perdre sa dignité de chancelier et de pair.

Aujourd’hui, les Anglais révèrent sa mémoire au point qu’à peine avouent-ils qu’il ait été coupable. Si on me demande ce que j’en pense, je me servirai, pour vous répondre, d’un mot que j’ai ouï dire à milord Bolingbroke. On parlait, en sa présence, de l’avarice dont le duc de Marlborough avait été accusé, et on en citait des traits sur lesquels on appelait au témoignage de milord Bolingbroke, qui, ayant été son ennemi déclaré, pouvait peut-être avec bienséance dire ce qui en était. « C’était un si grand homme, répondit-il, que j’ai oublié ses vices. »

Je me bornerai donc à vous parler de ce qui a mérité au chancelier Bacon l’estime de l’Europe.

Le plus singulier et le meilleur de ses ouvrages est celui qui est aujourd’hui le moins lu et le plus inutile: je veux parler de son Novum scientiarum organum. C’est l’échafaud avec lequel on a bâti la nouvelle philosophie; et, quand cet édifice a été élevé au moins en partie, l’échafaud n’a plus été d’aucun usage.

Le chancelier Bacon ne connaissait pas encore la nature; mais il savait et indiquait tous les chemins qui mènent à elle. Il avait méprisé de bonne heure ce que les universités appelaient la philosophie; et il faisait tout ce qui dépendait de lui, afin que ces compagnies, instituées pour la perfection de la raison humaine, ne continuassent pas de la gâter par leurs quiddités, leur horreur du vide, leurs formes substantielles et tous les mots impertinents que non seulement l’ignorance rendait respectables, mais qu’un mélange ridicule avec la religion avait rendus presque sacrés.

Il est le père de la philosophie expérimentale. Il est bien vrai qu’avant lui on avait découvert des secrets étonnants. On avait inventé la boussole, l’imprimerie, la gravure des estampes, la peinture à l’huile, les glaces, l’art de rendre en quelque façon la vue aux vieillards par les lunettes qu’on appelle bésicles, la poudre à canon, etc. On avait cherché, trouvé et conquis un nouveau monde. Qui ne croirait que ces sublimes découvertes eussent été faites par les plus grands philosophes, et dans des temps bien plus éclairés que le nôtre? Point du tout: c’est dans le temps de la barbarie scolastique que ces grands changements ont été faits sur la terre: le hasard seul a produit presque toutes ces innovations, et il y a même bien de l’apparence que ce qu’on appelle hasard a eu grande part dans la découverte de l’Amérique; du moins a-t-on cru que Christophe Colomb n’entreprit son voyage que sur la foi d’un capitaine de vaisseau qu’une tempête avait jeté jusqu’à la hauteur des îles Caraïbes.

Quoi qu’il en soit, les hommes savaient aller au bout du monde, ils savaient détruire des villes avec un tonnerre artificiel plus terrible que le tonnerre véritable; mais ils ne connaissaient pas la circulation du sang, la pesanteur de l’air, les lois du mouvement, la lumière, le nombre de nos planètes, etc., et un homme qui soutenait une thèse sur les catégories d’Aristote, sur l’universel (a parte rei) ou telle autre sottise, était regardé comme un prodige.

Les inventions les plus étonnantes et les plus utiles ne sont pas celles qui font le plus d’honneur à l’esprit humain. C’est à un instinct mécanique, qui est chez la plupart des hommes, que nous devons la plupart des arts, et nullement à la saine philosophie. La découverte du feu, l’art de faire du pain, de fondre et de préparer les métaux, de bâtir des maisons, l’invention de la navette, sont d’une tout autre nécessité que l’imprimerie et la boussole; cependant ces arts furent inventés par des hommes encore sauvages.

Quel prodigieux usage les Grecs et les Romains ne firent-ils pas depuis des mécaniques? Cependant on croyait de leur temps qu’il y avait des cieux de cristal, et que les étoiles étaient de petites lampes qui tombaient quelquefois dans la mer; et un de leurs plus grands philosophes, après bien des recherches, avait trouvé que les astres étaient des cailloux qui s’étaient détachés de la terre.

En un mot, personne avant le chancelier Bacon n’avait connu la philosophie expérimentale; et de toutes les épreuves physiques qu’on a faites depuis lui, il n’y en a presque pas une qui ne soit indiquée dans son livre. Il en avait fait lui-même plusieurs; il fit des espèces de machines pneumatiques, par lesquelles il devina l’élasticité de l’air; il a tourné tout autour de la découverte de sa pesanteur; il y touchait; cette vérité fut saisie par Torricelli. Peu de temps après, la physique expérimentale commença tout d’un coup à être cultivée à la fois dans presque toutes les parties de l’Europe. C’était un trésor caché dont Bacon s’était douté, et que tous les philosophes, encouragés par sa promesse, s’efforcèrent de déterrer
.
Nous avons vu qu’on trouve dans son livre, en termes exprès, cette attraction nouvelle dont Newton passe pour l’inventeur.

Ce précurseur de la philosophie a été aussi un écrivain élégant, un historien, un bel esprit. Ses Essais de morale sont très estimés; mais ils sont faits pour instruire plutôt que pour plaire; et, n’étant ni la satire de la nature humaine comme les Maximes de M. de La Rochefoucauld, ni l’école du scepticisme comme Montaigne, ils sont moins lus que ces deux livres ingénieux. Sa Vie de Henri VII a passé pour un chef-d’œuvre; mais comment se peut-il faire que quelques personnes osent comparer un si petit ouvrage avec l’histoire de notre illustre Thou?

En parlant de ce fameux imposteur Perkins, fils d’un juif converti, qui prit si hardiment le nom de Richard IV, roi d’Angleterre, encouragé par la duchesse de Bourgogne, et qui disputa la couronne à Henri VII, voici comme le chancelier Bacon s’exprime:

« Environ ce temps, le roi Henri fut obsédé d’esprits malins par la magie de la duchesse de Bourgogne, qui évoqua des enfers l’ombre d’Édouard IV pour venir tourmenter le roi Henri. Quand la duchesse de Bourgogne eut instruit Perkins, elle commença à délibérer par quelle région du Ciel elle ferait paraître cette comète, et elle résolut qu’elle éclaterait d’abord sur l’horizon de l’Irlande. »

Il me semble que notre sage de Thou ne donne guère dans ce phébus, qu’on prenait autrefois pour du sublime, mais qu’à présent on nomme avec raison galimatias.

### Letter XIII

sur m. locke

Jamais il ne fut peut-être un esprit plus sage, plus méthodique, un logicien plus exact que M. Locke; cependant il n’était pas grand mathématicien. Il n’avait jamais pu se soumettre à la fatigue des calculs ni à la sécheresse des vérités mathématiques, qui ne présente d’abord rien de sensible à l’esprit; et personne n’a mieux prouvé que lui qu’on pouvait avoir l’esprit géomètre sans le secours de la géométrie. Avant lui, de grands philosophes avaient décidé positivement ce que c’est que l’âme de l’homme; mais, puisqu’ils n’en savaient rien du tout, il est bien juste qu’ils aient tous été d’avis différents.

Dans la Grèce, berceau des arts et des erreurs, et où l’on poussa si loin la grandeur et la sottise de l’esprit humain, on raisonnait comme chez nous sur l’âme. Le divin Anaxagoras, à qui on dressa un autel pour avoir appris aux hommes que le Soleil était plus grand que le Péloponnèse, que la neige était noire et que les cieux étaient de pierre, affirma que l’âme était un esprit aérien, mais cependant immortel. Diogène, un autre que celui qui devint cynique après avoir été faux-monnayeur, assurait que l’âme était une portion de la substance même de Dieu; et cette idée au moins était brillante. Épicure la composait de parties comme le corps. Aristote, qu’on a expliqué de mille façons, parce qu’il était inintelligible, croyait, si l’on s’en rapporte à quelques-uns de ses disciples, que l’entendement de tous les hommes était une seule et même substance. Le divin Platon, maître du divin Aristote, et le divin Socrate, maître du divin Platon, disaient l’âme corporelle et éternelle. Le démon de Socrate lui avait appris sans doute ce qui en était. Il y a des gens, à la vérité, qui prétendent qu’un homme qui se vantait d’avoir un génie familier était indubitablement un peu fou ou un peu fripon; mais ces gens-là sont trop difficiles.

Quant à nos Pères de l’Église, plusieurs dans les premiers siècles ont cru l’âme humaine, les Anges et Dieu corporels.

Le monde se raffine toujours. Saint Bernard, selon l’aveu du père Mabillon, enseigna, à propos de l’âme, qu’après la mort elle ne voyait point Dieu dans le Ciel, mais qu’elle conversait seulement avec l’humanité de Jésus-Christ; on ne le crut pas cette fois sur sa parole. L’aventure de la Croisade avait un peu décrédité ses oracles. Mille scolastiques sont venus ensuite, comme le docteur irréfragable, le docteur subtil, le docteur angélique, le docteur séraphique, le docteur chérubique, qui tous ont été bien sûrs de connaître l’âme très clairement, mais qui n’ont pas laissé d’en parler comme s’ils avaient voulu que personne n’y entendît rien.

Notre Descartes, né pour découvrir les erreurs de l’antiquité, mais pour y substituer les siennes, et entraîné par cet esprit systématique qui aveugle les plus grands hommes, s’imagina avoir démontré que l’âme était la même chose que la pensée, comme la matière, selon lui, est la même chose que l’étendue; il assura bien que l’on pense toujours, et que l’âme arrive dans le corps pourvue de toutes les notions métaphysiques, connaissant Dieu, l’espace, l’infini, ayant toutes les idées abstraites, remplie enfin de belles connaissances, qu’elle oublie malheureusement en sortant du ventre de la mère.

Le P. Malebranche de l’Oratoire, dans ses illusions sublimes, non-seulement n’admet point les idées innées, mais il ne doutait pas que nous ne vissions tout en Dieu, et que Dieu, pour ainsi dire, ne fût notre âme.

Tant de raisonneurs ayant fait le roman de l’âme, un sage est venu, qui en a fait modestement l’histoire. Locke a développé à l’homme la raison humaine, comme un excellent anatomiste explique les ressorts du corps humain. Il s’aide partout du flambeau de la physique; il ose quelquefois parler affirmativement, mais il ose aussi douter; au lieu de définir tout d’un coup ce que nous ne connaissons pas, il examine par degrés ce que nous voulons connaître. Il prend un enfant au moment de sa naissance; il suit pas à pas les progrès de son entendement; il voit ce qu’il a de commun avec les bêtes et ce qu’il a au-dessus d’elles; il consulte surtout son propre témoignage, la conscience de sa pensée.

« Je laisse, dit-il, à discuter à ceux qui en savent plus que moi, si notre âme existe avant ou après l’organisation de notre corps; mais j’avoue qu’il m’est tombé en partage une de ces âmes grossières qui ne pensent pas toujours, et j’ai même le malheur de ne pas concevoir qu’il soit plus nécessaire à l’âme de penser toujours qu’au corps d’être toujours en mouvement. »

Pour moi, je me vante de l’honneur d’être en ce point aussi stupide que Locke. Personne ne me fera jamais croire que je pense toujours; et je ne me sens pas plus disposé que lui à imaginer que, quelques semaines après ma conception, j’étais une fort savante âme, sachant alors mille choses que j’ai oubliées en naissant, et ayant fort inutilement possédé dans l’utérus des connaissances qui m’ont échappé dès que j’ai pu en avoir besoin, et que je n’ai jamais bien pu rapprendre depuis.

Locke, après avoir ruiné les idées innées, après avoir bien renoncé à la vanité de croire qu’on pense toujours, ayant bien établi que toutes nos idées nous viennent par les sens, ayant examiné nos idées simples et celles qui sont composées, ayant suivi l’esprit de l’homme dans toutes ses opérations, ayant fait voir combien les langues que les hommes parlent sont imparfaites, et
quel abus nous faisons des termes à tout moment; Locke, dis-je, considère enfin l’étendue, ou plutôt le néant des connaissances humaines. C’est dans ce chapitre qu’il ose avancer modestement ces paroles: Nous ne serons peut-être jamais capables de connaître si un être purement matériel pense ou non.

Ce discours sage parut à plus d’un théologien une déclaration
scandaleuse que l’âme est matérielle et mortelle. Quelques Anglais,
dévots à leur manière, sonnèrent l’alarme. Les superstitieux sont
dans la société ce que les poltrons sont dans une armée: ils ont
et donnent des terreurs paniques. On cria que Locke voulait
renverser la religion: il ne s’agissait pourtant point de religion
dans cette affaire; c’était une question purement philosophique,
très-indépendante de la foi et de la révélation; il ne fallait qu’examiner
sans aigreur s’il y a de la contradiction à dire: La matière
peut penser, et Dieu peut communiquer la pensée à la matière. Mais les théologiens commencent trop souvent par dire que Dieu
est outragé quand on n’est pas de leur avis. C’est trop ressembler
aux mauvais poètes, qui croyaient que Despréaux parlait mal du
roi parce qu’il se moquait d’eux.

Le docteur Stillingfleet s’est fait une réputation de théologien
modéré pour n’avoir pas dit positivement des injures à Locke.
Il entra en lice contre lui, mais il fut battu, car il raisonnait en
docteur, et Locke en philosophe instruit de la force et de la faiblesse
de l’esprit humain, et qui se battait avec des armes dont il
connaissait la trempe.

Si j’osais parler après M. Locke sur un sujet si délicat, je dirais:
Les hommes disputent depuis longtemps sur la nature et
sur l’immortalité de l’âme: à l’égard de son immortalité, il est
impossible de la démontrer, puisqu’on dispute encore sur sa
nature, et qu’assurément il faut connaître à fond un être créé
pour décider s’il est immortel ou non. La raison humaine est si
peu capable de démontrer par elle-même l’immortalité de l’âme
que la religion a été obligée de nous la révéler. Le bien commun
de tous les hommes demande qu’on croie l’âme immortelle: la
foi nous l’ordonne; il n’en faut pas davantage, et la chose est
presque décidée. Il n’en est pas de même de sa nature: il importe peu à la religion de quelle substance soit l’âme, pourvu qu’elle
soit vertueuse. C’est une horloge qu’on nous a donnée à gouverner;
mais l’ouvrier ne nous a pas dit de quoi le ressort de cette horloge
est composé.

Je suis corps et je pense, je n’en sais pas davantage. Si je ne
consulte que mes faibles lumières, irai-je attribuer à une cause
inconnue ce que je puis si aisément attribuer à la seule cause
seconde que je connais un peu? Ici tous les philosophes de l’école
m’arrêtent en argumentant, et disent: Il n’y a dans le corps que de
l’étendue et de la solidité, et il ne peut avoir que du mouvement
et de la figure. Or, du mouvement, de la figure, de l’étendue et
de la solidité, ne peuvent faire une pensée: donc l’âme ne peut
pas être matière. Tout ce grand raisonnement répété tant de fois
se réduit uniquement à ceci: Je ne connais que très-peu de chose
de la matière, j’en devine imparfaitement quelques propriétés:
or je ne sais point du tout si ces propriétés peuvent être jointes
à la pensée; donc, parce que je ne sais rien du tout, j’assure positivement
que la matière ne saurait penser. Voilà nettement la
manière de raisonner de l’école.

M. Locke dirait avec simplicité à ces messieurs: Confessez du
moins que vous êtes aussi ignorants que moi: votre imagination
ni la mienne ne peuvent concevoir comment un corps a des idées;
et comprenez-vous mieux comment une substance, telle qu’elle
soit, a des idées? Vous ne concevez ni la matière ni l’esprit, comment
osez-vous assurer quelque chose? Que vous importe que
l’âme soit un de ces êtres incompréhensibles qu’on appelle
matière, ou un de ces êtres incompréhensibles qu’on appelle
esprit? Quoi! Dieu, le créateur de tout, ne peut-il pas éterniser
ou anéantir votre âme à son gré, quelle que soit sa substance?

Le superstitieux vient à son tour, et dit qu’il faut brûler pour
le bien de leurs âmes ceux qui soupçonnent qu’on peut penser
avec la seule aide du corps; mais que dirait-il si c’était lui-même
qui fût coupable d’irréligion? En effet, quel est l’homme qui osera
assurer, sans une impiété absurde, qu’il est impossible au Créateur
de donner à la matière la pensée et le sentiment? Voyez, je
vous prie, à quel embarras vous êtes réduits, vous qui bornez
ainsi la puissance du Créateur. Les bêtes ont les mêmes organes
que nous, les mêmes perceptions; elles ont de la mémoire, elles combinent quelques idées. Si Dieu n’a pas pu animer la matière,
et lui donner le sentiment, il faut de deux choses l’une, ou que
les bêtes soient de pures machines, ou qu'elles aient une âme
spirituelle.

Il me paraît démontré
que les bêtes ne peuvent être de
simples machines; voici ma preuve. Dieu leur a fait précisément
les mêmes organes de
sentiment que les nôtres: donc si elles
ne sentent point, Dieu a fait un ouvrage inutile; or Dieu, de
votre aveu même, ne fait rien en vain: donc il n’a point fabriqué
tant d’organes de sentiment pour qu’il n’y eût point de sentiment;
donc les bêtes ne sont point de pures machines. Les bêtes,
selon vous, ne peuvent pas avoir une âme spirituelle: donc malgré
vous il ne reste autre chose à dire sinon que Dieu a donné
aux organes des bêtes, qui sont matière, la faculté de sentir et
d’apercevoir, que vous appelez instinct dans elles. Et
qui peut
empêcher Dieu de communiquer à nos organes plus déliés cette
faculté de sentir, d’apercevoir, et de penser, que nous appelons
raison humaine? De quelque côté que vous vous tourniez, vous
êtes obligés d’avouer votre ignorance et la puissance immense
du Créateur. Ne vous révoltez donc plus contre la sage et modeste
philosophie de Locke; loin d’être contraire à la religion, elle lui
servirait de preuve, si la religion en avait besoin: car quelle
philosophie plus religieuse que celle qui, n’affirmant que ce
qu’elle conçoit clairement, et
sachant avouer sa faiblesse, vous
dit qu’il faut recourir à Dieu, dès qu’on examine les premiers
principes?

D’ailleurs, il ne faut jamais craindre qu’aucun sentiment
philosophique puisse nuire à la religion d’un pays. Nos mystères
ont beau être contraires à nos démonstrations, ils n’en sont pas
moins révérés par nos philosophes chrétiens, qui savent que les
objets de la raison et de la foi sont de différente nature. Jamais
les philosophes ne feront une secte de religion: pourquoi? c’est
qu’ils n’écrivent point pour le peuple, et qu’ils sont sans enthousiasme.
Divisez le genre humain en vingt parts, il y en a dix-neuf
composées de ceux qui travaillent de leurs mains, et qui ne sauront jamais s’il y a eu un
M. Locke au monde; dans la vingtième
partie qui reste, combien trouve-t-on peu d’hommes qui
lisent? et parmi ceux qui lisent, il y en a vingt qui lisent des
romans contre un qui étudie en philosophie. Le nombre de ceux
qui pensent est excessivement petit, et ceux-là ne s’avisent pas
de troubler le monde.

Ce n’est ni Montaigne, ni Locke, ni Bayle, ni Spinosa, ni
Hobbes, ni milord Shaftesbury, ni M. Collins, ni M. Toland ni
Fludd, ni Bekker, ni M. le comte de Boulainvilliers, etc., qui ont
porté le flambeau de la discorde dans leur patrie: ce sont, pour
la plupart, des théologiens qui, ayant eu d’abord l’ambition d’être
chefs de sectes, ont eu bientôt celle d’être chefs de partis. Que
dis-je? tous ces livres des philosophes modernes mis ensemble
ne feront jamais dans le monde autant de bruit seulement qu’en a
fait autrefois la dispute des cordeliers sur la forme de leurs manches
et de leur capuchon.

### Letter XIV

sur descartes et newton.

Un Français qui arrive à Londres trouve les choses bien changées
en philosophie comme dans tout le reste. Il a laissé le
monde plein, il le trouve vide. À Paris on voit l’univers composé
de tourbillons de matière subtile; à Londres on ne voit rien de
cela. Chez nous c’est la pression de la lune qui cause le flux de
la mer; chez les Anglais c’est la mer qui gravite vers la lune; de
façon que quand vous croyez que la lune devrait nous donner
marée haute, ces messieurs croient qu’on doit avoir marée basse:
ce qui malheureusement ne peut se vérifier, car il aurait fallu,
pour s’en éclaircir, examiner la lune et les marées au premier
instant de la création.

Vous remarquerez encore que le soleil, qui en France n’entre
pour rien dans cette affaire, y contribue ici environ pour son
quart. Chez nos cartésiens tout se fait par une impulsion qu’on ne comprend guère; chez M. Newton c’est par une attraction
dont on ne connaît pas mieux la cause. À Paris vous vous figurez la
terre faite comme un melon; à Londres elle est aplatie des deux
côtés. La lumière, pour un cartésien, existe dans l’air; pour un
newtonien, elle vient du soleil en six minutes et demie. Votre
chimie fait toutes ses opérations avec des acides, des alkalis, et
de la matière subtile; l’attraction domine jusque dans la chimie
anglaise.

L’essence même des choses a totalement changé. Vous ne vous
accordez ni sur la définition de l’âme, ni sur celle de la matière.
Descartes assure que l’âme est la même chose que la pensée, et
Locke lui prouve assez bien le contraire. Descartes assure encore
que l’étendue seule fait la matière; Newton y ajoute la solidité.

Voilà de sérieuses contrariétés.

Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites.

Ce fameux Newton, ce destructeur du système cartésien,
mourut au mois de mars de l’an 1727. Il a vécu honoré de ses
compatriotes, et a été enterré comme un roi qui aurait fait du
bien à ses sujets. On a lu ici avec avidité et l’on a traduit en anglais l’Éloge de M. Newton, que M. de Fontenelle a prononcé
dans l’Académie des sciences. On attendait en Angleterre son
jugement comme une déclaration solennelle de la supériorité de
la philosophie anglaise; mais quand on a vu que non-seulement
il s’était trompé en rendant compte de cette philosophie, mais
qu’il comparait Descartes à Newton, toute la Société royale de
Londres s’est soulevée. Loin d’acquiescer au jugement, on a fort
critiqué le discours. ». Plusieurs même (et ceux-là ne sont pas les
plus philosophes) ont été choqués de cette comparaison, seulement
parce que Descartes était Français.

Il faut avouer que ces deux grands hommes ont été bien différents
l’un de l’autre dans leur conduite, dans leur fortune, et
dans leur philosophie.

Descartes était né avec une imagination brillante et forte, qui en fit un homme singulier dans sa vie privée comme dans sa
manière de raisonner. Cette imagination ne put se cacher même
dans ses ouvrages philosophiques, où l’on voit à tout moment des
comparaisons ingénieuses et brillantes. La nature en avait presque
fait un poëte, et en effet il composa pour la reine de Suède
un divertissement en vers que pour l’honneur de sa mémoire on
n’a pas fait imprimer.

Il essaya quelque temps du métier de la guerre, et depuis,
étant devenu tout à fait philosophe, il ne crut pas indigne de lui
de faire l’amour. Il eut de sa maîtresse une fille nommée Francine,
qui mourut jeune, et dont il regretta beaucoup la perte. Ainsi il
éprouva tout ce qui appartient à l’humanité.

Il crut longtemps qu’il était nécessaire de fuir les hommes, et
surtout sa patrie, pour philosopher en liberté. Il avait raison: les
hommes de son temps n’en savaient pas assez pour l’éclairer, et
n’étaient guère capables que de lui nuire.

Il quitta la France parce qu’il cherchait la vérité, qui y était
persécutée alors par la misérable philosophie de l’école; mais il
ne trouva pas plus de raison dans les universités de la Hollande, où
il se retira. Car dans le temps qu’on condamnait en France les
seules propositions de sa philosophie qui fussent vraies, il fut
aussi persécuté par les prétendus philosophes de Hollande, qui
ne l’entendaient pas mieux, et qui, voyant de plus près sa gloire,
haïssaient davantage sa personne. Il fut obligé de sortir d’Utrecht:
il essuya l’accusation d’athéisme, dernière ressource des calomniateurs;
et lui, qui avait employé toute la sagacité de son esprit
à chercher de nouvelles preuves de l’existence d’un Dieu, fut
soupçonné de n’en point reconnaître.

Tant de persécutions supposaient un très-grand mérite et
une réputation éclatante: aussi avait-il l’un et l’autre. La raison
perça même un peu dans le monde à travers les ténèbres de
l’école et les préjugés de la superstition populaire. Son nom fit
enfin tant de bruit qu’on voulut l’attirer en France par des récompenses.
On lui proposa une pension de mille écus; il vint sur
cette espérance, paya les frais de la patente qui se vendait alors,
n’eut point la pension, et s’en retourna philosopher dans sa solitude
de Nord-Hollande, dans le temps que le grand Galilée, à
l’âge de quatre-vingts ans, gémissait dans les prisons de l’Inquisition
pour avoir démontré le mouvement de la terre.

Enfin il mourut à Stockholm d’une mort prématurée, et causée par un mauvais régime, au milieu de quelques savants, ses ennemis,
et entre les mains d’un médecin qui le haïssait,

La carrière du chevalier Newton a été tout différente: il a
vécu près de quatre-vingt-cinq ans, toujours tranquille, heureux,
et honoré dans sa patrie. Son grand bonheur a été non-seulement
d’être né dans un pays libre, mais dans un temps où,
les impertinences scolastiques étant bannies, la raison seule était
cultivée: le monde ne pouvait être que son écolier, et non son
ennemi.

Une opposition singulière dans laquelle il se trouve avec Descartes,
c’est que, dans le cours d’une si longue vie, il n’a eu ni
passion ni faiblesse. Il n’a jamais approché d’aucune femme: c’est
ce qui m’a été confirmé par le médecin et le chirurgien entre les
bras de qui il est mort. On peut admirer en cela Newton, mais
il ne faut pas blâmer Descartes.

L’opinion publique en Angleterre sur ces deux philosophes
est que le premier était un rêveur, et que l’autre était un sage.

Très-peu de personnes à Londres lisent Descartes, dont effectivement
les ouvrages sont devenus inutiles; très-peu lisent aussi
Newton, parce qu’il faut être fort savant pour le comprendre.
Cependant tout le monde parle d’eux; on n’accorde rien au
Français, et on donne tout à l’Anglais. Quelques gens croient que
si l’on ne s’en tient plus à l’horreur du vide, si l’on sait que l’air
est pesant, si l’on se sert de lunettes d’approche, on en a l’obligation
à Newton. Il est ici l’Hercule de la fable à qui les ignorants
attribuaient tous les faits des autres héros.

Dans une critique qu’on a faite à Londres du discours de M. de
Fontenelle, on a osé avancer que Descartes n’était pas un grand
géomètre. Ceux qui parlent ainsi peuvent se reprocher de battre
leur nourrice; Descartes a fait un aussi grand chemin du point
où il a trouvé la géométrie jusqu’au point où il l’a poussée que
Newton en a fait après lui: il est le premier qui ait enseigné la
manière de donner les équations algébriques des courbes. Sa
géométrie, grâce à lui, devenue aujourd’hui commune, était de
son temps si profonde qu’aucun professeur n’osa entreprendre de l’expliquer, et qu’il n’y avait guère en Hollande que Schooten,
et en France que Fermat, qui l’entendissent.

Il porta cet esprit de géométrie et d’invention dans la dioptrique,
qui devint entre ses mains un art tout nouveau; et s’il s’y
trompa beaucoup, c’est qu’un homme qui découvre de nouvelles
terres ne peut tout d’un coup en connaître toutes les propriétés.
Ceux qui le suivent lui ont au moins l’obligation de la découverte.
Je ne nierai pas que tous les autres ouvrages de M. Descartes ne
fourmillent d’erreurs.

La géométrie était un guide que lui-même avait en quelque
façon formé, et qui l’aurait conduit sûrement dans sa physique;
cependant il abandonna à la fin ce guide, et se livra à l’esprit de
système. Alors sa philosophie ne fut plus qu’un roman ingénieux,
et tout au plus vraisemblable pour les philosophes ignorants du
même temps. Il se trompa sur la nature de l’âme, sur les lois du
mouvement, sur la nature de la lumière. Il admit des idées innées,
il inventa de nouveaux éléments, il créa un monde, il fit
l’homme à sa mode; et on dit avec raison que l’homme de Descartes
n’est en effet que celui de Descartes, fort éloigné de l’homme
véritable. Il poussa ses erreurs métaphysiques jusqu’à prétendre
que deux et deux ne font quatre que parce que Dieu l’a voulu
ainsi; mais ce n’est point trop dire qu’il était estimable même
dans ses égarements. Il se trompa, mais ce fut au moins avec
méthode et de conséquence en conséquence. S’il inventa de nouvelles
chimères en physique, du moins il en détruisit d’anciennes:
il apprit aux hommes de son temps à raisonner et à se servir
contre lui-même de ses armes. S’il n’a pas payé en bonne monnaie,
c’est beaucoup d’avoir décrié la fausse.

Je ne crois pas qu’on ose à la vérité comparer en rien sa
philosophie avec celle de Newton: la première est un essai, la
seconde est un chef-d’œuvre; mais celui qui nous a mis sur la
voie de la vérité vaut peut-être celui qui a été depuis au bout de
cette carrière.

Descartes donna la vue aux aveugles; ils virent les fautes de l’Antiquité et les siennes. La route qu’il ouvrit est, depuis lui, devenue immense. Le petit livre de Rohault a fait pendant quelque temps une physique complète; aujourd’hui, tous les recueils des académies de l’Europe ne font pas même un commencement de système: en approfondissant cet abîme, il s’est trouvé infini. Il s’agit maintenant de voir ce que M. Newton a creusé dans ce précipice.

### Letter XV

histoire de l’attraction.

Je n’entrerai point ici dans une explication mathématique de ce qu’on appelle l’attraction, ou la gravitation: je me borne à l’histoire de cette nouvelle propriété de la matière, devinée longtemps avant Newton, et démontrée par lui; c’est donner en quelque sorte l’histoire d’une création nouvelle.

Copernic, ce Christophe Colomb de l’astronomie, avait à peine appris aux hommes le véritable ordre de l’univers, si longtemps défiguré; il avait à peine fait voir que la terre tourne, et sur elle-même et dans un espace immense, lorsque tous les docteurs firent à peu près les mêmes objections que leurs devanciers avaient faites contre les antipodes. Saint Augustin, en niant ces antipodes, avait dit: Eh quoi! ils auraient donc la tête en bas, et ils tomberaient
dans le ciel. Les docteurs disaient à Copernic: Si la terre tournait
sur elle-même, toutes ses parties se détacheraient et tomberaient dans le
ciel. Il est certain que la terre tourne, répondit Copernic, et que
ses parties ne s’envolent pas; il faut donc qu’une puissance les
dirige toutes vers le centre de la terre; et probablement, dit-il,
cette propriété existe dans tous les globes, dans le soleil, dans la
lune, dans les étoiles; c’est un attribut donné à la matière par la
divine Providence. C’est ainsi qu’il s’explique dans son premier
livre Des Révolutions célestes, sans avoir osé ni peut-être pu aller
plus loin.

Kepler, qui suivit Copernic et qui perfectionna l’admirable
découverte du vrai système du monde, approcha un peu du
système de la pesanteur universelle. On voit, dans son traité de
l’étoile de Mars, des veines encore mal formées de cette mine dont
Newton a tiré son or. Kepler admet non-seulement une tendance
de tous les corps terrestres au centre, mais aussi des astres les
uns vers les autres. Il ose entrevoir et dire que si la terre et la lune
n’étaient pas retenues dans leurs orbites, elles s’approcheraient
l’une de l’autre, elles s’uniraient. Cette vérité étonnante était
obscurcie chez lui de tant de nuages et de tant d’erreurs qu’on a
dit qu’il l’avait devinée par instinct.

Cependant le grand Galilée, partant d’un principe plus mécanique,
examinait quelle est la chute des corps sur la terre; comment
et en quelle proportion cette chute s’accélère; et le chancelier
Bacon voulait qu’on expérimentât si ces chutes se faisaient également
aux plus grandes profondeurs et aux plus grandes hauteurs
où l’on pût atteindre.

Il est bien singulier que Descartes, le plus grand géomètre de
son temps, ne se soit pas servi de ce fil dans le labyrinthe qu’il
s’était bâti lui-même. On ne trouve nulle trace de ces vérités dans
ses ouvrages; aussi n’est-il pas surprenant qu’il se soit égaré. Il
voulut créer un univers. Il fit une philosophie comme on fait un
bon roman: tout parut vraisemblable, et rien ne fut vrai. Il imagina
des éléments, des tourbillons, qui semblaient rendre une
raison plausible de tous les mystères de la nature; mais en philosophie
il faut se défier de ce qu’on croit entendre trop aisément
aussi bien que des choses qu’on n’entend pas. Descartes était plus
dangereux qu’Aristote parce qu’il avait l’air d’être plus raisonnable.
M. Conduit, neveu du chevalier Newton, m’a assuré que
son oncle avait lu Descartes à l’âge de vingt ans, qu’il crayonna
les marges des premières pages, et qu’il n’y mit qu’une seule note, souvent répétée, consistant en ce mot: error; mais que, las d’écrire
error partout, il jeta le livre et ne le relut jamais.

Newton, ayant quitté les abîmes de la théologie dans lesquels
il avait été élevé pour les vérités mathématiques, avait déjà trouvé
à l’âge de vingt-trois ans son calcul infinitésimal dont son maître
Wallis lui avait ouvert la route. Il s’appliquait à chercher ce
principe secret et universel de la nature, indiqué par Copernic,
par Kepler, par Bacon, et déjà saisi par le célèbre Hooke: c’est-à-dire
cette cause de la pesanteur et du mouvement de toute la
matière. S’étant retiré en 1666, à cause de la peste, à la campagne
près de Cambridge, un jour qu’il se promenait dans son jardin,
et qu’il voyait des fruits tomber d’un arbre, il se laissa aller à une
méditation profonde sur cette pesanteur dont tous les philosophes
ont cherché si longtemps la cause en vain, et dans laquelle le
vulgaire ne soupçonne pas même de mystère. Il se dit à lui-même:
De quelque hauteur dans notre hémisphère que tombassent
ces corps, leur chute, serait certainement dans la
progression découverte par Galilée; et les espaces parcourus par
eux seraient comme les carrés des temps. Ce pouvoir, qui fait
descendre les corps graves, est le même sans aucune diminution
sensible, à quelque profondeur qu’on soit dans la terre, et sur la
plus haute montagne. Pourquoi ce pouvoir ne s’étendrait-il pas
jusqu’à la lune? Et, s’il est vrai qu’il pénètre jusque-là, n’y a-t-il
pas grande apparence que ce pouvoir la retient dans son orbite et
détermine son mouvement? Mais si la lune obéit à ce principe,
quel qu’il soit, n’est-il pas encore très-raisonnable de croire que
les autres planètes y sont également soumises?

Si ce pouvoir existe, il doit (ce qui est prouvé d’ailleurs)
augmenter en raison renversée des carrés des distances. Il n’y
a donc plus qu’à examiner le chemin que ferait un corps grave
en tombant sur la terre d’une hauteur médiocre, et le chemin
que ferait dans le même temps un corps qui tomberait de l’orbite
de la lune. Pour en être instruit, il ne s’agit plus que d’avoir
la mesure de la terre, et la distance de la lune à la terre.

Voilà comment M. Newton raisonna. Mais on n’avait alors en
Angleterre que de très-fausses mesures de notre globe; on s’en
rapportait à l’estime incertaine des pilotes, qui comptaient
soixante milles d’Angleterre pour un degré, au lieu qu’il en fallait
compter près de soixante et dix. Ce faux calcul ne s’accordant
pas avec les conclusions que M. Newton voulait tirer, il les
abandonna. Un philosophe médiocre, et qui n’aurait eu que de
la vanité, eût fait cadrer comme il eût pu la mesure de la terre avec son système. M. Newton aima mieux abandonner alors son projet. Mais depuis que M. Picart eut mesuré la terre exactement, en traçant cette méridienne qui fait tant d’honneur à la France, M. Newton reprit ses premières idées, et il trouva son compte avec le calcul de M. Picart. Les autres planètes doivent être soumises à cette loi générale;
et si cette loi existe, ces planètes doivent suivre les règles
trouvées par Kepler. Toutes ces règles, tous ces rapports, sont en
effet gardés par les planètes. Son seul principe des lois de la gravitation
rend raison de toutes les inégalités apparentes dans le
cours des globes célestes. Les variations de la lune deviennent
une suite nécessaire de ces lois. Le flux et le reflux de la mer est
encore un effet très-simple de cette attraction. La proximité de
la lune dans son plein et quand elle est nouvelle, et son éloignement
dans ses quartiers, combinés avec l'action du soleil, rendent
une raison sensible de l’élévation et de l'abaissement de l'Océan.

Après avoir rendu compte, par sa sublime théorie, du cours
et des inégalités des planètes, il assujettit les comètes au frein de
la même loi.

Il prouve que ce sont des corps solides, qui se meuvent dans
la sphère de l'action du soleil, et décrivent une ellipse si excentrique
et si approchante de la parabole, que certaines comètes
doivent mettre plus de cinq cents ans dans leur révolution.

Le savant M. Halley croit que la comète de 1680 est la même
qui parut du temps de Jules César: celle-là surtout sert plus
qu'une autre à faire voir que les comètes sont des corps durs et
opaques, car elle descendit si près du soleil qu'elle n'en était
éloignée que d'une sixième partie de son disque; elle dut par
conséquent acquérir un degré de chaleur deux mille fois plus
violent que celui du fer le plus enflammé. Elle aurait été dissoute
et consommée en peu de temps si elle n'avait pas été un
corps opaque. La mode commençait alors de deviner le cours
des comètes. Le célèbre mathématicien Jacques Bernouilli conclut,
par son système, que cette fameuse comète de 1680 reparaîtrait
le 17 mai 1719. Aucun astronome de l'Europe ne se coucha
cette nuit du 17 mai, mais la fameuse comète ne parut point. Il
y a au moins plus d'adresse, s'il n'y a pas plus de sûreté, à
lui donner cinq cent soixante-quinze ans pour revenir. Pour M. Wilston, il a sérieusement affirmé que du temps du déluge
il y avait eu une comète qui avait inondé notre globe, et il a eu
l’injustice de s’étonner qu’on se soit moqué de lui. L’antiquité
pensait à peu près dans le goût de Wilston; elle croyait que
les comètes étaient toujours les avant-courrières de quelque
grand malheur sur la terre. Newton au contraire soupçonne
qu’elles sont très-bienfaisantes, et que les fumées qui en sortent
ne servent qu’à secourir et vivifier les planètes qui s’imbibent
dans leur cours de toutes ces particules que le soleil a détachées
des comètes. Ce sentiment est du moins plus probable que
l’autre.

Ce n’est pas tout, si cette force de gravitation, d’attraction,
agit dans tous les globes célestes, elle agit sans doute sur toutes
les parties de ces globes: car, si les corps s’attirent en raison de
leurs masses, ce ne peut être qu’en raison de la quantité de
leurs parties; et si ce pouvoir est logé dans le tout, il l’est sans
doute dans la moitié, il l’est dans le quart, dans la huitième
partie, ainsi jusqu’à l’infini. Voilà donc l’attraction qui est le
grand ressort qui fait mouvoir toute la nature.

Newton avait bien prévu, après avoir démontré l’existence de
ce principe, qu’on se révolterait contre ce seul nom: dans plus
d’un endroit de son livre il précautionne son lecteur contre l’attraction
même, il l’avertit de ne la pas confondre avec les qualités
occultes des anciens, et de se contenter de connaître qu’il y
a dans tous les corps une force centrale qui agit d’un bout de
l’univers à l’autre sur les corps les plus proches et sur les plus
éloignés, suivant les lois immuables de la mécanique.

Il est étonnant qu’après les protestations solennelles de ce
grand philosophe, M. Saurin et M. de Fontenelle, qui eux-mêmes
méritent ce nom, lui aient reproché nettement les chimères du
péripatétisme: M. Saurin, dans les Mémoires de l’Académie, de
1709; et M. de Fontenelle, dans l’éloge même de M. Newton.

Presque tous les Français, savants et autres, ont répété ce
reproche. On entend dire partout: Pourquoi Newton ne s’est-il pas servi du mot d’impulsion, que l’on comprend si bien, plutôt
que du terme d’attraction, que l’on ne comprend pas?

Newton aurait pu répondre à ces critiques:

Premièrement, vous n’entendez pas plus le mot d’impulsion
que celui d’attraction, et si vous ne concevez pas pourquoi un
corps tend vers le centre d’un autre corps, vous n’imaginez pas
plus par quelle vertu un corps en peut pousser un autre.

Secondement, je n’ai pas pu admettre l’impulsion: car il faudrait
pour cela que j’eusse connu qu’une matière céleste pousse
en effet les planètes; or, non-seulement je ne connais point cette
matière, mais j’ai prouvé qu’elle n’existe pas.

Troisièmement, je ne me sers du mot d’attraction que pour
exprimer un effet que j’ai découvert dans la nature, effet certain
et indisputable d’un principe inconnu, qualité inhérente dans
la matière, dont de plus habiles que moi trouveront, s’ils peuvent,
la cause.

Que nous avez-vous donc appris, insiste-t-on encore, et pourquoi
tant de calculs pour nous dire ce que vous-même ne comprenez pas?

Je vous ai appris (pourrait continuer Newton) que la mécanique
des forces centrales fait seule mouvoir les planètes et les
comètes dans des proportions marquées. Je suis, continuerait-il,
dans un cas bien différent des anciens: ils voyaient par exemple
l’eau monter dans les pompes, et ils disaient: L’eau monte parce
qu’elle a horreur du vide; mais moi, je suis dans le cas de celui
qui aurait remarqué le premier que l’eau monte dans les pompes,
et qui laisserait à d’autres le soin d’expliquer la cause de cet effet.
L’anatomiste qui a dit le premier que le bras se remue parce que
les muscles se contractent enseigna aux hommes une vérité
incontestable: lui en aura-t-on moins d’obligation parce qu’il n’a
pas su pourquoi les muscles se contractent? La cause du ressort de l’air est inconnue, mais celui qui a découvert ce ressort a rendu un grand service à la physique. Le ressort que j’ai découvert était plus caché, plus universel; ainsi, on doit m’en savoir plus de gré. J’ai découvert une propriété de la matière, un des secrets du Créateur; j’en ai calculé, j’en ai démontré les effets; peut-on me chicaner sur le nom que je lui donne?

Ce sont les tourbillons qu’on peut appeler une qualité occulte, puisqu’on n’a jamais prouvé leur existence. L’attraction au contraire est une chose réelle, puisqu’on en démontre les effets et qu’on en calcule les proportions. La cause de cette cause est dans le sein de Dieu. Procedes huc, et non ibis amplius.

### Letter XVI

sur l’optique de newton.

Un nouvel univers a été découvert par les philosophes du dernier siècle, et ce monde nouveau était d’autant plus difficile à connaître qu’on ne se doutait pas même qu’il existât. Il semblait aux plus sages que c’était une témérité d’oser seulement songer qu’on pût deviner par quelles lois les corps célestes se meuvent et comment la lumière agit.

Galilée, par ses découvertes astronomiques, Kepler, par ses calculs, Descartes, au moins dans sa Dioptrique, et Newton, dans tous ses ouvrages, ont vu la mécanique des ressorts du monde. Dans la géométrie, on a assujetti l’infini au calcul. La circulation du sang dans les animaux et de la sève dans les végétables a changé pour nous la nature. Une nouvelle manière d’exister a été donnée aux corps dans la machine pneumatique. Les objets se sont rapprochés de nos yeux à l’aide des télescopes. Enfin, ce que Newton a découvert sur la lumière est digne de tout ce que la curiosité des hommes pouvait attendre de plus hardi, après tant de nouveautés.

Jusqu’à Antonio de Dominis, l’arc-en-ciel avait paru un miracle inexplicable; ce philosophe devina que c’était un effet nécessaire de la pluie et du soleil. Descartes rendit son nom immortel par l’explication mathématique de ce phénomène si naturel; il calcula les réflexions de la lumière dans les gouttes de pluie, et cette sagacité eut alors quelque chose de divin.

Mais qu’aurait-il dit si on lui avait fait connaître qu’il se trompait sur la nature de la lumière; qu’il n’avait aucune raison d’assurer que c’était un corps globuleux; qu’il est faux que cette matière, s’étendant par tout l’univers, n’attende, pour être mise en action, que d’être poussée par le soleil, ainsi qu’un long bâton qui agit à un bout quand il est pressé par l’autre; qu’il est très vrai qu’elle est dardée par le soleil, et qu’enfin la lumière est transmise du soleil à la terre en près de sept minutes, quoique un boulet de canon, conservant toujours sa vitesse, ne puisse faire ce chemin qu’en vingt-cinq années?

Quel eût été son étonnement si on lui avait dit: « Il est faux que la lumière se réfléchisse directement en rebondissant sur les parties solides du corps; il est faux que les corps soient transparents quand ils ont des pores larges; et il viendra un homme qui démontrera ces paradoxes, et qui anatomisera un seul rayon de lumière avec plus de dextérité que le plus habile artiste ne dissèque le corps humain!

Il a si bien vu la lumière qu’il a déterminé à quel point l’art de l’augmenter et d’aider nos yeux par des télescopes doit se borner.

Descartes, par une noble confiance bien pardonnable à l’ardeur que lui donnaient les commencements d’un art presque découvert par lui, Descartes espérait voir dans les astres, avec des lunettes d’approche, des objets aussi petits que ceux qu’on discerne sur la terre.

Newton a montré qu’on ne peut plus perfectionner les lunettes, à cause de la réfraction même, qui, en nous rapprochant les objets, écartent trop les rayons élémentaires; il a calculé, dans ces verres, la proportion de l’écartement des rayons rouges et des rayons bleus; et, portant démonstration dans des choses dont on ne soupçonnait pas même l’existence, il examine les inégalités que produit la figure du verre, et celle que fait la réfrangibilité. Il trouve que le verre objectif de la lunette étant convexe d’un côté et plat de l’autre, si le côté plat est tourné vers l’objet, le défaut qui vient de la construction et de la position du verre est cinq mille fois moindre que le défaut qui vient par la réfrangibilité; et qu’ainsi ce n’est pas la figure des verres qui fait qu’on ne peut perfectionner les lunettes d’approche, mais qu’il faut s’en prendre à la matière même de la lumière.

Voilà pourquoi il inventa un télescope qui montre les objets
par réflexion, et non point par réfraction.

Il était encore peu connu en Europe quand il fit cette découverte.
J'ai vu un petit livre composé environ ce temps-là, dans
lequel, en parlant du télescope de Newton, on le prend pour un
lunetier: Artifex quidam Anglus nomine Newton. La postérité l'a
bien vengé.

### Letter XVII

sur l’infini et sur la chronologie.

Le labyrinthe et l’abîme de l’infini est aussi une carrière nouvelle parcourue par Newton, et on tient de lui le fil avec lequel on s’y peut conduire.

Descartes se trouve encore son précurseur dans cette étonnante nouveauté; il allait à grands pas dans sa géométrie jusque vers l’infini, mais il s’arrêta sur le bord. M. Wallis, vers le milieu du dernier siècle, fut le premier qui réduisit une fraction, par une division perpétuelle, à une suite infinie.

Milord Brouncker se servit de cette suite pour carrer l’hyperbole.

Mercator publia une démonstration de cette quadrature. Ce fut à peu près dans ce temps que Newton, à l’âge de vingt-trois ans, avait inventé une méthode générale pour faire sur toutes les courbes ce qu’on venait d’essayer sur l’hyperbole.

C’est cette méthode de soumettre partout l’infini au calcul algébrique, que l’on appelle calcul différentiel ou des fluxions et calcul intégral. C’est l’art de nombrer et de mesurer avec exactitude ce dont on ne peut pas même concevoir l’existence.

En effet, ne croiriez-vous pas qu’on veut se moquer de vous, quand on vous dit qu’il y a des lignes infiniment grandes qui forment un angle infiniment petit?

Qu’une droite qui est droite tant qu’elle est finie, changeant infiniment peu de direction, devient courbe infinie: qu’une courbe peut devenir infiniment moins courbe?

Qu’il y a des carrés d’infini, des cubes d’infini, et des infinis d’infini, dont le pénultième n’est rien par rapport au dernier?

Tout cela, qui paraît d’abord l’excès de la déraison, est, en effet, l’effort de la finesse et de l’étendue de l’esprit humain, et la méthode de trouver des vérités qui étaient jusqu’alors inconnues.

Cet édifice si hardi est même fondé sur des idées simples. Il s’agit de mesurer la diagonale d’un carré, d’avoir l’aire d’une courbe, de trouver une racine carrée à un nombre qui n’en a point dans l’arithmétique ordinaire.

Et, après tout, tant d’ordres d’infinis ne doivent pas plus révolter l’imagination que cette proposition si connue, qu’entre un cercle et une tangente on peut toujours faire passer des courbes; ou cette autre, que la matière est toujours divisible. Ces deux vérités sont depuis longtemps démontrées, et ne sont pas plus compréhensibles que le reste.

On a disputé longtemps à Newton l’invention de ce fameux calcul. M. Leibnitz a passé en Allemagne pour l’inventeur des différences que Newton appelle fluxions, et Bernoulli a revendiqué le calcul intégral; mais l’honneur de la première découverte a demeuré à Newton, et il est resté aux autres la gloire d’avoir pu faire douter entre eux et lui.

C’est ainsi que l’on contesta à Harvey la découverte de la circulation du sang; à M. Perrault, celle de la circulation de la sève. Hartsoeker et Leuvenhoeck se sont contesté l’honneur d’avoir vu le premier les petits vermisseaux dont nous sommes faits. Ce même Hartsoeker a disputé à M. Huyghens l’invention d’une nouvelle manière de calculer l’éloignement d’une étoile fixe. On ne sait encore quel philosophe trouva le problème de la roulette.

Quoi qu’il en soit, c’est par cette géométrie de l’infini que Newton est parvenu aux plus sublimes connaissances.

Il me reste à vous parler d’un autre ouvrage plus à la portée du genre humain, mais qui se sent toujours de cet esprit créateur que Newton portait dans toutes ses recherches; c’est une chronologie toute nouvelle, car, dans tout ce qu’il entreprenait, il fallait qu’il changeât les idées reçues par les autres hommes. Accoutumé à débrouiller des chaos, il a voulu porter au moins quelque lumière dans celui de ces fables anciennes confondues avec l’histoire, et fixer une chronologie incertaine. Il est vrai qu’il n’y a point de famille, de ville, de nation qui ne cherche à reculer son origine; de plus, les premiers historiens sont les plus négligents à marquer les dates; les livres étaient moins communs mille fois qu’aujourd’hui; par conséquent, étant moins exposé à la critique, on trompait le monde plus impunément; et, puisqu’on a évidemment supposé des faits, il est assez probable qu’on a aussi supposé des dates. En général, il parut à Newton que le monde était de cinq cents ans plus jeune que les chronologistes ne le disent; il fonde son idée sur le cours ordinaire de la nature et sur les observations astronomiques.

On entend ici par le cours de la nature le temps de chaque génération des hommes. Les Égyptiens s’étaient servis les premiers de cette manière incertaine de compter. Quand ils voulurent écrire les commencements de leur histoire, ils comptaient trois cent quarante et une générations depuis Ménès jusqu’à Séthon; et, n’ayant pas de dates fixes, ils évaluèrent trois générations à cent ans. Ainsi, ils comptèrent du règne de Ménès au règne de Séthon onze mille trois cent quarante années. Les Grecs, avant de compter par olympiades, suivirent la méthode des Égyptiens, et étendirent même un peu la durée des générations, poussant chaque génération jusqu’à quarante années. Or, en cela, les Égyptiens et les Grecs se trompèrent dans leur calcul. Il est bien vrai que, selon le cours ordinaire de la nature, trois générations font environ cent à six-vingts ans; mais il s’en faut bien que trois règnes tiennent ce nombre d’années. Il est très évident qu’en général les hommes vivent plus longtemps que les rois ne règnent. Ainsi, un homme qui voudra écrire l’histoire sans avoir de dates précises, et qui saura qu’il y a eu neuf rois chez une nation, aura grand tort s’il compte trois cents ans pour ces neuf rois. Chaque génération est d’environ trente-six ans; chaque règne est environ de vingt, l’un portant l’autre. Prenez les trente rois d’Angleterre, depuis Guillaume le Conquérant jusqu’à George Ier; ils ont régné six
cent quarante-huit ans, ce qui, réparti sur les trente rois, donne
à chacun vingt et un ans et demi de règne. Soixante-trois rois de
France ont régné, l’un portant l’autre, chacun à peu près vingt
ans. Voilà le cours ordinaire de la nature. Donc les anciens se
sont trompés quand ils ont égalé en général la durée des règnes
à la durée des générations; donc ils ont trop compté; donc il est
à propos de retrancher un peu de leur calcul.

Les observations astronomiques semblent prêter encore un
plus grand secours à notre philosophe: il paraît plus fort en
combattant sur son terrain.

Vous savez que la terre, outre son mouvement annuel, qui
l’emporte autour du soleil d’occident en orient dans l’espace d’une
année, a encore une révolution singulière, plutôt soupçonnée
que connue jusqu’à ces derniers temps. Ses pôles ont un mouvement
très lent de rétrogradation d’orient en occident, qui fait
que chaque jour leur position ne répond pas précisément aux
mêmes points du ciel. Cette différence, insensible en une année,
devient assez forte avec le temps, et au bout de soixante et douze
ans on trouve que la différence est d’un degré, c’est-à-dire de la
trois cent soixantième partie de tout le ciel. Ainsi, après soixante
et douze années, le colure de l’équinoxe du printemps, qui passant
par une fixe, répond à une autre fixe éloignée de la première
d’un degré. De là vient que le soleil, au lieu d’être dans la partie
du ciel où était le bélier du temps d’Hipparque, se trouve répondre
à cette partie du ciel où sont les poissons, et que les gémeaux
sont à la place où le taureau était alors. Tous les signes ont changé
de place; cependant nous retenons toujours la manière de parler
des anciens: nous disons que le soleil est dans le bélier au
printemps, par la même condescendance que nous disons que
le soleil tourne.

Hipparque fut le premier chez les Grecs qui s’aperçut de
quelques changements dans les constellations par rapport aux
équinoxes, ou plutôt qui l’apprit des Égyptiens. Les philosophes
attribuèrent ce mouvement aux étoiles, car alors on était bien
loin d’imaginer une telle révolution dans la terre: on la croyait
en tous sens immobile. Ils créèrent donc un ciel où ils attachèrent
toutes les étoiles, et donnèrent à ce ciel un mouvement  particulier qui le faisait avancer vers l’orient pendant que toutes les
étoiles semblaient faire leur route journalière d’orient en occident.
À cette erreur ils en ajoutèrent une seconde bien plus essentielle:
ils crurent que le ciel prétendu des étoiles fixes avançait
vers l’orient d’un degré en cent années. Ainsi ils se trompèrent
dans leur calcul astronomique aussi bien que dans leur système
physique. Par exemple un astronome aurait dit alors: « L’équinoxe
du printemps a été, du temps d’un tel observateur, dans
un tel signe, à une telle étoile; il a fait deux degrés de chemin
depuis cet observateur jusqu’à nous: or deux degrés valent deux
cents ans, donc cet observateur vivait deux cents ans avant moi. »
Il est certain qu’un astronome qui eût raisonné ainsi se serait
trompé environ de cinquante ans. Voilà pourquoi les anciens,
doublement trompés, composèrent leur grande année du monde,
c’est-à-dire de la révolution de tout le ciel, d’environ trente-six
mille ans. Mais les modernes savent que cette révolution imaginaire
du ciel des étoiles n’est autre chose que la révolution des
pôles de la terre, qui se fait en vingt-cinq mille neuf cents ans.
Il est bon de remarquer ici en passant que Newton, en déterminant
la figure de la terre, a très-heureusement expliqué la raison
de cette révolution.

Tout ceci posé, il reste, pour fixer la chronologie, de voir par
quelle étoile le colure des équinoxes coupe aujourd’hui l’écliptique
au printemps, et de savoir s’il ne se trouve point quelque
ancien qui nous ait dit en quel point l’écliptique était coupée
de son temps par le même colure des équinoxes.

Clément Alexandrin rapporte que Chiron, qui était de l’expédition
des Argonautes, observa les constellations au temps de
cette fameuse expédition, et fixa l’équinoxe du printemps au
milieu du bélier, l’équinoxe d’automne au milieu de la balance,
le solstice de notre été au milieu du cancre, et le solstice d’hiver
au milieu du capricorne.

Longtemps après l’expédition des Argonautes, et un an avant
la guerre du Péloponèse, Méton observa que le point du solstice
d’été passait par le huitième degré du cancre.

Or chaque signe du zodiaque est de trente degrés. Du temps
de Chiron le solstice était à la moitié du signe, c’est-à-dire au quinzième degré; un an avant la guerre du Péloponnèse, il était au huitième: donc il avait retardé de sept degrés. Un degré vaut soixante et douze ans: donc, du commencement de la du Péloponnèse à l’entreprise des Argonautes, il n’y a que sept fois soixante et douze ans, qui font cinq cent quatre ans, et non pas sept cents années, comme le disaient les Grecs. Ainsi, en comparant l’état du ciel d’aujourd’hui à l’état où il était alors, nous voyons que l’expédition des Argonautes doit être placée environ neuf cents ans avant Jésus-Christ, et non pas environ quatorze cents ans; et, par conséquent, le monde est moins vieux d’environ cinq cents ans qu’on ne pensait. Par là, toutes les époques sont rapprochées, et tout s’est fait plus tard qu’on ne le dit. Je ne sais si ce système ingénieux fera une grande fortune, et si on voudra se résoudre, sur ces idées, à réformer la chronologie du monde; peut-être les savants trouveraient-ils que c’en serait trop d’accorder à un même homme l’honneur d’avoir perfectionné à la fois la physique, la géométrie et l’histoire: ce serait une espèce de monarchie dont l’amour-propre s’accommode malaisément. Aussi, dans le temps que les partisans des tourbillons et de la matière cannelée attaquaient la gravitation démontrée, le R. P. Souciet et M. Fréret écrivaient contre la chronologie de Newton avant qu'elle
fût imprimée.

### Letter XVIII

sur la tragédie.

Les Anglais avaient déjà un théâtre aussi bien que les Espagnols, quand les Français n'avaient encore que des tréteaux. Shakespeare que les Anglais prennent pour un Sophocle, florissait
à peu près dans le temps de Lope de Véga: il créa le théâtre;
il avait un génie plein de force et de fécondité, de naturel et de
sublime, sans la moindre étincelle de bon goût, et sans la moindre
connaissance des règles. Je vais vous dire une chose hasardée,
mais vraie: c'est que le mérite de cet auteur a perdu le théâtre
anglais; il y a de si belles scènes, des morceaux si grands et si
terribles répandus dans ses farces monstrueuses, qu'on appelle
tragédies, que ses pièces ont toujours été jouées avec un grand
succès. Le temps, qui fait seul la réputation des hommes, rend à
la fin leurs défauts respectables, La plupart des idées bizarres et
gigantesques de cet auteur ont acquis au bout de deux cents ans
le droit de passer pour sublimes. Les auteurs modernes l'ont
presque tous copié; mais ce qui réussissait dans Shakespeare est
sifflé chez eux, et vous croyez bien que la vénération qu'on a
pour cet ancien augmente à mesure que l'on méprise les modernes.
On ne fait pas réflexion qu'il ne faudrait pas l'imiter, et
le mauvais succès de ses copistes fait seulement qu'on le croit
inimitable.

Vous savez que dans la tragédie du More de Venise, pièce très-touchante,
un mari étrangle sa femme sur le théâtre; et que,
quand la pauvre femme est étranglée, elle s'écrie qu'elle meurt
très-injustement. Vous n'ignorez pas que, dans Hamlet, des fossoyeurs
creusent une fosse en buvant, en chantant des vaudevilles,
et en faisant sur les têtes des morts qu'ils rencontrent des
plaisanteries convenables à gens de leur métier; mais, ce qui vous
surprendra, c'est qu'on a imité ces sottises. Sous le règne de
Charles II, qui était celui de la politesse, et l'âge des beaux-arts,
Otway, dans sa Venise sauvée, introduit le sénateur Antonio et sa
courtisane Naki au milieu des horreurs de la conspiration du
marquis de Bedmar. Le vieux sénateur Antonio fait auprès de sa
courtisane toutes les singeries d'un vieux débauché impuissant et
hors du bon sens; il contrefait le taureau et le chien, il mord les
jambes de sa maîtresse, qui lui donne des coups de pied et des coups de fouet. On a retranché de la pièce d’Otway ces bouffonneries
faites pour la plus vile canaille; mais on a laissé dans
le Jules César de Shakespeare les plaisanteries des cordonniers
et des savetiers romains introduits sur la scène avec Brutus et
Cassius.

Vous vous plaindrez sans doute que ceux qui, jusqu’à présent,
vous ont parlé du théâtre anglais, et surtout de ce fameux
Shakespeare, ne vous aient encore fait voir que ses erreurs, et
que personne n’ait traduit aucun de ces endroits frappants qui
demandent grâce pour toutes ses fautes. Je vous répondrai qu’il
est bien aisé de rapporter en prose les sottises d’un poète, mais
très-difficile de traduire ses beaux vers. Tous ceux qui s’érigent
en critiques des écrivains célèbres compilent des volumes. J’aimerais
mieux deux pages qui nous fissent connaître quelques beautés:
car je maintiendrai toujours, avec tous les gens de bon goût, qu’il
y a plus à profiter dans douze vers d’Homère et de Virgile que dans
toutes les critiques qu’on a faites de ces deux grands hommes.

J’ai hasardé de traduire quelques morceaux des meilleurs
poètes anglais: en voici un de Shakespeare. Faites grâce à la copie
en faveur de l’original, et souvenez-vous toujours, quand vous
voyez une traduction, que vous ne voyez qu’une faible estampe
d’un beau tableau.

J’ai choisi le monologue de la tragédie d’Hamlet, qui est su de
tout le monde, et qui commence par ces vers:

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

C’est Hamlet, prince de Danemark, qui parle:

Demeure; il faut choisir, et passer à l’instant

De la vie à la mort, et de l’être au néant.

Dieux justes! s’il en est, éclairez mon courage.

Faut-il vieillir courbé sous la main qui m’outrage,

Supporter ou finir mon malheur et mon sort?

Qui suis-je? qui m’arrête? et qu’est-ce que la mort?

C’est la fin de nos maux, c’est mon unique asile;

Après de longs transports, c’est un sommeil tranquille;

On s’endort, et tout meurt. Mais un affreux réveil

Doit succéder peut-être aux douceurs du sommeil.

On nous menace, on dit que cette courte vie

De tourments éternels est aussitôt suivie.

Ô mort! moment fatal! affreuse éternité!

Tout cœur à ton seul nom se glace épouvanté.

Eh! qui pourrait sans toi supporter cette vie,

De nos fourbes puissants bénir l’hypocrisie,

D’une indigne maîtresse encenser les erreurs.

Ramper sous un ministre, adorer ses hauteurs,

Et montrer les langueurs de son âme abattue

À des amis ingrats qui détournent la vue?

La mort serait trop douce en ces extrémités;

Mais le scrupule parle, et nous crie: Arrêtez.

Il défend à nos mains cet heureux homicide,

Et d’un héros guerrier fait un chrétien timide, etc..

Après ce morceau de poésie, les lecteurs sont priés de jeter
les yeux sur la traduction littérale:

Être ou n’être pas, c’est là la question:

S’il est plus noble dans l’esprit de souffrir

Les piqûres et les flèches de l’affreuse fortune.

Ou de prendre les armes contre une mer de trouble,

Et, en s’opposant à eux, les finir? Mourir, dormir,

Rien de plus, et par ce sommeil dire: Nous terminons

Les peines du cœur, et dix mille chocs naturels

Dont la chair est héritière; c’est une consommation

Ardemment désirable. Mourir, dormir:

Dormir, peut-être rêver? ah! voilà le mal!

Car, dans ce sommeil de la mort, quels rêves aura-t-on,

Quand on a dépouillé cette enveloppe mortelle?

C’est là ce qui fait penser; c’est là la raison

Qui donne à la calamité une vie si longue:

Car qui voudrait supporter les coups et les injures du temps,

Les torts de l’oppresseur, les dédains de l’orgueilleux,

Les angoisses d’un amour méprisé, les délais de la justice,

L’insolence des grandes places, et les rebuts

Que le mérite patient essuie de l’homme indigne,

Quand il peut faire son quietus

Avec une simple aiguille à tête? qui voudrait porter ces fardeaux.

Sangloter, suer sous une fatigante vie?

Mais cette crainte de quelque chose après la mort,

Ce pays ignoré, des bornes duquel

Nul voyageur ne revient, embarrasse la volonté.

Et nous fait supporter les maux que nous avons,

Plutôt que de courir vers d’autres que nous ne connaissons pas.

Ainsi la conscience fait des poltrons de nous tous;

Ainsi la couleur naturelle de la résolution

Est ternie par les pâles teintes de la pensée;

Et les entreprises les plus importantes,

Par ce respect, tournent leur courant de travers,

Et perdent leur nom d’action…

Ne croyez pas que j’aie rendu ici l’anglais mot pour mot;
malheur aux faiseurs de traductions littérales, qui, traduisant
chaque parole, énervent le sens! C’est bien là qu’on peut dire que
la lettre tue, et que l’esprit vivifie.

Voici encore un passage d’un fameux tragique anglais: c’est
Dryden, poëte du temps de Charles II, auteur plus fécond que
judicieux, qui aurait une réputation sans mélange s’il n’avait
fait que la dixième partie de ses ouvrages.

Ce morceau commence ainsi:

When I consider life, t’is ail a cheat,

Yet fool’d by hope men favour the deceit.

De desseins en regrets, et d’erreurs en désirs,

Les mortels insensés promènent leur folie.

Dans des malheurs présents, dans l’espoir des plaisirs,

Nous ne vivons jamais, nous attendons la vie.

Demain, demain, dit-on, va combler tous nos vœux;

Demain vient, et nous laisse encor plus malheureux.

Quelle est l’erreur, hélas! du soin qui nous dévore?

Nul de nous ne voudrait recommencer son cours:

De nos premiers moments nous maudissons l’aurore,

Et de la nuit qui vient nous attendons encore

Ce qu’ont en vain promis les plus beaux de nos jours, etc.

C’est dans ces morceaux détachés que les tragiques anglais
ont jusqu’ici excellé; leurs pièces, presque toutes barbares, dépourvues de bienséance, d’ordre, de vraisemblance, ont des
lueurs étonnantes au milieu de cette nuit. Le style est trop
ampoulé, trop hors de la nature, trop copié des écrivains hébreux
si remplis de l’enflure asiatique; mais aussi les échasses du style
figuré, sur lesquelles la langue anglaise est guindée, élèvent
l’esprit bien haut, quoique par une marche irrégulière.

Il semble quelquefois que la nature ne soit pas faite en Angleterre
comme ailleurs. Ce même Dryden, dans sa farce de Don Sebastien, roi de Portugal,
qu’il appelle tragédie, fait parler ainsi
un officier à ce monarque:

LE ROI SÉBASTIEN.

Ne me connais-tu pas, traître, insolent?

ALONZE.

Je te connais fort bien, mais non pas pourQui, moi?

Je te connais fort bien, mais non pas pour mon roi.

Tu n’es plus dans Lisbonne, où ta cour méprisable

Nourrissait de ton cœur l’orgueil insupportable.

Un tas d’illustres sots et de fripons titrés,

Et de gueux du bel air, et d’esclaves dorés,

Chatouillait ton oreille et fascinait ta vue;

On t’entourait en cercle, ainsi qu’une statue;

Quand tu disais un mot, chacun, le cou tendu,

S’empressait d’applaudir sans t’avoir entendu;

Et ce troupeau servile admirait en silence

Ta royale sottise et ta noble arrogance.

Mais te voilà réduit à ta juste valeur…

Ce discours est un peu anglais; la pièce d’ailleurs est bouffonne.
Comment concilier, disent nos critiques, tant de ridicule
et de raison, tant de bassesse et de sublime? Rien n’est plus aisé
à concevoir: il faut songer que ce sont des hommes qui ont écrit.
La scène espagnole a tous les défauts de l’anglaise, et n’en a  peut-être pas les beautés. Et, de bonne foi, qu’étaient donc les Grecs?
qu’était donc Euripide, qui, dans la même pièce, fait un tableau
si touchant, si noble, d’Alceste s’immolant à son époux, et met
dans la bouche d’Admète et de son père des puérilités si grossières
que les commentateurs mêmes en sont embarrassés? Ne
faut-il pas être bien intrépide pour ne pas trouver le sommeil d’Homère
quelquefois un peu long, et les rêves de ce sommeil assez
insipides? Il faut bien des siècles pour que le bon goût s’épure,
Virgile, chez les Romains; Racine, chez les Français, furent les
premiers dont le goût fut toujours pur dans les grands ouvrages.

M. Addison est le premier Anglais qui ait fait une tragédie
raisonnable. Je le plaindrais s’il n’y avait mis que de la raison.
Sa tragédie de Caton est écrite d’un bout à l’autre avec cette élégance
mâle et énergique dont Corneille le premier donna chez
nous de si beaux exemples dans son style inégal. Il me semble
que cette pièce est faite pour un auditoire un peu philosophe et
très-républicain. Je doute que nos jeunes dames et nos petits-maîtres
eussent aimé Caton en robe de chambre, lisant les dialogues
de Platon, et faisant ses réflexions sur l’immortalité de
l’âme. Mais ceux qui s’élèvent au-dessus des usages, des préjugés,
des faiblesses de leur nation, ceux qui sont de tous les temps et
de tous les pays, ceux qui préfèrent la grandeur philosophique
à des déclarations d’amour, seront bien aises de trouver ici une
copie, quoique imparfaite, de ce morceau sublime: il semble
qu’Addison, dans ce beau monologue de Caton, ait voulu lutter
contre Shakespeare. Je traduirai l’un comme l’autre, c’est-à-dire
avec cette liberté sans laquelle on s’écarterait trop de son original
à force de vouloir lui ressembler. Le fond est très-fidèle;
j’y ajoute peu de détails. Il m’a fallu enchérir sur lui, ne pouvant
l’égaler.

Oui, Platon, tu dis vrai; notre âme est immortelle,

C’est un dieu qui lui parle, un dieu qui vit en elle.

Eh! d’où viendrait sans lui ce grand pressentiment,

Ce dégoût des faux biens, cette horreur du néant?

Vers des siècles sans fin je sens que tu m’entraînes.

Du monde et de mes sens je vais briser les chaînes,

Et m’ouvrir, loin d’un corps dans la fange arrêté,

Les portes de la vie et de l’éternité.

L’éternité! quel mot consolant et terrible!

Ô lumière! ô nuage, ô profondeur horrible!

Que suis-je? où suis-je? où vais-je? et d’où suis-je tiré?

Dans quels climats nouveaux, dans quel monde ignoré

Le moment, du trépas va-t-il plonger mon être?

Où sera cet esprit qui ne peut se connaître?

Que me préparez-vous, abîmes ténébreux?

Allons, s’il est un dieu, Caton doit être heureux.

Il en est un sans doute, et je suis son ouvrage.

Lui-même au cœur du juste il empreint son image.

Il doit venger sa cause et punir les pervers.

Mais comment? dans quel temps? et dans quel univers?

Ici la vertu pleure, et l’audace l’opprime;

L’innocence à genoux y tend la gorge au crime:

La fortune y domine, et tout y suit son char.

Ce globe infortuné fut formé pour César:

Hâtons-nous de sortir d’une prison funeste:

Je te verrai sans ombre, ô vérité céleste!

Tu te caches de nous dans nos jours de sommeil:

Cette vie est un songe, et la mort un réveil.

Dans cette tragédie d’un patriote et d’un philosophe, le rôle de Caton me paraît surtout un des plus beaux personnages qui soient sur aucun théâtre. Le Caton d’Addison est, je crois, fort au-dessus de la Cornélie de Pierre Corneille; car il est continuellement grand sans enflure, et le rôle de Cornélie, qui d’ailleurs n’est pas un personnage nécessaire, sent trop la déclamation en quelques endroits. Elle veut toujours être héroïne, et Caton ne s’aperçoit jamais qu’il est un héros.

Il est bien triste que quelque chose de si beau ne soit pas une belle tragédie. Des scènes décousues, qui laissent souvent le théâtre vide, des apartés trop longs et sans art, des amours froids et insipides, une conspiration inutile à la pièce, un certain Sempronius déguisé et tué sur le théâtre: tout cela fait de la fameuse tragédie de Caton une pièce que nos comédiens n’oseraient jamais jouer, quand même nous penserions à la romaine ou à l’anglaise. La barbarie et l’irrégularité du théâtre de Londres ont percé jusque dans la sagesse d’Addison. Il me semble que je vois le czar Pierre, qui, en réformant les Russes, tenait encore quelque chose de son éducation et des mœurs de son pays.

La coutume d’introduire de l’amour à tort et à travers dans les ouvrages dramatiques passa de Paris à Londres, vers l’an 1660, avec nos rubans et nos perruques. Les femmes, qui y parent les spectacles, comme ici, ne veulent plus souffrir qu’on leur parle d’autre chose que d’amour. Le sage Addison eut la molle complaisance de plier la sévérité de son caractère aux mœurs de son temps, et gâta un chef-d’œuvre pour avoir voulu plaire.

Depuis lui, les pièces sont devenues plus régulières, le peuple plus difficile, les auteurs plus corrects et moins hardis. J’ai vu des pièces nouvelles fort sages, mais froides. Il semble que les Anglais n’aient été faits jusqu’ici que pour produire des beautés irrégulières. Les monstres brillants de Shakespeare plaisent mille fois plus que la sagesse moderne. Le génie poétique des Anglais ressemble jusqu’à présent à un arbre touffu planté par la nature, jetant au hasard mille rameaux, et croissant inégalement et avec force; il meurt, si vous voulez forcer sa nature et le tailler en arbre des jardins de Marly.

### Letter XIX

SUR LA COMÉDIE.

Si dans la plupart des tragédies anglaises les héros sont ampoulés et les héroïnes extravagantes, en récompense le style est plus naturel dans la comédie. Mais ce naturel nous paraîtrait souvent celui de la débauche plutôt que celui de l’honnêteté. On y appelle chaque chose par son nom. Une femme fâchée contre son amant lui souhaite la v…… Un ivrogne, dans une pièce qu’on joue tous les jours, se masque en prêtre, fait du tapage, est arrêté par le guet. Il se dit curé; on lui demande s’il a une cure: il répond qu’il en a une excellente pour la chaude…… Une des comédies les plus décentes, intitulée le Mari négligent, représente d’abord ce mari qui se fait gratter la tête par une servante, assise à côté de lui; sa femme survient et s’écrie: À quelle autorité ne parvient-on pas par être p……! Quelques cyniques prennent le parti de ces expressions grossières; ils s’appuient sur l’exemple d’Horace, qui nomme par leur nom toutes les parties du corps humain et tous les plaisirs qu’elles donnent. Ce sont des images qui gagnent chez nous à être voilées. Mais Horace, qui semble fait pour les mauvais lieux ainsi que pour la cour, et qui entend parfaitement les usages de ces deux empires, parle aussi franchement de ce qu’un honnête homme dans ses besoins peut faire à une jeune fille que s’il parlait d’une promenade ou d’un souper. On ajoute que les Romains, du temps d’Auguste, étaient aussi polis que les Parisiens, et que ce même Horace, qui loue l’empereur Auguste d’avoir réformé les mœurs, se conformait sans honte à l’usage de son siècle, qui permettait les filles, les garçons, et les noms propres. Chose étrange (si quelque chose pouvait l’être) qu’Horace, en parlant le langage de la débauche, fut le favori d’un réformateur, et qu’Ovide, pour avoir parlé le langage de la galanterie, fut exilé par un débauché, un fourbe, un assassin nommé Octave, parvenu à l’empire par des crimes qui méritaient le dernier supplice.

Quoi qu’il en soit, Bayle prétend que les expressions sont indifférentes: en quoi lui, les cyniques, et les stoïciens, semblent se tromper, car chaque chose a des noms différents qui la peignent sous divers aspects, et qui donnent d’elle des idées fort différentes. Les mots de magistrat et de robin, de gentilhomme et de gentillâtre, d’officier et d’aigrefin, de religieux et de moine, ne signifient pas la même chose. La consommation du mariage, et tout ce qui sert à ce grand œuvre, sera différemment exprimé par le curé, par le mari, par le médecin, et par un jeune homme amoureux. Le mot dont celui-ci se servira réveillera l’image du plaisir; les termes du médecin ne présenteront que des figures
anatomiques; le mari fera entendre avec décence ce que le jeune
indiscret aura dit avec audace; et le curé tâchera de donner
l’idée d’un sacrement. Les mots ne sont donc pas indifférents,
puisqu’il n’y a point de synonymes.

Il faut encore considérer que si les Romains permettaient des
expressions grossières dans des satires qui n’étaient lues que de
peu de personnes, ils ne souffraient pas des mots déshonnêtes sur
le théâtre. Car, comme dit La Fontaine,

Chastes sont les oreilles,

Encor que les yeux soient fripons.

En un mot, il ne faut qu’on prononce en public un mot qu’une
honnête femme ne puisse répéter.

Les Anglais ont pris, ont déguisé, ont gâté la plupart des
pièces de Molière, Ils ont voulu faire un Tartuffe. Il était impossible
que ce sujet réussit à Londres: la raison en est qu’on ne se plaît
guère aux portraits des gens qu’on ne connaît pas. Un des grands
avantages de la nation anglaise, c’est qu’il n’y a point de tartufes
chez elle. Pour qu’il y eût de faux dévots, il faudrait qu’il y en
eût de véritables. On n’y connaît presque pas le nom de dévot,
mais beaucoup celui d’honnête homme. On n’y voit point d’imbéciles
qui mettent leurs âmes en d’autres mains, ni de ces petits
ambitieux qui s’établissent, dans un quartier de la ville, un
empire despotique sur quelques femmelettes autrefois galantes et
toujours faibles, et sur quelques hommes plus faibles et plus
méprisables qu’elles. La philosophie, la liberté, et le climat, conduisent
à la misanthropie: Londres, qui n’a point de tartufes, est
plein de Timons. Aussi le Misanthrope, ou l’Homme au franc procédé,
est une des bonnes comédies qu’on ait à Londres: elle fut faite
du temps que Charles II et sa cour brillante tâchaient de défaire
la nation de son humeur noire. Wicherley, auteur de cet ouvrage,
était l’amant déclaré de la duchesse de Cléveland, maîtresse du
roi. Cet homme, qui passait sa vie dans le plus grand monde, en
peignait les ridicules et les faiblesses avec les couleurs les plus
fortes. Les traits de la pièce de Wicherley sont plus hardis que
ceux de Molière; mais aussi ils ont moins de finesse et de  bienséance. L’auteur anglais a corrigé le seul défaut qui soit dans la
pièce de Molière: ce défaut est le manque d’intrigue et d’intérêt.
La pièce anglaise est intéressante, et l’intrigue en est ingénieuse,
mais trop hardie pour nos mœurs.

C’est un capitaine de vaisseau plein de valeur, de franchise, et
de mépris pour le genre humain. Il a un ami sage et sincère dont
il se défie, et une maîtresse dont il est tendrement aimé, sur
laquelle il ne daigne pas jeter les yeux; au contraire il a mis
toute sa confiance dans un faux ami qui est le plus indigne
homme qui respire, et il a donné son cœur à la plus coquette et
à la plus perfide de toutes les femmes. Il est bien assuré que cette
femme est une Pénélope, et ce faux ami un Caton. Il part pour
s’aller battre contre les Hollandais, et laisse tout son argent, ses
pierreries, et tout ce qu’il a au monde, à cette femme de bien, et
recommande cette femme elle-même à cet ami fidèle, sur lequel
il compte si fort. Cependant le véritable honnête homme dont il
se défie tant s’embarque avec lui; et la maîtresse qu’il n’a pas
seulement daigné regarder se déguise en page, et fait le voyage
sans que le capitaine s’aperçoive de son sexe de toute la campagne.

Le capitaine, ayant fait sauter son vaisseau dans un combat,
revient à Londres, sans secours, sans vaisseau, et sans argent,
avec son page et son ami, ne connaissant ni l’amitié de l’un, ni
l’amour de l’autre. Il va droit chez la perle des femmes, qu’il
compte retrouver avec sa cassette et sa fidélité: il la retrouve
mariée avec l’honnête fripon à qui il s’était confié, et on ne lui a
pas plus gardé son dépôt que le reste. Mon homme a toutes les
peines du monde à croire qu’une femme de bien puisse faire de
pareils tours; mais, pour l’en convaincre mieux, cette honnête
dame devient amoureuse du petit page, et veut le prendre à
force. Mais comme il faut que justice se fasse, et que dans une
pièce de théâtre le vice soit puni et la vertu récompensée, il se
trouve à la fin du compte que le capitaine se met à la place du
page, couche avec son infidèle, fait cocu son traître ami, lui
donne un bon coup d’épée au travers du corps, reprend sa cassette,
et épouse son page. Vous remarquerez qu’on a encore lardé cette
pièce d’une comtesse de Pimbesche, vieille plaideuse, parente du
capitaine, laquelle est bien la plus plaisante créature et le meilleur
caractère qui soit au théâtre.

Wicherley a encore tiré de Molière une pièce non moins singulière
et non moins hardie: c’est une espèce d’École des Femmes.

Le principal personnage de la pièce est un drôle à bonnes
fortunes, la terreur des maris de Londres, qui, pour être plus sûr
de son fait, s’avise de faire courir le bruit que dans sa dernière
maladie les chirurgiens ont trouvé à propos de le faire eunuque.
Avec cette belle réputation tous les maris lui amènent leurs
femmes, et le pauvre homme n’est plus embarrassé que du choix.
Il donne surtout la préférence à une petite campagnarde qui a
beaucoup d’innocence et de tempérament, et qui fait son mari
cocu avec une bonne foi qui vaut mieux que la malice des dames
les plus expertes. Cette pièce n’est pas, si vous voulez, l’école des
bonnes mœurs, mais en vérité c’est l’école de l’esprit et du bon
comique.

Un chevalier Van Brugh a fait des comédies encore plus
plaisantes, mais moins ingénieuses. Ce chevalier était un homme
de plaisir, et, par-dessus cela, poète et architecte. On prétend qu’il
écrivait avec autant de délicatesse et d’élégance qu’il bâtissait
grossièrement. C’est lui qui a bâti le fameux château de
Blenheim, pesant et durable monument de notre malheureuse
bataille d’Hochstedt. Si les appartements étaient seulement aussi
larges que les murailles sont épaisses, ce château serait assez
commode.

On a mis dans l’épitaphe de Van Brugh qu’on souhaitait que
la terre ne lui fût point légère, attendu que de son vivant il l’avait si
inhumainement chargée. Ce chevalier, ayant fait un tour en France
avant la belle guerre de 1701, fut mis à la Bastille, et y resta
quelque temps, sans avoir pu jamais savoir ce qui lui avait attiré
cette distinction de la part de notre ministère. Il fit une comédie
à la Bastille, et, ce qui est à mon sens fort étrange, c’est qu’il n’y
a dans cette pièce aucun trait contre le pays dans lequel il essuya
cette violence.

Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porté le plus loin la gloire du
théâtre comique est feu M. Congrève. Il n’a fait que peu de pièces,
mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre. Les règles du théâtre
y sont rigoureusement observées. Elles sont pleines de caractères
nuancés avec une extrême finesse; on n’y essuie pas la moindre
mauvaise plaisanterie; vous y voyez partout le langage des honnêtes gens avec des actions de fripon: ce qui prouve qu’il
connaissait bien son monde, et qu’il vivait dans ce qu’on appelle
la bonne compagnie.

Ses pièces sont les plus spirituelles et les plus exactes; celles de
Van Brugh, les plus gaies; et celles de Wicherley, les plus fortes.

Il est à remarquer qu’aucun de ces beaux esprits n’a mal
parlé de Molière. Il n’y a que les mauvais auteurs anglais qui
aient dit du mal de ce grand homme.

Au reste, ne me demandez pas que j’entre ici dans le moindre
détail de ces pièces anglaises dont je suis si grand partisan, ni
que je vous rapporte un bon mot ou une plaisanterie des Wicherley
et des Congrève; on ne rit point dans une traduction. Si vous
voulez connaître la comédie anglaise, il n’y a d’autre moyen pour
cela que d’aller à Londres, d’y rester trois ans, d’apprendre bien
l’anglais, et de voir la comédie tous les jours. Je n’ai pas grand
plaisir en lisant Plaute et Aristophane: pourquoi? c’est que je ne
suis ni Grec ni Romain. La finesse des bons mots, l’allusion, l’à-propos,
tout cela est perdu pour un étranger.

Il n’en est pas de même dans la tragédie. Il n’est question chez
elle que de grandes passions et de sottises héroïques consacrées
par de vieilles erreurs de fable ou d’histoire. Œdipe, Électre, appartiennent
aux Espagnols, aux Anglais, et à nous, comme aux Grecs.
Mais la bonne comédie est la peinture parlante des ridicules
d’une nation; et, si vous ne connaissez pas la nation à fond, vous
ne pouvez guère juger de la peinture.

On reproche aux Anglais leur scène souvent ensanglantée et ornée de corps morts; on leur reproche leurs gladiateurs, qui combattent à moitié nus devant de jeunes filles, et qui s’en retournent quelquefois avec un nez et une joue de moins. Ils disent pour leurs raisons qu’ils imitent les Grecs dans l’art de la tragédie, et les Romains dans l’art de couper des nez. Mais leur théâtre est un peu loin de celui des Sophocle et des Euripide; et à l’égard des Romains, il faut avouer qu’un nez et une joue sont bien peu de chose en comparaison de cette multitude de victimes qui s’égorgeaient mutuellement dans le cirque pour le plaisir des dames romaines.

Ils ont eu quelquefois des danses dans leurs comédies, et ces danses ont été des allégories d'un goût singulier. Le pouvoir despotique et l'état républicain furent représentés en 1709 par une danse tout à fait galante. On voyait d'abord un roi qui, après un entrechat, donnait un grand coup de pied dans le derrière à son premier ministre; celui-ci le rendait à un second, le second à un troisième; et enfin celui qui recevait le dernier coup figurait le gros de la nation, qui ne se vengeait sur personne: le tout se faisait en cadence. Le gouvernement républicain était figuré par une danse ronde, où chacun donnait et recevait également. C'est pourtant là le pays qui a produit des Addison, des Pope, des Locke, et des Newton!

### Letter XX

sur les seigneurs qui cultivent les lettres.

Il a été un temps en France où les Beaux-Arts étaient cultivés par les premiers de l’État. Les courtisans surtout s’en mêlaient, malgré la dissipation, le goût des riens, la passion pour l’intrigue, toutes divinités du pays.

Il me paraît qu’on est actuellement à la cour dans tout un autre goût que celui des lettres; peut-être dans peu de temps la mode de penser reviendra-t-elle: un roi n’a qu’à vouloir; on fait de cette nation-ci tout ce qu’on veut. En Angleterre communément on pense, et les lettres y sont plus en honneur qu’en France. Cet avantage est une suite nécessaire de la forme de leur gouvernement. Il y a à Londres environ huit cents personnes qui ont le droit de parler en public et de soutenir les intérêts de la nation. Environ cinq ou six mille prétendent au même honneur à leur tour. Tout le reste s’érige en juge de tous ceux-ci, et chacun peut faire imprimer ce qu’il pense sur les affaires publiques: ainsi, toute la nation est dans la nécessité de s’instruire. On n’entend parler que des gouvernements d’Athènes et de Rome; il faut bien, malgré qu’on en ait, lire les auteurs qui en ont traité. Cette étude conduit naturellement aux belles-lettres. En général, les hommes ont l’esprit de leur état. Pourquoi d’ordinaire nos magistrats, nos avocats, nos médecins et beaucoup d’ecclésiastiques ont-ils plus de lettres, de goût et d’esprit que l’on n’en trouve dans toutes les autres professions? C’est que réellement leur état est d’avoir l’esprit cultivé, comme celui d’un marchand est de connaître son négoce. Il n’y a pas longtemps qu’un seigneur anglais fort jeune me vint voir à Paris en revenant d’Italie. Il avait fait en vers une description de ce pays-là, aussi poliment écrite que tout ce qu’ont fait le comte de Rochester et nos Chaulieu, nos Sarrasin et nos Chapelle.

La traduction que j’en ai faite est si loin d’atteindre à la force et à la bonne plaisanterie de l’original que je suis obligé d’en demander sérieusement pardon à l’auteur et à ceux qui entendent l’anglais. Cependant, comme je n’ai pas d’autre moyen de faire connaître les vers de milord Harvey, les voici dans ma langue:

Qu’ai-je donc vu dans l’Italie?

Orgueil, astuce et pauvreté,

Grands compliments, peu de bonté,

Et beaucoup de cérémonie,

L’extravagante comédie

Que souvent l’Inquisition

Veut qu’on nomme religion,

Mais qu’ici nous nommons folie.

La nature, en vain bienfaisante,

Veut enrichir ces lieux charmants;

Des Prêtres la main désolante

Étouffe ses plus beaux présents.

Les Monsignors, soi-disant grands,

Seuls dans leurs palais magnifiques,

Y sont d’illustres fainéants,

Sans argent et sans domestiques.

Pour les petits, sans liberté,

Martyrs du joug qui les domine,

Ils ont fait vœu de pauvreté,

Priant Dieu par oisiveté,

Et toujours jeûnant par famine.

Ces beaux lieux, du pape bénis,

Semblent habités par les diables,

Et les habitants misérables

Sont damnés dans le paradis.

Je ne suis pas de l’avis de milord Harvey. Il y a des pays en Italie qui sont très-malheureux, parce que des étrangers s’y battent depuis longtemps à qui les gouvernera; mais il y en a d’autres où l’on n'est ni si gueux ni si sot qu’il dit.

### Letter XXI

sur le comte de rochester et m. waller.

Tout le monde connaît la réputation du comte de Rochester. M. de Saint-Évremond en a beaucoup parlé; mais il ne nous a fait connaître du fameux Rochester que l’homme de plaisir, l'homme à bonnes fortunes. Je voudrais faire connaître en lui l’homme de génie et le grand poëte. Entre autres ouvrages qui brillaient de cette imagination ardente qui n’appartenait qu’à lui, il a fait quelques satires sur les mêmes sujets que notre célèbre Despréaux avait choisis. Je ne sais rien de plus utile, pour se perfectionner le goût, que la comparaison des grands génies qui se sont exercés sur les mêmes matières.

Voici comme M. Despréaux parle contre la raison humaine, dans sa satire sur l’homme:

Cependant, à le voir, plein de vapeurs légères,

Soi-même se bercer de ses propres chimères,

Lui seul de la nature est la base et l’appui,

Et le dixième Ciel ne tourne que pour lui.

De tous les animaux il est ici le maître;

Qui pourrait le nier, poursuis-tu?

Moi, peut-être:

Ce maître prétendu qui leur donne des lois,

Ce Roi des animaux, combien a-t-il de Rois?

Voici à peu près comme s’exprime le comte de Rochester, dans sa satire sur l’homme; mais il faut que le lecteur se ressouvienne toujours que ce sont ici des traductions libres de poètes anglais, et que la gêne de notre versification et les bienséances délicates de notre langue ne peuvent donner l’équivalent de la licence impétueuse du style anglais.

Cet esprit que je hais, cet esprit plein d’erreur,

Ce n’est pas ma raison, c’est la tienne, Docteur;

C’est ta raison frivole, inquiète, orgueilleuse,

Des sages animaux rivale dédaigneuse

Qui croit entre eux et l’Ange occuper le milieu,

Et pense être ici-bas l’image de son Dieu,

Vil atome importun, qui croit, doute, dispute,

Rampe, s’élève, tombe, et nie encor sa chute;

Qui nous dit: « Je suis libre, en nous montrant ses fers,

Et dont l’œil trouble et faux croit percer l’Univers.

Allez, révérends fous, bienheureux fanatiques!

Compilez bien l’amas de vos riens scolastiques!

Pères de visions et d’énigmes sacrés,

Auteurs du labyrinthe où vous vous égarez,

Allez obscurément éclaircir vos mystères,

Et courez dans l’école adorer vos chimères!

Il est d’autres erreurs: il est de ces dévots,

Condamnés par eux-même à l’ennui du repos.

Ce mystique encloîtré, fier de son indolence,

Tranquille au sein de Dieu, qu’y peut-il faire? Il pense.

Non, tu ne penses point, misérable, tu dors,

Inutile à la terre et mis au rang des morts;

Ton esprit énervé croupit dans la mollesse;

Réveille-toi, sois homme, et sors de ton ivresse.

L’homme est né pour agir, et tu prétends penser!

Que ces idées soient vraies ou fausses, il est toujours certain qu’elles sont exprimées avec une énergie qui fait le poëte.

Je me garderai bien d’examiner la chose en philosophe, et de quitter ici le pinceau pour le compas. Mon unique but, dans cette lettre est de faire connaître le génie des poëtes anglais.

On a beaucoup entendu parler du célèbre Waller en France. MM. de La Fontaine, Saint-Évremond et Bayle ont fait son éloge; mais on ne connaît de lui que son nom. Il eut à peu près à Londres la même réputation que Voiture eut à Paris, et je crois qu’il la méritait mieux. Voiture vint dans un temps où l’on sortait de la barbarie, et où l’on était encore dans l’ignorance. On voulait avoir de l’esprit, et on n’en avait pas encore. On cherchait des tours au lieu de pensées: les faux brillants se trouvent plus aisément que les pierres précieuses. Voiture, né avec un génie frivole et facile, fut le premier qui brilla dans cette aurore de la littérature française; s’il était venu après les grands hommes qui ont illustré le siècle de Louis XIV, ou il aurait été inconnu, ou l’on n’aurait parlé de lui que pour le mépriser, ou il aurait son style. M. Despréaux le loue, mais c’est dans ses premières satires; c’est dans le temps où le goût de Despréaux n’était pas encore formé: il était jeune, et dans l’âge où l’on juge des hommes par la réputation, et non pas par eux-mêmes. D’ailleurs, Despréaux était souvent bien injuste dans ses louanges et dans ses censures. Il louait Segrais, que personne ne lit; il insultait Quinault, que tout le monde sait par cœur; et il ne dit rien de La Fontaine. Waller, meilleur que Voiture, n’était pas encore parfait; ses ouvrages galants respirent la grâce; mais la négligence les fait languir, et souvent les pensées fausses les défigurent. Les Anglais n’étaient pas encore parvenus de son temps à écrire avec correction. Ses ouvrages sérieux sont pleins d’une vigueur qu’on n’attendrait pas de la mollesse de ses autres pièces. Il a fait un éloge funèbre de Cromwell, qui, avec ses défauts, passe pour un chef-d’œuvre. Pour entendre cet ouvrage, il faut savoir que Cromwell mourut le jour d’une tempête extraordinaire.

La pièce commence ainsi:

Il n’est plus; c’en est fait; soumettons-nous au sort:

Le ciel a signalé ce jour par des tempêtes,

Et la voix du tonnerre, éclatant sur nos têtes,

                    Vient d’annoncer sa mort.

Par ses derniers soupirs il ébranle cette île,

Cette île que son bras fit trembler tant de fois,

                    Quand, dans le cours de ses exploits,

                    Il brisait la tête des rois

Et soumettait un peuple à son joug seul docile.

Mer, tu t’en es troublée. Ô mer! tes flots émus

Semblent dire en grondant aux plus lointains rivages

Que l’effroi de la terre, et ton maître, n’est plus.

Tel au Ciel autrefois s’envola Romulus,

Tel il quitta la terre au milieu des orages,

Tel d’un peuple guerrier il reçut les hommages:

Obéi dans sa vie, à sa mort adoré,

Son palais fut un temple, etc.

C’est à propos de cet éloge de Cromwell que Waller fit au roi Charles second cette réponse, qu’on trouve dans le dictionnaire de Bayle. Le Roi, pour qui Waller venait, selon l’usage des rois et des poëtes, de présenter une pièce farcie de louanges, lui reprocha qu’il avait fait mieux pour Cromwell. Waller: « Sire, nous autres poëtes, nous réussissons mieux dans les fictions que dans les vérités. » Cette réponse n’était pas si sincère que celle de l’ambassadeur hollandais, qui, lorsque le même roi se plaignait que l’on avait moins d’égards pour lui que pour Cromwell, répondit: « Ah! Sire, ce Cromwell était tout autre chose. » Il y a des courtisans, même en Angleterre, et Waller l'était; mais je ne considère les gens après leur mort que par leurs ouvrages; tout le reste est anéanti pour moi. Je remarque seulement que Waller, né à la cour, avec soixante mille livres de rente, n’eut jamais ni le sot orgueil ni la nonchalance d’abandonner son talent. Les comtes de Dorset et de Roscommon, les deux ducs de Buckingham, milord Halifax et tant d’autres n’ont pas cru déroger en devenant de très grands poètes et d’illustres écrivains. Leurs ouvrages leur font plus d’honneur que leurs noms. Ils ont cultivé les lettres comme s’ils en eussent attendu leur fortune; ils ont, de plus, rendu les arts respectables aux yeux du peuple, qui, en tout, a besoin d’être mené par les grands, et qui pourtant se règle moins sur eux en Angleterre qu’en aucun lieu du monde.

### Letter XXII

sur m. pope et quelques autres poëtes fameux.

On n'imaginait pas en France que Prior, qui vint de la part
de la reine Anne donner la paix à Louis XIV, avant que le baron
Bolingbroke vînt la signer; on ne devinait pas, dis-je, que ce plénipotentiaire fût un poëte. La France paya depuis l'Angleterre en
même monnaie, car le cardinal Dubois envoya notre Destouches à
Londres, et il ne passa pas plus pour poëte parmi les Anglais que
Prior parmi les Français. Le plénipotentiaire Prior était originairement un garçon cabaretier que le comte de Dorset, bon poëte
lui-même et un peu ivrogne, rencontra un jour lisant Horace sur
le banc de la taverne, de même que milord Aila trouva son garçon jardinier lisant Newton. Aila fit du jardinier un bon géomètre, et Dorset fit un très-agréable poëte du cabaretier.

C’est de Prior qu’est l’Histoire de l’Ame; cette histoire est la
plus naturelle qu’on ait faite jusqu’à présent de cet être si bien
senti et si mal connu. L’âme est d’abord aux extrémités du corps,
dans les pieds et dans les mains des enfants; et de là elle se place
insensiblement au milieu du corps dans l’âge de puberté; ensuite
elle monte au cœur, et là elle produit les sentiments de l’amour
et de l’héroïsme; elle s’élève jusqu’à la tête dans un âge plus
mûr: elle y raisonne comme elle peut; et, dans la vieillesse, on
ne sait plus ce qu’elle devient: c’est la sève d’un vieil arbre, qui
s’évapore et qui ne se répare plus. Peut-être cet ouvrage est-il
trop long: toute plaisanterie doit être courte, et même le sérieux
devrait bien être court aussi.

Ce même Prior fit un petit poëme sur la fameuse bataille
d’Hochstedt. Cela ne vaut pas son Histoire de l’Ame; il n’y a de bon
que cette apostrophe à Boileau:

Satirique flatteur, toi qui pris tant de peine

Pour chanter que Louis n’a point passé le Rhin.

Notre plénipotentiaire finit par paraphraser en quinze cents vers
ces mots attribués à Salomon, que Tout est vanité. On en pourrait
faire quinze mille sur ce sujet; mais malheur à qui dit tout ce
qu’il peut dire.

Enfin, la reine Anne étant morte, le ministère ayant changé,
la paix que Prior avait entamée étant en horreur, Prior n’eut de
ressource qu’une édition de ses œuvres par une souscription de
son parti; après quoi il mourut en philosophe, comme meurt
ou croit mourir tout honnête Anglais.

Je voudrais donner aussi quelques idées des poésies de milord
Roscommon de milord Dorset; mais je sens qu’il me faudrait
faire un gros livre, et qu’après bien de la peine je ne vous donnerais
qu’une idée fort imparfaite de tous ces ouvrages. La poésie
est une espèce de musique: il faut l’entendre pour en juger.
Quand je vous traduis quelques morceaux de ces poésies étrangères, je vous note imparfaitement leur musique; mais je ne puis
exprimer le goût de leur chant.

Il y a un poëme anglais difficile à faire connaître aux étrangers;
il s’appelle Hudibras. C’est un ouvrage tout comique, et
cependant le sujet est la guerre civile du temps de Cromwell.
Ce qui a fait verser tant de sang et tant de larmes a produit un
poëme qui force le lecteur le plus sérieux à rire; on trouve un
exemple de ce contraste dans notre Satyre Ménippée. Certainement
les Romains n’auraient point fait un poëme burlesque sur les
guerres de César et de Pompée, et sur les proscriptions d’Octave et
d’Antoine. Pourquoi donc les malheurs affreux que causa la Ligue
en France, et ceux que les guerres du roi et du parlement étalèrent
en Angleterre, ont-ils pu fournir des plaisanteries? C’est qu’au
fond il y avait un ridicule caché dans ces querelles funestes. Les
bourgeois de Paris, à la tête de la faction des Seize, mêlaient
l’impertinence aux horreurs de la faction. Les intrigues des
femmes, des légats et des moines, avaient un côté comique, malgré
les calamités qu’elles apportèrent. Les disputes théologiques
et l’enthousiasme des puritains en Angleterre étaient très-susceptibles
de railleries; et ce fond de ridicule bien développé pouvait
devenir plaisant, en écartant les horreurs tragiques qui le
couvraient. Si la bulle Unigenitus faisait répandre du sang,
le petit poëme de Philotaus n’en serait pas moins convenable
au sujet, et on ne pourrait même lui reprocher que de n’être
pas aussi gai, aussi plaisant, aussi varié qu’il pouvait l’être, et
de ne pas tenir dans le corps de l’ouvrage ce que promet le commencement.

Le poëme d’Hudibras, dont je vous parle, semble être un composé
de la Satyre Ménippée et de Don Quichotte; il a sur eux l’avantage
des vers. Il a celui de l’esprit: la Satyre Ménippée n’en approche pas; elle n’est qu’un ouvrage très-médiocre; mais à force d’esprit
l’auteur d’Hudibras a trouvé le secret d’être fort au-dessous de Don Quichotte. Le goût, la naïveté, l’art de narrer, celui de bien entremêler
les aventures, celui de ne rien prodiguer, valent bien mieux
que de l’esprit: aussi Don Quichotte est lu de toutes les nations, et
Hudibras n’est lu que des Anglais.

L’auteur de ce poëme si extraordinaire s’appelait Butler: il
était contemporain de Milton, et eut infiniment plus de réputation
que lui, parce qu’il était plaisant, et que le poëme de Milton était
lort triste. Butler tournait les ennemis du roi Charles II en ridicule,
et toute la récompense qu’il en eut fut que le roi citait souvent
ses vers. Les combats du chevalier Hudibras furent plus
connus que les combats des anges et des diables du Paradis perdu;
mais la cour d’Angleterre ne traita pas mieux le plaisant Butler
que la cour céleste ne traita le sérieux Milton, et tous deux moururent
de faim, ou à peu près.

Le héros du poëme de Butler n’était pas un personnage feint,
comme le Don Quichotte de Michel Cervantes; c’était un chevalier
baronnet très-réel, qui avait été un des enthousiastes de
Cromwell et un de ses colonels. Il s’appelait sir Samuel Luke,
Pour faire connaître l’esprit de ce poëme, unique en son genre,
il faut retrancher les trois quarts de tout passage qu’on veut
traduire: car ce Butler ne finit jamais. J’ai donc réduit à environ
quatre-vingts vers les quatre cents premiers vers d’Hudibras,
pour éviter la prolixité.

Quand les profanes et les saints

Dans l’Angleterre étaient aux prises,

Qu’on se battait pour des églises

Aussi fort que pour des catins;

Lorsque anglicans et puritains

Faisaient une si rude guerre,

Et qu’au sortir du cabaret

Les orateurs de Nazareth

Allaient battre la caisse en chaire;

Que partout, sans savoir pourquoi,

Au nom du ciel, au nom du roi,

Les gens d’armes couvraient la terre,

Alors monsieur le chevalier,

Longtemps oisif, ainsi qu’Achille,

Tout rempli d’une sainte bile,

Suivi de son grand écuyer,

S’échappa de son poulailler,

Avec son sabre et l’Évangile,

Et s’avisa de guerroyer.

Sire Hudibras, cet homme rare,

Était, dit-on, rempli d’honneur.

Avait de l’esprit et du cœur;

Mais il en était fort avare.

D’ailleurs, par un talent nouveau,

Il était tout propre au barreau.

Ainsi qu’à la guerre cruelle;

Grand sur les bancs, grand sur la selle,

Dans les camps et dans un bureau;

Semblable à ces rats amphibies,

Qui, paraissant avoir deux vies.

Sont rats de campagne et rats d’eau.

Mais, malgré sa grande éloquence.

Et son mérite, et sa prudence,

Il passa chez quelques savants

Pour être un de ces instruments

Dont les fripons avec adresse

Savent user sans dire mot.

Et qu’ils tournent avec souplesse:

Cet instrument s’appelle un sot.

Ce n’est pas qu’en théologie,

En logique, en astrologie,

Il ne fût un docteur subtil;

En quatre il séparait un fil,

Disputant sans jamais se rendre,

Changeant de thèse tout à coup,

Toujours prêt à parler beaucoup,

Quand il fallait ne pas s’entendre.

D’Hudibras la religion

Était, tout comme sa raison.

Vide de sens et fort profonde:

Le puritanisme divin,

La meilleure secte du monde,

Et qui certes n’a rien d’humain;

La vraie église militante,

Qui prêche un pistolet en main.

Pour mieux convertir son prochain

À grands coups de sabre argumente;

Qui promet les célestes biens

Par le gibet et par la corde.

Et damne sans miséricorde

Les péchés des autres chrétiens,

Pour se mieux pardonner les siens;

Secte qui, toujours détruisante,

Se détruit elle-même enfin:

Tel Sanison, de sa main puissante.

Brisa le temple philistin;

Mais il périt par sa vengeance.

Et lui-même il s’ensevelit

Écrasé dans la chute immense

De ce temple qu’il démolit.

Au nez du chevalier antique

Deux grandes moustaches pendaient

À qui les parques attachaient

Le destin de la république.

Il les garde soigneusement.

Et si jamais on les arrache,

C’est la chute du parlement:

L’État entier, en ce moment.

Doit tomber avec sa moustache.

Ainsi Taliacotius,

Grand Esculape d’Étrurie,

Répara tous les nez perdus

Par une nouvelle industrie:

Il vous prenait adroitement

Un morceau du cul d’un pauvre homme.

L’appliquait au nez proprement;

Enfin il arrivait qu’en somme

Tout juste à la mort du prêteur

Tombait le nez de l’emprunteur:

Et souvent dans la même bière,

Par justice et par bon accord,

On remettait au gré du mort

Le nez auprès de son derrière.

Notre grand héros d’Albion,

Grimpé dessus sa haridelle.

Pour venger la religion,

Avait à l’arçon de sa selle

Deux pistolets et du jambon;

Mais il n’avait qu’un éperon.

C’était de tout temps sa manière;

Sachant que si la talonnière

Pique une moitié du cheval.

L’autre moitié de l’animal

Ne resterait point en arrière.

Voilà donc Hudibras parti;

Que Dieu bénisse son voyage,

Ses arguments et son parti,

Sa barbe rousse et son courage!

Un homme qui aurait dans l’imagination la dixième partie
de l’esprit comique, bon ou mauvais, qui règne dans cet ouvrage,
serait encore très-plaisant; mais il se donnerait bien de garde de
traduire Hudibras. Le moyen de faire rire des lecteurs étrangers
des ridicules déjà oubliés chez la nation même où ils ont été
célèbres! On ne lit plus le Dante dans l’Europe, parce que tout y
est allusion à des faits ignorés: il en est de même d’Hudibras. La
plupart des railleries de ce livre tombent sur la théologie et les
théologiens du temps. Il faudrait à tout moment un commentaire.
La plaisanterie expliquée cesse d’être plaisanterie, et un
commentateur de bons mots n’est guère capable d’en dire.

Voilà pourquoi on n’entendra jamais bien en France les livres
de l’ingénieux docteur Swift, qu’on appelle le Rabelais d’Angleterre.
Il a l’honneur d’être prêtre et de se moquer de tout,
comme lui; mais Rabelais n’était pas au-dessus de son siècle, et
Swift est fort au-dessus de Rabelais. Notre curé de Meudon, dans
son extravagant et inintelligible livre, a répandu une extrême
gaieté et une plus grande impertinence; il a prodigué l’érudition,
les ordures, et l’ennui. Un bon conte de deux pages est acheté
par des volumes de sottises: il n’y a que quelques personnes d’un
goût bizarre qui se piquent d’entendre et d’estimer tout cet
ouvrage. Le reste de la nation rit des plaisanteries de Rabelais,
et méprise le livre. On le regarde comme le premier des bouffons;
on est fâché qu’un homme qui avait tant d’esprit en ait
fait un si misérable usage: c’est un philosophe ivre qui n’a écrit
que dans le temps de son ivresse.

M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne
compagnie. Il n’a pas à la vérité la gaieté du premier, mais il a
toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon goût, qui manquent à
notre curé de Meudon. Ses vers sont d’un goût singulier et  presque inimitable; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose, mais, pour le bien entendre, il faut faire un petit voyage dans son pays.

Dans ce pays, qui paraît si étrange à une partie de l’Europe, on n’a point trouvé trop étrange que le révérend Swift, doyen d’une cathédrale, se soit moqué, dans son Conte du Tonneau, du catholicisme, du luthéranisme, et du calvinisme: il dit pour ses raisons qu’il n’a pas touché au christianisme. Il prétend avoir respecté le père en donnant cent coups de fouet aux trois enfants; des gens difficiles ont cru que les verges étaient si longues qu’elles allaient jusqu’au père.

Ce fameux Conte du Tonneau est une imitation de l’ancien conte des trois anneaux indiscernables, qu’un père légua à ses trois enfants. Ces trois anneaux étaient la religion juive, la chrétienne, et la mahométane. C’est encore une imitation de l’Histoire de Méro et d’Énegu, par Fontenelle. Méro était l’anagramme de Rome, et Énegu celle de Genève. Ce sont deux sœurs qui prétendent à la succession du royaume de leur père. Méro règne la première. Fontenelle la présente comme une sorcière qui escamotait le pain, et qui faisait des conjurations avec des cadavres. C’est là précisément le milord Pierre, de Swift, qui présente un morceau de pain à ses deux frères, et qui leur dit: Voilà d’excellent vin de Bourgogne, mes amis; voilà des perdrix d’un fumet admirable. Le même milord Pierre, dans Swift, joue en tout le rôle que Méro joue dans Fontenelle.

Ainsi presque tout est imitation. L’idée des Lettres persanes est prise de celle de l’Espion turc. Le Boiardo a imité le Pulci, l’Arioste a imité le Boiardo. Les esprits les plus originaux empruntent les uns des autres. Michel Cervantes fait un fou de son Don Quichotte; mais Roland est-il autre chose qu’un fou? Il serait difficile de décider si la chevalerie errante est plus tournée en ridicule par les peintures grotesques de Cervantes que par la féconde imagination de l’Arioste. Métastase a pris la plupart de ses opéras dans nos tragédies françaises. Plusieurs auteurs anglais nous ont copiés, et n’en ont rien dit. Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; ou va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l’allume chez soi, on le communique à d’autres, et il appartient à tous.

Vous pouvez plus aisément vous former quelque idée de M. Pope: c’est, je crois, le poëte le plus élégant, le plus correct, et, ce qui est encore beaucoup, le plus harmonieux qu’ait eu l’Angleterre. Il a réduit les sifflements aigres de la trompette anglaise aux sons doux de la flûte. On peut le traduire, parce qu’il est extrêmement clair, et que ses sujets, pour la plupart, sont généraux et du ressort de toutes les nations.

On connaîtra bientôt en France son Essai sur la Critique, par la traduction en vers qu’en fait M. l’abbé du Resnel.

Voici un morceau de son poëme de la Boucle de Cheveux, que je viens de traduire avec ma liberté ordinaire: car, encore une fois, je ne sais rien de pis que de traduire un poëte mot pour mot.

Umbriel à l’instant, vieux gnome rechigné,

Va, d’une aile pesante et d’un air renfrogné,

Chercher, en murmurant, la caverne profonde

Où, loin des doux rayons que répand l’œil du monde,

La déesse aux vapeurs a choisi son séjour.

Les tristes aquilons y sifflent à l’entour.

Et le souffle malsain de leur aride haleine

Y porte aux environs la fièvre et la migraine.

Sur un riche sofa, derrière un paravent,

Loin des flambeaux, du bruit, des parleurs, et du vent,

La quinteuse déesse incessamment repose,

Le cœur gros de chagrins, sans en savoir la cause,

N’ayant pensé jamais, l’esprit toujours troublé,

L’œil chargé, le teint pâle, et l’hypocondre enflé.

La médisante Envie est assise auprès d’elle,

Vieux spectre féminin, décrépite pucelle,

Avec un air dévot déchirant son prochain,

Et chansonnant les sens l’Évangile à la main.

Sur un lit plein de fleurs négligemment penchée,

Une jeune beauté non loin d’elle est couchée:

C’est l’Affectation, qui grasseye en parlant,

Écoute sans entendre, et lorgne en regardant,

Qui rougit sans pudeur, et rit de tout sans joie,

De cent maux différents prétend qu’elle est la proie,

Et, pleine de santé sous le rouge et le fard,

Se plaint avec mollesse, et se pâme avec art.

Si vous lisiez ce morceau dans l’original, au lieu de le lire dans cette faible traduction, vous le compareriez à la description de la Mollesse dans le Lutrin.

L’Essai sur l’Homme de Pope me paraît le plus beau poëme didactique, le plus utile, le plus sublime qu’on ait jamais fait dans aucune langue. Il est vrai que le fond s’en trouve tout entier dans les Caractéristiques du lord Shaftesbury; et je ne sais pourquoi M. Pope en fait uniquement honneur à M. de Bolingbroke, sans dire un mot du célèbre Shaftesbury, élève
de Locke,

Comme tout ce qui tient à la métaphysique a été pensé de
tous les temps et chez tous les peuples qui cultivent leur esprit,
ce système tient beaucoup de celui de Leibnitz, qui prétend que
de tous les mondes possibles Dieu a dû choisir le meilleur, et
que, dans ce meilleur, il fallait bien que les irrégularités de
notre globe et les sottises de ses habitants tinssent leur place. Il
ressemble encore à cette idée de Platon, que dans la chaîne
infinie des êtres, notre terre, notre corps, notre âme, sont au
nombre des chaînons nécessaires. Mais ni Leibnitz ni Pope n’admettent
les changements que Platon imagine être arrivés à ces
chaînons, à nos âmes, et à nos corps. Platon parlait en poète
dans sa prose peu intelligible; et Pope parle en philosophe dans
ses admirables vers. Il dit que tout a été dès le commencement
comme il a dû être, et comme il est.

J’ai été flatté, je l’avoue, de voir qu’il s’est rencontré avec moi
dans une chose que j’avais dite, il y a plusieurs années. « Vous
vous étonnez que Dieu ait fait l’homme si borné, si ignorant, si
peu heureux. Que ne vous étonnez-vous qu’il ne l’ait pas fait
plus borné, plus ignorant, et plus malheureux? » Quand un
Français et un Anglais pensent de même, il faut bien qu’ils aient
raison.

Le fils du célèbre Racine a fait imprimer une lettre de Pope,
à lui adressée, dans laquelle Pope se rétracte. Cette lettre est
écrite dans le goût et dans le style de M. de Fénelon; elle lui fut
remise, dit-il, par Ramsay, l’éditeur du Tèlémaque; Ramsay, l’imitateur
du Télémaque, comme Boyer l’était de Corneille; Ramsay
l’Écossais, qui voulait être de l’Académie française; Ramsay, qui
regrettait de n’être pas docteur de Sorbonne. Ce que je sais, ainsi
que tous les gens de lettres d’Angleterre, c’est que Pope, avec qui
j’ai beaucoup vécu, pouvait à peine lire le français, qu’il ne
parlait pas un mot de notre langue, qu’il n’a jamais écrit une
lettre en français, qu’il en était incapable, et que, s’il a écrit cette
lettre au fils de notre Racine, il faut que Dieu, sur la fin de sa
vie, lui ait donné subitement le don des langues, pour le  penser d’avoir fait un aussi admirable ouvrage que son Essai sur l’Homme.

### Letter XXIII

sur la considération qu’on doit aux gens de lettres.

Ni en Angleterre ni en aucun pays du monde on ne trouve
des établissements en faveur des beaux-arts comme en France.
Il y a presque partout des universités; mais c’est dans la France
seule qu’on trouve ces utiles encouragements pour l’astronomie,
pour toutes les parties des mathématiques, pour celles de la médecine, pour les recherches de l’antiquité, pour la peinture, la
sculpture, et l’architecture. Louis XIV s’est immortalisé par toutes
ces fondations, et cette immortalité ne lui a pas coûté deux cent
mille francs par an.

J’avoue que c’est un de mes étonnements que le parlement
d’Angleterre, qui s’est avisé de promettre vingt mille guinées à
celui qui ferait l’impossible découverte des longitudes, n’ait
jamais pensé à imiter Louis XIV dans sa magnificence envers les
arts.

Le mérite trouve à la vérité, en Angleterre, d’autres récompenses plus honorables pour la nation: tel est le respect que ce
peuple a pour les talents qu’un homme de mérite y fait toujours
fortune. M. Addison, en France, eût été de quelque académie,
et aurait pu obtenir, par le crédit de quelque femme, une
pension de douze cents livres, ou plutôt on lui aurait fait des
affaires sous prétexte qu’on aurait aperçu dans sa tragédie de
Caton quelques traits contre le portier d’un homme en place; en Angleterre, il a été secrétaire d’État. M. Newton était intendant
des monnaies du royaume; M. Congrève avait une charge importante;
M. Prior a été plénipotentiaire; le docteur Swift est doyen
d’Irlande, et y est beaucoup plus considéré que le primat. Si la
religion de M. Pope ne lui permet pas d’avoir une place, elle
n’empêche pas que sa traduction d’Homère ne lui ait valu deux
cent mille francs. J’ai vu longtemps en France l’auteur de Rhadamiste
près de mourir de faim; le fils d’un des plus grands
hommes que la France ait eus, et qui commençait à marcher
sur les traces de son père, était réduit à la misère sans M. Fagon.
Ce qui encourage le plus les gens de lettres en Angleterre, c’est
la considération où ils sont: le portrait du premier ministre se
trouve sur la cheminée de son cabinet; mais j’ai vu celui de
M. Pope dans vingt maisons.

M. Newton était honoré de son vivant, et l’a été après sa mort
comme il devait l’être. Les principaux de la nation se sont disputé
l’honneur de porter le poêle à son convoi. Entrez à Westminster,
ce ne sont pas les tombeaux des rois qu’on y admire, ce
sont les monuments que la reconnaissance de la nation a érigés
aux plus grands hommes qui ont contribué à sa gloire; vous
y voyez leurs statues comme on voyait dans Athènes celles des
Sophocle et des Platon; et je suis persuadé que la seule vue de
ces glorieux monuments a excité plus d’un esprit, et a formé plus
d’un grand homme.

On a même reproché aux Anglais d’avoir été trop loin dans les
honneurs qu’ils rendent au simple mérite; on a trouvé à redire
qu’ils aient enterré dans Westminster la célèbre comédienne
Mlle Oldfield, à peu près avec les mêmes honneurs qu’on a rendus
à M. Newton; quelques-uns ont prétendu qu’ils avaient affecté
d’honorer à ce point la mémoire de cette actrice afin de nous
faire sentir davantage la barbare et lâche injustice qu’ils nous
reprochent d’avoir jeté à la voirie le corps de Mlle Lecouvreur.

Mais je puis vous assurer que les Anglais, dans la pompe
funèbre de Mlle Oldfield, enterrée dans leur Saint-Denis, n’ont rien consulté que leur goût: ils sont bien loin d’attacher l’infamie à
l’art des Sophocle et des Euripide, et de retrancher du corps de
leurs citoyens ceux qui se dévouent à réciter devant eux des
ouvrages dont leur nation se glorifie.

Du temps de Charles Ier, et dans le commencement de ces
guerres civiles commencées par des rigoristes fanatiques qui
eux-mêmes en furent enfin les victimes, on écrivait beaucoup
contre les spectacles, d’autant plus que Charles Ier et sa femme,
fille de notre Henri le Grand, les aimaient extrêmement.

Un docteur, nommé Prynne, scrupuleux a toute outrance,
qui se serait cru damné s’il avait porté un manteau court au lieu
d’une soutane, et qui aurait voulu que la moitié des hommes eût
massacré l’autre pour la gloire de Dieu et la propaganda fide, s’avisa
d’écrire un fort mauvais livre contre d’assez bonnes comédies
qu’on jouait tous les jours très-innocemment devant le roi et la
reine. Il cita l’autorité des rabbins et quelques passages de saint
Bonaventure, pour prouver que l’Œdipe de Sophocle était l’ouvrage
du Malin, que Térence était excommunié ipso facto; et il ajouta
que sans doute Brutus, qui était un janséniste très-sévère, n’avait
assassiné César que parce que César, qui était grand-prêtre, avait
composé une tragédie d’Œdipe; enfin il dit que tous ceux qui
assistaient à un spectacle étaient des excommuniés qui reniaient
leur croyance et leur baptême: c’était outrager le roi et toute la
famille royale. Les Anglais respectaient alors Charles I"; ils ne
voulurent pas souffrir qu’on excommuniât ce même prince à qui
ils firent depuis couper la tête; M. Prynne fut cité devant la
chambre étoilée, condamné à voir son beau livre, dont le P. Le
Brun a emprunté le sien, brûlé par la main du bourreau, et lui
à avoir les oreilles coupées. Son procès se voit dans les actes
publics.

On se garde bien en Italie de flétrir l’opéra et d’excommunier
le signor Tenezini, ou la signora Cuzzoni. Pour moi, j’oserais
souhaiter qu’on pût supprimer en France je ne sais quels mauvais
livres qu’on a imprimés contre nos spectacles. Lorsque les Italiens
et les Anglais apprennent que nous flétrissons de la plus grande infamie un art dans lequel nous excellons, que l’on excommunie
des personnes gagées par le roi, que l’on condamne comme
impie un spectacle représenté chez les religieux et dans les couvents, qu’on déshonore des jeux où de grands princes ont été
acteurs, qu’on déclare œuvre du démon des pièces revues par
les magistrats les plus sévères, et représentées devant une reine
vertueuse; quand, dis-je, des étrangers apprennent cette insolence,
cette barbarie gothique qu’on ose nommer sévérité chrétienne,
que voulez-vous qu’ils pensent de notre nation, et comment peuvent-ils
concevoir ou que nos lois autorisent un art déclaré si
infâme, ou qu’on ose marquer de tant d’infamie un art autorisé
par les lois, récompensé par les souverains, cultivé par les plus
grands hommes, et admiré des nations; et qu’on trouve chez le
même libraire l’impertinente déclamation contre nos spectacles
à côté des ouvrages immortels de Corneille, de Racine, de Molière,
de Quinault?

### Letter XXIV

sur les académies

Les grands hommes se sont tous formés ou avant les académies ou indépendamment d’elles. Homère et Phidias, Sophocle et Apelle, Virgile et Vitruve, l’Arioste et Michel-Ange, n’étaient
d’aucune académie; le Tasse n’eut que des critiques injustes de
la Crusca, et Newton ne dut point à la Société royale de Londres ses
découvertes sur l’optique, sur la gravitation, sur le calcul intégral,
et sur la chronologie. À quoi peuvent donc servir les académies?
à entretenir le feu que les grands génies ont allumé.

La Société royale de Londres fut formée en 1660, six ans avant
notre Académie des sciences. Elle n’a point de récompenses comme
la nôtre, mais aussi elle est libre: point de ces distinctions désagréables
inventées par l’abbé Bignon, qui distribua l’Académie
des sciences en savants qu’on payait, et en honoraires qui n’étaient
pas savants. La Société de Londres, indépendante, et n’étant encouragée
que par elle-même, a été composée de sujets qui ont
trouvé le calcul de l’infini, les lois de la lumière, celles de la
pesanteur, l’aberration des étoiles, le télescope de réflexion, la
pompe à feu, le microscope solaire, et beaucoup d’autres inventions
aussi utiles qu’admirables, Qu’auraient fait de plus ces
grands hommes s’ils avaient été pensionnaires ou honoraires?

Le fameux docteur Swift forma le dessein, dans les dernières
années du règne de la reine Anne, d’établir une académie pour
la langue, à l’exemple de l’Académie française. Ce projet était appuyé par le comte d’Oxford, grand trésorier, et encore plus par
le vicomte Bolingbroke, secrétaire d’État, qui avait le don de
parler sur-le-champ dans le parlement avec autant de pureté que
Swift écrivait dans son cabinet, et qui aurait été le protecteur et
l’ornement de cette académie. Les membres qui la devaient composer
étaient des hommes dont les ouvrages dureront autant que
la langue anglaise: c’étaient ce docteur Swift; M. Prior, que nous
avons vu ici ministre public, et qui en Angleterre a la même
réputation que La Fontaine a parmi nous; c’étaient M. Pope, le
Boileau d’Angleterre; M. Congrève, qu’on peut en appeler le Molière;
plusieurs autres dont les noms m’échappent ici, auraient
tous fait fleurir cette compagnie dans sa naissance. Mais la reine
mourut subitement; les whigs se mirent dans la tête de faire
pendre les protecteurs de l’académie: ce qui, comme vous croyez
bien, fut mortel aux belles-lettres. Les membres de ce corps
auraient eu un grand avantage sur les premiers qui composèrent
l’Académie française. Swift, Prior, Congrève, Dryden, Pope,
Addison, etc., avaient fixé la langue anglaise par leurs écrits; au
lieu que Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, Cotin, nos premiers
académiciens, étaient l’opprobre de notre nation, et que
leurs noms sont devenus si ridicules que, si quelque auteur passable
avait le malheur de s’appeler aujourd’hui Chapelain ou
Cotin, il serait obligé de changer de nom. Il aurait fallu surtout
que l’Académie anglaise se fût proposé des occupations toutes
différentes de la nôtre. Un jour, un bel esprit de ce pays-là me
demanda les Mémoires de l’Académie française. « Elle n’écrit
point de mémoires, lui répondis-je; mais elle a fait imprimer
soixante ou quatre-vingts volumes de compliments. » Il en parcourut
un ou deux; il ne put jamais entendre ce style, quoiqu’il
entendît fort bien tous nos bons auteurs. « Tout ce que j’entrevois,
me dit-il, dans ces beaux discours, c’est que le récipiendaire ayant
assuré que son prédécesseur était un grand homme, que le cardinal
de Richelieu était un très-grand homme, le chancelier
Séguier un assez grand homme, le directeur lui répond la même
chose, et ajoute que le récipiendaire pourrait bien aussi être une
espèce de grand homme, et que, pour lui directeur, il n’en quitte
pas sa part. »

Il est aisé de voir par quelle fatalité presque tous ces discours
académiques ont fait si peu d’honneur à ce corps, vitium est temporis
potius quam hominis. L’usage s’est insensiblement établi que
tout académicien répéterait ces éloges à sa réception. On s’est
imposé une espèce de loi d’ennuyer le public. Si on cherche ensuite
pourquoi les plus grands génies qui sont entrés dans ce
corps on fait quelquefois les plus mauvaises harangues, la raison
en est encore bien aisée: c’est qu’ils ont voulu briller, c’est qu’ils
ont voulu traiter nouvellement une matière tout usée, La nécessité
de parler, l’embarras de n’avoir rien à dire, et l’envie d’avoir
de l’esprit, sont trois choses capables de rendre ridicule même le
plus grand homme. Ne pouvant trouver des pensées nouvelles,
ils ont cherché des tours nouveaux, et ont parlé sans penser,
comme des gens qui mâcheraient à vide, et feraient semblant de
manger en périssant d’inanition.

Au lieu que c’est une loi dans l’Académie française de faire
imprimer tous ces discours, par lesquels seuls elle est connue, ce
devrait être une loi de ne les imprimer pas,

L’Académie des belles-lettres s’est proposé un but plus sage
et plus utile, c’est de présenter au public un recueil de mémoires
remplis de recherches et de critiques curieuses. Ces mémoires
sont déjà estimés chez les étrangers. On souhaiterait seulement
que quelques matières y fussent plus approfondies, et qu’on n’en
eût point traité d’autres. On se serait, par exemple, fort bien passé
de je ne sais quelle dissertation sur les prérogatives de la main
droite sur la main gauche, et de quelques autres recherches qui,
sous un titre moins ridicule, n’en sont guère moins frivoles,

L’Académie des sciences, dans ses recherches plus difficiles et
d’une utilité plus sensible, embrasse la connaissance de la nature
et la perfection des arts. Il est à croire que des études si profondes
et si suivies, des calculs si exacts, des découvertes si fines,
des vues si grandes, produiront enfin quelque chose qui servira
au bien de l’univers.

C’est dans les siècles les plus barbares que se sont faites les
plus utiles découvertes. Il semble que le partage des temps les
plus éclairés et des compagnies les plus savantes soit de raisonner
sur ce que des ignorants ont inventé. On sait aujourd’hui, après
les longues disputes de M. Huygens et de M. Renaud, la détermination
de l’angle le plus avantageux d’un gouvernail de vaisseau
avec la quille; mais Christophe Colomb avait découvert l’Amérique
sans rien soupçonner de cet angle.

Je suis bien loin d’inférer de là qu’il faille s’en tenir seulement
à une pratique aveugle; mais il serait heureux que les physiciens
et les géomètres joignissent, autant qu’il est possible, la pratique
à la spéculation. Faut-il que ce qui fait le plus d’honneur à l’esprit
humain soit souvent ce qui est le moins utile? Un homme,
avec les quatre règles d’arithmétique et du bon sens, devient un
grand négociant, un Jacques Cœur, un Delmet, un Bernard;
tandis qu’un pauvre algébriste passe sa vie à chercher dans
les nombres des rapports et des propriétés étonnantes, mais
sans usage, et qui ne lui apprendront pas ce que c’est que le
change. Tous les arts sont à peu près dans ce cas; il y a un
point passé lequel les recherches ne sont plus que pour la
curiosité. Ces vérités ingénieuses et inutiles ressemblent à des
étoiles qui, placées trop loin de nous, ne nous donnent point de
clarté.

Pour l’Académie française, quel service ne rendrait-elle pas
aux lettres, à la langue et à la nation, si, au lieu de faire imprimer
tous les ans des compliments, elle faisait imprimer les bons
ouvrages du siècle de Louis XIV, épurés de toutes les fautes de
langage qui s’y sont glissées? Corneille et Molière en sont pleins,
La Fontaine en fourmille: celles qu’on ne pourrait pas corriger
seraient au moins marquées. L’Europe, qui lit ces auteurs,
apprendrait par eux notre langue avec sûreté. Sa pureté serait à
jamais fixée. Les bons livres français, imprimés avec ce soin aux
dépens du roi, seraient un des plus glorieux monuments de la
nation. J’ai ouï dire que M. Despréaux avait fait autrefois cette
proposition, et qu’elle a été renouvelée par un homme dont l’esprit,
la sagesse, et la saine critique, sont connus; mais cette idée a eu le sort de beaucoup d’autres projets utiles, d’être approuvée et d’être négligée.

Une chose assez singulière, c’est que Corneille, qui écrivit avec assez de pureté et beaucoup de noblesse les premières de ses bonnes tragédies, lorsque la langue commençait à se former, écrivit toutes les autres très-incorrectement et d’un style très-bas, dans le temps que Racine donnait à la langue française tant de pureté, de vraie noblesse, et de grâces; dans le temps que Despréaux la fixait par l’exactitude la plus correcte, par la précision, la force, et l’harmonie. Que l’on compare la Bérénice de Racine avec celle de Corneille, on croirait que celui-ci est du temps de Tristan. Il semblait que Corneille négligeât son style à mesure qu’il avait plus besoin de le soutenir, et qu’il n’eût que l’émulation d’écrire au lieu de l’émulation de bien écrire. Non-seulement ses douze ou treize dernières tragédies sont mauvaises; mais le style en est très-mauvais. Ce qui est encore plus étrange, c’est que de notre temps même nous avons eu des pièces de théâtre, des ouvrages de prose et de poésie, composés par des académiciens qui ont négligé leur langue au point qu’on ne trouve pas chez eux dix vers ou dix lignes de suite sans quelque barbarisme. On peut être un très-bon auteur avec quelques fautes, mais non pas avec beaucoup de fautes. Un jour une société de gens d’esprit éclairés compta plus de six cents solécismes intolérables dans une tragédie qui avait eu le plus grand succès à Paris et la plus grande faveur à la cour. Deux ou trois succès pareils suffiraient pour corrompre la langue sans retour, et pour la faire retomber dans son ancienne barbarie, dont les soins assidus de tant de grands hommes l’ont tirée.

FIN DES LETTRES PHILOSOPHIQUES.

## Translation — Mouseia

> Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the French text of all twenty-four letters (Garnier edition, 1879, French Wikisource) for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity.

### Letter I

On the Quakers

I thought the doctrine and history of a people as extraordinary as the Quakers deserved the curiosity of a reasonable man. To learn about them, I went to see one of the most celebrated Quakers in England, who, after thirty years in trade, had known how to set limits to his fortune and his desires, and had retired to the country near London. I sought him out in his retreat: it was a small house, but well built and adorned by nothing but its cleanliness. The Quaker was a vigorous old man who had never been ill because he had never known passion or excess: in my life I have never seen an expression more noble or more inviting than his. Like all those of his faith, he wore a coat without pleats at the sides or buttons on the pockets or sleeves, and a broad hat with its brim turned down, like our clergymen. He received me with his hat on his head and came forward without the least bow; yet there was more courtesy in the frank and humane look on his face than in the custom of drawing one leg behind the other and holding in one's hand what was made to cover the head. “Friend,” he said, “I see you are a stranger; if I can be of any use to you, you have only to speak.” “Sir,” I said, bending my body and sliding a foot toward him, as is our custom, “I trust that my legitimate curiosity will not displease you, and that you will do me the honor of instructing me in your religion.” “People from your country,” he answered, “make too many compliments and bows; but I have yet to see one with the same curiosity as yours. Come in, and first let us dine together.” I made a few more poor compliments, for one does not shed one's habits all at once; and after a wholesome, frugal meal that began and ended with a prayer to God, I set about questioning my man. I began with the question that good Catholics have asked Huguenots more than once. “My dear sir,” I said, “have you been baptized?” “No,” the Quaker answered, “and neither have my fellows.” “What, damn it,” I replied, “then you are not Christians?” “My friend,” he answered gently, “do not swear. We are Christians; but we do not think Christianity consists in pouring water on a head with a little salt.” “Good God!” I exclaimed, outraged by this impiety, “have you forgotten that Jesus Christ was baptized by John?” “Friend, no swearing, I say again,” said the kindly Quaker. “Christ received John's baptism, but he never baptized anyone; we are not disciples of John but of Christ.” “Ah! How the Holy Inquisition would burn you,” I cried… “For God's sake, dear man, let me baptize you!” “If that were all it took to indulge your weakness, we would gladly do it,” he replied gravely; “we condemn no one for using the ceremony of Baptism, but we believe that those who profess a wholly holy and spiritual religion should abstain as far as they can from Jewish ceremonies.” “Now that's another thing altogether,” I exclaimed. “Jewish ceremonies!” “Yes, my friend,” he continued, “and so Jewish that several Jews still sometimes practice John's baptism today. Consult antiquity; it will teach you that John merely revived this practice, long in use among the Hebrews before him, just as the pilgrimage to Mecca was among the Ishmaelites. Jesus was willing to receive John's baptism, just as he submitted to Circumcision; but both Circumcision and washing with water must be abolished by Christ's Baptism, that baptism of the spirit, that cleansing of the soul which saves mankind. Thus John the forerunner said: I baptize you indeed with water, but another will come after me, mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with fire and the Holy Spirit. Thus also Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles, writes to the Corinthians: Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel; and that same Paul baptized only two people with water, and even that against his will. He circumcised his disciple Timothy; the other Apostles likewise circumcised everyone who wished it. Are you circumcised?” he added. I answered that I did not have that honor. “Well then, friend,” he said, “you are a Christian without being circumcised, and I am one without being baptized.”

That was how my holy man rather plausibly misused three or four passages of Holy Scripture that seemed to favor his sect; in all good faith he forgot a hundred passages that crushed it. I took care not to dispute anything with him. There is nothing to be gained with an enthusiast: one should not presume to tell a man his mistress's faults, or a litigant the weakness of his case, or an inspired visionary one's reasons. So I passed to other questions.

“As for Communion,” I said, “what do you do about it?” “We do not practice it,” he said. “What! No Communion?” “No, none but the communion of hearts.” Then he cited Scripture to me again. He delivered a very fine sermon against Communion, and spoke in an inspired tone to prove that all the Sacraments were human inventions, and that the word Sacrament did not appear once in the Gospel. “Forgive my ignorance,” he said; “I have not offered you a hundredth part of the proofs of my religion, but you can find them in Robert Barclay's Exposition of Our Faith: it is one of the best books ever to come from human hands. Our enemies admit that it is very dangerous, which proves how reasonable it is.” I promised to read the book, and my Quaker already thought me converted.

Then in a few words he explained some of the peculiarities that expose this sect to the contempt of others. “Admit,” he said, “that you had quite a struggle not to laugh when I answered all your courtesies with my hat on my head and addressed you with the familiar ‘you’; yet you seem too well informed not to know that in Christ's time no nation fell into the absurdity of substituting the plural for the singular. People said to Caesar Augustus: I love you, I beg you, I thank you; he would not even allow himself to be called lord, dominus. It was only long after his time that men thought of being addressed in the plural rather than the singular, as though they were double, and of arrogating the absurd titles of Greatness, Eminence, Holiness, even Divinity, which worms bestow on other worms while assuring them, with profound respect and infamous dishonesty, that they are their most humble and most obedient servants. To be more on our guard against this shameful commerce in lies and flattery, we address kings and charcoal burners alike in the singular, bow to no one, and reserve charity for men and respect for the laws.

“We also wear clothing a little different from other men's, so that it may be a constant reminder not to resemble them. Others wear the marks of their rank; we wear those of Christian humility. We shun gatherings devoted to pleasure, the theater, and gambling, for we would be pitiable indeed if we filled with such trifles hearts in which God should dwell. We never swear oaths, not even in court; we believe the name of the Most High should not be profaned in the wretched disputes of men. When we must appear before magistrates on other people's business (for we never have lawsuits), we affirm the truth with a yes or a no, and the judges believe us on our word alone, while so many other Christians perjure themselves upon the Gospel. We never go to war: it is not that we fear death; on the contrary, we bless the moment that joins us to the Being of beings. But we are not wolves or tigers or mastiffs: we are men, we are Christians. Our God, who has commanded us to love our enemies and suffer without complaint, surely does not want us to cross the sea to slaughter our brothers because murderers dressed in red, wearing hats two feet high, enlist citizens by making a noise with two little sticks on a tightly stretched donkey skin. And when, after battles won, all London shines with illuminations, the sky blazes with fireworks, and the air rings with thanksgiving, bells, organs, and cannons, we mourn in silence the killings that occasion this public joy.”

### Letter II

On the Quakers

Such, more or less, was the conversation I had with this singular man; but I was far more surprised when, the following Sunday, he took me to the Quakers' church. They have several chapels in London; the one I visited is near that famous column called the Monument. The congregation had already gathered when I entered with my guide. There were about four hundred men in the church and three hundred women: the women hid their faces; the men wore their broad hats; all were seated, all in profound silence. I passed among them without a single person raising his eyes to me. The silence lasted a quarter of an hour. At last one of them stood up, removed his hat, and, after a few sighs, delivered, half through his mouth and half through his nose, a jumble drawn, so he believed, from the Gospel, of which neither he nor anyone else understood a word. When this contortionist had finished his fine monologue and the congregation had dispersed, thoroughly edified and thoroughly stupefied, I asked my man why the wisest among them tolerated such foolishness. “We are obliged to tolerate it,” he told me, “because we cannot know whether a man who rises to speak will be inspired by the spirit or by madness; in doubt, we listen patiently to everything, and we even allow women to speak. Two or three of our devout women often find themselves inspired at the same time, and then a fine noise breaks out in the house of the Lord.” “So you have no priests?” I asked. “No, my friend,” said the Quaker, “and we are all the better for it.” Then he opened a book of his sect and read these words with emphasis: “God forbid that we should presume to appoint someone to receive the Holy Spirit on Sunday to the exclusion of all the other faithful! Thank heaven, we are the only people on earth without priests. Would you take so happy a distinction from us? Why should we entrust our child to hired nurses when we have milk to give it ourselves? Those hirelings would soon rule the house and oppress both mother and child. God has said: Freely you have received, freely give. After hearing that, are we to haggle over the Gospel, sell the Holy Spirit, and turn an assembly of Christians into a merchant's shop? We pay no money to men in black to care for our poor, bury our dead, or preach to the faithful: these sacred offices are too dear to us to hand over to others.

“But how can you tell,” I pressed him, “whether it is the spirit of God that moves you when you speak?” “Whoever prays to God for enlightenment,” he said, “and proclaims Gospel truths that he feels within himself may be sure that God inspires him.” Then he overwhelmed me with quotations from Scripture which, in his view, proved that there is no Christianity without immediate revelation, and he added these remarkable words: “When you move one of your limbs, is it your own strength that moves it? Certainly not, for that limb often moves involuntarily. It is therefore the one who created your body who moves this body of earth. And the ideas your soul receives—do you form them yourself? Still less, for they come in spite of you. It is therefore the Creator of your soul who gives you these ideas; but since he has left your heart free, he gives your mind the ideas that your heart deserves. You live in God, you act and think in God: you have only to open your eyes to that light which illuminates all men, and then you will see the truth and show it to others.” “Why, there is Father Malebranche pure and simple!” I exclaimed. “I know your Malebranche,” he said. “He was somewhat of a Quaker, but not enough of one.”

These are the most important things I learned about the doctrine of the Quakers. In the first letter you will have their history, which you will find still more singular than their doctrine.

### Letter III

On the Quakers

You have already seen that the Quakers date their beginnings from Jesus Christ, who, according to them, is the first Quaker. Religion, they say, was corrupted almost immediately after his death and remained in that corruption for about sixteen hundred years; but there were always a few hidden Quakers in the world who took care to preserve the sacred fire, extinguished everywhere else, until at last its light spread through England in the year 1642.

It was when three or four sects were tearing Great Britain apart in civil wars undertaken in God's name that a certain George Fox, from the county of Leicester and the son of a silk worker, took it into his head to preach like a true apostle, as he claimed—that is, without knowing how to read or write. He was a young man of twenty-five, of irreproachable conduct and holy madness. He was dressed in leather from head to foot; he went from village to village crying out against war and the clergy. Had he preached only against soldiers, he would have had nothing to fear; but he attacked churchmen, and he was soon put in prison. They took him to Darby before the justice of the peace. Fox appeared before the judge with his leather cap on his head. A sergeant gave him a resounding slap and said, “Scoundrel, don't you know you must appear bareheaded before the judge?” Fox turned the other cheek and asked the sergeant to be so good as to slap him again for the love of God. The judge of Darby wanted him to swear an oath before questioning him. “My friend, understand,” he told the judge, “that I never take God's name in vain.” The judge, angered at being addressed as an equal and determined to have him swear, sent him to the madhouse at Darby to be whipped. Fox went off praising God to the asylum, where the sentence was duly carried out to the letter. The gentlemen who administered his punishment with the whip were greatly surprised when he asked them to give him a few more strokes of the rod for the good of his soul. They needed no urging; Fox received a double dose, for which he thanked them most heartily, and then began to preach to them. At first they laughed, then they listened; and since enthusiasm is a contagious disease, several were persuaded, and those who had whipped him became his first disciples.

Released from prison, he roamed the countryside with a dozen converts, always preaching against the clergy and being whipped from time to time. One day, when he was put in the pillory, he addressed the whole crowd with such force that he converted some fifty listeners and won the rest so completely to his side that they pulled him in an uproar out of the hole where he was held. They went to fetch the Anglican parson whose influence had secured Fox's sentence and put him in the pillory in his place.

He even dared to convert some of Cromwell's soldiers, who renounced the trade of killing and refused to take the oath. Cromwell had no use for a sect that would not fight, just as Sixtus V took a dim view of a sect where no one was having sex. He used his power to persecute these newcomers. The prisons were filled with them; but persecution almost never does anything except win converts. They came out of prison confirmed in their belief and followed by the jailers they had converted. But this is what did most to spread the sect. Fox believed himself inspired. Consequently he thought he ought to speak differently from other men. He began to tremble, to contort his body and make faces, to hold his breath and force it out violently; the priestess of Delphi could have done no better. Before long he became thoroughly practiced at inspiration, and soon afterward it was scarcely in his power to speak any other way. This was the first gift he passed on to his disciples. In all good faith they made every face their master made; they trembled with all their might at the moment of inspiration. From this they received the name Quakers, meaning tremblers. The common people amused themselves by imitating them. They trembled, spoke through their noses, went into convulsions, and believed they possessed the Holy Spirit. They needed a few miracles, so they performed them.

The patriarch Fox publicly told a justice of the peace, before a large gathering: “Friend, take care; God will soon punish you for persecuting the saints.” This judge was a drunkard who got drunk every day on bad beer and brandy: two days later he died of apoplexy, just after signing an order to send some Quakers to prison. His sudden death was not attributed to the judge's intemperance; everyone regarded it as the fulfillment of the holy man's prophecies.

That death made more Quakers than a thousand sermons and as many convulsions could have made. Cromwell, seeing their number increase every day, wished to draw them to his side: he had money offered to them, but they proved incorruptible; and he said one day that this was the only religion he had not been able to prevail against with guineas.

They were sometimes persecuted under Charles II, not on account of their religion, but because they would not pay tithes to the clergy, addressed magistrates as equals, and refused to take the oaths prescribed by law.

At last Robert Barclay, a Scot, presented to the king in 1675 his Apology for the Quakers, as good a work as it could be. The dedicatory epistle to Charles II contains not servile flattery but bold truths and sound advice. “You have tasted,” he tells Charles at the end of this epistle, “sweetness and bitterness, prosperity and the greatest misfortunes; you have been driven from the countries over which you reign; you have felt the weight of oppression, and must know how hateful the oppressor is before God and men. If, after so many trials and blessings, your heart should harden and forget the God who remembered you in your adversity, your crime would be greater and your condemnation more terrible. Instead, then, of listening to the flatterers of your court, listen to the voice of your conscience, which will never flatter you. I am your faithful friend and subject, Barclay.”

What is more astonishing is that this letter, written to a king by an obscure private citizen, had its effect, and the persecution ceased.

### Letter IV

On the Quakers

Around this time the illustrious William Penn appeared. He established the power of the Quakers in America and would have made them respected in Europe, if men could respect virtue beneath ridiculous appearances. He was the only son of Sir Penn, vice admiral of England and favorite of the Duke of York, later James II.

At the age of fifteen, William Penn met a Quaker at Oxford, where he was studying. This Quaker persuaded him, and the young man, who was spirited, naturally eloquent, and possessed an air of authority in his face and manner, soon won over some of his fellow students. Little by little he founded a society of young Quakers who met at his home; thus at the age of sixteen he found himself the leader of the sect.

When he returned from college to the home of his father, the vice admiral, instead of kneeling before him and asking his blessing, as the English custom was, he approached him with his hat on his head and said, “I am very glad, friend, to see you in good health.” The vice admiral thought his son had gone mad; he soon realized he had become a Quaker. He tried every means that human prudence could devise to persuade him to live like other people; the young man answered his father only by urging him to become a Quaker himself.

In the end his father relented so far as to ask only that he visit the king and the Duke of York with his hat under his arm and not address them as equals. William replied that his conscience would not allow it, and his father, indignant and desperate, turned him out of the house. Young Penn thanked God that he was already suffering for his cause; he went to preach in the city and made many converts there.

The congregations attending the ministers' sermons grew thinner every day; and since Penn was young, handsome, and well built, women of the court and of the city flocked devoutly to hear him. The patriarch George Fox came from deep in the English countryside to see him in London on the strength of his reputation; the two resolved to undertake missions in foreign lands. They sailed for Holland, after leaving behind a good number of laborers to tend the vineyard of London. Their work met with happy success in Amsterdam; but what did them the most honor, and most endangered their humility, was the welcome they received from Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate, aunt of George I, king of England, an illustrious woman of wit and learning to whom Descartes had dedicated his philosophical romance.

She was then living in retirement at The Hague, where she met the Friends, as the Quakers were called at that time in Holland. She held several discussions with them; they often preached at her home, and if they did not make her a perfect Quaker woman, they admitted at least that she was not far from the kingdom of heaven.

The Friends also sowed their seed in Germany, but reaped little there. Addressing people as equals found no favor in a country where one must constantly pronounce the titles Highness and Excellency. Penn soon returned to England on hearing that his father was ill; he came to receive his dying breath. The vice admiral was reconciled with him and embraced him tenderly, though they were of different faiths; but William urged him in vain not to receive the sacrament and to die a Quaker; and the good old man urged William, just as fruitlessly, to have buttons on his sleeves and braid on his hat.

William inherited a great fortune, which included sums owed by the crown for advances the vice admiral had made on naval expeditions. Nothing was less certain then than money owed by the king: Penn had to address Charles II and his ministers as equals more than once to obtain payment. In 1680, instead of money, the government gave him the ownership and sovereignty of a province in America, south of Maryland: there was a Quaker turned sovereign. He set out for his new dominions with two ships loaded with Quakers who followed him. From then on the country was called Pennsylvania, after Penn; there he founded the city of Philadelphia, which is very prosperous today. He began by making an alliance with the neighboring Americans: it is the only treaty between those peoples and the Christians that was neither sworn to nor broken. The new sovereign was also the lawgiver of Pennsylvania: he gave it very wise laws, none of which has been changed since his time. The first forbids mistreating anyone on account of religion and regards all who believe in a god as brothers.

Hardly had he established his government when several merchants from America came to populate the colony. Instead of fleeing into the forests, the natives of the country gradually grew accustomed to the peaceful Quakers: as much as they detested the other Christians, the conquerors and destroyers of America, so much did they love these newcomers. Before long these so-called savages, delighted by their new neighbors, came in crowds to ask William Penn to receive them among his subjects. It was a very novel spectacle: a sovereign whom everyone addressed as an equal and spoke to with hat on head; a government without priests; a people without weapons; citizens all equal except in the holding of magistracies; and neighbors without jealousy.

William Penn could boast that he had brought to earth the golden age of which so much is said and which, in all likelihood, has existed only in Pennsylvania. After the death of Charles II, he returned to England on the business of his new country. King James, who had loved his father, felt the same affection for the son and no longer regarded him as an obscure sectarian but as a very great man. In this the king's policy accorded with his inclination: he wanted to court the Quakers by abolishing the laws against Nonconformists, so that under cover of this freedom he could introduce the Catholic religion. All the sects of England saw the trap and did not fall into it; they have always stood united against Catholicism, their common enemy. But Penn did not think he should renounce his principles to favor Protestants who hated him against a king who loved him. He had established freedom of conscience in America and did not wish to seem intent on destroying it in Europe. He therefore remained faithful to James II, to the point that he was widely accused of being a Jesuit. This slander deeply distressed him; he had to defend himself against it in public writings. Meanwhile the unfortunate James II, who, like almost every Stuart, combined greatness with weakness and, like them, did both too much and too little, lost his kingdom without a sword being drawn and without anyone being able to say how it happened.

All the English sects received from William III and his Parliament that same freedom which they had refused to accept from James's hands. It was then that the Quakers began, through the force of law, to enjoy all the privileges they possess today. Penn, having at last seen his sect established without opposition in the land of his birth, returned to Pennsylvania. His people and the Americans welcomed him with tears of joy, like a father returning to his children. All his laws had been faithfully observed during his absence, something that had never happened to any lawgiver before him. He stayed for some years in Philadelphia; at last he left, against his will, to seek new advantages in London for the commerce of the Pennsylvanians: he never saw them again; he died in London in 1718. It was in the reign of Charles II that they obtained the noble privilege of never swearing oaths and of being believed in court on their word. The chancellor, a man of wit, spoke to them thus: “My friends, Jupiter once ordered all the beasts of burden to come and be shod. The donkeys protested that their law did not allow it. ‘Very well!’ said Jupiter. ‘You will not be shod; but the first time you stumble, you will receive a hundred lashes of the stirrup strap.’”

I cannot guess what will become of the Quakers' religion in America; but I see it dwindling every day in London. In every country the dominant religion, when it does not persecute, eventually swallows up all the others. Quakers cannot be members of Parliament or hold any office, because they would have to take an oath, and they will not swear. They are reduced to the necessity of earning money by trade; their children, enriched by their fathers' industry, want pleasures, honors, buttons, and cuffs. They are ashamed to be called Quakers and become Protestants to be fashionable.

### Letter V

On the Anglican Religion

England is the land of sects: “In my Father's house are many mansions.” An Englishman, as a free man, goes to heaven by whatever road he pleases.

Yet although everyone here may worship God in his own way, their true religion, the one in which fortunes are made, is the sect of the bishops, called the Anglican Church, or simply the Church. No one can hold office in England or Ireland without being among the Anglican faithful; this reason, an excellent proof, has converted so many nonconformists that today not a twentieth part of the nation remains outside the fold of the established Church.

The Anglican clergy have retained many Catholic ceremonies, above all the practice of collecting tithes with the most scrupulous attention. They also cherish the pious ambition of being masters: for what village vicar would not wish to be pope?

Moreover, they foster in their flocks, as far as they can, a holy zeal against nonconformists. This zeal ran fairly high under the Tory government in the last years of Queen Anne; but it went no further than occasionally breaking the windows of heretical chapels: for sectarian fury ended in England with the civil wars, and under Queen Anne one heard only the low rumble of a sea still troubled long after the storm. When the Whigs and Tories tore their country apart, as the Guelphs and Ghibellines once laid Italy waste, religion inevitably entered the rival parties. The Tories stood for the episcopate; the Whigs wished to abolish it, but contented themselves with diminishing it when they came to power.

When Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Lord Bolingbroke were drinking to the health of the Tories, the Anglican Church regarded them as the defenders of its sacred privileges. The assembly of the lower clergy, a sort of House of Commons composed of churchmen, then possessed a certain influence; it enjoyed at least the freedom to meet, to debate points of controversy, and from time to time to have a few impious books burned—that is, books written against it. The ministry, now Whig, does not permit these gentlemen to hold their assembly; confined to the obscurity of their parishes, they have the melancholy duty of praying to God for the government, which they would not be sorry to disturb. As for the bishops, twenty-six in all, they sit in the upper house despite the Whigs, because the custom, or abuse, of regarding them as barons still survives. One clause in the oath sworn to the state sorely tests these gentlemen's Christian patience.

In it they promise to belong to the Church as it is established by law. There is scarcely a bishop, dean, or archpriest who does not believe his office to be his by divine right; it is therefore a great mortification for them to have to admit that they owe everything to a wretched law made by profane laymen. A learned cleric (Father Courayer) recently wrote a book to prove the validity and succession of Anglican ordinations. The work was proscribed in France; but do you think it pleased the ministry of England? Not at all. The accursed Whigs care very little whether the episcopal succession was interrupted among them or not, or whether Bishop Parker was consecrated in a tavern (as some maintain) or in a church; indeed, they would rather the bishops derived their authority from Parliament than from the apostles. Lord B. says that this notion of divine right would serve only to make tyrants in capes and surplices, whereas the law makes citizens.

As to conduct, the Anglican clergy are more disciplined than the clergy of France; and here is why. All churchmen are educated at the University of Oxford or that of Cambridge, far from the corruption of the capital: they are called to the dignities of the Church only very late, at an age when men have no passion left but greed, once their ambition has nothing to feed on. Here appointments reward long service in the Church as in the army; one does not see young men made bishops or colonels on leaving college. Moreover, the priests are almost all married. Their awkwardness, acquired at the university, and their scant acquaintance with women here mean that a bishop is usually obliged to content himself with his wife. Priests sometimes go to the tavern, because custom allows it; and if they get drunk, they do so earnestly and without scandal.

That indefinable creature who is neither a churchman nor a layman—in a word, what is called an abbé—is a species unknown in England; churchmen here are all reserved and almost all pedants. When they learn that in France young men notorious for their debaucheries, raised to the prelacy through women's intrigues, openly pursue love affairs, amuse themselves by writing tender songs, give elaborate, protracted suppers every day, and then go to implore the light of the Holy Spirit and boldly call themselves successors of the apostles, they thank God that they are Protestants. But they are vile heretics fit to be burned by all the devils, as Master François Rabelais says; and so I do not meddle in their affairs.

### Letter VI

On the Presbyterians

The Anglican religion reigns only in England and Ireland. Presbyterianism is the dominant religion in Scotland. This Presbyterianism is nothing but pure Calvinism, as it was established in France and still exists in Geneva. Because the ministers of this sect receive only very modest salaries from their churches, and consequently cannot live in the same luxury as the bishops, they have taken the natural course of railing against honors beyond their reach. Picture proud Diogenes trampling on the pride of Plato: the Presbyterians of Scotland bear a striking resemblance to that haughty, penniless philosopher. They treated King Charles II with far less consideration than Diogenes had shown Alexander. For when they took up arms for him against Cromwell, who had deceived them, they made the poor king endure four sermons a day; they forbade him to play games; they set him penances; so that Charles soon tired of being king of these pedants, and escaped from their hands like a schoolboy running away from school.

Beside a lively young French bachelor, in the schools of theology and singing with the ladies in the evening, an Anglican theologian is a Cato; but that Cato looks like a gallant beside a Scottish Presbyterian. The latter affects a solemn gait and a surly expression, wears a vast hat and a long cloak over a short coat, preaches through his nose, and calls every church the Whore of Babylon where some churchmen are fortunate enough to have an income of fifty thousand livres and the people are good-natured enough to put up with it and address them as My Lord, Your Grace, Your Eminence.

These gentlemen, who also have a few churches in England, have made grave and austere airs fashionable in that country. To them we owe the sanctification of Sunday in the three kingdoms; on that day working and enjoying oneself are forbidden, twice the severity of the Catholic churches. No opera, no plays, no concerts in London on Sunday; cards themselves are so expressly forbidden that only people of rank and those called respectable people play on that day. The rest of the nation goes to the sermon, the tavern, and the houses of prostitutes.

Although the episcopal and Presbyterian sects are the two dominant ones in Great Britain, all the others are welcome there and live together well enough, while most of their preachers detest one another with almost as much cordiality as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit.

Enter the London Exchange, a place more worthy of respect than many courts, and you will see representatives of every nation assembled there for the benefit of humankind. There the Jew, the Muslim, and the Christian deal with one another as if they belonged to the same religion, and call no one an infidel but a bankrupt; there the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Anglican accepts the word of the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful and free gatherings, some go to the synagogue, others go drinking; one man goes to be baptized in a great tub in the name of the Father, by the Son, in the Holy Spirit; another has his son's foreskin cut off and Hebrew words he does not understand mumbled over the child; others go to their church to await inspiration from God, hats on their heads: and all are content.

If there were only one religion in England, its despotism would be a danger; if there were only two, they would cut each other's throats; but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.

### Letter VII

On the Socinians, or Arians, or Anti-Trinitarians

In England there is a small sect composed of churchmen and a few very learned laymen who call themselves neither Arians nor Socinians, but who do not at all agree with Saint Athanasius on the question of the Trinity, and who tell you plainly that the Father is greater than the Son.

Do you remember a certain orthodox bishop who, to convince an emperor of consubstantiality, took it into his head to seize the emperor's son by the chin and pull his nose in the presence of His Sacred Majesty? The emperor was about to have the bishop thrown out the window when the good man addressed him in these fine, persuasive words: “Sire, if Your Majesty is so angry that someone should show disrespect to your son, how do you think God the Father will treat those who refuse Jesus Christ the titles due to him?” The people I am speaking of say that the holy bishop was very ill-advised, that his argument was anything but conclusive, and that the emperor ought to have answered him: “Understand that there are two ways of showing me disrespect: the first is to give my son too little honor; the second is to give him as much as you give me.”

Be that as it may, the party of Arius is beginning to revive in England as well as in Holland and Poland. The great Newton did this opinion the honor of favoring it. That philosopher thought the Unitarians reasoned more geometrically than we do. But the most steadfast patron of Arian doctrine is the illustrious Dr. Clarke. This man is strict in virtue and gentle in character, more attached to his opinions than eager to make converts, occupied solely with calculations and demonstrations, blind and deaf to everything else—a veritable reasoning machine.

He is the author of a book on the existence of God that is little understood but highly esteemed, and of another on the truth of the Christian religion that is more intelligible but rather despised.

He has not involved himself in the fine scholastic disputes that our friend… calls venerable nonsense; he has contented himself with publishing a book containing all the testimony of the early centuries for and against the Unitarians, leaving it to the reader to count the votes and judge. This book of the doctor's won him many supporters, but prevented him from becoming Archbishop of Canterbury; for when Queen Anne wished to give him the post, a doctor named Gibson, who doubtless had his reasons, said to the queen: “Madam, Mr. Clarke is the most learned and most honorable man in the kingdom; he lacks only one thing.” “And what is that?” said the queen. “To be a Christian,” said the benevolent doctor. I think Clarke miscalculated, and that it was better to be the orthodox primate of England than an Arian parish priest.

You see what revolutions occur in opinions as in empires. The party of Arius, after three hundred years of triumph and twelve centuries of oblivion, is at last reborn from its ashes; but it has chosen a very poor time to reappear, in an age when everyone has had enough of disputes and sects. This sect is still too small to gain the freedom to hold public assemblies: no doubt it will gain that freedom if it grows more numerous; but people are so lukewarm about all this now that there is scarcely a fortune to be made from a new or revived religion. Is it not amusing that Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, all writers one cannot bear to read, founded sects that divide Europe; that the ignorant Muhammad gave a religion to Asia and Africa; and that Messrs. Newton, Clarke, Locke, and Leclerc, the greatest philosophers and finest writers of their time, could barely manage to establish a little flock?

That is what comes of arriving in the world at the right moment. If Cardinal de Retz reappeared today, he would not rouse ten women in Paris.

If Cromwell were born again—he who had his king beheaded and made himself sovereign—he would be an ordinary citizen of London.

### Letter VIII

On Parliament

The members of the Parliament of England like to compare themselves to the ancient Romans whenever they can.

Not long ago Mr. Shipping began a speech in the House of Commons with these words: “The majesty of the English people would be offended, etc.” The singularity of the expression provoked a great burst of laughter; but without losing his composure, he repeated the same words firmly, and no one laughed again. I confess that I see nothing in common between the majesty of the English people and that of the Roman people, still less between their governments; there is a senate in London whose members are sometimes suspected, though surely without cause, of selling their votes when the occasion arises, as they did at Rome: that is the whole resemblance. In other respects the two nations seem to me entirely different, for good or ill. The Romans never knew the hideous madness of wars of religion: that abomination was reserved for devout preachers of humility and patience. Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Caesar, Antony and Augustus, did not fight to decide whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe or his robe over his shirt, and whether the sacred chickens should eat and drink, or only eat, when the auguries were taken. The English once had one another hanged by their courts and destroyed one another in pitched battles over quarrels of this kind; the episcopal sect and Presbyterianism turned those melancholy heads for a time. I imagine that the same folly will not overtake them again; they seem to be growing wise at their own expense, and I see no desire in them to cut one another's throats hereafter over syllogisms. Yet who can answer for human beings?

Here is a more essential difference between Rome and England, and one that is altogether to England's advantage: the fruit of Rome's civil wars was slavery, while the fruit of England's troubles was liberty. The English nation is the only one on earth that has managed to limit the power of kings by resisting them, and that through effort after effort has finally established a wise government in which the prince, all-powerful to do good, has his hands tied when it comes to doing evil; in which the lords are great without insolence and without vassals; and in which the people share in government without disorder.

The House of Lords and the House of Commons are the arbiters of the nation; the king is the supreme arbiter. This balance was lacking among the Romans: the great and the people were always divided at Rome, with no intermediary power to reconcile them. The Roman senate, with its unjust and culpable pride in refusing to share anything with the plebeians, knew no way to keep them away from government except to keep them constantly busy with foreign wars. It regarded the people as a ferocious beast that had to be loosed upon its neighbors for fear it would devour its masters: thus the greatest defect in the Roman government made the Romans conquerors; because they were unhappy at home, they became masters of the world, until at last their divisions made them slaves.

The government of England is not made for such dazzling glory or such a disastrous end; its aim is not the brilliant madness of conquest, but to prevent its neighbors from conquering; this people is jealous not only of its own liberty, but of the liberty of others as well. The English were implacable toward Louis XIV solely because they believed him ambitious.

There is no doubt that establishing liberty in England came at a cost; the idol of despotic power was drowned in seas of blood; but the English do not believe they paid too much for their laws. Other nations have endured no fewer troubles, have shed no less blood: but the blood they shed for the cause of their liberty merely cemented their servitude.

What becomes a revolution in England is only a sedition in other countries. A city takes up arms to defend its privileges, whether in Spain, Barbary, or Turkey: at once mercenary soldiers subdue it, executioners punish it, and the rest of the nation kisses its chains. The French think the government of this island more storm-tossed than the sea that surrounds it, and that is true: but it is when the king starts the storm, when he seeks to become master of the ship of which he is only the chief pilot. The civil wars of France were longer, more cruel, and more prolific in crimes than those of England; but of all those civil wars not one had wise liberty as its object.

In the detestable days of Charles IX and Henry III, the only question was whether people would be slaves of the Guises. As for the last war in Paris, it deserves nothing but hisses; I seem to see schoolboys rebelling against the head of a school and ending by being whipped. Cardinal de Retz, with much wit and courage put to bad use, a rebel without cause, a faction leader without purpose, a party chief without an army, schemed for the sake of scheming and seemed to make civil war for his own pleasure. Parliament did not know what it wanted or what it did not want; it raised troops by decree, dismissed them, threatened and begged pardon; it put a price on Cardinal Mazarin's head, then came to pay him ceremonial compliments: our civil wars under Charles VI had been cruel, those of the League were abominable, that of the Fronde was ridiculous.

The charge most often made against the English in France is the execution of Charles I, a monarch worthy of a better fate, who was treated by his victors as he would have treated them had he prevailed.

After all, consider on the one hand Charles I, defeated in pitched battle, imprisoned, tried, condemned in Westminster, and beheaded; and on the other the emperor Henry VII poisoned by his chaplain while taking communion, Henry III assassinated by a monk, thirty assassination plots against Henry IV, several carried out, and the last at length robbing France of that great king. Weigh these attacks, and judge.

### Letter IX

On Government

This mixture in the government of England, this harmony among the Commons, the lords, and the king, has not always existed. England was long enslaved; it was enslaved by the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes, the French. William the Conqueror in particular ruled it with an iron scepter: he disposed of the property and lives of his new subjects like an Eastern monarch; he forbade any Englishman, on pain of death, to keep a fire or a light in his home after eight o'clock in the evening, whether he intended thereby to prevent their nighttime gatherings or wished to test, by so strange a prohibition, how far the power of men over other men could go.

It is true that before and after William the Conqueror the English had parliaments: they boast of them as though these assemblies, then called parliaments, composed of clerical tyrants and plunderers called barons, had been the guardians of liberty and public happiness.

The barbarians who swept from the shores of the Baltic Sea into the rest of Europe brought with them the custom of estates or parliaments, about which so much noise is made and so little is known. The kings of that time were not despots, it is true: and for that very reason the peoples groaned in miserable servitude. The chiefs of these savages who had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England became monarchs; their captains divided the lands of the conquered among themselves: hence those margraves, lairds, barons, those lesser tyrants who often contested the spoils of the peoples with kings whose hold on power was uncertain. They were birds of prey fighting an eagle for the blood of doves: each people had a hundred tyrants instead of one good master. Priests soon entered the contest. The fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the inhabitants of England had always been to be governed by their druids and by the chiefs of their villages, an ancient kind of baron, but less tyrannical than their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between the Divinity and men; they made laws, they excommunicated, they sentenced people to death. The bishops gradually succeeded to their temporal authority in the Gothic and Vandal government. The popes set themselves at their head; and with briefs, bulls, and monks they made kings tremble, deposed them, had them assassinated, and drew from Europe all the money they could. The imbecile Inas, one of the tyrants of England's heptarchy, was the first, on a pilgrimage to Rome, to submit to paying Peter's Pence (which amounted to about one écu of our currency) for every house in his territory. The whole island soon followed his example: little by little England became a province of the pope, and the Holy Father sent his legates there from time to time to levy exorbitant taxes. John Lackland finally made a formal surrender of his kingdom to His Holiness, who had excommunicated him; and the barons, finding no profit in this, drove out that wretched king and put in his place Louis VIII, father of Saint Louis, king of France; but they soon tired of this newcomer and made him cross the sea again.

While the barons, the bishops, and the popes were thus all tearing England apart, where all wanted to rule, the people—the most numerous, the most useful, and even the most virtuous part of humanity, consisting of those who study laws and sciences, of merchants, artisans, and, finally, farmers, who practice the foremost and most despised of occupations—the people, I say, were regarded by them as animals beneath human beings. The Commons were far from having a share in government then: they were villeins; their labor and their blood belonged to their masters, who were called nobles. Most people in Europe were what they still are in many parts of the world, serfs of a lord, a kind of livestock bought and sold with the land. It took centuries to do justice to humanity, to recognize the horror of having the many sow and the few reap; and is it not a blessing for the French that the authority of these petty brigands was extinguished in France by the legitimate power of kings, as it was in England by the power of the king and the nation?

Fortunately, amid the shocks that the quarrels of kings and magnates dealt to empires, the nations' chains loosened to some degree; liberty in England was born of the quarrels of tyrants. The barons forced John Lackland and Henry III to grant that famous charter whose principal purpose was, to be sure, to make kings dependent on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation was given some advantage, so that on occasion it would take the side of its supposed protectors. This great charter, regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties, itself shows how little liberty was understood. Its very title proves that the king believed himself absolute by right, and that the barons and even the clergy forced him to yield that supposed right only because they were stronger.

This is how the great charter begins: “Of our own free will we grant the following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and barons of our kingdom, etc.”

In the articles of this charter not a word is said of the House of Commons, proof that it did not yet exist, or that it existed without power. It specifies the free men of England: a sad indication that there were men who were not free. Article 32 shows that the supposedly free men owed service to their lord. Such liberty still had much of slavery about it.

By article 21, the king orders that henceforth his officers may not take the horses and carts of free men by force without paying for them. This regulation seemed genuine liberty to the people because it removed a greater tyranny.

Henry VII, a conqueror and a successful statesman, who pretended to love the barons but hated and feared them, conceived the idea of encouraging the sale of their lands. Thus the villeins, who subsequently acquired property through their work, bought the castles of illustrious peers who had ruined themselves through their follies. Little by little all the land changed hands.

The House of Commons grew more powerful day by day, while the families of the old peers died out with time; and since, strictly speaking, only peers are noble in England under the letter of the law, there would be scarcely any nobility left in that country if the kings had not created new barons from time to time and preserved the body of peers, which they once feared so much, as a counterweight to the Commons, which had grown too formidable.

All these new peers who make up the upper house receive their title from the king and nothing more, since none of them owns the land whose name he bears: one is Duke of Dorset and does not own an inch of land in Dorsetshire; another is earl of a village whose location he scarcely knows. They have power in Parliament, nowhere else.

You hear nothing here of high, middle, and low jurisdiction, or of the right to hunt on a citizen's land when that citizen is not free to fire a gun in his own field.

A man is not exempt here from paying certain taxes because he is a noble or a priest; all taxation is regulated by the House of Commons, which, though second in rank, is first in influence.

The lords and bishops may reject a Commons bill to raise money, but they are not permitted to change anything in it; they must accept it or reject it without qualification. When the bill is confirmed by the lords and approved by the king, everyone pays; each gives not according to his rank (which would be absurd), but according to his income; there is neither an arbitrary direct tax nor an arbitrary poll tax, but a fixed tax on land; all land was assessed under the famous King William III, and valued below its worth.

The tax remains unchanged, although income from land has increased; thus no one is oppressed and no one complains. The peasant's feet are not bruised by wooden clogs, he eats white bread, he is well dressed, and he is not afraid to increase the number of his livestock or to tile his roof for fear that his taxes will be raised the following year. One sees many peasants there with an income of about five or six hundred pounds sterling, who do not disdain to continue cultivating the land that has enriched them, and on which they live free.

### Letter X

On Commerce

Since the calamity of Carthage, no people has been powerful at once through commerce and war; Venice furnished an example of this. The Portuguese, for having passed the Cape of Good Hope, were for a time great lords on the coasts of India, but never formidable in Europe. The United Provinces became warlike only against their will; and it was not as provinces united among themselves, but as allies of England, that they lent a hand in maintaining the balance of Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Carthage, Venice, and Amsterdam were powerful; but they behaved like those among us who, having amassed money in trade, buy landed estates. Neither Carthage nor Venice nor Holland nor any other people began as warriors, even conquerors, only to end as merchants. The English alone did so; they fought for a long time before they learned to reckon. When they won the battles of Agincourt, Crécy, and Poitiers, they did not know that they could sell a great deal of wheat and manufacture fine cloth that would bring them far more. That knowledge alone has made the nation larger, richer, stronger. London was poor and rustic when Edward III was conquering half of France. It is solely because the English became traders that London surpasses Paris in the size of the city and the number of its inhabitants; that they can put two hundred warships to sea and pay the wages of allied kings. The people of Scotland were born warlike and ingenious: how is it that their country has become, under the name of union, a province of England? Because Scotland has only coal, whereas England has fine tin, splendid wool, excellent wheat, manufactures, and trading companies.

When Louis XIV was making Italy tremble, and his armies, already masters of Savoy and Piedmont, stood ready to take Turin, Prince Eugene had to march from the depths of Germany to the aid of the duke of Savoy; he had no money, without which one can neither take nor defend cities. He appealed to English merchants: in half an hour they lent him five million; with it he freed Turin, defeated the French, and wrote this little note to those who had lent the sum: “Gentlemen, I have received your money, and I flatter myself that I have put it to good use, to your satisfaction.”

All this gives an English merchant a rightful pride and makes him dare to compare himself, not without some reason, to a Roman citizen. Thus the younger son of a peer of the realm does not disdain trade. Lord Townshend, a minister of state, has a brother content to be a merchant in the City. When Lord Orford governed England, his younger brother was an agent in Aleppo, from which he refused to return, and where he died.

This custom, though it is already falling too much into disuse, seems monstrous to Germans obsessed with their pedigrees; they cannot conceive that the son of an English peer should be no more than a rich and powerful commoner, whereas in Germany everyone is a prince; as many as thirty highnesses of the same name have been seen possessing nothing but coats of arms and noble pride.

In France, anyone who wishes can be a marquis; and anyone who arrives in Paris from the depths of a province with money to spend and a name ending in ac or ille can say, “A man like me, a man of my rank,” and look down utterly upon a merchant. The merchant himself hears his profession spoken of with contempt so often that he is foolish enough to blush for it. Yet I do not know which is more useful to a state: a well-powdered lord who knows precisely when the king rises and when he goes to bed, and affects an air of greatness while playing the slave in a minister’s antechamber; or a merchant who enriches his country, issues orders from his office to Surat and Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of the world.

### Letter XI

On Inoculation Against Smallpox

People in Christian Europe say, in gentle tones, that the English are fools and madmen: fools because they give their children smallpox to prevent their catching it; madmen because they willingly communicate to those children a certain and dreadful disease in the hope of preventing an uncertain harm. The English, for their part, say: “The other Europeans are cowards and unnatural parents: cowards because they fear to cause their children a little pain; unnatural because they expose them to dying one day of smallpox.” To decide which of the two nations is right, here is the history of the famous inoculation spoken of in France with such dread.

The women of Circassia have from time immemorial been accustomed to give their children smallpox even at the age of six months, by making an incision in the arm and placing in it a pustule carefully taken from the body of another child. That pustule acts in the arm where it is inserted as yeast does in a piece of dough; it ferments there, spreading through the whole mass of blood the properties it bears. The pustules of the child given this artificial smallpox serve to carry the same disease to others. It is an almost unbroken circulation in Circassia; and when, unfortunately, there is no smallpox in the country, people are as troubled as they are elsewhere in a bad year.

What introduced this custom into Circassia, though it seems so strange to other peoples, is nevertheless a motive common to all the peoples on earth: maternal tenderness and self-interest. The Circassians are poor and their daughters beautiful; accordingly, it is in daughters that they do most of their trading. They supply beauties to the harems of the Grand Seigneur, the Sophi of Persia, and those rich enough to buy and maintain this precious merchandise. They bring up these girls in all virtue and honor to caress men, to perform dances full of sensuality and languor, and to rekindle, by every most voluptuous artifice, the desire of the very fastidious masters for whom they are destined. These poor creatures repeat their lesson every day with their mothers, just as our little girls repeat their catechism without understanding it. Now it often happened that a father and mother, after taking great pains to give their children a good education, suddenly saw their hopes dashed. Smallpox entered the household: one daughter died of it, another lost an eye, a third recovered with a swollen nose; and the poor people were ruined beyond remedy. Often, too, when smallpox became epidemic, trade was interrupted for several years, causing a notable decline in the seraglios of Persia and Turkey.

A trading nation is always keenly alert to its interests and neglects no knowledge that might be useful to its business. The Circassians noticed that among a thousand people hardly one was attacked twice by a full-blown case of smallpox; that one might indeed undergo three or four mild attacks, but never two that were unmistakable and dangerous; that, in short, no one truly has this disease twice in a lifetime. They also observed that when cases of smallpox are very mild, and their eruption has only delicate, fine skin to break through, they leave no trace on the face. From these natural observations they concluded that if a child of six months or a year had a mild case of smallpox, the child would not die of it, would not be scarred by it, and would be free of the disease for the rest of its days. To preserve their children's lives and beauty, then, they had only to give them smallpox early: they did this by inserting into a child's body a pustule taken from the fullest and at the same time most favorable case they could find. The experiment could not fail to succeed. The Turks, who are sensible people, soon adopted this custom too; and today there is not a pasha in Constantinople who does not give smallpox to his son and daughter when they are being weaned.

Some maintain that the Circassians originally took this custom from the Arabs; but we leave that question of history to be settled by some Benedictine, who will doubtless compose several folio volumes of evidence on the subject. All I have to say on the matter is that, early in the reign of George I, Lady Wortley-Montague, one of the English women with the keenest wit and the strongest mind, while accompanying her husband on an embassy to Constantinople, took it into her head, without scruple, to give smallpox to a child she had borne in that country. Her chaplain told her in vain that this experiment was unchristian and could succeed only among unbelievers; Lady Wortley's son fared wonderfully well. On her return to London, she told of her experience to the princess of Wales, now queen. It must be acknowledged that, titles and crowns aside, this princess was born to encourage all the arts and to do good to mankind: she is an engaging philosopher on the throne; she has never missed an opportunity to learn or an opportunity to exercise her generosity. It was she who, hearing that a daughter of Milton was still alive and living in poverty, immediately sent her a substantial gift; she who protects the learned Father Courayer; she who graciously acted as mediator between Dr. Clarke and Mr. Leibniz. As soon as she heard of inoculation, or the insertion of smallpox, she had it tried on four criminals condemned to death, whose lives she saved twice over: not only did she rescue them from the gallows, but by means of this artificial smallpox she forestalled the natural disease, which they would probably have caught, and from which they might have died at a later age. Assured of the value of this experiment, the princess had her children inoculated: England followed her example, and since then at least ten thousand children of good families owe their lives to the queen and Lady Wortley-Montague, and as many girls owe them their beauty.

Of every hundred people in the world, at least sixty catch smallpox; of these sixty, ten die of it even in the most favorable years, and ten bear disfiguring traces of it forever. So this disease certainly kills or disfigures a fifth of mankind. Of all those inoculated in Turkey or England, not one dies unless already infirm and doomed to die from another cause; no one is scarred, none has smallpox a second time, provided the inoculation was complete. It is certain, then, that if some French ambassador's wife had brought this secret from Constantinople to Paris, she would have done the nation a lasting service; the duke of Villequier, father of the present duke of Aumont, the most robust and healthy man in France, would not have died in the flower of his age; the prince of Soubise, whose health was so radiant, would not have been carried off at the age of twenty-five; Monseigneur, grandfather of Louis XV, would not have been buried in his fiftieth year; twenty thousand people who died of smallpox in Paris in 1723 would still be alive. What, then! Do the French not love life? Do their women care nothing for their beauty? Truly, we are a strange people! Perhaps in ten years this English method will be adopted, if priests and doctors permit it; or else, in three months, the French will take up inoculation on a whim if the English abandon it through fickleness.

I learn that the Chinese have practiced it for a hundred years; the example of a nation reputed to be the wisest and best governed in the universe is a strong presumption in its favor. The Chinese, it is true, proceed differently: they make no incision, but administer smallpox through the nose like powdered tobacco. This way is more agreeable, but comes to the same thing, and equally confirms that if inoculation had been practiced in France, thousands of lives would have been saved.

Some years ago a Jesuit missionary, having read this article and finding himself in a district of America where smallpox was wreaking terrible havoc, took it into his head to have all the little indigenous children he baptized inoculated: thus they owed him both their present life and eternal life. What gifts for those children!

A bishop of Worcester has lately preached inoculation in London: as a citizen he showed how many subjects this practice had preserved for the state; as a charitable pastor he commended it. In Paris they would preach against this salutary invention, just as they wrote for twenty years against Newton's experiments: everything proves that the English are more philosophical and bolder than we are. It takes a long time for a measure of reason and intellectual courage to cross the Strait of Dover.

Yet one must not imagine that from Dover to the Orkney Islands there are none but philosophers; the opposite kind always makes up the greater number. Inoculation was opposed in London at first; and long before the bishop of Worcester proclaimed this gospel from the pulpit, a parish priest took it into his head to preach against it: he said that Job had been inoculated by the devil. That preacher was made to be a Capuchin; he scarcely deserved to have been born in England. So prejudice mounted the pulpit first, and reason only afterward: such is the ordinary course of the human mind.

### Letter XII

On Chancellor Bacon

Not long ago, in a distinguished company, people were debating the worn-out, frivolous question of which was the greatest man: Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell. Someone answered that it was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. He was right: for if true greatness consists in having received a mighty genius from heaven and using it to enlighten oneself and others, a man like Newton, scarcely one of whom appears in ten centuries, is truly a great man; while those politicians and conquerors, of whom no century has been without its share, are ordinarily no more than illustrious scoundrels. It is to the man who rules minds by the force of truth, not those who enslave by force; to the man who knows the universe, not those who disfigure it, that we owe our respect.

The celebrated count of Verulam, known throughout Europe as Bacon, his family name, was the son of a keeper of the seals and served for many years as chancellor under King James I. Yet amid the intrigues of court and the duties of an office that demanded a man's whole attention, he found time to be a great philosopher, a good historian, and an elegant writer; still more remarkably, he lived in an age that knew little of the art of writing well and less still of sound philosophy. As so often happens among men, he was more esteemed after his death than during his life: his enemies were at the London court; his admirers were foreigners. When the marquis d'Effiat brought Princess Marie, daughter of Henri the Great, to England to marry King Charles, this minister went to visit Bacon, who was then ill in bed and received him with the curtains drawn. “You are like the angels,” d'Effiat told him; “one always hears of them, believes them far above men, and never has the consolation of seeing them.”

Everyone knows how Bacon was accused of a crime hardly becoming in a philosopher: allowing himself to be corrupted by money. Everyone knows how the House of Lords sentenced him to a fine of about four hundred thousand livres in our currency and the loss of his dignity as chancellor and peer.

Today the English revere his memory so deeply that they scarcely admit he was guilty. If you ask what I think, I shall answer with a remark I once heard Lord Bolingbroke make. People were speaking in his presence of the avarice of which the duke of Marlborough had been accused, and citing incidents for which they appealed to Lord Bolingbroke's testimony; as Marlborough's avowed enemy, he might perhaps have said what he knew without impropriety. “He was such a great man,” he replied, “that I have forgotten his vices.”

I shall confine myself, then, to speaking of what earned Chancellor Bacon the esteem of Europe.

The most remarkable and best of his works is the one least read today, and the least useful: I mean his Novum scientiarum organum. It is the scaffolding with which the new philosophy was built; once the building was raised, at least in part, the scaffolding was no longer of any use.

Chancellor Bacon did not yet know nature; but he knew and pointed out every road that leads to it. He had early come to scorn what the universities called philosophy; and he did everything in his power to prevent these institutions, established to perfect human reason, from continuing to corrupt it with their quiddities, their horror of a vacuum, their substantial forms, and all the foolish terms that ignorance had made respectable and an absurd mixture with religion had made almost sacred.

He is the father of experimental philosophy. It is quite true that astonishing secrets had been discovered before him. People had invented the compass, printing, engraving, oil painting, mirrors, the art of restoring sight in some measure to the elderly by means of spectacles, gunpowder, and so forth. They had sought, found, and conquered a new world. Who would not believe that these sublime discoveries were made by the greatest philosophers, in an age far more enlightened than our own? Not at all: it was in the age of scholastic barbarism that these great changes were wrought upon the earth. Chance alone produced almost all these innovations; and it even seems very likely that what we call chance played a large part in the discovery of America. At least, it has been believed that Christopher Columbus undertook his voyage only on the word of a ship's captain whom a storm had carried as far as the latitude of the Caribbean Islands.

Be that as it may, men knew how to travel to the ends of the world; they knew how to destroy cities with an artificial thunder more terrible than the real kind; but they did not know the circulation of the blood, the weight of the air, the laws of motion, light, the number of our planets, and so on; and a man who defended a thesis on Aristotle's categories, on the universal (a parte rei), or some other nonsense was regarded as a prodigy.

The most astonishing and useful inventions are not those that bring the greatest honor to the human mind. We owe most of the arts to a mechanical instinct found in most people, and in no way to sound philosophy. The discovery of fire, the art of making bread, of smelting and working metals, of building houses, the invention of the shuttle—all these are far more necessary than printing and the compass; yet these arts were invented by people who were still savages.

What prodigious use the Greeks and Romans later made of machinery! Yet in their day people believed there were crystal heavens and that the stars were little lamps that sometimes fell into the sea; and one of their greatest philosophers, after much research, concluded that the heavenly bodies were stones that had broken away from the earth.

In short, before Chancellor Bacon no one had understood experimental philosophy; and of all the physical experiments carried out since his time, there is scarcely one not suggested in his book. He performed several himself; he made kinds of pneumatic machines by which he divined the elasticity of the air; he came very close to discovering its weight; he nearly touched that truth, which Torricelli grasped. Soon afterward, experimental physics suddenly began to be cultivated in almost every part of Europe at once. It was a hidden treasure of which Bacon had suspected the existence, and which all the philosophers, encouraged by his promise, strove to unearth.

We have seen that his book expressly mentions that new attraction whose inventor Newton is thought to be.

This forerunner of philosophy was also an elegant writer, a historian, a man of wit. His moral Essays are highly esteemed; but they are intended to instruct rather than delight, and, being neither a satire on human nature like the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld nor a school of skepticism like Montaigne, they are less read than those two ingenious books. His Life of Henri VII has been taken for a masterpiece; but how can some people dare compare so small a work with the history of our illustrious de Thou?

Speaking of the famous impostor Perkins, son of a converted Jew, who so boldly assumed the name Richard IV, king of England, with the encouragement of the duchess of Burgundy, and contested the crown with Henri VII, Chancellor Bacon expresses himself thus:

“Around this time, King Henri was beset by evil spirits through the magic of the duchess of Burgundy, who summoned the shade of Edward IV from hell to torment King Henri. Once the duchess of Burgundy had instructed Perkins, she began to deliberate in which region of the heavens she should make this comet appear, and resolved that it should first blaze forth on the horizon of Ireland.”

It seems to me that our wise de Thou scarcely indulges in such bombast, once taken for sublimity but now rightly called gibberish.

### Letter XIII

On Mr. Locke

Perhaps there was never a wiser, more methodical mind, or a more exact logician, than Mr. Locke; yet he was no great mathematician. He could never submit to the labor of calculations or to the dryness of mathematical truths, which at first offer the mind nothing tangible; and no one has proved better than he that one can have a geometric mind without the aid of geometry. Before him, great philosophers had pronounced with certainty on what the human soul is; but since they knew nothing at all about it, it is only right that they should all have held different opinions.

In Greece, cradle of the arts and of errors, where the human mind carried both its greatness and its folly so far, people argued about the soul as we do. The divine Anaxagoras, for whom an altar was raised because he taught men that the Sun was larger than the Peloponnese, that snow was black, and that the heavens were made of stone, asserted that the soul was an airy spirit, yet immortal. Diogenes—not the one who became a Cynic after being a counterfeiter—maintained that the soul was a portion of God's own substance; and that idea, at least, had brilliance. Epicurus composed it of parts, like the body. Aristotle, who has been explained in a thousand ways because he was unintelligible, believed, if some of his disciples are to be trusted, that the intellect of all men was one and the same substance. The divine Plato, master of the divine Aristotle, and the divine Socrates, master of the divine Plato, said the soul was corporeal and eternal. Socrates' familiar spirit had doubtless taught him the truth of it. There are people, admittedly, who claim that a man who boasted of having a familiar spirit was unquestionably a little mad or a little dishonest; but such people are too exacting.

As for our Fathers of the Church, several of them in the earliest centuries believed that the human soul, the angels, and God were corporeal.

The world grows ever more refined. Saint Bernard, by Father Mabillon's own account, taught concerning the soul that after death it did not see God in Heaven, but merely conversed with the human nature of Jesus Christ; this time his word was not taken for it. The affair of the Crusade had somewhat discredited his oracles. Then came a thousand scholastics, such as the Irrefutable Doctor, the Subtle Doctor, the Angelic Doctor, the Seraphic Doctor, the Cherubic Doctor, all quite certain that they knew the soul with perfect clarity, yet speaking of it as though they wanted no one to understand a thing.

Our Descartes, born to discover the errors of antiquity but to replace them with his own, and carried away by that passion for systems which blinds the greatest men, imagined he had demonstrated that the soul was the same thing as thought, just as matter, according to him, was the same thing as extension. He confidently declared that we always think, and that the soul arrives in the body furnished with every metaphysical notion, knowing God, space, infinity, possessing every abstract idea, filled, in short, with splendid knowledge that it unfortunately forgets on emerging from its mother's womb.

Father Malebranche of the Oratory, amid his sublime illusions, not only rejected innate ideas but had no doubt that we saw everything in God, and that God, so to speak, was our soul.

After so many reasoners had written romances about the soul, a wise man came and modestly wrote its history. Locke laid bare human reason for mankind as an excellent anatomist explains the workings of the human body. Everywhere he takes the torch of natural philosophy to guide him; he sometimes ventures to speak with certainty, but also ventures to doubt. Instead of defining at once what we do not know, he examines by degrees what we wish to know. He takes a child at the moment of birth; step by step he follows the progress of its understanding; he sees what it shares with animals and what raises it above them; above all he consults his own testimony, the consciousness of his thought.

“I leave it,” he says, “to those who know more than I do to discuss whether our soul exists before or after the organization of our body; but I confess that I have been allotted one of those coarse souls that do not think all the time, and I even have the misfortune not to understand why it should be any more necessary for the soul always to think than for the body always to be in motion.”

For my part, I boast of the honor of being as stupid as Locke on this point. No one will ever persuade me that I am always thinking; and I am no more inclined than he to imagine that, some weeks after my conception, I was a very learned soul, knowing then a thousand things I forgot at birth, and possessing, quite uselessly in the womb, knowledge that escaped me as soon as I had need of it and that I have never quite managed to learn again since.

Having demolished innate ideas, thoroughly renounced the vanity of believing that we always think, established that all our ideas come to us through the senses, examined our simple ideas and our compound ones, followed the human mind through all its operations, and shown how imperfect the languages men speak are, and how constantly we abuse words, Locke, I say, considers at last the extent—or rather the nothingness—of human knowledge. It is in this chapter that he modestly dares to offer these words: We may perhaps never be capable of knowing whether a purely material being thinks or not.

More than one theologian took this wise remark for a scandalous declaration that the soul is material and mortal. Some Englishmen, devout in their own fashion, sounded the alarm. The superstitious are to society what cowards are to an army: they suffer panics and spread them. People cried out that Locke wanted to overthrow religion; yet religion was not at issue in this matter. It was a purely philosophical question, quite independent of faith and revelation; one needed only to examine without rancor whether there is a contradiction in saying: Matter can think, and God can communicate thought to matter. But theologians too often begin by saying that God is insulted when one disagrees with them. They resemble too closely the bad poets who believed that Despréaux spoke ill of the king because he mocked them.

Dr. Stillingfleet gained a reputation as a moderate theologian for not positively insulting Locke. He entered the lists against him, but was beaten, for he argued like a doctor, while Locke argued like a philosopher who understood the strength and weakness of the human mind, and fought with weapons whose temper he knew.

If I dared speak after Mr. Locke on so delicate a subject, I would say: Men have long disputed the nature and immortality of the soul. As for its immortality, it is impossible to demonstrate it, since we still dispute its nature, and surely one must know a created being through and through to decide whether it is immortal or not. Human reason is so little able to demonstrate the soul's immortality by itself that religion has had to reveal it to us. The common good of all men requires belief that the soul is immortal; faith commands it; nothing more is needed, and the matter is almost settled. Its nature is another question: religion cares little what substance the soul is made of, provided it is virtuous. It is a clock entrusted to us to regulate; but the maker has not told us what its spring is made of.

I am a body, and I think; I know nothing beyond that. If I consult only my feeble lights, shall I ascribe to an unknown cause what I can so easily ascribe to the one secondary cause of which I know a little? Here all the philosophers of the schools stop me with an argument, saying: A body contains only extension and solidity, and can have only motion and shape. Now motion, shape, extension, and solidity cannot make a thought; therefore the soul cannot be matter. All this grand argument, repeated so often, amounts solely to this: I know very little about matter, and imperfectly guess some of its properties; now I have no idea at all whether these properties can be joined to thought; therefore, because I know nothing at all, I confidently assert that matter cannot think. There, plainly, is how the schools reason.

Mr. Locke would say to these gentlemen simply: Admit at least that you are as ignorant as I am. Neither your imagination nor mine can conceive how a body has ideas; but do you better understand how a substance, whatever it may be, has ideas? You conceive neither matter nor spirit; how do you dare make any assertion? What does it matter to you whether the soul is one of those incomprehensible beings called matter or one of those incomprehensible beings called spirit? What! Can God, the creator of all things, not make your soul eternal or annihilate it as he pleases, whatever its substance?

The superstitious man comes forward in his turn and says that, for the good of their souls, those who suspect one can think with the aid of the body alone must be burned; but what would he say if he himself were guilty of irreligion? Indeed, who will dare assert, without absurd impiety, that it is impossible for the Creator to give matter thought and feeling? Consider, I beg you, the predicament to which you reduce yourselves by thus limiting the Creator's power. Animals have the same organs as we do, the same perceptions; they have memory, and they combine some ideas. If God has not been able to animate matter and give it feeling, one of two things must follow: either animals are mere machines or they have a spiritual soul.

It seems to me demonstrated that animals cannot be mere machines; here is my proof. God gave them precisely the same organs of sensation as ours: therefore, if they feel nothing, God has made a useless work; but God, by your own admission, does nothing in vain: therefore he did not fashion so many organs of sensation for there to be no sensation; therefore animals are not mere machines. Animals, according to you, cannot have a spiritual soul: therefore, despite yourselves, nothing remains to be said except that God has given the organs of animals, which are matter, the faculty of feeling and perceiving, which in them you call instinct. And who can prevent God from communicating to our more delicate organs this faculty of feeling, perceiving, and thinking, which we call human reason? Whichever way you turn, you must acknowledge your ignorance and the Creator's immense power. No longer rebel, then, against Locke's wise and modest philosophy; far from being contrary to religion, it would furnish religion with a proof, if religion needed one: for what philosophy is more religious than one which, asserting only what it clearly understands, and knowing how to confess its weakness, tells you to turn to God whenever you examine first principles?

Besides, one should never fear that any philosophical opinion can harm the religion of a country. However contrary our mysteries may be to our demonstrations, they are no less revered by our Christian philosophers, who know that the objects of reason and faith are different in kind. Philosophers will never found a religious sect. Why? Because they do not write for the people and have no zealotry. Divide mankind into twenty parts: nineteen are made up of those who work with their hands and will never know whether a Mr. Locke ever existed; in the twentieth part that remains, how few men do we find who read? And among readers, twenty read novels for every one who studies philosophy. The number of those who think is exceedingly small, and they do not take it into their heads to disturb the world.

It is not Montaigne, or Locke, or Bayle, or Spinosa, or Hobbes, or Lord Shaftesbury, or Mr. Collins, or Mr. Toland, or Fludd, or Bekker, or Count Boulainvilliers, etc., who have carried the torch of discord through their native lands: for the most part it is theologians who, first ambitious to lead sects, soon became ambitious to lead factions. What am I saying? All the books of modern philosophers put together will never make as much noise in the world as the friars' dispute once made over the shape of their sleeves and hoods.

### Letter XIV

On Descartes and Newton

A Frenchman arriving in London finds things greatly changed in philosophy, as in everything else. He left the world full; he finds it empty. In Paris the universe is seen as composed of vortices of subtle matter; in London nothing of the kind is seen. Among us the pressure of the moon causes the sea's tides; among the English the sea gravitates toward the moon. Thus, when you think the moon ought to give us high tide, these gentlemen think there should be low tide—something which, unfortunately, cannot be verified, since to settle it one would have had to examine the moon and the tides at the first moment of creation.

You will also notice that the sun, which plays no part in this affair in France, contributes about a quarter to it here. Among our Cartesians everything happens through an impulse that we scarcely understand; with Mr. Newton it happens through an attraction whose cause is no better known. In Paris you picture the earth shaped like a melon; in London it is flattened on both sides. For a Cartesian, light exists in the air; for a Newtonian, it comes from the sun in six and a half minutes. Your chemistry performs all its operations with acids, alkalis, and subtle matter; attraction rules even English chemistry.

The very essence of things has changed completely. You agree neither on the definition of the soul nor on that of matter. Descartes assures us that the soul is the same thing as thought, and Locke makes a fairly good case to the contrary. Descartes further asserts that extension alone constitutes matter; Newton adds solidity.

These are serious disagreements.

It is not for me to settle such great quarrels between you.

The celebrated Newton, destroyer of the Cartesian system, died in the month of March in the year 1727. He lived honored by his countrymen and was buried like a king who had done good to his subjects. Here people eagerly read, and translated into English, the Eulogy of Mr. Newton delivered by Mr. de Fontenelle at the Academy of Sciences. In England they awaited his judgment as a solemn declaration of the superiority of English philosophy; but when they saw that he had not only erred in his account of that philosophy but had compared Descartes with Newton, the whole Royal Society of London rose up. Far from accepting the judgment, they sharply criticized the speech. Several, even—and these are not the most philosophical—were offended by the comparison simply because Descartes was French.

One must admit that these two great men differed greatly from each other in their conduct, their fortunes, and their philosophy.

Descartes was born with a brilliant and powerful imagination, which made him a singular man in private life as in his manner of reasoning. That imagination could not hide itself even in his philosophical works, where ingenious, dazzling comparisons appear at every turn. Nature had nearly made him a poet, and indeed he composed a verse entertainment for the queen of Sweden which, for the sake of his reputation, has not been printed.

He tried his hand at the profession of arms for a time, and later, having become a philosopher through and through, he did not think it beneath him to make love. By his mistress he had a daughter named Francine, who died young; he grieved deeply for her loss. Thus he experienced all that belongs to humanity.

For a long time he believed he needed to flee men, and above all his native country, to philosophize freely. He was right: the men of his time knew too little to enlighten him and were hardly capable of anything but doing him harm.

He left France because he was seeking truth, then persecuted there by the wretched philosophy of the schools; but he found no more reason in the universities of Holland, where he took refuge. For while in France the only propositions of his philosophy that were true were being condemned, he was also persecuted by the supposed philosophers of Holland, who understood him no better and, seeing his glory closer at hand, hated him all the more. He was forced to leave Utrecht; he endured an accusation of atheism, the last resort of slanderers; and he, who had employed all the acuity of his mind in seeking new proofs of God's existence, was suspected of not acknowledging a God at all.

So much persecution presupposed great merit and a brilliant reputation: indeed, he possessed both. Reason even broke through a little into the world, across the darkness of the schools and the prejudices of popular superstition. His name finally made so much noise that they sought to entice him to France with rewards. He was offered a pension of a thousand écus; he came in the hope of it, paid the fees for the patent, then sold at a price, received no pension, and went back to philosophize in his solitude in North Holland, at the very time when the great Galileo, at the age of eighty, languished in the prisons of the Inquisition for having demonstrated the motion of the earth.

At last he died in Stockholm, prematurely, as a result of an unhealthy regimen, surrounded by a few scholars who were his enemies and in the care of a physician who hated him.

The course of Sir Isaac Newton's life was entirely different: he lived nearly eighty-five years, always at peace, happy and honored in his native land. His great good fortune was to have been born not only in a free country but in an age when scholastic absurdities had been banished and reason alone was cultivated: the world could only be his pupil, not his enemy.

One striking contrast with Descartes is that, throughout so long a life, he had neither passion nor weakness. He never approached a woman: this was confirmed to me by the physician and the surgeon in whose arms he died. One may admire Newton for this, but one should not blame Descartes.

Public opinion in England about these two philosophers holds that the first was a dreamer, the other a wise man.

Very few people in London read Descartes, whose works have indeed become useless; very few read Newton either, because one must be very learned to understand him. Yet everyone talks about them; the Frenchman is given no credit, and the Englishman gets it all. Some people believe that if we no longer cling to the horror of a vacuum, if we know that air has weight, if we use telescopes, we owe it to Newton. Here he is the Hercules of fable, to whom the ignorant attributed all the deeds of other heroes.

In a London critique of Mr. de Fontenelle's speech, someone dared assert that Descartes was not a great geometer. Those who speak thus can reproach themselves for striking the nurse who raised them. Descartes made as great a journey from the point at which he found geometry to the point to which he advanced it as Newton made after him: he was the first to teach how to give algebraic equations for curves. Thanks to him, his geometry, now commonplace, was so profound in his day that no professor dared undertake to explain it, and hardly anyone in Holland except Schooten, or in France except Fermat, understood it.

He brought this geometric and inventive spirit to optics, which became an entirely new art in his hands; and if he made many mistakes in it, that is because a man who discovers new lands cannot at once know all their properties. Those who follow him at least owe him the discovery. I will not deny that all Mr. Descartes' other works swarm with errors.

Geometry was a guide he had, in a sense, fashioned for himself, and one that would surely have led him through physics; yet in the end he abandoned this guide and surrendered to the passion for systems. His philosophy then became nothing but an ingenious romance, plausible at best to the ignorant philosophers of his time. He was mistaken about the nature of the soul, the laws of motion, and the nature of light. He admitted innate ideas, invented new elements, created a world, fashioned man after his own pattern; and it is rightly said that Descartes' man is in fact Descartes' alone, far removed from the real man. He carried his metaphysical errors so far as to claim that two and two make four only because God willed it so; but it is not saying too much that he was admirable even in his wanderings. He was mistaken, but at least he erred methodically, following one consequence to the next. If he invented new fantasies in physics, at least he destroyed old ones: he taught the men of his time to reason and to use his own weapons against him. If he did not pay in good coin, it is no small thing to have discredited the counterfeit.

I do not believe anyone would truly dare compare his philosophy with Newton's in any respect: the first is an attempt, the second a masterpiece; but the man who set us on the road to truth may be worth as much as the man who later reached the end of that road.

Descartes gave sight to the blind; they saw the errors of antiquity and his own. The road he opened has since grown immense. Rohault's little book for a time constituted a complete physics; today all the collections of Europe's academies do not even make the beginning of a system: as this abyss was explored more deeply, it proved infinite. We must now see what Mr. Newton has excavated in this chasm.

### Letter XV

History of Attraction

I shall not enter here into a mathematical explanation of what is called attraction, or gravitation. I confine myself to the history of this new property of matter, divined long before Newton and demonstrated by him; in a sense, it is the history of a new creation.

Copernicus, that Christopher Columbus of astronomy, had scarcely taught mankind the true order of the universe, so long disfigured; he had scarcely shown that the earth turns both on its axis and through an immense expanse, when all the learned doctors raised much the same objections their predecessors had raised against the antipodes. Saint Augustine, denying the antipodes, had said: “What! They would have their heads downward and would fall into the sky.” The doctors said to Copernicus: “If the earth turned on its axis, all its parts would break away and fall into the sky.” “It is certain that the earth turns,” Copernicus replied, “and that its parts do not fly away; there must therefore be a power directing them all toward the center of the earth. And probably,” he said, “this property exists in all heavenly bodies, in the sun, the moon, and the stars; it is an attribute bestowed on matter by divine Providence.” So he explains himself in the first book of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, without daring, or perhaps being able, to go further.

Kepler, who followed Copernicus and perfected the marvelous discovery of the true system of the world, came somewhat closer to the system of universal gravity. In his treatise on the star Mars one can see the still unformed veins of the mine from which Newton drew his gold. Kepler admits not only a tendency of all terrestrial bodies toward the center, but also a tendency of the heavenly bodies toward one another. He dares to glimpse and say that if the earth and moon were not held in their orbits, they would approach each other and unite. This astonishing truth was obscured in his work by so many clouds and so many errors that it has been said he divined it by instinct.

Meanwhile the great Galileo, starting from a more mechanical principle, examined how bodies fall on earth, and how and in what proportion their fall accelerates; and Chancellor Bacon wished experiments to determine whether these falls occurred in the same way at the greatest depths and heights one could reach.

It is very strange that Descartes, the greatest geometer of his time, did not use this thread to guide him through the labyrinth he had built for himself. No trace of these truths is found in his works; it is no wonder, then, that he lost his way. He wanted to create a universe. He made a philosophy as one makes a good novel: everything seemed plausible, and nothing was true. He imagined elements and vortices that seemed to give a plausible account of all the mysteries of nature; but in philosophy one must distrust what one thinks one understands too easily no less than what one does not understand. Descartes was more dangerous than Aristotle because he appeared more reasonable. Mr. Conduit, nephew of Sir Isaac Newton, assured me that his uncle had read Descartes at the age of twenty, had marked the margins of the first pages, and had written only one note, often repeated: error. But, weary of writing error everywhere, he threw the book aside and never read it again.

Newton, having left the depths of theology in which he had been brought up for mathematical truths, had already discovered, at the age of twenty-three, his infinitesimal calculus, toward which his teacher Wallis had shown him the way. He devoted himself to seeking that secret and universal principle of nature indicated by Copernicus, Kepler, and Bacon, and already grasped by the celebrated Hooke: that is, the cause of gravity and of the movement of all matter. Having withdrawn to the countryside near Cambridge in 1666 because of the plague, one day as he walked in his garden and saw fruit falling from a tree, he sank into deep reflection on this gravity whose cause all philosophers have so long sought in vain, and in which ordinary people do not even suspect a mystery. He said to himself: “From whatever height in our hemisphere these bodies might fall, their fall would certainly follow the progression discovered by Galileo; and the distances they traveled would be as the squares of the times. This power that brings heavy bodies down is the same, without any perceptible diminution, at whatever depth one may be within the earth, and on the highest mountain. Why should this power not extend as far as the moon? And if it truly reaches that far, is it not highly likely that this power holds the moon in its orbit and determines its motion? But if the moon obeys this principle, whatever it may be, is it not also most reasonable to believe that the other planets are subject to it as well?”

“If this power exists, it must (as is proved on other grounds) increase in inverse proportion to the squares of the distances. All that remains, therefore, is to compare the distance a heavy body would travel in falling to earth from a moderate height with the distance a body falling from the moon's orbit would travel in the same time. To learn this, we need only the size of the earth and the moon's distance from the earth.”

This was how Mr. Newton reasoned. But at that time England had only very inaccurate measurements of our globe; people relied on the uncertain estimates of pilots, who reckoned sixty English miles to a degree when they should have reckoned nearly seventy. As this erroneous calculation did not agree with the conclusions Mr. Newton wished to draw, he abandoned them. A lesser philosopher, with nothing but vanity, would have made the earth's measurement fit his system as best he could. Mr. Newton preferred to abandon his project for the time being. But after Mr. Picart had measured the earth accurately by tracing that meridian which does France so much honor, Mr. Newton returned to his first ideas and found that Mr. Picart's calculation suited them. The other planets must be subject to this general law; and if this law exists, these planets must follow the rules discovered by Kepler. All these rules, all these relations, are in fact observed by the planets. His single principle of the laws of gravitation accounts for all the apparent irregularities in the courses of the heavenly bodies. The moon's variations become a necessary consequence of these laws. The ebb and flow of the sea is another very simple effect of this attraction. The moon's proximity when full and when new, and its remoteness at its quarters, combined with the action of the sun, furnish a clear explanation of the ocean's rise and fall.

Having accounted, through his sublime theory, for the courses and irregularities of the planets, he brought the comets under the rule of the same law.

He proves that they are solid bodies moving within the sphere of the sun's action, describing an ellipse so eccentric and so close to a parabola that certain comets must take more than five hundred years to complete a revolution.

The learned Mr. Halley believes that the comet of 1680 is the same one that appeared in the time of Julius Caesar. This comet above all helps to show that comets are hard and opaque bodies, for it came so near the sun that it was only a sixth of the sun's disk away from it; consequently it must have acquired a degree of heat two thousand times more intense than that of the most incandescent iron. It would have dissolved and been consumed in a short time if it had not been an opaque body. It was then becoming fashionable to predict the courses of comets. The celebrated mathematician Jacques Bernouilli concluded from his system that this famous comet of 1680 would reappear on 17 May 1719. Not an astronomer in Europe went to bed that night of 17 May, but the famous comet did not appear. There is at least more ingenuity, if not more certainty, in allotting it five hundred and seventy-five years before its return. As for Mr. Wilston, he seriously asserted that in the time of the Flood there had been a comet that inundated our globe, and he was unfair enough to be surprised that people laughed at him. Antiquity thought much as Wilston did; it believed that comets were always the heralds of some great calamity on earth. Newton, on the contrary, suspects that they are very beneficial, and that the vapors issuing from them serve only to replenish and invigorate the planets, which in their courses absorb all the particles the sun has detached from the comets. This view is at least more probable than the other.

That is not all. If this force of gravitation, of attraction, acts in all heavenly bodies, it doubtless acts upon every part of those bodies: for if bodies attract one another in proportion to their masses, that can only be in proportion to the quantity of their parts; and if this power resides in the whole, it doubtless resides in the half, in the quarter, in the eighth part, and so on without end. Attraction, then, is the great spring that sets all nature in motion.

Newton had clearly foreseen, after demonstrating the existence of this principle, that people would rebel against the very name. In more than one passage of his book he cautions his reader against attraction itself, warning him not to confuse it with the occult qualities of the ancients, and to be content with knowing that there is in all bodies a central force that acts from one end of the universe to the other upon the nearest and the most distant bodies, according to the immutable laws of mechanics.

It is astonishing that after this great philosopher's solemn protestations, Mr. Saurin and Mr. de Fontenelle, themselves worthy of that title, should have expressly charged him with the fantasies of Peripatetic philosophy: Mr. Saurin in the Memoirs of the Academy of 1709, and Mr. de Fontenelle in his very eulogy of Mr. Newton.

Almost all the French, learned and otherwise, have repeated this charge. Everywhere one hears: “Why did Newton not use the word impulse, which we understand so well, instead of the term attraction, which we do not understand?”

Newton could have replied to these critics:

“First, you understand the word impulse no better than attraction; and if you cannot conceive why one body tends toward the center of another, you can no more imagine by what power one body can push another.

“Second, I could not admit impulse: for that I would have had to know that a celestial matter actually pushes the planets; yet not only do I know nothing of such matter, I have proved that it does not exist.

“Third, I use the word attraction only to express an effect I have discovered in nature, a certain and indisputable effect of an unknown principle, a quality inherent in matter, whose cause those more skillful than I may find, if they can.”

“What, then, have you taught us,” people insist, “and why so many calculations to tell us something you yourself do not understand?”

“I have taught you,” Newton might continue, “that the mechanics of central forces alone moves the planets and comets in definite proportions. My case,” he would continue, “is quite different from that of the ancients: they saw, for example, water rising in pumps and said: ‘Water rises because it abhors a vacuum.’ But I am in the position of the first person to notice that water rises in pumps, leaving to others the task of explaining the cause of this effect. The anatomist who first said that the arm moves because the muscles contract taught mankind an incontestable truth: do we owe him less because he did not know why muscles contract? The cause of the elasticity of air is unknown, but whoever discovered that elasticity rendered physics a great service. The spring I have discovered was more hidden, more universal; I deserve still greater thanks. I have discovered a property of matter, one of the Creator's secrets; I have calculated and demonstrated its effects. Can anyone quibble with me over the name I give it?”

It is the vortices that may be called an occult quality, since their existence has never been proved. Attraction, on the contrary, is a real thing, since its effects can be demonstrated and its proportions calculated. The cause of this cause lies in the bosom of God. Procedes huc, et non ibis amplius.

### Letter XVI

On Newton's Optics

A new universe was discovered by the philosophers of the last century, and this new world was all the harder to know because no one even suspected that it existed. To the wisest minds it seemed rash merely to imagine that one could discover the laws by which the heavenly bodies move and how light acts.

Galileo, through his astronomical discoveries, Kepler, through his calculations, Descartes, at least in his Optics, and Newton, throughout his works, have seen the workings of the world's machinery. In geometry, the infinite has been brought under calculation. The circulation of blood in animals and of sap in plants has transformed our conception of nature. A new mode of existence has been given to bodies in the air pump. Telescopes have brought objects closer to our eyes. Finally, what Newton discovered about light is worthy of the boldest hopes human curiosity could entertain after so many new discoveries.

Until Antonio de Dominis, the rainbow had seemed an inexplicable miracle; this philosopher divined that it was a necessary effect of rain and sun. Descartes made his name immortal through the mathematical explanation of this most natural phenomenon; he calculated the reflections of light in raindrops, and his insight then seemed almost divine.

But what would he have said if he had been told that he was mistaken about the nature of light; that he had no reason to assert it was a globular body; that it is false that this matter, spread throughout the universe, merely waits to be set in action by a push from the sun, like a long rod that moves at one end when pressed at the other; that it is quite true that light is projected from the sun, and that light is transmitted from the sun to the earth in nearly seven minutes, although a cannonball, even if it kept its speed throughout, could cover that distance only in twenty-five years?

How astonished he would have been to hear: “It is false that light is reflected directly by rebounding from the solid parts of a body; it is false that bodies are transparent when they have wide pores; and a man will come who will demonstrate these paradoxes and dissect a single ray of light more deftly than the most skillful practitioner dissects the human body!”

He understood light so well that he determined the point beyond which the art of magnifying objects and aiding our eyes with telescopes cannot go.

Descartes, with a noble confidence readily forgiven in view of the ardor inspired by the beginnings of an art he had almost discovered himself—Descartes hoped that telescopes would reveal objects in the stars as small as those we can distinguish on earth.

Newton showed that telescopes cannot be further perfected because refraction itself, though it brings objects nearer to us, spreads their constituent rays too far apart. He calculated the proportion in which red and blue rays spread apart in these lenses; and, extending demonstration to things whose very existence had not even been suspected, he examines the irregularities produced by the shape of the glass and those produced by refrangibility. He finds that, if the objective lens of a telescope is convex on one side and flat on the other, and the flat side faces the object, the defect due to the construction and position of the lens is five thousand times smaller than the defect due to refrangibility; and thus it is not the shape of the lenses that prevents us from perfecting telescopes: the fault lies with the very nature of light.

That is why he invented a telescope that shows objects by reflection and not by refraction.

He was still little known in Europe when he made this discovery. I have seen a little book composed around that time which, speaking of Newton's telescope, takes him for a maker of optical instruments: Artifex quidam Anglus nomine Newton. Posterity has amply avenged him.

### Letter XVII

On the Infinite and on Chronology

The labyrinth and abyss of the infinite is another new domain traversed by Newton, and from him we have the thread by which we may find our way through it.

Descartes again appears as his forerunner in this astonishing innovation; in his geometry he advanced with great strides toward the infinite, but stopped at its edge. Mr. Wallis, around the middle of the last century, was the first to reduce a fraction, by perpetual division, to an infinite series.

Lord Brouncker used this series to square the hyperbola.

Mercator published a demonstration of this quadrature. It was at about this time that Newton, at the age of twenty-three, invented a general method for doing with every curve what had just been attempted with the hyperbola.

This method of everywhere subjecting the infinite to algebraic calculation is called differential calculus, or the calculus of fluxions, and integral calculus. It is the art of counting and measuring exactly that whose very existence one cannot even conceive.

Indeed, would you not think someone was making sport of you if you were told that there are infinitely long lines forming an infinitely small angle?

That a straight line, straight as long as it is finite, becomes an infinite curve by changing its direction infinitely little; that a curve can become infinitely less curved?

That there are squares of infinity, cubes of infinity, and infinities of infinity, the next to last of which is nothing beside the last?

All this, which at first appears the height of unreason, is in fact a triumph of the subtlety and scope of the human mind, and a method for discovering truths hitherto unknown.

This daring edifice is even founded on simple ideas. The task is to measure the diagonal of a square, find the area under a curve, find a square root for a number that has none in ordinary arithmetic.

And, after all, so many orders of infinity should no more affront the imagination than the familiar proposition that one can always draw curves between a circle and a tangent, or the proposition that matter can always be divided. Both truths have long been demonstrated and are no more comprehensible than the rest.

Newton's invention of this famous calculus was long contested. Mr. Leibnitz passed in Germany for the inventor of the differentials Newton calls fluxions, and Bernoulli laid claim to the integral calculus; but the honor of the first discovery remained Newton's, while the others retained the glory of having been able to make the choice between themselves and him seem doubtful.

So it was that Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood was disputed, as was Mr. Perrault's discovery of the circulation of sap. Hartsoeker and Leuvenhoeck disputed which of them had first seen the tiny worms of which we are made. The same Hartsoeker disputed with Mr. Huyghens the invention of a new way to calculate the distance of a fixed star. It is still unknown which philosopher solved the problem of the cycloid.

Be that as it may, it was by this geometry of the infinite that Newton attained the most sublime knowledge.

I have yet to speak to you of another work, more within the reach of mankind, but still marked by the creative spirit Newton brought to all his researches: an entirely new chronology. For whatever he undertook, he had to change the ideas accepted by other men. Accustomed to bringing order to chaos, he wanted at least to cast some light on the chaos of ancient fables mingled with history and to settle an uncertain chronology. It is true that there is no family, city, or nation that does not try to push its origins farther back; moreover, the earliest historians are the most careless about recording dates. Books were a thousand times less common than today; consequently, being less exposed to criticism, people could deceive the world with greater impunity. And since facts have plainly been fabricated, it is quite likely that dates have been fabricated too. In general, it seemed to Newton that the world was five hundred years younger than the chronologists say; he bases his idea on the ordinary course of nature and on astronomical observations.

By the course of nature we mean here the duration of each human generation. The Egyptians were the first to use this uncertain way of counting. When they wished to write the beginnings of their history, they counted three hundred and forty-one generations from Menes to Sethon; and, having no fixed dates, they reckoned three generations to a hundred years. Thus they counted eleven thousand three hundred and forty years from the reign of Menes to the reign of Sethon. Before they counted by Olympiads, the Greeks followed the Egyptians' method and even lengthened the duration of generations somewhat, extending each generation to forty years. In this calculation, however, the Egyptians and the Greeks were mistaken. It is quite true that, in the ordinary course of nature, three generations make about a hundred to a hundred and twenty years; but three reigns fall far short of that many years. It is perfectly clear that, in general, people live longer than kings reign. Thus someone wishing to write history without precise dates, who knows that a nation had nine kings, would be very wrong to allow three hundred years for those nine kings. Each generation lasts about thirty-six years; each reign, on average, about twenty. Take the thirty kings of England from William the Conqueror to George I: they reigned six hundred and forty-eight years, which, divided among the thirty kings, gives each a reign of twenty-one and a half years. Sixty-three kings of France reigned, on average, about twenty years each. Such is the ordinary course of nature. Thus the ancients were mistaken when they generally equated the length of reigns with the length of generations; thus they counted too much; thus it is fitting to subtract a little from their reckoning.

Astronomical observations seem to offer our philosopher still greater help: he appears stronger fighting on his own ground.

You know that the earth, besides its annual motion, which carries it around the sun from west to east in the space of a year, undergoes another remarkable revolution, suspected rather than known until recent times. Its poles move very slowly backward from east to west, so that from one day to the next their position does not correspond precisely to the same points in the sky. This difference, imperceptible in a year, becomes considerable in time; and after seventy-two years the difference is found to be one degree, that is, one three-hundred-and-sixtieth part of the entire sky. Thus, after seventy-two years, the colure of the spring equinox, which passes through one fixed star, corresponds to another fixed star one degree away from the first. That is why the sun, instead of being in the region of the sky where Aries was in Hipparchus's time, is found to correspond to the region where Pisces is, and Gemini occupies the place where Taurus then stood. All the signs have changed places; yet we still retain the ancients' way of speaking: we say that the sun is in Aries in spring, by the same indulgence with which we say the sun moves around us.

Hipparchus was the first among the Greeks to notice certain changes in the constellations relative to the equinoxes, or rather to learn of them from the Egyptians. Philosophers attributed this motion to the stars, for at that time they were far from imagining such a revolution of the earth: they believed it immobile in every respect. They therefore devised a heaven to which they attached all the stars, and gave this heaven a motion of its own carrying it toward the east while all the stars seemed to make their daily journey from east to west. To this error they added a second, far more consequential one: they believed that the supposed heaven of fixed stars advanced eastward one degree in a hundred years. Thus they were mistaken in their astronomical reckoning as well as in their physical system. An astronomer then might have said, for example: “In the time of a certain observer the spring equinox was in such-and-such a sign, by such-and-such a star; it has moved two degrees between that observer's time and ours; now two degrees amount to two hundred years, so that observer lived two hundred years before me.” An astronomer reasoning in this way would certainly have been mistaken by about fifty years. That is why the ancients, doubly deceived, made their great year of the world, that is, the revolution of the entire heavens, about thirty-six thousand years long. But the moderns know that this imaginary revolution of the heaven of stars is nothing other than the revolution of the earth's poles, which takes twenty-five thousand nine hundred years. It is worth noting in passing that Newton, in determining the shape of the earth, very successfully explained the reason for this revolution.

With all this established, what remains in order to settle the chronology is to see by which star the colure of the equinoxes crosses the ecliptic today in spring, and to find out whether some ancient writer has told us at what point the ecliptic was crossed in his time by the same colure of the equinoxes.

Clement of Alexandria reports that Chiron, who took part in the expedition of the Argonauts, observed the constellations at the time of that famous expedition and placed the spring equinox in the middle of Aries, the autumn equinox in the middle of Libra, our summer solstice in the middle of Cancer, and the winter solstice in the middle of Capricorn.

Long after the expedition of the Argonauts, and one year before the Peloponnesian War, Meton observed that the point of the summer solstice passed through the eighth degree of Cancer.

Now each sign of the zodiac has thirty degrees. In Chiron's time the solstice was halfway through the sign, that is, at the fifteenth degree; one year before the Peloponnesian War it was at the eighth: it had therefore moved backward seven degrees. One degree amounts to seventy-two years: therefore, from the beginning of the Peloponnesian War to the expedition of the Argonauts, there are only seven times seventy-two years, which makes five hundred and four years, not seven hundred years, as the Greeks said. Thus, comparing the present state of the sky with its state then, we see that the expedition of the Argonauts must be placed about nine hundred years before Jesus Christ, and not about fourteen hundred years; consequently the world is about five hundred years younger than was thought. In this way all the epochs are brought closer together, and everything happened later than is said. I do not know whether this ingenious system will meet with great success, or whether people will resolve, on the strength of these ideas, to reform the chronology of the world; perhaps the learned would find it too much to grant one man the honor of having perfected physics, geometry, and history at once: it would be a sort of monarchy that pride can scarcely endure. Indeed, while the partisans of vortices and grooved matter were attacking demonstrated gravitation, the Reverend Father Souciet and Mr. Fréret were writing against Newton's chronology before it was printed.

### Letter XVIII

On Tragedy

The English already had a theater, as did the Spanish, when the French still had nothing but makeshift stages. Shakespeare, whom the English regard as a Sophocles, flourished at about the time of Lope de Vega: he created their theater. His genius was full of power and abundance, of nature and sublimity, without the least spark of good taste or the least knowledge of the rules. I shall tell you something rash but true: this author's merit has ruined the English theater. Such beautiful scenes, such grand and terrible passages, are scattered through his monstrous farces, called tragedies, that his plays have always enjoyed great success. Time, which alone establishes men's reputations, eventually makes even their faults respectable. After two hundred years, most of this author's strange and gigantic notions have acquired the right to pass for sublime. Modern authors have almost all copied him; but what succeeded in Shakespeare is hissed off the stage in them, and you may be sure that reverence for their predecessor grows as the moderns are despised. People fail to reflect that he should not be imitated; the failure of his imitators merely persuades them that he cannot be imitated.

You know that in the tragedy of the Moor of Venice, a very moving play, a husband strangles his wife onstage, and that, once the poor woman has been strangled, she cries out that she dies most unjustly. Nor are you unaware that in Hamlet gravediggers dig a grave while drinking, singing popular songs, and making jokes about the skulls they find, jokes suited to men of their trade. But what will surprise you is that such follies have been imitated. Under Charles II, in the reign of refinement and the age of the fine arts, Otway, in his Venice Preserved, introduces the senator Antonio and his courtesan Naki amid the horrors of the Marquis of Bedmar's conspiracy. Old Senator Antonio performs for his courtesan all the antics of a senile libertine, impotent and out of his mind: he imitates a bull and a dog, bites his mistress's legs, and receives kicks and lashes from her. These clownish scenes, fit for the lowest rabble, have been cut from Otway's play; but the jokes of the Roman shoemakers and cobblers, brought onstage with Brutus and Cassius, have been left in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

You will doubtless complain that those who have spoken to you so far of the English theater, and especially of the celebrated Shakespeare, have shown you only his errors, and that no one has translated any of those striking passages that plead for the pardon of all his faults. I shall reply that it is very easy to relate a poet's absurdities in prose, but very hard to translate his fine verse. Everyone who sets himself up as a critic of famous writers compiles volumes. I would rather have two pages that showed us a few beauties: for I shall always maintain, with all people of good taste, that there is more to gain from twelve lines of Homer and Virgil than from all the criticism written about those two great men.

I have ventured to translate a few passages from the best English poets: here is one by Shakespeare. Forgive the copy for the sake of the original, and always remember, when you look at a translation, that you see only a faint engraving of a beautiful painting.

I have chosen the soliloquy from the tragedy of Hamlet, which everybody knows, and which begins with these lines:

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

It is Hamlet, prince of Denmark, who speaks:

Stay; I must choose, and pass at once

From life to death, from being into nothingness.

Just gods! If gods there are, give light to my courage.

Must I grow old bent beneath the hand that wrongs me,

Endure my misery and fate, or end them both?

Who am I? What restrains me? And what is death?

It ends our ills; it is my sole refuge;

After long convulsions, it is a peaceful sleep;

We fall asleep, and all things die. But a dreadful waking

May perhaps succeed the sweetness of that sleep.

We are threatened; we are told this brief life

Is followed at once by everlasting torments.

O death! Fatal moment! Terrible eternity!

At your very name every heart freezes in fear.

Ah, without you who could endure this life,

Bless the hypocrisy of our powerful cheats,

Praise an unworthy mistress for her faults,

Crawl before a minister, worship his lofty station,

And bare the anguish of a beaten spirit

To thankless friends who turn their eyes away?

In such straits death would be too sweet;

But scruple speaks, and cries to us: “Stop.”

It forbids our hands this blessed killing of ourselves,

And turns a warrior hero into a timid Christian, etc.

After this piece of poetry, readers are asked to cast their eyes upon the literal translation:

To be or not to be, that is the question:

Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer

The stings and arrows of dreadful fortune,

Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by opposing them, end them? To die, to sleep,

Nothing more; and by that sleep to say: We end

The heart's sorrows, and ten thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to; this is a consummation

Ardently to be desired. To die, to sleep:

To sleep, perhaps to dream? Ah, there lies the harm!

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,

When we have shed this mortal covering?

That is what gives us pause; that is the reason

That gives calamity so long a life:

For who would bear the blows and insults of time,

The wrongs of the oppressor, the proud man's scorn,

The anguish of rejected love, the delays of justice,

The insolence of high office, and the slights

That patient merit suffers from the unworthy man,

When he could settle his account

With a simple pin? Who would carry these burdens,

Sob and sweat beneath a wearying life?

But this fear of something after death,

That unknown country, from whose borders

No traveler returns, perplexes the will,

And makes us bear the ills we have

Rather than rush toward others we do not know.

Thus conscience makes cowards of us all;

Thus the natural color of resolve

Is dimmed by the pale shades of thought;

And enterprises of the greatest moment,

By this regard, turn their course awry

And lose the name of action…

Do not imagine that I have rendered the English here word for word. Woe to the makers of literal translations, who, by translating every word, drain the meaning of its strength! Here indeed one may say that the letter kills, and the spirit gives life.

Here is another passage from a famous English tragedian: Dryden, a poet of the time of Charles II, more prolific than judicious, whose reputation would be unblemished if he had written only a tenth of his works.

The passage begins this way:

When I consider life, it's all a cheat,

Yet fooled by hope men favor the deceit.

From schemes to regrets, from errors to desires,

Foolish mortals carry their folly everywhere.

Amid present sorrows and hoped-for pleasures,

We never live; we wait for life.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, we say, will fulfill our every wish;

Tomorrow comes and leaves us still more wretched.

What an illusion, alas, this care that consumes us!

Not one of us would wish to run his course again:

We curse the dawn of our first moments,

And still expect from the coming night

What the fairest of our days have promised us in vain, etc.

It is in such detached passages that the English tragedians have so far excelled. Their plays, almost all barbarous, devoid of decorum, order, and plausibility, show astonishing flashes amid that darkness. The style is too bombastic, too far from nature, too closely copied from the Hebrew writers, so full of Asiatic extravagance; yet the stilts of figurative language, on which English is raised so high, also lift the mind to great heights, though by an uneven path.

At times it seems that nature is not made in England as it is elsewhere. This same Dryden, in his farce Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, which he calls a tragedy, has an officer speak to the monarch as follows:

KING SEBASTIAN.

Do you not know me, insolent traitor?

ALONZO.

I know you very well, but not as—Who, me?

I know you very well, but not as my king.

You are no longer in Lisbon, where your contemptible court

Fed your heart's insufferable pride.

A heap of illustrious fools and titled rogues,

Fashionable beggars and gilded slaves,

Tickled your ear and bewitched your sight;

They stood around you in a circle, as around a statue;

Whenever you said a word, each craned his neck,

Hastening to applaud before he had heard you;

And that servile flock admired in silence

Your royal folly and your noble arrogance.

But now you are reduced to your true worth…

That speech is rather English; the play, moreover, is farcical. How can so much absurdity and sense, so much baseness and sublimity, be reconciled, our critics ask? Nothing is easier to understand: we must remember that men wrote these works. The Spanish stage has all the faults of the English, and perhaps none of its beauties. And honestly, what were the Greeks? What was Euripides, who in the same play paints so moving and noble a picture of Alcestis sacrificing herself for her husband, yet puts in the mouths of Admetus and his father childish inanities so crude that even the commentators are at a loss? Must one not be very bold to admit that Homer's sleep sometimes lasts a little long, and the dreams that fill it are rather insipid? It takes many centuries for good taste to be refined. Virgil among the Romans and Racine among the French were the first whose taste was always pure in their major works.

Mr. Addison was the first Englishman to write a sensible tragedy. I should pity him if he had put nothing into it but sense. His tragedy Cato is written from beginning to end with that vigorous, forceful elegance of which Corneille first offered us such fine examples in his uneven style. The play seems to me intended for an audience somewhat philosophical and thoroughly republican. I doubt our young ladies and dandies would have liked Cato in his dressing gown, reading Plato's dialogues and reflecting on the immortality of the soul. But those who rise above their nation's customs, prejudices, and weaknesses, who belong to all times and all countries, who prefer philosophical grandeur to declarations of love, will be glad to find here a copy, however imperfect, of this sublime passage: in this beautiful soliloquy of Cato's, Addison seems to have wanted to vie with Shakespeare. I shall translate one as I did the other, that is, with the freedom without which an effort to resemble the original would carry us too far from it. The substance is very faithful; I add few details. I have had to surpass him, since I could not equal him.

Yes, Plato, you speak truly; our soul is immortal;

A god speaks to it, a god lives within it.

Ah, without him, what would give rise to this great presentiment,

This distaste for false goods, this horror of nothingness?

I feel you draw me toward unending ages.

I shall break the chains of the world and of my senses,

And open, far from a body bound in mire,

The gates of life and eternity.

Eternity! What a comforting and terrible word!

O light! O cloud! O fearful depth!

What am I? Where am I? Where am I going? Where did I come from?

Into what new regions, what unknown world,

Will the moment of death plunge my being?

Where will this spirit be, which cannot know itself?

What do you prepare for me, dark abysses?

Come, if there is a god, Cato must be happy.

There is one, surely, and I am his work.

He himself impresses his image on the just man's heart.

He must vindicate his cause and punish the wicked.

But how? At what time? And in what universe?

Here virtue weeps, and audacity oppresses her;

Innocence on her knees offers her throat to crime:

Fortune rules here, and all follow her chariot.

This unhappy globe was formed for Caesar:

Let us hasten to leave this fatal prison:

I shall see you without shadow, O heavenly truth!

You hide from us in our days of sleep:

This life is a dream, and death an awakening.

In this tragedy of a patriot and a philosopher, the role of Cato seems to me above all one of the finest characters on any stage. Addison's Cato, I believe, stands far above Pierre Corneille's Cornelia: he is great throughout without bombast, while Cornelia's part, which is not even necessary to the play, smacks too much of declamation in places. She always wants to be a heroine; Cato never notices that he is a hero.

It is very sad that something so beautiful should not be a beautiful tragedy. Disjointed scenes that often leave the stage empty, overlong and artless asides, cold and insipid love affairs, a conspiracy that serves no purpose in the play, a certain Sempronius disguised and killed onstage: all this makes the celebrated tragedy of Cato a play our actors would never dare perform, even if we thought like Romans or Englishmen. The barbarism and irregularity of the London stage have penetrated even Addison's wisdom. I seem to see Czar Peter, who, as he reformed the Russians, still retained something of his upbringing and the customs of his country.

The custom of thrusting love into dramatic works at every opportunity traveled from Paris to London around the year 1660, along with our ribbons and wigs. Women, who adorn the performances there as they do here, will no longer tolerate being told of anything but love. Wise Addison had the soft-hearted complaisance to bend the severity of his character to the habits of his time, and spoiled a masterpiece by trying to please.

Since his day, plays have grown more regular, the public more demanding, and authors more correct and less daring. I have seen new plays that were very judicious, but cold. It seems that the English have thus far been made only to produce irregular beauties. Shakespeare's brilliant monsters please a thousand times more than modern good sense. The poetic genius of the English still resembles a thickly foliaged tree planted by nature, throwing out a thousand branches at random and growing unevenly but vigorously; it dies if you try to force its nature and trim it into one of the garden trees at Marly.

### Letter XIX

On Comedy

If in most English tragedies the heroes are bombastic and the heroines extravagant, the style in comedy, by contrast, is more natural. But its naturalness would often seem to us the naturalness of debauchery rather than decency. Everything is called by its name. A woman angry with her lover wishes him the p…… In a play performed every day, a drunkard disguises himself as a priest, makes a disturbance, and is arrested by the watch. He says he is a parish priest; they ask whether he has a parish: he replies that he has an excellent cure for the c…… One of the most decent comedies, entitled The Careless Husband, opens with the husband having a maid seated beside him scratch his head. His wife enters and exclaims: “What influence can one not gain by being a w……!” Some cynics defend these coarse expressions, relying on the example of Horace, who names every part of the human body and every pleasure it affords outright. Such images gain by being veiled among us. But Horace, who seems as much at home in brothels as at court, and knows the customs of both realms perfectly, speaks of what a respectable man may do with a young girl to satisfy his needs as plainly as if he were speaking of a walk or a supper. It is added that the Romans in Augustus's day were as polished as the Parisians, and that the same Horace who praises the emperor Augustus for reforming morals conformed without shame to the usage of his century, which allowed girls, boys, and explicit names. Strange indeed—if anything could be strange—that Horace, speaking the language of debauchery, should be a reformer's favorite, and that Ovid, for speaking the language of gallantry, should have been exiled by a libertine, a fraud, a murderer named Octavius, who won the empire through crimes deserving the ultimate punishment.

Be that as it may, Bayle holds that expressions make no difference; in this he, the cynics, and the Stoics appear mistaken, for every thing has different names that portray it from different aspects and give very different ideas of it. The words magistrate and petty lawyer, gentleman and would-be gentleman, officer and swindler, man of religion and monk, do not mean the same thing. The consummation of marriage, and everything that contributes to that great work, will be described differently by the parish priest, the husband, the doctor, and a young man in love. The word the last of these uses will conjure up the image of pleasure; the doctor's terms will suggest only anatomical diagrams; the husband will speak with decency of what the indiscreet young man has spoken of boldly; and the priest will try to convey the idea of a sacrament. Words, then, are not indifferent, since no two words are synonymous.

It must also be considered that, if the Romans permitted coarse expressions in satires read by only a few people, they did not tolerate indecent words onstage. For, as La Fontaine says,

Chaste are the ears,

Though the eyes may be roguish.

In short, no word should be spoken in public that a respectable woman could not repeat.

The English have borrowed, disguised, and spoiled most of Molière's plays. They wanted to make a Tartuffe. It was impossible for that subject to succeed in London: people seldom enjoy portraits of people they do not know. One of the great advantages of the English nation is that it has no Tartuffes. For there to be false devotees, there would first have to be true ones. The name devotee is hardly known there, but the name honest man is widely known. One sees no fools who place their souls in other people's hands, none of those petty aspirants who establish, in a neighborhood of the city, a despotic empire over a few little women, once flirtatious and always weak, and over a few men still weaker and more contemptible than they. Philosophy, freedom, and climate foster misanthropy: London, which has no Tartuffes, is full of Timons. Thus The Misanthrope, or The Plain Dealer, is one of the good comedies to be found in London. It was written when Charles II and his brilliant court were trying to cure the nation of its dark disposition. Wycherley, its author, was the acknowledged lover of the Duchess of Cleveland, the king's mistress. This man, who spent his life in the highest society, painted its follies and weaknesses in the boldest colors. The strokes in Wycherley's play are bolder than Molière's, but they also have less subtlety and decorum. The English author corrected the sole defect of Molière's play: its lack of plot and dramatic interest. The English play holds one's interest and its plot is ingenious, but too bold for our manners.

Its hero is a ship's captain full of courage, candor, and contempt for humankind. He distrusts a wise and sincere friend, and will not even look at a woman who loves him tenderly. Instead, he has placed his complete trust in a false friend, the most unworthy man alive, and given his heart to the most flirtatious and treacherous of women. He is quite certain that this woman is a Penelope, and this false friend a Cato. He leaves to fight the Dutch, entrusts all his money, his jewels, and everything he owns to this good woman, and commends the woman herself to the faithful friend on whom he relies so completely. Meanwhile, the genuinely honorable man whom he distrusts so much boards ship with him; and the woman he has not even deigned to look at disguises herself as a page and makes the voyage without the captain noticing her sex throughout the campaign.

After blowing up his ship in battle, the captain returns to London, without help, ship, or money, accompanied by his page and his friend, unaware of the friendship of the one or the love of the other. He goes straight to that pearl among women, expecting to find her with his strongbox and her fidelity: he finds her married to the respectable rogue in whom he had confided, and nothing he entrusted to her has been kept for him, least of all her fidelity. My man can scarcely believe that a virtuous woman could play such tricks; but to convince him still more thoroughly, this worthy lady falls in love with the little page and tries to take him by force. Yet justice must be done, and in a play vice must be punished and virtue rewarded. So it turns out in the end that the captain takes the page's place, sleeps with his unfaithful woman, makes a cuckold of his treacherous friend, runs him through with a good thrust of his sword, gets back his strongbox, and marries his page. You will notice that the play is also stuffed with a Countess of Pimbesche, an elderly litigant and a relative of the captain's, who is quite the funniest creature and finest character on the stage.

Wycherley also drew from Molière a play no less singular and no less daring: a kind of School for Wives.

The principal character is a rake with a string of conquests, the terror of London's husbands, who, to make his success more certain, conceives the idea of spreading a rumor that during his last illness the surgeons thought it advisable to make a eunuch of him. With this fine reputation, all the husbands bring him their wives, and the poor man has no problem now but choosing among them. He especially favors a little country woman of considerable innocence and appetite, who cuckolds her husband with a good faith worth more than the cunning of the most experienced ladies. This play may not, if you like, be a school for good morals; but it truly is a school for wit and good comedy.

A Sir Vanbrugh wrote comedies still more entertaining, though less ingenious. This knight was a man of pleasure and, in addition, a poet and architect. People say he wrote with as much delicacy and elegance as he built with heaviness. It was he who built the famous palace of Blenheim, a massive and lasting monument to our unfortunate battle of Hochstedt. If only its rooms were as broad as its walls are thick, the palace would be quite comfortable.

Vanbrugh's epitaph expressed the wish that the earth might not lie lightly upon him, since in life he had loaded it so inhumanely. Having made a visit to France before the fine war of 1701, this knight was put in the Bastille and kept there for a time, without ever learning what had earned him this distinction from our government. He wrote a comedy in the Bastille; what seems very strange to me is that the play contains not a single barb against the country where he suffered this violence.

Of all the English, the one who carried the glory of the comic theater furthest is the late Mr. Congreve. He wrote only a few plays, but every one is excellent of its kind. The rules of the theater are rigorously observed in them. They abound in characters shaded with extreme subtlety; one encounters not the slightest bad joke; everywhere one hears the language of honorable people accompanying the deeds of scoundrels. This proves that he knew his world well and moved in what is called good society.

His plays are the wittiest and the most exact; Vanbrugh's are the most cheerful; and Wycherley's are the strongest.

It is worth noting that none of these fine minds spoke ill of Molière. Only bad English authors have spoken ill of that great man.

Moreover, do not ask me to go into the least detail here about these English plays, of which I am such a great partisan, or to recount a witticism or joke of Wycherley or Congreve. No one laughs at a translation. If you want to know English comedy, there is no other way but to go to London, stay there three years, learn English well, and see a comedy every day. I take little pleasure in reading Plautus and Aristophanes: why? Because I am neither Greek nor Roman. The finesse of the witticisms, the allusions, the aptness of each remark—all that is lost on a foreigner.

It is otherwise with tragedy. It deals only with grand passions and heroic follies consecrated by ancient errors of myth or history. Oedipus and Electra belong to the Spanish, the English, and ourselves as much as to the Greeks. But good comedy is a speaking portrait of a nation's absurdities; unless you know the nation thoroughly, you can hardly judge the portrait.

The English are reproached for a stage often bloodstained and adorned with dead bodies; they are reproached for gladiators who fight half-naked before young women and sometimes leave with a nose and a cheek missing. Their defense is that they imitate the Greeks in the art of tragedy, and the Romans in the art of cutting off noses. But their theater is rather far from that of Sophocles and Euripides; and as for the Romans, one must admit that a nose and a cheek are very little compared with the multitude of victims who slaughtered one another in the circus for the pleasure of Roman ladies.

At times their comedies have featured dances, and those dances have been allegories of a singular taste. Despotic power and republican government were represented in 1709 by a thoroughly gallant dance. First a king appeared who, after a leap, delivered a great kick to the backside of his prime minister; the minister passed it on to a second, the second to a third, and finally the man who received the last kick represented the body of the nation, which took revenge on no one. All this was done in time to the music. Republican government was represented by a circle dance in which everyone gave and received equally. Yet this is the country that produced Addisons, Popes, Lockes, and Newtons!

### Letter XX

On Noblemen Who Cultivate Letters

There was a time in France when the fine arts were cultivated by the foremost men of the state. Courtiers in particular took part, despite their dissipation, their taste for trifles, and their passion for intrigue—all deities of that country.

It seems to me that at present the court has tastes quite different from a taste for letters; perhaps before long the fashion of thinking will return. A king has only to wish it: one can make this nation into anything one likes. In England people commonly think, and letters are held in greater honor there than in France. This advantage is a necessary consequence of their form of government. In London there are about eight hundred people who have the right to speak in public and defend the interests of the nation. About five or six thousand aspire to the same honor in their turn. All the rest set themselves up as judges of these men, and anyone may publish what he thinks on public affairs: thus the whole nation is obliged to educate itself. One hears nothing but talk of the governments of Athens and Rome; however unwilling one may be, one must read the authors who have written about them. This study leads naturally to literature. In general, men's minds reflect their occupations. Why do our magistrates, our lawyers, our doctors, and many of our clergy generally have more learning, taste, and intelligence than are found in all the other professions? Because cultivating the mind is truly part of their calling, just as knowing his business is part of a merchant's. Not long ago a very young English nobleman came to see me in Paris on his return from Italy. He had composed a description of that country in verse, written as elegantly as anything by the Earl of Rochester or our own Chaulieu, Sarrasin, and Chapelle.

My translation falls so far short of the original's force and fine wit that I must sincerely beg the author's pardon, and that of those who understand English. Still, since I have no other way of making Lord Harvey's verses known, here they are in my language:

What, then, did I see in Italy?

Pride, cunning, and poverty,

Lavish compliments, little kindness,

And a great deal of ceremony;

That extravagant comedy

Which the Inquisition often wants

To have called religion,

But which we here call madness.

Nature, generous in vain,

Would enrich these lovely places;

The desolating hand of priests

Stifles her fairest gifts.

The monsignors, great men in name alone,

Alone in their magnificent palaces,

Are idle grandees there,

Without money or servants.

As for the common people, deprived of freedom,

Martyrs to the yoke that rules them,

They have taken a vow of poverty,

Praying to God out of idleness,

And always fasting from hunger.

These lovely places, blessed by the pope,

Seem to be inhabited by devils,

And their wretched inhabitants

Are damned in paradise.

I do not share Lord Harvey's opinion. There are regions of Italy that are very unhappy because foreigners have long been fighting there over who will govern them; but there are others where people are neither as destitute nor as foolish as he says.

### Letter XXI

On the Earl of Rochester and Mr. Waller

Everyone knows the Earl of Rochester's reputation. Mr. de Saint-Évremond has spoken of him at length; but he has shown us only the pleasure seeker, the man of amorous conquests, in the famous Rochester. I should like to show the man of genius and the great poet in him. Among other works that glowed with an ardent imagination all his own, he wrote several satires on the same subjects our celebrated Despréaux had chosen. I know nothing more useful for refining one's taste than comparing great minds who have tried their powers on the same themes.

Here is how Mr. Despréaux attacks human reason in his satire on man:

Yet see him, full of airy fumes,

Lulling himself with his own dreams:

He alone is nature's foundation and support,

And the tenth Heaven turns for him alone.

Of all the animals he is master here;

Who could deny it, you persist?

I, perhaps:

This would-be master who gives them laws,

This King of animals—how many Kings has he?

Here is approximately how the Earl of Rochester expresses himself in his satire on man; but the reader must always remember that these are free translations of English poets, and that the constraints of our versification and the delicate proprieties of our language cannot furnish an equivalent for the headlong freedom of English style.

That mind I hate, that mind so full of error,

Is not my reason, Doctor, but your own;

Your frivolous, restless, proud reason,

Disdainful rival of the wiser beasts,

That thinks it stands midway between them and the Angel

And fancies itself God's image here below:

Vile, troublesome atom that believes, doubts, disputes,

Crawls, rises, falls, and still denies its fall;

That tells us, “I am free,” while showing us its chains,

Whose clouded, lying eye thinks it can pierce the Universe.

Go, reverend fools, blessed fanatics!

Compile your heap of scholastic nothings well!

Fathers of visions and sacred riddles,

Authors of the labyrinth in which you lose yourselves,

Go shed your obscure light upon your mysteries,

And hurry to the schools to worship your illusions!

There are other errors: there are those devotees

Condemned by their own hands to the tedium of repose.

That cloistered mystic, proud of his indolence,

At peace in God's embrace—what can he do there? He thinks.

No, wretch, you do not think: you sleep,

Useless to the earth and counted among the dead;

Your feeble mind lies stagnant in its softness;

Wake, be a man, and leave your stupor.

Man was born to act, and you presume to think!

Whether these ideas are true or false, it remains certain that they are expressed with an energy that makes the poet.

I shall take care not to examine the matter as a philosopher and exchange the paintbrush here for the compass. My sole aim in this letter is to make the genius of the English poets known.

Much has been heard in France of the celebrated Waller. Messrs. de La Fontaine, Saint-Évremond, and Bayle have praised him; but only his name is known. In London he enjoyed much the same reputation that Voiture enjoyed in Paris, and I think he deserved it more. Voiture came at a time when we were emerging from barbarism and still lived in ignorance. People wished to have wit, but had none yet. They sought turns of phrase instead of thoughts: false glitter is more readily found than precious stones. Voiture, born with a facile, frivolous genius, was the first to shine at the dawn of French literature; had he come after the great men who brought glory to the age of Louis XIV, either he would have been unknown, or spoken of only with contempt, or he would have his style. Mr. Despréaux praises him, but in his early satires, when Despréaux's taste had not yet formed: he was young, at the age when men are judged by their reputations, not by themselves. Besides, Despréaux was often very unjust in both his praise and his censure. He praised Segrais, whom no one reads; he insulted Quinault, whom everyone knows by heart; and he says nothing of La Fontaine. Waller, better than Voiture, was not yet perfect. His love poems breathe grace, but carelessness makes them languish, and false thoughts often mar them. The English had not yet learned in his day to write with precision. His serious works are full of a vigor one would not expect from the softness of his other pieces. He wrote a funeral eulogy of Cromwell that, despite its faults, is considered a masterpiece. To understand this work, one must know that Cromwell died on the day of an extraordinary storm.

The piece begins thus:

He is no more; it is done; let us bow to fate:

Heaven has marked this day with storms,

And thunder's voice, bursting above our heads,

                    Has come to announce his death.

With his last breaths he shakes this island,

This island that his arm so often made to tremble

                    When, in the course of his exploits,

                    He shattered the heads of kings

And subjected a people obedient to his yoke alone.

Sea, you have felt the turmoil. O sea! Your troubled waves

Seem to tell the farthest shores with their roar

That the terror of the earth, and your master, is no more.

So Romulus once flew up to Heaven,

So he left the earth amid the storms,

So he received the homage of a warrior people:

Obeyed in life, adored in death,

His palace became a temple, etc.

It was in connection with this eulogy of Cromwell that Waller made to King Charles II the reply recorded in Bayle's dictionary. The King, to whom Waller had just presented, as kings and poets customarily do, a piece stuffed with praise, reproached him for having written better for Cromwell. Waller replied, “Sire, we poets succeed better at fictions than at truths.” That reply was less candid than the Dutch ambassador's, when the same king complained that he was treated with less respect than Cromwell: “Ah, Sire, that Cromwell was something else altogether.” There are courtiers even in England, and Waller was one; but after their deaths I consider people only by their works; all the rest has vanished for me. I note only that Waller, born at court with an income of sixty thousand livres, never had either the foolish pride or the indolence to abandon his talent. The Earls of Dorset and Roscommon, the two Dukes of Buckingham, Lord Halifax, and so many others did not think it beneath them to become very great poets and illustrious writers. Their works do them more honor than their names. They cultivated letters as though they expected to make their fortunes by them; and what is more, they made the arts respectable in the eyes of the people, who in everything need to be led by the great, though in England they follow their lead less than anywhere else in the world.

### Letter XXII

On Mr. Pope and Several Other Famous Poets

No one in France imagined that Prior, who came on Queen Anne's behalf to offer Louis XIV peace before Baron Bolingbroke came to sign it—no one guessed, I say, that this plenipotentiary was a poet. France later paid England back in kind, for Cardinal Dubois sent our Destouches to London, and the English no more took him for a poet than the French had taken Prior for one. The plenipotentiary Prior had originally been a tavern boy whom the Earl of Dorset, himself a good poet and something of a drunkard, once found reading Horace on a tavern bench, just as Lord Aila found his gardener's boy reading Newton. Aila made a fine geometer of the gardener, and Dorset made a most agreeable poet of the tavern boy.

Prior wrote the History of the Soul; this history is the most natural yet written of that being so keenly felt and so little understood. At first the soul is at the body's extremities, in children's feet and hands; from there it gradually moves to the middle of the body at puberty. Next it rises to the heart, and there produces feelings of love and heroism; in maturer years it rises to the head, where it reasons as best it can. In old age no one knows what becomes of it: it is the sap of an old tree, evaporating and never renewed. Perhaps this work is too long: every joke should be short, and even serious writing would do well to be short too.

The same Prior wrote a little poem on the famous battle of Hochstedt. It is not as good as his History of the Soul; the only good thing in it is this apostrophe to Boileau:

Flattering satirist, you who took such pains

To sing that Louis had not crossed the Rhine.

Our plenipotentiary ended by paraphrasing in fifteen hundred lines the words attributed to Solomon, that All is vanity. One could write fifteen thousand on the subject; but woe to the man who says all he could say.

At last, Queen Anne dead, the ministry changed, and the peace Prior had initiated abhorred, Prior had no recourse but an edition of his works funded by subscriptions from his party; after that he died a philosopher, as every respectable Englishman dies, or believes he dies.

I should also like to give some notion of the poems of Lord Roscommon and Lord Dorset; but I feel I would have to write a great book, and after much effort I would still give you only a very imperfect notion of all these works. Poetry is a kind of music: one must hear it to judge it. When I translate a few passages of this foreign poetry for you, I transcribe its music imperfectly; I cannot convey the quality of its song.

There is an English poem difficult to make known to foreigners; it is called Hudibras. It is an entirely comic work, and yet its subject is the civil war of Cromwell's day. What caused so much blood and so many tears has produced a poem that forces the gravest reader to laugh; an example of this contrast appears in our Satyre Ménippée. Certainly the Romans would not have written a burlesque poem on the wars of Caesar and Pompey and the proscriptions of Octave and Antony. Why, then, could the dreadful calamities caused by the League in France, and those displayed by the wars of king and Parliament in England, furnish material for jokes? Because at bottom a hidden absurdity lay in those disastrous quarrels. The burghers of Paris, at the head of the faction of the Sixteen, mingled insolence with the horrors of faction. The intrigues of women, legates, and monks had a comic side despite the calamities they brought. The theological disputes and the zeal of England's Puritans lent themselves readily to mockery; and this underlying absurdity, properly brought out, could become amusing once the tragic horrors covering it were set aside. If the bull Unigenitus caused blood to be shed, the little poem Philotaus would be no less suited to its subject; indeed, its only reproach would be that it was not as lively, as amusing, or as varied as it might have been, and that the body of the work did not fulfill the promise of its beginning.

The poem Hudibras, of which I speak, seems a compound of the Satyre Ménippée and Don Quixote; it has the advantage of verse over them. It has the advantage of wit: the Satyre Ménippée comes nowhere near it; that is a very mediocre work. Yet through an excess of wit, the author of Hudibras has discovered the secret of falling far below Don Quixote. Taste, naturalness, the art of storytelling, the art of interweaving adventures, and the art of never squandering anything are worth far more than wit: thus Don Quixote is read by every nation, and Hudibras only by the English.

The author of this extraordinary poem was called Butler: he was a contemporary of Milton and enjoyed infinitely more fame than he did, because Butler was funny and Milton's poem was very somber. Butler made the enemies of King Charles II ridiculous, and his only reward was that the king often quoted his verses. The battles of the knight Hudibras were better known than the battles of angels and devils in Paradise Lost; but the English court treated the humorous Butler no better than the heavenly court treated the serious Milton, and both died of hunger, or very nearly.

The hero of Butler's poem was not a fictional character like the Don Quixote of Miguel de Cervantes; he was a very real knight and baronet, one of Cromwell's enthusiasts and one of his colonels. His name was Sir Samuel Luke. To show the spirit of this poem, unique of its kind, one must cut three quarters from any passage one wishes to translate: this Butler never ends. I have therefore reduced the first four hundred lines of Hudibras to about eighty, to avoid prolixity.

When the profane and the saints

Were locked in combat in England,

And fought over churches

As fiercely as over whores;

When Anglicans and Puritans

Waged such a bitter war,

And fresh from the tavern

The orators of Nazareth

Beat the drum from the pulpit;

When everywhere, without knowing why,

In heaven's name, in the king's name,

Men at arms covered the earth,

Then our good knight,

Long idle, like Achilles,

Full of holy bile,

Followed by his great squire,

Escaped from his chicken coop

With his saber and the Gospel,

And took it into his head to wage war.

Sir Hudibras, this rare man,

Was said to be full of honor.

He had wit and courage;

But he was very sparing with them.

Besides, by some novel talent,

He was perfectly suited to the bar

As well as to cruel war;

Great on the bench, great in the saddle,

In camp and at a desk;

Like those amphibious rats

That, seeming to have two lives,

Are field rats and water rats.

But despite his great eloquence,

His merit and his prudence,

Some learned men took him

For one of those instruments

Which rogues know how to wield

With skill and without a word,

And turn about with ease:

That instrument is called a fool.

Not that in theology,

In logic, or astrology,

He was not a subtle doctor;

He could split a hair in four,

Arguing without ever yielding,

Changing his thesis all at once,

Always ready to talk at length

When the point was not to understand one another.

Hudibras's religion

Was, just like his reason,

Empty of sense and very profound:

Divine Puritanism,

The finest sect in the world,

And certainly nothing human;

The true church militant,

Which preaches with a pistol in hand,

And to convert its neighbor better

Argues with mighty strokes of the saber;

Which promises heavenly blessings

By the gallows and the rope,

And damns without mercy

The sins of other Christians

So as better to pardon its own;

A sect that, forever destroying,

Finally destroys itself:

So Samson, with his mighty hand,

Shattered the Philistine temple;

But he died by his own revenge,

And buried himself as well,

Crushed beneath the immense fall

Of the temple he demolished.

From the old knight's nose

Hung two enormous mustaches

To which the Fates had fastened

The republic's destiny.

He guards them carefully,

And if ever they are torn away,

The Parliament will fall:

The whole State, that very instant,

Must fall along with his mustache.

Thus Taliacotius,

Great Aesculapius of Etruria,

Repaired every lost nose

By a new art of surgery:

He deftly took for you

A piece of a poor man's ass,

Fixed it neatly on a nose;

Until it happened that, in short,

At the precise moment the lender died,

The borrower's nose fell off:

And often in the very same coffin,

In justice and by common consent,

They put back, as the dead man wished,

The nose beside his backside.

Our great hero of Albion,

Mounted on his old nag,

To avenge religion,

Had at his saddle bow

Two pistols and some ham;

But he had just one spur.

That had always been his way;

He knew that if its rowel

Pricked one half of the horse,

The animal's other half

Would not lag behind.

So there goes Hudibras;

May God bless his journey,

His arguments and his party,

His red beard and his courage!

A man with a tenth of the comic wit, good or bad, that reigns throughout this work in his imagination would still be very amusing; but he would take great care not to translate Hudibras. How can foreign readers be made to laugh at absurdities already forgotten even by the nation in which they were once famous? Dante is no longer read in Europe because everything in him alludes to events now unknown; Hudibras is the same. Most of its mockery falls on the theology and theologians of the time. It would require commentary at every turn. An explained joke ceases to be a joke, and a commentator on witticisms is scarcely likely to make any himself.

That is why the books of the ingenious Dr. Swift, called the Rabelais of England, will never be properly understood in France. He has the honor of being a priest and of mocking everything, as Rabelais did; but Rabelais did not rise above his age, while Swift rises far above Rabelais. Our curate of Meudon scattered immense gaiety and even greater impertinence through his extravagant and unintelligible book; he lavished learning, filth, and tedium on it. A good two-page tale is purchased at the price of volumes of nonsense: only a few people of eccentric taste pride themselves on understanding and esteeming the whole work. The rest of the nation laughs at Rabelais's jokes and despises the book. He is considered the foremost of buffoons; people regret that a man of so much wit put it to such miserable use: he is a drunken philosopher who wrote only during his bouts of drunkenness.

Mr. Swift is Rabelais in his right mind and moving in good society. He does not, to be sure, have the other's gaiety; but he has all the subtlety, reason, discrimination, and good taste that our curate of Meudon lacks. His verses have a singular and almost inimitable quality; fine humor is his province in verse and prose alike, but to understand him properly one must pay a little visit to his country.

In that country, which seems so strange to part of Europe, people did not find it too strange that the Reverend Swift, dean of a cathedral, should mock Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism in his Tale of a Tub: he says in his defense that he did not touch Christianity. He claims to have respected the father by giving the three children a hundred lashes each; discerning people have thought the rods were so long that they reached the father.

This famous Tale of a Tub imitates the old tale of the three indistinguishable rings a father bequeathed to his three children. These three rings were the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions. It also imitates Fontenelle's History of Méro and Énegu. Méro was an anagram of Rome, and Énegu of Geneva. They are two sisters who lay claim to the inheritance of their father's kingdom. Méro reigns first. Fontenelle portrays her as a witch who made bread disappear by sleight of hand and worked spells with corpses. This is precisely Swift's Lord Peter, who offers his two brothers a piece of bread and tells them, “Here is excellent Burgundy wine, my friends; here are partridges of an exquisite aroma.” The same Lord Peter in Swift plays in every respect the part Méro plays in Fontenelle.

Thus nearly everything is imitation. The idea of the Persian Letters is taken from that of the Turkish Spy. Boiardo imitated Pulci; Ariosto imitated Boiardo. The most original minds borrow from one another. Miguel de Cervantes makes his Don Quixote a madman; but is Roland anything else? It would be hard to decide whether knight-errantry is mocked more thoroughly by the grotesque pictures of Cervantes or by Ariosto's fertile imagination. Metastasio took most of his operas from our French tragedies. Several English authors have copied us and said nothing of it. Books are like the fire in our hearths: we fetch that fire from a neighbor, light it in our own homes, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone.

You can more easily form some notion of Mr. Pope: he is, I believe, the most elegant, the most precise, and—no small thing—the most harmonious poet England has had. He has brought the harsh whistle of the English trumpet down to the gentle tones of the flute. He can be translated because he is exceedingly clear, and because his subjects are, for the most part, universal and the concern of every nation.

His Essay on Criticism will soon be known in France through the verse translation being made by the Abbé du Resnel.

Here is a passage from his poem The Rape of the Lock, which I have just translated with my usual freedom: for, once again, I know nothing worse than translating a poet word for word.

Umbriel at once, a surly old gnome,

On heavy wing and with a scowling face,

Goes, muttering, to seek the deep cavern

Where, far from the gentle rays the world's eye sheds,

The goddess of vapors has chosen to dwell.

Sad north winds whistle all around,

And the sickly breath of their parched mouths

Carries fever and migraine through the air.

On a rich sofa, behind a screen,

Far from lights, noise, talkers, and the wind,

The capricious goddess lies continually at rest,

Her heart burdened with sorrows she cannot explain,

Having never thought, her mind forever disturbed,

Her eyes heavy, her face pale, her spleen swollen.

Slanderous Envy sits beside her,

An old female specter, a decrepit maiden,

With a pious air she tears her neighbor to shreds,

And, Gospel in hand, makes songs about the senses.

Reclining carelessly on a bed full of flowers,

A young beauty lies not far away:

It is Affectation, who speaks with a lisp,

Listens without hearing, and casts sidelong looks,

Blushes without shame, and laughs at everything without joy,

Claims to suffer a hundred different ailments,

And, healthy beneath her rouge and powder,

Complains languidly and swoons with art.

If you read this passage in the original instead of reading it in this feeble translation, you would compare it to the description of Indolence in Le Lutrin.

Pope's Essay on Man seems to me the finest didactic poem, the most useful and the most sublime, ever composed in any language. It is true that its substance is found in its entirety in Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics; and I do not know why Mr. Pope gives the credit solely to Mr. de Bolingbroke, without a word about the celebrated Shaftesbury, Locke's pupil.

Since everything concerning metaphysics has been thought through in every age and among every people who cultivate their minds, this system has much in common with Leibniz's, which holds that of all possible worlds God must have chosen the best, and that in this best world the irregularities of our globe and the follies of its inhabitants had to have their place. It also resembles Plato's notion that in the infinite chain of beings our earth, our body, and our soul are among the necessary links. But neither Leibniz nor Pope accepts the changes Plato imagines have occurred in those links, in our souls and our bodies. Plato spoke as a poet in his barely intelligible prose; Pope speaks as a philosopher in his admirable verse. He says that from the beginning everything has been as it had to be and as it is.

I was flattered, I admit, to see that he agreed with something I had said several years before. “You are astonished that God made man so limited, so ignorant, so little happy. Why are you not astonished that he did not make him more limited, more ignorant, and more unhappy?” When a Frenchman and an Englishman think alike, surely they must be right.

The son of the celebrated Racine has published a letter from Pope, addressed to him, in which Pope recants. The letter is written in Mr. de Fénelon's manner and style; it was delivered to him, he says, by Ramsay, the editor of Télémaque; Ramsay, the imitator of Télémaque as Boyer imitated Corneille; Ramsay the Scot, who wanted to belong to the French Academy; Ramsay, who regretted not being a doctor of the Sorbonne. What I know, as do all the literary people of England, is that Pope, with whom I spent much time, could scarcely read French, that he did not speak a word of our language, that he never wrote a letter in French, that he was incapable of it, and that if he wrote this letter to the son of our Racine, God must have suddenly given him the gift of tongues at the end of his life, to punish him for having written so admirable a work as his Essay on Man.

### Letter XXIII

On the Esteem Due to Men of Letters

Neither in England nor in any country in the world are there institutions devoted to the fine arts such as those in France. Universities exist almost everywhere; but only in France do we find these useful incentives for astronomy, every branch of mathematics, the branches of medicine, the study of antiquity, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Louis XIV immortalized himself through all these foundations, and this immortality cost him less than two hundred thousand francs a year.

I confess that one of the things that astonishes me is that the Parliament of England, which took it into its head to promise twenty thousand guineas to anyone who made the impossible discovery of longitude, has never thought to imitate Louis XIV in his generosity toward the arts.

Merit does, it is true, find other rewards in England, rewards more honorable to the nation: such is the respect this people has for talent that a man of merit always prospers there. In France, Mr. Addison would have belonged to some academy and might, through the influence of some woman, have obtained a pension of twelve hundred livres; or, rather, trouble would have been made for him on the pretext that someone had detected in his tragedy Cato a few barbs aimed at the doorman of a man in office. In England, he became secretary of state. Mr. Newton was master of the kingdom's mint; Mr. Congreve held an important post; Mr. Prior was a plenipotentiary; Dr. Swift is a dean in Ireland and is far more esteemed there than the primate. If Mr. Pope's religion does not allow him to hold office, it did not prevent his translation of Homer from earning him two hundred thousand francs. For a long time I saw the author of Rhadamiste in France close to starving; the son of one of the greatest men France has ever had, who was beginning to follow in his father's footsteps, would have been reduced to destitution but for Mr. Fagon. What encourages men of letters most in England is the esteem in which they are held: the prime minister's portrait stands on his own mantelpiece, but I have seen Mr. Pope's in twenty houses.

Mr. Newton was honored in his lifetime and after his death as he deserved. The leading men of the nation vied for the honor of bearing the pall at his funeral. Enter Westminster: it is not the tombs of kings that inspire admiration there, but the monuments raised in national gratitude to the greatest men who have contributed to the nation's glory. You see their statues there as you once saw those of Sophocles and Plato in Athens; and I am convinced that the mere sight of these glorious monuments has stirred more than one mind and helped form more than one great man.

The English have even been reproached for going too far in the honors they bestow on merit alone. People have objected to their burying the celebrated actress Miss Oldfield in Westminster with nearly the same honors paid to Mr. Newton. Some have maintained that they deliberately honored this actress's memory to such a degree in order to bring home to us more sharply the barbarous and cowardly injustice of which they accuse us for casting Miss Lecouvreur's body onto a refuse heap.

But I can assure you that in the splendor of Miss Oldfield's funeral, when they buried her in their Saint-Denis, the English consulted nothing but their own taste: they are far from attaching infamy to the art of Sophocles and Euripides, or excluding from the body of their citizens those who devote themselves to performing before them works in which their nation takes pride.

In the time of Charles I, at the beginning of those civil wars instigated by fanatical rigorists who finally became their victims themselves, much was written against the theater, all the more because Charles I and his wife, the daughter of our Henry the Great, were exceedingly fond of it.

A doctor named Prynne, a man of scruples carried to extremes, who would have thought himself damned had he worn a short cloak instead of a cassock, and who would have wished half of mankind to massacre the other half for the glory of God and the propagation of the faith, took it into his head to write a very bad book against some fairly good plays performed every day, quite innocently, before the king and queen. He cited the authority of the rabbis and certain passages from Saint Bonaventure to prove that Sophocles' Oedipus was the work of the Evil One and that Terence was excommunicated ipso facto; and he added that Brutus, who was a very strict Jansenist, had no doubt assassinated Caesar only because Caesar, who was high priest, had composed a tragedy of Oedipus. Finally he said that all who attended a performance were excommunicates who renounced their faith and their baptism: this was an insult to the king and the whole royal family. The English still respected Charles I then; they would not tolerate the excommunication of the very prince whose head they would later have cut off. Mr. Prynne was summoned before the Star Chamber and sentenced to watch his fine book, from which Father Le Brun borrowed his own, burned by the executioner, and to have his ears cut off. His trial can be found in the public records.

In Italy they take good care not to brand opera with disgrace and excommunicate Signor Tenezini or Signora Cuzzoni. For my part, I would venture to wish that we could suppress certain wretched books published in France against our theater. When Italians and English people learn that we brand with the utmost infamy an art in which we excel, excommunicate people employed by the king, condemn as impious a performance staged in religious houses and convents, dishonor entertainments in which great princes have acted, and declare the work of the devil plays examined by the strictest magistrates and performed before a virtuous queen; when, I say, foreigners learn of this insolence, this Gothic barbarism that people dare to call Christian rigor, what do you expect them to think of our nation? How can they comprehend either that our laws authorize an art declared so infamous, or that anyone dares heap such infamy on an art authorized by the laws, rewarded by sovereigns, cultivated by the greatest men, and admired by nations—and that at the same bookseller's they find an impertinent tirade against our theater beside the immortal works of Corneille, Racine, Molière, and Quinault?

### Letter XXIV

On the Academies

Great men have all been formed either before academies existed or independently of them. Homer and Phidias, Sophocles and Apelles, Virgil and Vitruvius, Ariosto and Michelangelo belonged to no academy; Tasso received nothing but unjust criticism from the Crusca, and Newton did not owe his discoveries in optics, gravitation, integral calculus, and chronology to the Royal Society of London. What use, then, can academies be? To keep alive the fire kindled by great minds.

The Royal Society of London was founded in 1660, six years before our Academy of Sciences. It has none of the rewards ours offers, but then it is free: none of those disagreeable distinctions devised by the Abbé Bignon, who divided the Academy of Sciences into scholars who were paid and honorary members who were not scholars. Independent and encouraged by nothing but its own efforts, the London Society has included men who discovered infinitesimal calculus, the laws of light and gravity, stellar aberration, the reflecting telescope, the steam pump, the solar microscope, and many other inventions as useful as they are admirable. What more would these great men have done if they had drawn stipends or been honorary members?

The famous Dr. Swift conceived a plan, in the last years of Queen Anne's reign, to establish an academy for the language on the model of the French Academy. This project had the support of the Earl of Oxford, lord high treasurer, and still more of Viscount Bolingbroke, secretary of state, who had the gift of speaking extemporaneously in Parliament with as much purity as Swift wrote in his study, and who would have been both protector and ornament of the academy. The men who were to compose it had written works that will last as long as the English language: Dr. Swift himself; Mr. Prior, whom we have seen here as a diplomatic minister and who in England enjoys the same reputation that La Fontaine enjoys among us; Mr. Pope, England's Boileau; and Mr. Congreve, whom one might call its Molière. Several others whose names escape me here would all have helped this institution flourish from its birth. But the queen died suddenly; the Whigs got it into their heads to hang the academy's patrons: which, as you can well imagine, proved fatal to literature. The members of this body would have had a great advantage over the first members of the French Academy. Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Addison, and others had established the English language through their writings; whereas Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, and Cotin, our first academicians, were a disgrace to our nation, and their names have become so ridiculous that if a passable writer had the misfortune to be named Chapelain or Cotin today, he would have to change his name. Above all, the English Academy would have had to set itself tasks entirely different from ours. One day a wit of that country asked me for the Memoirs of the French Academy. “It does not write memoirs,” I replied, “but it has published sixty or eighty volumes of compliments.” He skimmed one or two; he could never make sense of their style, though he understood all our good writers perfectly well. “All I can make out,” he told me, “from these fine speeches is that the new member, having declared that his predecessor was a great man, Cardinal Richelieu a very great man, and Chancellor Séguier a fairly great man, receives the same answer from the director, who adds that the new member might well be a sort of great man himself, and that he, the director, will not forgo his own share of greatness.”

It is easy to see what fatal circumstance has caused almost all these academic speeches to bring so little honor to that body: the fault belongs to the times rather than to the man. A custom gradually took hold that every academician should repeat these eulogies upon his admission. They imposed upon themselves a kind of law requiring them to bore the public. If we then ask why the greatest minds to enter this body have sometimes delivered the worst addresses, the reason is again very simple: they wanted to shine; they wanted to treat an exhausted subject in a new way. The need to speak, the embarrassment of having nothing to say, and the desire to be clever are three things capable of making even the greatest man ridiculous. Unable to find new thoughts, they sought new turns of phrase and spoke without thinking, like people chewing on nothing, pretending to eat while dying of starvation.

Instead of the French Academy's rule that all these speeches be printed—the only thing for which it is known—there ought to be a rule against printing them.

The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres has set itself a wiser and more useful goal: to offer the public a collection of memoirs full of curious research and criticism. These memoirs are already esteemed abroad. One might wish only that some subjects had been examined more deeply and others not treated at all. We could, for example, very well have done without some dissertation or other on the prerogatives of the right hand over the left, and without certain other inquiries whose titles, though less ridiculous, do little to make them less frivolous.

The Academy of Sciences, in its more difficult and more plainly useful research, embraces the knowledge of nature and the improvement of the arts. We may believe that studies so profound and so sustained, calculations so exact, discoveries so subtle, and visions so expansive will at last produce something that serves the good of the world.

The most useful discoveries have been made in the most barbarous ages. It seems to fall to the most enlightened times and the most learned societies to reason about what the ignorant have invented. Today, after the long disputes of Mr. Huygens and Mr. Renaud, we know the angle a ship's rudder should make with its keel for the greatest advantage; but Christopher Columbus discovered America without the faintest idea of that angle.

I am very far from inferring that we should confine ourselves to blind practice; but it would be fortunate if physicists and geometers joined practice to speculation wherever possible. Must what does the greatest honor to the human mind so often be what is least useful? A man with the four rules of arithmetic and common sense becomes a great merchant, a Jacques Cœur, a Delmet, a Bernard; while a poor algebraist spends his life seeking astonishing relations and properties among numbers that have no practical use and will not teach him what a bill of exchange is. Nearly all the arts stand in the same position; there is a point beyond which inquiry serves curiosity alone. These ingenious and useless truths are like stars so far from us that they shed no light upon us.

As for the French Academy, what a service it would render to literature, the language, and the nation if, instead of publishing compliments every year, it published the fine works of the age of Louis XIV, cleansed of all the errors of language that have slipped into them! Corneille and Molière are full of them; La Fontaine teems with them: those that could not be corrected would at least be marked. Europe, which reads these authors, would learn our language from them with confidence. Its purity would be fixed forever. Fine French books printed with this care at the king's expense would be among the most glorious monuments of the nation. I have heard that Mr. Despréaux once made this proposal, and that it was renewed by a man whose intelligence, wisdom, and sound critical judgment are well known; but this idea has met the fate of many other useful projects: it has been approved and neglected.

One rather singular thing is that Corneille, who wrote the first of his good tragedies with considerable purity and great nobility when the language was beginning to take shape, wrote all the others very incorrectly and in a very low style, at the very time when Racine was giving the French language such purity, true nobility, and grace; when Despréaux was establishing it through the most scrupulous correctness, precision, force, and harmony. Compare Racine's Bérénice with Corneille's: one would think the latter belonged to the age of Tristan. Corneille seemed to neglect his style more and more as his need to sustain it grew, and to have the ambition to write but not the ambition to write well. Not only are his last twelve or thirteen tragedies bad; their style is very bad. What is stranger still is that even in our own time we have had plays, works of prose and poetry, composed by academicians who neglected their language to the point that one cannot find ten successive verses or ten successive lines in their work without some barbarism. A group of enlightened and intelligent people once counted more than six hundred intolerable solecisms in a tragedy that had enjoyed the greatest success in Paris and the highest favor at court. Two or three such successes would suffice to corrupt the language beyond recovery and plunge it back into the old barbarism from which the assiduous care of so many great men has rescued it.

END OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL LETTERS.

## Translation — Mouseia

> Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the French text of all twenty-four letters (Garnier edition, 1879, French Wikisource).

### Letter I

On the Quakers

I thought the beliefs and history of such an unusual people as the Quakers would interest a reasonable person. To learn about them, I visited one of England’s best-known Quakers. After thirty years in business, he had learned to limit both his wealth and his wants, and had retired to the countryside near London. His house was small but well built. Cleanliness was its only decoration. He was a healthy old man who had never been sick, because he had never given in to strong passions or excess. I have never seen anyone look more dignified or welcoming. Like everyone in his religion, he wore a coat without pleats at the sides or buttons on the pockets or sleeves. He wore a large hat with its brim turned down, like our clergy. He received me with his hat on and came toward me without the slightest bow. Yet his open, kind face showed more courtesy than the custom of putting one leg behind the other and carrying in your hand something made to cover your head. “Friend,” he said, “I see you’re a stranger. If I can help you, just say so.” “Sir,” I said, bowing and sliding one foot toward him as we do, “I hope my genuine curiosity won’t offend you. I hope you’ll do me the honor of teaching me about your religion.” “People from your country,” he answered, “make too many compliments and bows. But I’ve never seen one as curious as you. Come in, and let’s have dinner first.” I made a few more awkward compliments, because habits do not disappear at once. After a healthy, simple meal that began and ended with a prayer to God, I started questioning him. I began with a question good Catholics have asked Huguenots more than once. “My dear sir,” I said, “have you been baptized?” “No,” answered the Quaker, “and neither have my fellow believers.” “What the devil!” I said. “Then you aren’t Christians?” “My friend,” he replied gently, “don’t swear. We are Christians, but we don’t think Christianity consists of pouring water and a little salt on someone’s head.” “Good God!” I exclaimed, outraged at this irreverence. “Have you forgotten that Jesus Christ was baptized by John?” “Friend, no more swearing,” said the kindly Quaker. “Christ accepted John’s baptism, but he never baptized anyone. We follow Christ, not John.” “Ah, the holy Inquisition would burn you!” I cried. “For God’s sake, dear man, let me baptize you!” “If that were all it took to accommodate your weakness, we would gladly do it,” he answered seriously. “We don’t condemn anyone for practicing the ceremony of baptism. But we believe that those who profess a wholly holy and spiritual religion should avoid Jewish ceremonies as far as they can.” “Now that’s something else!” I cried. “Jewish ceremonies?” “Yes, my friend,” he continued. “So Jewish that even today some Jews sometimes practice John’s baptism. Look into ancient history. You’ll find that John merely revived a practice the Hebrews had long used before him, just as the Ishmaelites had long made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Jesus agreed to receive John’s baptism, just as he submitted to circumcision. But both circumcision and washing with water must give way to Christ’s baptism: the baptism of the spirit, the washing of the soul that saves people. John, who came before him, said: ‘I baptize you with water, but someone more powerful than I am will come after me. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with fire and the Holy Spirit.’ And Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles, wrote to the Corinthians: ‘Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel.’ Paul himself baptized only two people with water, and even then reluctantly. He circumcised his disciple Timothy. The other Apostles also circumcised anyone who wanted it. Are you circumcised?” he added. I answered that I had not had that honor. “Well then, friend,” he said, “you’re a Christian without being circumcised, and I am one without being baptized.”

That is how my holy man made a fairly plausible misuse of three or four passages of Scripture that seemed to support his sect. In perfect good faith, he forgot a hundred passages that demolished it. I was careful not to argue. There is nothing to gain by arguing with a fanatic. Don’t point out a man’s girlfriend’s faults, tell a litigant the weakness of his case, or offer arguments to someone who thinks he has divine insight. So I moved on to other questions.

“What about Communion?” I asked. “What do you do?” “We don’t practice it,” he said. “What? No Communion?” “None but the communion of hearts.” Then he quoted Scripture to me again. He gave me a fine sermon against Communion, speaking as if inspired to prove that all the sacraments were human inventions, and that the word “sacrament” did not appear once in the Gospel. “Forgive my ignorance,” he said. “I haven’t given you even a hundredth of the evidence for my religion. But you can find it in Robert Barclay’s Exposition of Our Faith. It’s one of the best books anyone has ever written. Our enemies agree that it’s very dangerous, which shows how reasonable it is.” I promised to read the book, and my Quaker already thought I was converted.

He then briefly explained some of the odd customs that expose the sect to other people’s ridicule. “Admit it,” he said, “you had a hard time not laughing when I answered all your courtesies with my hat on and addressed you in the familiar singular. But you seem too well educated not to know that in Christ’s time no nation did anything so ridiculous as using the plural for one person. People said to Caesar Augustus, ‘I love you, I ask you, I thank you,’ using the singular form. He wouldn’t even let people call him lord, dominus. Only much later did people decide to address one person in the plural, as if that person were two. They also claimed absurd titles such as Greatness, Eminence, Holiness, and even Divinity. Worms bestow these titles on other worms, assuring them, with deep respect and shameful dishonesty, that they are their most humble and obedient servants. To guard against this disgraceful trade in lies and flattery, we address kings and coalmen alike in the singular. We bow to no one, because we reserve kindness for people and respect for the laws.

“We also dress a little differently from other people, as a constant reminder not to be like them. Others wear the signs of their rank; we wear signs of Christian humility. We stay away from parties, shows, and gambling. It would be a sad thing to fill with such trifles hearts where God should live. We never swear oaths, not even in court. We think the name of the Most High should not be dragged into people’s petty disputes. When we must appear before magistrates on other people’s business (since we never have lawsuits of our own), we state the truth with a yes or no. The judges take us at our word, while so many other Christians swear falsely on the Gospel. We never go to war. It is not because we fear death. On the contrary, we welcome the moment that joins us to the Being above all beings. But we are not wolves, tigers, or attack dogs. We are people and Christians. Our God ordered us to love our enemies and suffer without complaint. Surely he does not want us to cross the sea and slaughter our brothers because murderers dressed in red, wearing hats two feet high, recruit citizens by beating two little sticks on a tightly stretched donkey skin. And when London is lit up after victories, the sky glows with fireworks, and the air rings with thanksgiving, bells, organs, and cannons, we silently mourn the killings that cause all this public joy.”

### Letter II

On the Quakers

That was roughly the conversation I had with this unusual man. But I was much more surprised when he took me to a Quaker meetinghouse the following Sunday. They have several chapels in London. The one I visited is near the famous pillar called the Monument. The congregation had already assembled when I entered with my guide. There were about four hundred men and three hundred women in the church. The women hid their faces; the men wore their broad hats. Everyone sat in deep silence. I walked through them without anyone looking up at me. The silence lasted a quarter of an hour. At last one of them stood up, took off his hat, sighed a few times, and delivered through his mouth and nose a jumble supposedly drawn from the Gospel. Neither he nor anyone else could make sense of it. When this man had finished his fine monologue, full of contortions, and the congregation had dispersed, both edified and bewildered, I asked my guide why the more sensible members put up with such foolishness. “We have to tolerate it,” he told me, “because we can’t know whether someone who stands up to speak is inspired by the spirit or by madness. Since we can’t be sure, we listen patiently to everything. We even allow women to speak. Two or three of our devout women are often inspired at once, and then the house of the Lord gets quite noisy.” “So you have no priests?” I asked. “No, my friend,” said the Quaker, “and we’re better off that way.” He opened one of his sect’s books and read these words emphatically: “God forbid that we should dare appoint someone to receive the Holy Spirit on Sundays, to the exclusion of all other believers! Thank heaven we are the only people on earth without priests. Would you take away such a happy distinction? Why should we hand our child over to paid nurses when we have milk to feed it ourselves? Those hired nurses would soon rule the house and oppress both mother and child. God said: ‘You received freely; give freely.’ After hearing that, shall we bargain over the Gospel, sell the Holy Spirit, and turn a gathering of Christians into a merchant’s shop? We pay no men dressed in black to help our poor, bury our dead, or preach to believers. These sacred duties matter too much to us to pass them on to others.”

“But how can you tell,” I pressed him, “whether the spirit of God is moving you when you speak?” “Anyone who asks God for enlightenment,” he said, “and proclaims Gospel truths he feels within himself can be sure God inspires him.” He then overwhelmed me with scriptural quotations which, he said, proved that Christianity cannot exist without direct revelation. He added these remarkable words: “When you move a limb, is it your own strength that moves it? Surely not, since that limb often moves without your willing it. So the one who made your body moves that body of earth. And do you form the ideas that come into your mind? Even less so: they come whether you want them or not. So the maker of your soul gives you these ideas. But since he has left your heart free, he gives your mind the ideas your heart deserves. You live in God; you act and think in God. All you need to do is open your eyes to the light that shines on everyone. Then you’ll see the truth and show it to others.” “Why, that’s Father Malebranche exactly!” I cried. “I know your Malebranche,” he said. “He was a bit of a Quaker, but not enough of one.”

Those are the most important things I learned about the Quakers’ beliefs. In the next letter you will hear their history, which you will find even stranger than their beliefs.

### Letter III

On the Quakers

You have already seen that the Quakers trace themselves back to Jesus Christ, who they say was the first Quaker. They say religion was corrupted almost immediately after his death and stayed corrupt for about sixteen hundred years. But there were always some hidden Quakers in the world who kept the sacred fire alive when it had gone out everywhere else. At last, in 1642, its light spread through England.

At a time when three or four sects were tearing Great Britain apart in civil wars fought in God’s name, a man called George Fox began preaching. He came from Leicester County and was the son of a silk worker. He claimed to preach like a true apostle: that is, without knowing how to read or write. He was twenty-five, lived an irreproachable life, and was mad in a holy way. Dressed head to toe in leather, he went from village to village speaking out against war and the clergy. If he had preached only against soldiers, he would have had nothing to fear. But he attacked churchmen, and soon he was imprisoned. He was taken before a justice of the peace in Darby. Fox appeared before the judge with his leather cap on. An officer slapped him hard and said, “You scoundrel! Don’t you know you must take your hat off before the judge?” Fox turned his other cheek and asked the officer to slap it too, for the love of God. The judge of Darby wanted Fox to take an oath before questioning him. “My friend,” Fox told the judge, “you should know I never use God’s name in vain.” Angry at being addressed so familiarly, and determined to make Fox swear, the judge sent him to the Darby madhouse to be whipped. Fox went to the asylum praising God, and the sentence was carried out in full. The men who whipped him were amazed when he asked for a few more lashes for the good of his soul. They needed no urging. Fox received twice the punishment and thanked them warmly for it. Then he started preaching to them. At first they laughed, then they listened. Enthusiasm is contagious: several were convinced, and the men who had whipped him became his first disciples.

After his release, he traveled the countryside with a dozen converts, still preaching against the clergy and getting whipped now and then. One day, while he was in the pillory, he spoke to the whole crowd with such force that he converted about fifty listeners. The rest took his side so strongly that they pulled him out of the hole in an uproar. Then they fetched the Anglican minister whose influence had brought about Fox’s punishment and put him in the pillory instead.

He even dared to convert some of Cromwell’s soldiers. They gave up the business of killing and refused to take the oath. Cromwell had no use for a sect that would not fight, just as Sixtus V thought badly of a sect where no one had sex. He used his power to persecute these newcomers. The prisons filled with them, but persecution almost always produces more converts. They came out of prison more certain of their beliefs, followed by jailers they had converted. Yet what did most to spread the sect was this: Fox believed he was inspired. So he thought he had to speak differently from other people. He began to tremble, twist his body, make faces, hold his breath, and then breathe out violently. The priestess at Delphi could not have done better. He quickly became so used to speaking under inspiration that before long he could hardly speak any other way. This was the first gift he passed on to his disciples. They sincerely copied all their master’s grimaces and shook with all their might when inspiration came. That is how they got the name Quakers, meaning “shakers.” Ordinary people amused themselves by imitating them. People shook, spoke through their noses, had convulsions, and believed they had the Holy Spirit. They needed some miracles, so they produced some.

The patriarch Fox publicly told a justice of the peace before a large crowd, “Friend, watch out. God will soon punish you for persecuting the saints.” This judge was a drunk who got drunk every day on bad beer and brandy. Two days later he died of a stroke, just after signing an order to put some Quakers in prison. No one blamed the judge’s sudden death on his drinking. Everyone saw it as the result of the holy man’s prediction.

That death made more Quakers than a thousand sermons and as many fits of shaking could have made. Cromwell saw their numbers growing daily and wanted them on his side. He had money offered to them, but they could not be bought. He once said that this was the only religion he had not been able to win over with guineas.

They were sometimes persecuted under Charles II, not for their religion but because they would not pay tithes to the clergy, addressed magistrates familiarly, and refused to take the oaths required by law.

At last, in 1675, Robert Barclay, a Scot, presented the king with his Apology for the Quakers, a work as good as it could be. The dedication to Charles II contains no cheap flattery, but bold truths and sound advice. “You have tasted,” he tells Charles at the end, “sweetness and bitterness, prosperity and the worst misfortunes. You have been driven out of the lands you rule. You have felt the weight of oppression, and you should know how hateful an oppressor is to God and to people. If, after so many trials and blessings, your heart grew hard and you forgot the God who remembered you in your troubles, your wrongdoing would be greater and your punishment more terrible. Instead of listening to the flatterers at your court, listen to your conscience, which will never flatter you. I am your faithful friend and subject, Barclay.”

More surprising still, this letter from an unknown private citizen to a king had an effect: the persecution ended.

### Letter IV

On the Quakers

Around this time the famous William Penn appeared. He established the Quakers’ power in America, and would have made them respected in Europe if people could respect goodness when it looks ridiculous. He was the only son of Sir Penn, vice admiral of England and a favorite of the Duke of York, who later became James II.

At fifteen, William Penn met a Quaker at Oxford, where he was studying. The Quaker persuaded him. The young man was energetic and naturally eloquent, with a commanding face and manner, and soon won over some of his fellow students. Little by little he formed a group of young Quakers who met at his home. By sixteen, he had become the sect’s leader.

When he returned from college to his father, the vice admiral, he did not kneel before him and ask for his blessing, as the English custom required. He approached with his hat on and said, “I’m very glad to see you in good health, friend.” The vice admiral thought his son had gone mad. He soon realized he had become a Quaker. He tried everything a sensible person could think of to make him live like everyone else. The young man answered his father only by urging him to become a Quaker too.

Finally, his father relented and asked only that William visit the king and the Duke of York with his hat under his arm and not address them familiarly. William said his conscience would not let him. Angry and desperate, his father threw him out of the house. Young Penn thanked God that he was already suffering for his cause. He went to preach in the City and made many converts there.

The ministers’ preaching meetings grew emptier every day. Penn was young, handsome, and well built, so women from both the court and the city flocked devoutly to hear him. The patriarch George Fox came from deep in England to see him in London because of his reputation. Together they decided to undertake missions abroad. They sailed to Holland, leaving enough workers behind to look after the London vineyard. Their work in Amsterdam went well. But what brought them the most honor and put their humility most at risk was their reception by Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate. She was the aunt of George I, king of England, and a woman famous for her intelligence and learning. Descartes had dedicated his philosophical novel to her.

She was then living in retirement at The Hague, where she met the Friends, as Quakers were then called in Holland. She spoke with them several times, and they often preached in her home. Even if they did not make her a full Quaker, they admitted she was not far from the kingdom of heaven.

The Friends also sowed seeds in Germany, but gathered little there. Addressing people familiarly was not popular in a country where one must constantly say “Your Highness” and “Your Excellency.” Penn soon returned to England on hearing that his father was ill. He came to be with him at the end. The vice admiral made peace with his son and embraced him tenderly despite their different religions. But William tried in vain to persuade him not to take Communion and to die a Quaker. The good old man just as vainly urged William to have buttons on his sleeves and trim on his hat.

William inherited a large fortune, including money the Crown owed his father for advances made toward naval expeditions. Nothing was less certain then than money owed by the king. To get paid, Penn had to address Charles II and his ministers familiarly more than once. Instead of money, in 1680 the government gave him ownership and sovereignty over an American province south of Maryland. So a Quaker became a ruler. He sailed to his new territory with two ships full of Quakers who followed him. From then on the country was called Pennsylvania, after Penn. He founded the city of Philadelphia there, which is now thriving. He began by making a treaty with his American neighbors. It is the only treaty between those peoples and Christians that was neither sworn to nor broken. The new ruler also became Pennsylvania’s lawgiver. He gave it very wise laws, none of which has been changed since. The first is that no one should be mistreated over religion, and that all who believe in a god should be treated as brothers.

No sooner had he set up his government than several merchants from America came to settle the colony. The native people, instead of fleeing into the forests, gradually grew used to the peaceful Quakers. They hated the other Christians who conquered and destroyed America, but loved these newcomers just as much. Soon these supposedly savage people, delighted by their new neighbors, came in crowds to ask William Penn to accept them as his subjects. Here was a truly new sight: a ruler whom everyone addressed familiarly and spoke to without taking off their hats, a government without priests, a people without weapons, citizens all equal except in official rank, and neighbors without jealousy.

William Penn could claim to have brought to earth the golden age people talk about so much, which probably existed only in Pennsylvania. After Charles II died, he returned to England on business for his new country. King James, who had loved his father, showed the same affection for the son. He no longer saw Penn as an obscure sectarian, but as a very great man. The king’s policy matched his personal preference here. He wanted to win over the Quakers by repealing the laws against nonconformists, so that he could use this freedom to introduce the Catholic religion. Every English sect saw the trap and refused to fall into it. They are always united against Catholicism, their common enemy. But Penn did not think he should abandon his principles to support Protestants who hated him against a king who loved him. He had established freedom of conscience in America and did not want to seem eager to destroy it in Europe. He therefore remained so loyal to James II that people generally accused him of being a Jesuit. The slander hurt him deeply, and he had to defend himself in public writings. Meanwhile the unfortunate James II, who like almost every Stuart combined greatness with weakness, and like them did both too much and too little, lost his kingdom without a sword being drawn. No one could say how it had happened.

All the English sects received from William III and his Parliament the same freedom they had refused to accept from James. It was then that the Quakers began to enjoy, with the protection of the law, all the privileges they still have today. After finally seeing his sect securely established in the land where he was born, Penn returned to Pennsylvania. His people and the Americans welcomed him with tears of joy, like a father returning to his children. All his laws had been faithfully observed in his absence, something that had never happened to any lawgiver before him. He stayed in Philadelphia for several years. Finally he left against his wishes to seek new trade advantages for the people of Pennsylvania in London. He never saw them again. He died in London in 1718. It was during the reign of Charles II that the Quakers won the fine privilege of never swearing oaths and being believed in court on their word. The chancellor, a witty man, spoke to them this way: “My friends, Jupiter once ordered all beasts of burden to come and be shod. The donkeys objected that their law did not permit it. ‘Very well,’ said Jupiter, ‘you won’t be shod. But the first wrong step you take, you’ll get a hundred lashes with a strap.’”

I cannot guess what will become of the Quaker religion in America, but I see it declining daily in London. In every country, the dominant religion eventually swallows up all the others if it does not persecute them. Quakers cannot sit in Parliament or hold any public office, because they would have to take an oath and they will not swear. They are forced to earn money through trade. Their children grow rich through their fathers’ hard work and want pleasures, honors, buttons, and cuffs. They are ashamed to be called Quakers and become Protestants to be fashionable.

### Letter V

On the Anglican Religion

England is a country of sects: There are many rooms in my Father's house. An Englishman is a free man, and takes whatever road to heaven he likes.

Yet while everyone here can worship God in his own way, the real religion—the one that helps you get ahead—is the sect of the bishops. It is called the Anglican Church, or simply the Church. You cannot hold a position in England or Ireland without being one of the Anglican faithful. This reason, which makes an excellent argument, has converted so many nonconformists that today not even a twentieth of the nation is outside the dominant Church.

The Anglican clergy have kept many Catholic ceremonies. Above all, they are very careful to collect tithes. They also have the pious ambition to be in charge: what village vicar would not want to be pope?

They also do all they can to stir up holy zeal against nonconformists among their flocks. This zeal was quite strong under the Tory government in Queen Anne's last years. But it went no further than occasionally breaking the windows of heretical chapels. The fury between sects ended in England with the civil wars. Under Queen Anne there was only the low rumble of a sea that stays rough long after a storm. When the Whigs and Tories tore their country apart, as the Guelphs and Ghibellines had once ravaged Italy, religion inevitably joined the parties. The Tories supported bishops; the Whigs wanted to abolish them, but once in power settled for reducing their standing.

When the Earl of Oxford, Harley, and Lord Bolingbroke were drinking to the Tories' health, the Anglican Church saw them as defenders of its holy privileges. The assembly of the lower clergy, a kind of House of Commons made up of churchmen, then had some influence. At least it was free to meet, debate religious disputes, and occasionally burn a few impious books—that is, books written against it. The present Whig ministry does not allow these gentlemen to hold their assembly. They are confined to the obscurity of their parishes and the sad task of praying to God for the government, which they would not mind upsetting. As for the bishops, twenty-six in all, they sit in the upper house despite the Whigs, because the custom, or abuse, of regarding them as barons still survives. There is a clause in the oath of allegiance to the state that really tests these gentlemen's Christian patience.

In that oath they promise to belong to the Church as established by law. There is hardly a bishop, dean, or archpriest who does not believe his office exists by divine right. It is therefore deeply humiliating for them to have to admit they owe everything to a wretched law made by laypeople with no religious office. A learned member of a religious order (Father Courayer) recently wrote a book to prove the validity and unbroken succession of Anglican ordinations. His work was banned in France. But do you think it pleased the English ministry? Not at all. Those accursed Whigs care very little whether the succession of bishops in England was broken, or whether Bishop Parker was consecrated in a tavern, as some claim, or in a church. They would actually prefer bishops to get their authority from Parliament rather than from the apostles. Lord B. says that this idea of divine right would only create tyrants in clerical capes and robes, while the law makes citizens.

In their behavior, Anglican clergy are more restrained than French clergy, and here is why. All churchmen are educated at Oxford or Cambridge, far from the capital's corruption. They are only promoted to high positions in the Church quite late in life, at an age when men have no passions left but greed, if their ambition has nothing to feed on. Positions here reward long service in the Church, just as they do in the army. You do not see young men made bishops or colonels straight out of school. Also, nearly all the priests are married. Their awkwardness, acquired at university, and the little contact they have with women here mean that a bishop usually has to make do with his wife. Priests sometimes go to the tavern, because custom allows it. If they get drunk, they do it in earnest and without causing a scandal.

That hard-to-define creature who is neither a clergyman nor a layman—in short, what we call an abbé—is unknown in England. The churchmen here are all reserved and almost all pedantic. When they hear that in France young men known for their debauchery are promoted to high church office through women's intrigues, openly have love affairs, amuse themselves by writing love songs, give elaborate, lengthy suppers every day, and then go to ask the Holy Spirit for guidance and boldly call themselves successors to the apostles, they thank God they are Protestants. But they are dreadful heretics who should be burned to all the devils, as Master François Rabelais says. That is why I do not meddle in their affairs.

### Letter VI

On the Presbyterians

The Anglican religion prevails only in England and Ireland. Presbyterianism is the dominant religion in Scotland. This Presbyterianism is simply Calvinism in its pure form, as it was established in France and as it still exists in Geneva. The ministers of this sect receive only very modest pay from their churches. As a result, they cannot live in the same luxury as bishops, so naturally they denounce the honors they cannot get. Picture proud Diogenes trampling on Plato's pride. The Scottish Presbyterians are much like that proud, penniless thinker. They treated King Charles II with far less respect than Diogenes had shown Alexander. When they took up arms for Charles against Cromwell, who had deceived them, they made the poor king sit through four sermons a day. They forbade him to play games and made him do penance. Charles soon got tired of being king of these pedants and escaped from them like a schoolboy running away from school.

Compared with a lively young French theologian who spends his days in theology classes and his evenings singing with the ladies, an Anglican theologian is a Cato. But that Cato looks like a ladies' man beside a Scottish Presbyterian. The Presbyterian puts on a solemn walk and a sour expression. He wears an enormous hat and a long cloak over a short coat. He preaches through his nose. He calls every church the whore of Babylon if some of its clergy are lucky enough to have an income of fifty thousand livres a year and its people are good enough to tolerate this and to address them as My Lord, Your Lordship, and Your Eminence.

These gentlemen also have some churches in England, and have made grave, stern behavior fashionable there. They are responsible for keeping Sunday holy in the three kingdoms. On that day it is forbidden to work or to have fun, a rule twice as strict as that of the Catholic churches. On Sundays in London there is no opera, no theater, and no concerts. Even card games are so strictly forbidden that only the nobility and those called respectable people play them that day. The rest of the nation goes to sermons, taverns, and prostitutes.

Although the bishops' church and the Presbyterian church are the two dominant sects in Great Britain, all the others are welcome and get along fairly well. Meanwhile most of their preachers hate each other almost as wholeheartedly as a Jansenist condemns a Jesuit to hell.

Go into the London Exchange. This place deserves more respect than many royal courts. There you see representatives of every nation gathered to serve people's needs. Jews, Muslims, and Christians do business together as if they shared a religion. The only people they call unbelievers are those who go bankrupt. The Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Anglican accepts the Quaker's word. After these peaceful, free meetings, some go to the synagogue and others go for a drink. One goes to be baptized in a large tub in the name of the Father, by the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Another has his son's foreskin cut off while Hebrew words that he does not understand are mumbled over the child. Others go to their church and wait for God to inspire them, keeping their hats on. And everyone is content.

If England had just one religion, its tyranny would be frightening. If it had only two, they would cut each other's throats. But it has thirty, and they live together peacefully and happily.

### Letter VII

On the Socinians, or Arians, or Anti-Trinitarians

In England there is a small sect of churchmen and a few very learned laypeople. They do not call themselves Arians or Socinians, but they certainly disagree with Saint Athanasius about the Trinity. They tell you plainly that the Father is greater than the Son.

Do you remember that orthodox bishop who decided to prove that the Father and Son were of the same substance to an emperor? He took the emperor's son by the chin and pulled his nose in front of His Sacred Majesty. The emperor was about to have the bishop thrown out the window when the good man said these fine, persuasive words: “Sire, if Your Majesty is so upset when someone disrespects your son, how do you think God the Father will treat those who deny Jesus Christ the titles he is owed?” The people I am talking about say that the holy bishop acted very unwisely and that his argument proved nothing at all. The emperor should have answered him: “Understand that there are two ways to disrespect me: first, by giving my son too little honor, and second, by giving him as much honor as you give me.”

In any case, Arius's party is beginning to come back to life in England, as it is in Holland and Poland. The great Newton did this view the honor of supporting it. This philosopher thought the Unitarians reasoned more like mathematicians than we do. But the strongest supporter of Arian teaching is the distinguished Dr. Clarke. He is strict in his virtue and gentle in temperament. He loves his own opinions more than he cares about winning converts. He is entirely absorbed in calculations and proofs, blind and deaf to everything else: a real reasoning machine.

He wrote a book on the existence of God that few people understand but that is highly regarded. He wrote another, clearer book on the truth of Christianity, but it is held in rather low regard.

He did not get involved in the fine scholastic disputes that our friend… calls venerable nonsense. Instead, he published a book containing all the testimony from the early centuries both for and against the Unitarians. He left readers to count the votes and decide for themselves. That book won the doctor many supporters but kept him from becoming archbishop of Canterbury. When Queen Anne wanted to give him the post, a scholar named Gibson, who no doubt had his reasons, said to the queen: “Madam, Mr. Clarke is the most learned and most honest man in the kingdom. He lacks only one thing.” “And what is that?” asked the queen. “He is not a Christian,” said the kindly scholar. I think Clarke got his calculation wrong. It would have been better to be the orthodox primate of England than an Arian parish priest.

You can see that opinions go through revolutions just as empires do. After three hundred years of triumph and twelve centuries of obscurity, Arius's party is finally rising from the ashes. But it has picked a very bad time to return, in an age when everyone has had enough of disputes and sects. This sect is still too small to be allowed public meetings. It will surely get that freedom if it grows more numerous. Yet people are now so indifferent to all this that there is hardly a career to be made by starting a new religion or reviving an old one. Isn't it funny that Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, all writers no one can bear to read, founded sects that divide Europe? The uneducated Muhammad gave a religion to Asia and Africa. Yet Messrs. Newton, Clarke, Locke, and Leclerc, the greatest philosophers and best writers of their day, could barely manage to establish a tiny flock!

That is what comes of being born at the right time. If Cardinal de Retz came back today, he could not stir up even ten women in Paris.

If Cromwell were born again, he who had his king beheaded and made himself ruler, he would be an ordinary citizen of London.

### Letter VIII

On Parliament

Members of the English Parliament like to compare themselves to the ancient Romans whenever they can.

Not long ago, Mr. Shipping began a speech in the House of Commons with these words: “The majesty of the English people would be offended, etc.” His odd choice of words brought a roar of laughter. But he was not rattled. He repeated the same words firmly, and no one laughed again. I admit that I see nothing in common between the majesty of the English people and that of the Roman people, much less between their governments. London has a senate whose members are sometimes suspected, wrongly no doubt, of selling their votes when the opportunity arises, just as people did in Rome. That is the whole resemblance. In all other respects the two nations seem entirely different to me, for better and for worse. The Romans never knew the horrible madness of religious wars. That abomination was left to pious preachers of humility and patience. Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Caesar, Antony and Augustus, did not fight to decide whether a priest should wear his shirt over his robe or his robe over his shirt. Nor did they fight about whether the sacred chickens had to eat and drink, or only eat, before people took the omens. In the past the English hanged one another after trials and killed one another in open battle over quarrels of this kind. The bishops' sect and the Presbyterians drove these gloomy heads mad for a while. I imagine they will not do anything so foolish again. They seem to be learning wisdom the hard way, and I see no desire in them to go on cutting each other's throats over syllogisms. Still, who can answer for what people will do?

Here is a more important difference between Rome and England, one entirely to England's advantage. Rome's civil wars ended in slavery; England's upheavals ended in freedom. The English are the only people on earth to have succeeded in limiting the power of kings by resisting them. By one effort after another, they finally set up a sensible government. In it, the ruler has every power to do good but is prevented from doing harm. The lords have high rank without arrogance and without vassals. The people share in government without disorder.

The House of Lords and the House of Commons are the nation's judges, and the king is the final judge above them. The Romans lacked this balance. The powerful and the ordinary people were always divided in Rome, with no power between them to bring them together. The Roman senate was so unjustly and blameworthily proud that it would share nothing with the common people. It knew only one way to keep them out of government: keep them busy with foreign wars. The senate saw the people as a wild animal that had to be set loose on its neighbors, for fear it would eat its masters. So the greatest flaw in the Roman government made the Romans conquerors. Because they were unhappy at home, they became masters of the world, until at last their divisions made them slaves.

England's government is not designed for such dazzling success or such a disastrous end. Its aim is not the spectacular madness of making conquests, but stopping its neighbors from making them. The English guard not just their own freedom but other people's freedom too. They fiercely opposed Louis XIV solely because they believed he was ambitious.

Establishing freedom in England certainly came at a cost. The idol of despotic power was drowned in seas of blood. But the English do not think they paid too much for their laws. Other nations have had no fewer upheavals and have shed no less blood. Yet the blood they shed for their freedom has only strengthened their servitude.

What becomes a revolution in England is only a failed uprising in other countries. A city in Spain, Barbary, or Turkey takes up arms to defend its privileges. Mercenary soldiers immediately subdue it, executioners punish it, and the rest of the nation kisses its chains. The French think the government of this island is more stormy than the sea around it. That is true, but it happens when the king starts the storm, when he tries to take command of a ship on which he is only the chief pilot. France's civil wars were longer, crueler, and more full of crimes than England's. Yet not one of all those civil wars had sensible freedom as its goal.

In the dreadful times of Charles IX and Henry III, the only question was whether people would be slaves to the Guises. As for the last war in Paris, it deserves nothing but boos. I seem to see schoolboys rebelling against their school's headmaster and ending up whipped. Cardinal de Retz had plenty of wit and courage, both badly used. He was a rebel without a cause, a troublemaker without a plan, and the leader of a party without an army. He plotted for the sake of plotting and seemed to wage civil war for his own amusement. Parliament did not know what it wanted or what it did not want. By decree it raised troops, then dismissed them. It threatened and then begged forgiveness. It put a price on Cardinal Mazarin's head and then came to pay him formal compliments. Our civil wars under Charles VI were cruel; those of the League were appalling; that of the Fronde was ridiculous.

What the French most often reproach the English for is the execution of Charles I, a king who deserved a better fate. His victors treated him as he would have treated them had he won.

After all, look on one side at Charles I, defeated in open battle, taken prisoner, tried, condemned in Westminster, and beheaded. On the other, look at Emperor Henry VII, poisoned by his chaplain as he took communion; Henry III, murdered by a monk; and the thirty plots to murder Henry IV, several of them carried out, the last of which finally robbed France of that great king. Weigh these crimes and judge for yourself.

### Letter IX

On Government

This mixture in England's government, this cooperation among the Commons, the lords, and the king, has not always existed. England was enslaved for a long time: by the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes, and the French. William the Conqueror in particular ruled it with an iron scepter. He controlled the property and lives of his new subjects like an Eastern monarch. He forbade any English person, on pain of death, to have a fire or a light at home after eight in the evening. Perhaps he meant to stop them meeting at night. Or perhaps this strange ban was a way to test how far one person's power over other people could go.

It is true that the English had parliaments before and after William the Conqueror. They boast about them as though those assemblies, then called parliaments and made up of tyrannical churchmen and robbers called barons, had protected freedom and the public's welfare.

The barbarians who swept into the rest of Europe from the shores of the Baltic Sea brought with them the practice of holding estates or parliaments. People make a great fuss about these assemblies but know very little about them. Kings were not despots then, it is true. And that was precisely why the people suffered under miserable servitude. The chiefs of these tribes who had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England made themselves kings. Their captains divided up the conquered people's land among themselves. That is how there came to be margraves, lairds, barons, and lesser tyrants, who often fought insecure kings over what they could steal from the people. They were birds of prey fighting an eagle for the chance to drink the blood of doves. Every people had a hundred tyrants instead of one good ruler. Priests soon joined in. From the earliest times, the Gauls, the Germanic peoples, and the islanders of England had been ruled by their druids and their village chiefs. These chiefs were an early kind of baron, but less tyrannical than their successors. The druids said they mediated between God and humanity. They made laws, expelled people from their religious community, and sentenced them to death. Under the Goths and Vandals, bishops gradually took over the druids' secular authority in government. The popes placed themselves at the bishops' head. With their formal letters, decrees, and monks, they made kings tremble, removed them from power, had them murdered, and drew as much money as they could from Europe. The foolish Inas, one of the rulers in England's seven kingdoms, was the first to agree, on a pilgrimage to Rome, to pay Peter's Pence for every house in his territory. This came to about one écu in our money per house. The whole island soon followed his example. England gradually became a province of the pope. The Holy Father sent his representatives there from time to time to collect exorbitant taxes. At last John Lackland formally surrendered his kingdom to His Holiness, who had expelled him from the Church. The barons, who saw nothing to gain from this, drove out the wretched king and replaced him with Louis VIII, king of France and father of Saint Louis. But they soon tired of the newcomer and sent him back across the sea.

While barons, bishops, and popes were all tearing England apart because they all wanted to rule it, the people were treated by them as less than human animals. The people were the largest, most useful, and even most virtuous part of humanity. They included those who studied law and science, merchants, craftspeople, and, finally, farmers, who practice the most important and most despised occupation. The common people were nowhere near having a share in government then. They were peasants, and their labor and blood belonged to masters who called themselves nobles. Across Europe most people were what they still are in several parts of the world: a lord's serfs, a kind of livestock bought and sold with the land. It took centuries to do humanity justice and recognize how terrible it was for the many to sow and the few to reap. And is it not fortunate for the French that the legitimate power of their kings put an end to the power of these petty thieves in France, just as the power of the king and nation did in England?

Fortunately, as disputes between kings and great lords shook their kingdoms, the bonds holding their peoples loosened to some degree. In England, freedom was born from quarrels among tyrants. The barons forced John Lackland and Henry III to grant that famous charter. Its main purpose, admittedly, was to make kings dependent on the lords. But it also gave the rest of the nation a little protection, so that people would side with their supposed protectors when the need arose. This great charter is seen as the sacred origin of English liberties, but it shows how little freedom people knew. Its very title proves that the king believed he had an absolute right to rule. The barons and even the clergy forced him to give up some of this supposed right only because they were stronger.

This is how the great charter begins: “Of our own free will we grant the following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and barons of our kingdom, etc.”

The charter's articles say not a word about the House of Commons. That proves it either did not exist yet or existed without power. The charter specifically mentions the free men of England, sad proof that some men were not free. Article 32 shows that those supposedly free men owed service to their lord. This kind of freedom was still very close to slavery.

In article 21 the king orders that from then on his officers may take the horses and carts of free men by force only if they pay for them. The people saw this rule as real freedom because it removed a worse form of tyranny.

Henry VII was a conqueror and a successful political operator. He pretended to love the barons but hated and feared them. He devised a way to get their lands sold off. As a result, peasants who later acquired wealth by their work bought the castles of distinguished peers who had ruined themselves by their foolish behavior. Little by little, all the land changed hands.

The House of Commons grew more powerful every day. The families of the old peers died out over time. Since, strictly speaking, only peers count as nobles under English law, there would now be almost no nobility in that country if kings had not created new barons from time to time. They kept the body of peers, which they had once feared so much, to set it against the Commons, which had become too powerful.

All these new peers who make up the upper house receive their titles from the king, and nothing more. None of them owns the land he is named after. One is Duke of Dorset and does not own an inch of land in Dorsetshire. Another is earl of a village and barely knows where the village is. They have power in Parliament, but nowhere else.

Here you hear nothing about high, middle, and low courts of justice, or about the right to hunt on a citizen's land when that citizen is not even free to fire a gun on his own field.

Being a noble or a priest does not exempt a man here from paying certain taxes. All taxes are set by the House of Commons, which ranks second but has the most influence.

The lords and bishops can reject a bill from the Commons when it concerns raising money, but they are not allowed to change any part of it. They must accept or reject it without conditions. When a bill is confirmed by the lords and approved by the king, everyone pays. Each person pays according to income, not social rank, which would be absurd. There is no arbitrary land tax or head tax, but a fixed tax on land. Every piece of land was assessed under the famous King William III, and assessed below its value.

The tax remains the same, even though income from the land has risen. So no one is crushed by taxes, and no one complains. Farmers do not have their feet bruised by wooden clogs. They eat white bread and dress well. They are not afraid to add to their livestock or put tiles on their roofs for fear of having their taxes raised the following year. You see many farmers there with incomes of about five or six hundred pounds sterling who are happy to go on farming the land that made them wealthy and on which they live in freedom.

### Letter X

On Trade

Since Carthage's downfall, no people have been powerful both through trade and through war. Venice set that example. For a time, after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese were great lords on the coasts of India, but they were never feared in Europe. The United Provinces became warriors only against their will. And at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they helped keep Europe's balance of power not by acting together on their own, but by joining with England.

Carthage, Venice, and Amsterdam were powerful. But they acted like people among us who make money in trade and then buy estates with noble titles. Neither Carthage nor Venice nor Holland nor any other people began as fighters, even conquerors, only to end as merchants. The English alone did that. They fought for a long time before they learned to count. When they won the battles of Agincourt, Crécy, and Poitiers, they did not know they could sell a great deal of wheat and make fine cloth that would bring them much more. That knowledge alone has made the nation larger, richer, and stronger. London was poor and rough when Edward III conquered half of France. It is only because the English became merchants that London now exceeds Paris in the size of the city and the number of its people. That is why they can put two hundred warships to sea and pay allied kings. The Scots are born fighters and clever people. So why has their country become a province of England under the name of a union? Because Scotland has only coal, while England has fine tin, fine wool, excellent wheat, factories, and trading companies.

When Louis XIV made Italy tremble, and his armies had already taken Savoy and Piedmont and were about to take Turin, Prince Eugene had to march from deep in Germany to help the Duke of Savoy. He had no money, and without it you can neither take nor defend cities. He turned to English merchants. In half an hour they lent him five million. With that money he freed Turin and defeated the French. He then wrote this short note to the people who had lent him the sum: “Gentlemen, I have received your money, and I trust I have used it well, to your satisfaction.”

All this gives an English merchant a fair reason for pride. He even dares, with some justification, to compare himself to a Roman citizen. The younger son of a peer of the realm does not look down on trade either. Lord Townshend, a minister of state, has a brother content to be a merchant in the City. When Lord Orford governed England, his younger brother was a trading agent in Aleppo. He refused to come back and died there.

This custom, though it is already becoming far too rare, seems monstrous to Germans obsessed with their noble ancestry. They cannot understand how the son of an English peer can be no more than a rich and powerful ordinary citizen. In Germany, by contrast, everyone is a prince. As many as thirty Highnesses with the same name have been seen, owning nothing but coats of arms and noble pride.

In France, anyone who wants to be a marquis can be one. Anyone who arrives in Paris from a distant province with money to spend and a name ending in ac or ille can say, “A man like me, a man of my rank,” and look down completely on a merchant. The merchant himself hears his profession spoken of with contempt so often that he is foolish enough to be ashamed of it. Yet I do not know which is more useful to a country: a well-powdered lord who knows exactly when the king gets up and goes to bed, and who puts on airs of grandeur while playing the slave in a minister's waiting room; or a merchant who enriches his country, sends orders from his office to Surat and Cairo, and helps make the world happier.

### Letter XI

On Smallpox Inoculation

People in Christian Europe quietly say the English are mad and reckless. Mad, because they give their children smallpox to keep them from getting it; reckless, because they willingly give those children a certain and terrible disease to prevent one they might never catch. The English, for their part, say, “Other Europeans are cowards and unnatural parents. They are cowards because they are afraid to cause their children a little pain, and unnatural parents because they leave them open to dying of smallpox one day.” To decide which side is right, here is the history of this famous inoculation that people in France discuss with such fear.

For as long as anyone can remember, Circassian women have given their children smallpox, even at the age of six months. They make a cut in the arm and place in it a pustule carefully taken from another child's body. In the arm where it is placed, the pustule works like yeast in a piece of dough. It ferments there and spreads its properties through the blood. The sores on the child who has been given this artificial smallpox are used to pass the same disease to others. This circulation is almost constant in Circassia. When, unfortunately, there is no smallpox in the country, people are as troubled as people elsewhere are in a bad year.

What introduced this custom to Circassia, strange as it looks to other peoples, was a motive common to everyone on earth: a mother's love and self-interest. Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, so their daughters are what they trade most. They supply beautiful women to the harems of the Grand Seigneur, the Shah of Persia, and anyone rich enough to buy and keep such valuable merchandise. They raise these girls, in all propriety, to caress men, perform dances full of sensuality and softness, and use every seductive trick to rekindle the interest of the very hard-to-please masters for whom they are destined. These poor creatures repeat their lessons every day with their mothers, just as our little girls repeat their catechism without understanding any of it. Often, after parents had worked hard to give their children a good education, their hopes were suddenly destroyed. Smallpox would enter the family: one daughter died, another lost an eye, and a third recovered with a swollen nose. The poor family was ruined beyond repair. Sometimes, when smallpox became an epidemic, the trade stopped for several years, causing a noticeable drop in the numbers in the harems of Persia and Turkey.

A trading nation is always alert to its own interests and overlooks no knowledge that could help its business. The Circassians noticed that hardly one person in a thousand got a full-blown case of smallpox twice. It is true that someone may have three or four mild cases, but never two clear and dangerous ones. In short, no one truly has this disease twice in a lifetime. They also noticed that when a case of smallpox is very mild and the sores break through only delicate, fine skin, they leave no marks on the face. From these everyday observations they concluded that if a child of six months or one year had a mild case of smallpox, the child would not die or be scarred by it, and would be free of the disease for the rest of life. So, to preserve their children's lives and beauty, they had to give them smallpox early. They did this by putting into a child's body a sore taken from the most fully developed, yet most favorable, case of smallpox they could find. The experiment was bound to succeed. The Turks, who are sensible people, soon adopted the custom. Today every pasha in Constantinople gives smallpox to his son and daughter when they are being weaned.

Some people claim the Circassians originally got this custom from the Arabs. But we will leave that historical question for some Benedictine monk to clear up. He will surely write several large volumes on it, complete with evidence. All I have to say on the subject is that early in the reign of George I, Lady Wortley-Montague, one of England's most intelligent and strong-minded women, was with her husband on a diplomatic mission in Constantinople. She decided without hesitation to give smallpox to a child she had borne there. Her chaplain kept telling her that this experiment was unchristian and could succeed only among unbelievers. But Lady Wortley's son came through it wonderfully. Back in London, she told the Princess of Wales, who is now queen, about her experiment. Titles and crowns aside, this princess was born to encourage all the arts and do good to people. She is a likable philosopher on the throne. She has never missed a chance to learn or a chance to be generous. When she heard that a daughter of Milton was still alive and living in poverty, she immediately sent her a substantial gift. She protects the learned Father Courayer. She even agreed to mediate between Dr. Clarke and Mr. Leibnitz. As soon as she heard of smallpox inoculation, she had it tested on four criminals sentenced to death. She saved their lives twice over: she kept them from the gallows, and, by giving them artificial smallpox, prevented the natural kind, which they probably would have caught and perhaps died from at an older age. Convinced that the test was useful, the princess had her children inoculated. England followed her example. Since then, at least ten thousand children of good families owe their lives to the queen and Lady Wortley-Montague, and as many girls owe them their beauty.

Of every hundred people in the world, at least sixty get smallpox. Of those sixty, ten die from it even in the most favorable years, and ten are left with lasting damage. So the disease certainly kills or disfigures one fifth of all people. Of all those inoculated in Turkey or England, no one dies unless already sick and destined to die anyway. No one is scarred, and no one gets smallpox a second time, provided the inoculation was done properly. So it is certain that if some French ambassador's wife had brought this secret from Constantinople to Paris, she would have done the nation a lasting service. The Duke of Villequier, father of today's Duke of Aumont and the healthiest and strongest man in France, would not have died in the prime of life. The Prince of Soubise, who enjoyed exceptionally good health, would not have been taken at twenty-five. Monseigneur, grandfather of Louis XV, would not have been buried in his fiftieth year. Twenty thousand people who died of smallpox in Paris in 1723 would still be alive. What, then? Don't the French love life? Don't French women care about their beauty? We really are strange people! Perhaps in ten years we will adopt this English method, if the priests and doctors allow it. Or the French may start using inoculation on a whim in three months, if the English give it up through fickleness.

I hear that the Chinese have used this practice for a hundred years. The example of a nation thought to be the wisest and best governed in the world is strong evidence in its favor. It is true that the Chinese do it differently. They make no cut. They have people take smallpox through the nose, like powdered tobacco. That way is more pleasant, but the result is the same. It also confirms that if inoculation had been practiced in France, thousands of lives would have been saved.

A few years ago, a Jesuit missionary read this article while in a part of America where smallpox was causing terrible devastation. He decided to inoculate all the young Indigenous children he baptized. They thus owed him their lives in this world and in the next. What gifts for those children!

A bishop of Worcester recently preached in favor of inoculation in London. As a citizen he showed how many people the practice had saved for the state. As a caring pastor he recommended it. In Paris people would preach against this lifesaving invention, just as they wrote against Newton's experiments for twenty years. Everything shows that the English think more philosophically and act more boldly than we do. It will take a long time for a certain kind of reason and intellectual courage to cross the Strait of Dover.

Still, one should not imagine that everyone from Dover to the Orkney Islands is a philosopher. The opposite kind of person is always in the majority. Inoculation first met opposition in London. Long before the bishop of Worcester preached this new gospel from the pulpit, a priest had decided to preach against it. He said the devil had inoculated Job. That preacher was fit to be a Capuchin friar, and hardly worthy of being born in England. So prejudice reached the pulpit first, and reason climbed into it only afterward. That is the usual course of the human mind.

### Letter XII

On Chancellor Bacon

Not long ago, a famous group was discussing the old, pointless question of who was the greatest man: Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell. Someone answered that it was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. He was right. If true greatness means receiving a powerful mind from heaven and using it to enlighten yourself and others, then a man like Mr. Newton, who appears scarcely once in ten centuries, truly is a great man. Those politicians and conquerors, who have appeared in every century, are usually just celebrated scoundrels. Our respect belongs to the person who wins over minds by the power of truth, not to those who enslave people by force. It belongs to the person who understands the universe, not to those who ruin it.

The famous Earl of Verulam was known across Europe by his family name, Bacon. His father was a keeper of the seals, and he served for many years as chancellor under King James I. Yet amid the plots at court and the demands of an office that could have taken all his time, he found time to become a great philosopher, a good historian, and an elegant writer. What is still more remarkable is that he lived in an age that barely knew how to write well, much less how to practice good philosophy. As so often happens, people valued him more after his death than during his life. His enemies were at the London court; his admirers were foreigners. When the Marquis d'Effiat brought Princess Marie, daughter of Henry the Great, to England to marry King Charles, he visited Bacon. Bacon was ill in bed and received him with the curtains closed. “You are like the angels,” d'Effiat told him. “We always hear of them, we believe they are far above mankind, and yet we never have the pleasure of seeing them.”

Everyone knows how Bacon was accused of a crime hardly suited to a philosopher: allowing himself to be bribed with money. Everyone knows how the House of Lords sentenced him to a fine of about four hundred thousand livres in our currency and stripped him of his rank as chancellor and peer.

Today the English honor his memory so much that they can hardly admit he was guilty. If you ask what I think, I will answer with something I once heard Lord Bolingbroke say. People were discussing the greed of which the Duke of Marlborough had been accused. They cited examples and asked Lord Bolingbroke to confirm them. Since he had openly been Marlborough's enemy, he could perhaps properly say what was true. “He was such a great man,” Bolingbroke replied, “that I have forgotten his faults.”

So I will confine myself to what earned Chancellor Bacon the respect of Europe.

His most unusual and best work is the one read least today and least useful now. I mean his Novum scientiarum organum. It is the scaffolding used to build the new philosophy. Once the building was at least partly up, the scaffolding was no longer of any use.

Chancellor Bacon did not yet understand nature, but he knew and pointed out every path that leads to it. He had long looked down on what universities called philosophy. He did all he could to stop these institutions, founded to improve human reason, from continuing to spoil it with their talk of quiddities, their horror of a vacuum, their substantial forms, and all the other foolish words that ignorance had made respectable and that a ridiculous mixing with religion had made almost sacred.

He is the father of experimental philosophy. It is true that people had discovered remarkable things before him. They had invented the compass, printing, the engraving of pictures, oil painting, mirrors, eyeglasses that in some measure restore sight to older people, gunpowder, and so on. They had sought, found, and conquered a new world. Who would not think such great discoveries were made by the greatest philosophers in ages much more enlightened than ours? Not at all. These great changes on earth happened during the age of scholastic ignorance. Chance alone produced almost all these innovations. It even seems very likely that what we call chance had a large part in the discovery of America. At least people believed Christopher Columbus made his voyage only because he trusted the story of a ship captain whom a storm had carried as far as the latitude of the Caribbean islands.

In any case, people knew how to travel to the ends of the earth and destroy cities with artificial thunder more terrible than real thunder. But they did not understand the circulation of the blood, the weight of air, the laws of motion, light, the number of our planets, and so on. A man defending a thesis on Aristotle's categories, on the universal as something existing in things (a parte rei), or on some other nonsense was seen as a marvel.

The most astonishing and useful inventions are not the ones that bring the human mind the most credit. We owe most crafts to a mechanical instinct found in most people, not at all to sound philosophy. The discovery of fire, making bread, smelting and working metals, building houses, and inventing the loom's shuttle were far more necessary than printing or the compass. Yet these crafts were invented by people who were still living without civilization.

Think of the extraordinary uses the Greeks and Romans later made of machines. Yet in their day people believed the heavens were made of crystal and the stars were little lamps that sometimes fell into the sea. One of their greatest philosophers, after much study, concluded that the heavenly bodies were pebbles broken off from the earth.

In short, no one before Chancellor Bacon had understood experimental philosophy. Of all the experiments in physics conducted since his time, hardly one is not suggested in his book. He had carried out several himself. He made kinds of air pumps with which he guessed that air is elastic. He came very close to discovering that air has weight; he was almost there. Torricelli grasped that truth. Shortly afterward, people suddenly began practicing experimental physics in nearly every part of Europe at once. It was a hidden treasure Bacon had suspected was there. Encouraged by his promise, philosophers all worked to dig it up.

We have seen that his book explicitly describes the new attraction that Newton is credited with discovering.

This forerunner of philosophy was also an elegant writer, a historian, and a man of wit. His moral Essays are held in high regard, but they aim to teach rather than please. They are neither a satire of human nature like Mr. de La Rochefoucauld's Maxims nor a school of skepticism like Montaigne's work, so they are read less than those two clever books. His Life of Henry VII has been called a masterpiece. But how can anyone dare compare such a small work with the history by our distinguished de Thou?

Speaking of the famous fraud Perkins, the son of a converted Jew, who boldly took the name Richard IV, king of England, and, with encouragement from the Duchess of Burgundy, contested the crown with Henry VII, Chancellor Bacon writes:

“Around this time King Henry was beset by evil spirits through the magic of the Duchess of Burgundy. She summoned the ghost of Edward IV from hell to torment King Henry. Once the Duchess of Burgundy had trained Perkins, she began to consider in which part of the sky she would display this comet. She decided it would first blaze over the horizon of Ireland.”

It seems to me our wise de Thou hardly falls into this flowery language, once taken for lofty writing but now rightly called gibberish.

### Letter XIII

On Mr. Locke

Perhaps there has never been a wiser, more systematic mind or a more precise logician than Mr. Locke. Yet he was no great mathematician. He could never put up with the hard work of calculation or the dry truths of mathematics, which at first offer the mind nothing it can grasp through the senses. And no one has shown better that a person can think like a geometer without studying geometry. Before him, great philosophers had declared with certainty what the human soul is. But since they knew nothing about it, it is only fair that they all held different opinions.

In Greece, the birthplace of both the arts and mistaken ideas, where the human mind went so far in both greatness and foolishness, people argued about the soul just as we do. The divine Anaxagoras, for whom an altar was built because he taught people that the Sun was larger than the Peloponnese, that snow was black, and that the heavens were made of stone, claimed that the soul was an airy spirit, yet immortal. Diogenes—not the one who became a Cynic after working as a counterfeiter—said the soul was a portion of God's own substance. At least that idea had some brilliance. Epicurus held that it was made of parts, like the body. Aristotle has been interpreted in a thousand ways because he was impossible to understand. According to some of his disciples, he thought that everyone's understanding was a single substance. The divine Plato, teacher of the divine Aristotle, and the divine Socrates, teacher of the divine Plato, said the soul was bodily and eternal. No doubt Socrates' spirit told him the truth about it. Of course, some people claim that a man who boasted of having a personal spirit was surely a little mad or a bit of a fraud. But those people are too hard to please.

As for our Church Fathers, several of them in the early centuries believed that the human soul, the angels, and God had bodies.

The world is always getting more refined. According to Father Mabillon himself, Saint Bernard taught that after death the soul does not see God in Heaven, but only speaks with the human nature of Jesus Christ. This time people did not take his word for it. The business of the Crusade had somewhat damaged his reputation as an oracle. Then came a thousand scholastics, including the Irrefutable Doctor, the Subtle Doctor, the Angelic Doctor, the Seraphic Doctor, and the Cherubic Doctor. They were all quite sure they understood the soul very clearly. Even so, they spoke about it as though they wanted no one else to understand a thing.

Our Descartes was born to expose the mistakes of the ancients, but also to replace them with his own. Carried away by the urge to build a system, which blinds even the greatest men, he imagined he had proved that the soul was the same thing as thought, just as matter, in his view, was the same thing as extension. He insisted that we always think and that the soul enters the body already equipped with every metaphysical concept. It knows God, space, and infinity; it has every abstract idea. In short, it is full of fine knowledge, which it unfortunately forgets when it leaves its mother's womb.

Father Malebranche of the Oratory, in his lofty delusions, not only rejected innate ideas. He also had no doubt that we see everything in God, and that God, so to speak, is our soul.

So many thinkers had written a fiction about the soul that a wise man finally came along and modestly wrote its history. Locke showed people how human reason works, as an excellent anatomist explains the workings of the human body. He uses the light of physical science everywhere. Sometimes he dares to make firm claims, but he also dares to doubt. Instead of immediately defining something we do not know, he examines step by step what we want to know. He takes a child at birth and follows the development of its understanding, step by step. He observes what the child shares with animals and how it surpasses them. Above all, he consults his own evidence: his awareness of his thoughts.

“I leave it to those who know more than I do,” he says, “to discuss whether our soul exists before or after our body is formed. But I admit that I have been allotted one of those crude souls that do not always think. I even have the misfortune not to see why the soul must always think any more than the body must always move.”

For my part, I take pride in being as stupid as Locke on this point. No one will ever make me believe that I am always thinking. And I am no more inclined than he is to imagine that, a few weeks after my conception, I was a very learned soul. I supposedly knew a thousand things then that I forgot at birth, and possessed in the womb, to no purpose, knowledge that escaped me as soon as I needed it and that I have never quite managed to relearn.

Locke demolished innate ideas and gave up the vanity of believing we always think. He established that all our ideas come to us through the senses. He examined our simple ideas and our compound ones, followed the human mind through all its operations, and showed how imperfect human languages are and how constantly we misuse words. Finally, Locke considers the scope—or rather the lack—of human knowledge. In that chapter he modestly ventures these words: We may never be able to know whether a purely material being thinks or not.

More than one theologian took this sensible statement as a scandalous declaration that the soul is material and mortal. Some Englishmen, devout in their own way, sounded the alarm. Superstitious people play the same part in society that cowards play in an army: they panic and spread panic. People shouted that Locke wanted to bring down religion. Yet religion was not at issue here. It was a purely philosophical question, quite separate from faith and revelation. All that was needed was to consider calmly whether it is contradictory to say: Matter can think, and God can give matter the power to think. But theologians too often start by saying that God is insulted whenever someone disagrees with them. They are too much like the bad poets who thought Despréaux was speaking badly of the king because he made fun of them.

Dr. Stillingfleet earned a reputation as a moderate theologian because he did not directly hurl insults at Locke. He entered the contest against him but lost. Stillingfleet argued like a doctor of theology; Locke argued like a philosopher who knew the strengths and weaknesses of the human mind, and who fought with weapons whose quality he understood.

If I dared speak after Mr. Locke on such a delicate subject, I would say this: People have long argued about the nature and immortality of the soul. Its immortality cannot be demonstrated, because people still argue about its nature, and surely we must know a created being thoroughly before deciding whether it is immortal. Human reason is so unable to prove the soul's immortality on its own that religion has had to reveal it to us. It is in everyone's common interest to believe the soul immortal. Faith commands us to believe it; nothing more is needed, and the matter is almost settled. Its nature is another matter. Religion cares little what substance the soul is made of, provided it is virtuous. We have been given a clock to look after, but its maker has not told us what its spring is made of.

I am a body, and I think. That is all I know. If I rely only on my limited understanding, why should I credit an unknown cause with something I can so easily credit to the only secondary cause I know a little about? At this point all the scholastic philosophers stop me and argue as follows: A body has only extension and solidity, and can have only motion and shape. But motion, shape, extension, and solidity cannot produce thought. Therefore the soul cannot be matter. All this grand reasoning, repeated so often, amounts to this: I know very little about matter and can barely guess at some of its properties. I do not know at all whether these properties can go together with thought. Therefore, because I know nothing at all, I confidently insist that matter cannot think. That, in plain terms, is how the scholastics reason.

Mr. Locke would say simply to these gentlemen: “At least admit that you are as ignorant as I am. Neither your imagination nor mine can conceive how a body has ideas. But do you understand any better how a substance of any kind has ideas? You understand neither matter nor spirit, so how dare you assert anything? What difference does it make to you whether the soul is one of those incomprehensible things called matter, or one of those incomprehensible things called spirit? What! Can God, the creator of everything, not make your soul eternal or destroy it as he wishes, whatever its substance may be?”

Then the superstitious man takes his turn. He says that, for the good of their souls, we must burn people who suspect that we can think with the help of the body alone. But what would he say if he himself were the one guilty of irreligion? After all, who would dare claim, without absurd impiety, that the Creator cannot give matter thought and feeling? Just look at the difficulty you get into when you limit the Creator's power this way. Animals have the same organs as we do and the same perceptions. They remember things and combine some ideas. If God could not bring matter to life and give it feeling, then one of two things must be true: animals are mere machines, or they have spiritual souls.

It seems proven to me that animals cannot be mere machines. Here is my proof. God gave them exactly the same organs of sensation as ours. So if they feel nothing, God has made something useless. But even you admit that God does nothing in vain. So he did not make all those organs of sensation for there to be no sensation. Therefore animals are not mere machines. According to you, animals cannot have spiritual souls. So, despite yourselves, you can only say that God has given the organs of animals, which are matter, the ability to feel and perceive. You call that ability instinct in animals. And what could prevent God from giving our more finely made organs the ability to feel, perceive, and think, which we call human reason? Whichever way you turn, you must admit your ignorance and the Creator's immense power. So stop rebelling against Locke's wise and modest philosophy. Far from opposing religion, it could serve as evidence for religion, if religion needed any. What philosophy could be more religious than one that asserts only what it clearly understands, admits its own limits, and tells you to turn to God as soon as you examine first principles?

Besides, we should never fear that any philosophical opinion could harm a country's religion. Our mysteries may contradict our proofs, but our Christian philosophers respect them nonetheless. They know that reason and faith deal with different kinds of things. Philosophers will never form a religious sect. Why not? Because they do not write for the common people, and they have no zeal for it. Divide humanity into twenty parts. Nineteen parts consist of people who work with their hands and will never know that a Mr. Locke ever existed. Of the twentieth part that remains, how few people read? And among readers, twenty read novels for every one who studies philosophy. Very few people think, and those who do have no intention of disturbing the world.

It was not Montaigne, Locke, Bayle, Spinosa, Hobbes, Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Collins, Mr. Toland, Fludd, Bekker, or the Count of Boulainvilliers, etc., who carried the torch of conflict into their own countries. For the most part, it was theologians. They first wanted to lead religious sects, then soon wanted to lead political parties. Indeed, put all the books of modern philosophers together, and they will never cause as much commotion in the world as the dispute the Franciscan friars once had about the shape of their sleeves and hoods.

### Letter XIV

On Descartes and Newton

A Frenchman arriving in London finds that philosophy, like everything else, has changed completely. He left a world full of matter and finds an empty one. In Paris, people see the universe as made up of whirlpools of subtle matter. In London, they see nothing of the kind. Back home, the Moon's pressure causes the ocean tides. For the English, the sea is drawn toward the Moon. So when you think the Moon ought to give us high tide, these gentlemen think it should be low tide. Unfortunately, there is no way to check this. To settle the matter, we would have had to examine the Moon and the tides at the very first moment of creation.

You will also notice that the Sun, which plays no part in this business in France, accounts for about a quarter of it here. For our Cartesians, everything happens through a push whose workings they scarcely understand. For Mr. Newton, it happens through attraction, whose cause they understand no better. In Paris, you picture the Earth shaped like a melon. In London, it is flattened on both sides. For a Cartesian, light exists in the air. For a Newtonian, it reaches us from the Sun in six and a half minutes. Your chemistry does everything with acids, alkalis, and subtle matter. Attraction rules even English chemistry.

The very nature of things has changed completely. You disagree about the definition of both the soul and matter. Descartes says that the soul is the same thing as thought, and Locke gives him quite a good argument to the contrary. Descartes also says that extension alone makes up matter. Newton adds solidity.

These are serious disagreements.

It is not my place to settle such great disputes between you.

The famous Newton, who brought down the Cartesian system, died in March of the year 1727. His fellow citizens honored him throughout his life, and he was buried like a king who had done good for his people. Here people eagerly read and translated into English Mr. de Fontenelle's Eulogy of Mr. Newton, delivered at the Academy of Sciences. People in England awaited Fontenelle's verdict as though it would formally declare English philosophy superior. But when they found that he had not only misunderstood that philosophy in describing it, but had also compared Descartes with Newton, the whole Royal Society of London rose in protest. Far from accepting his verdict, they sharply criticized the speech. Some people—and these were not the most philosophical—were offended by the comparison simply because Descartes was French.

We must admit that these two great men were very different in their conduct, their fortunes, and their philosophies.

Descartes was born with a vivid, powerful imagination. It made him an unusual man in both his private life and his way of reasoning. Even in his philosophical works he could not hide it: clever, striking comparisons appear at every turn. Nature had almost made him a poet. In fact, he wrote a verse entertainment for the queen of Sweden, which, for the sake of his reputation, has not been printed.

For a while he tried being a soldier. Later, when he had become a philosopher through and through, he did not consider love beneath him. He had a daughter named Francine with his lover. She died young, and he mourned her deeply. So he experienced everything that comes with being human.

For a long time he believed that he had to get away from people, and especially from his homeland, if he wanted the freedom to do philosophy. He was right. The people of his day did not know enough to teach him anything and were capable of little besides harming him.

He left France because he was looking for truth, which was being persecuted there by the wretched philosophy of the schools. But he found no more reason in the Dutch universities where he took refuge. In France, people were condemning the only claims in his philosophy that were true. Meanwhile, he was also persecuted by the so-called philosophers of Holland. They understood him no better, and because his fame was closer to them, they hated him all the more. He had to leave Utrecht. He faced an accusation of atheism, the slanderer's last resort. This man, who had used all his mental skill to seek new proofs that God exists, was suspected of not believing in God.

So much persecution suggested great talent and a brilliant reputation, and he had both. A little reason even broke through into the world despite the darkness of scholastic teaching and the prejudices of popular superstition. In the end his name became so famous that people tried to lure him back to France with rewards. They offered him a pension of a thousand écus. He came in the hope of receiving it, paid the costs of the official document, which was sold at the time, received no pension, and went back to pursue philosophy alone in northern Holland. Meanwhile, the great Galileo, at the age of eighty, was suffering in the prisons of the Inquisition for having proved that the Earth moves.

At last Descartes died early in Stockholm, partly because of an unhealthy routine. He was among a few scholars who were his enemies and in the care of a doctor who hated him.

Sir Newton's career was entirely different. He lived for nearly eighty-five years, always peaceful, happy, and respected in his own country. His great good luck was not only that he was born in a free country. He also lived at a time when scholastic nonsense had been cast out and reason alone was cultivated. The world could only become his pupil, not his enemy.

One striking difference between him and Descartes is that in such a long life he had no passions and no weaknesses. He never had relations with a woman. The doctor and surgeon in whose arms he died confirmed this to me. We may admire Newton for this, but we should not blame Descartes.

Public opinion in England holds that, of these two philosophers, the first was a dreamer and the second a wise man.

Very few people in London read Descartes, whose works have indeed become useless. Very few read Newton either, because understanding him takes a great deal of learning. Yet everyone talks about them. They give the Frenchman no credit and the Englishman all of it. Some people think it is thanks to Newton that we no longer cling to the horror of a vacuum, know that air has weight, and use telescopes. Here he is like the mythical Hercules, to whom ignorant people attributed all the deeds of the other heroes.

In a London critique of Mr. de Fontenelle's speech, someone dared claim that Descartes was not a great geometer. People who say that should feel ashamed of attacking the man who taught them. Descartes advanced geometry as far from where he found it as Newton advanced it afterward. He was the first to teach how to express curves as algebraic equations. Thanks to Descartes, his geometry has become commonplace today. In his day it was so difficult that no professor dared undertake to explain it. Hardly anyone understood it except Schooten in Holland and Fermat in France.

He brought the same talent for geometry and invention to optics, which became a completely new art in his hands. If he made many mistakes in it, that is because a man who discovers new lands cannot immediately know all their properties. Those who follow him at least owe him credit for the discovery. I will not deny that all Mr. Descartes' other works are full of errors.

Geometry was a guide he had in a sense made for himself, and it would have led him safely through physics. But in the end he abandoned that guide and gave himself over to system-building. From that point on, his philosophy was only a clever story, barely plausible even to the ill-informed philosophers of his day. He was wrong about the nature of the soul, the laws of motion, and the nature of light. He accepted innate ideas, invented new elements, created a world, and fashioned a human being to suit himself. People rightly say that Descartes' human being is really his alone, far removed from any real person. He took his metaphysical errors so far as to claim that two and two make four only because God wanted it that way. Still, it is no exaggeration to say that he deserved respect even when he went astray. He was wrong, but at least he was wrong methodically, moving from one conclusion to the next. If he invented new fantasies in physics, at least he destroyed old ones. He taught the people of his day to reason and to turn his own weapons against him. If he did not pay in good coin, it was still a great deal to discredit counterfeit coin.

To tell the truth, I do not think anyone would dare compare his philosophy with Newton's in any respect. The first is an attempt; the second is a masterpiece. But the man who set us on the road to truth may be worth as much as the man who later reached the end of that road.

Descartes gave sight to the blind. They saw the mistakes of antiquity and his own mistakes. The road he opened has since become vast. Rohault's little book served for a while as a complete system of physics. Today, even all the publications of Europe's academies together do not amount to the beginning of a system. As people explored this abyss more deeply, it proved infinite. Now we must see what Mr. Newton has uncovered in its depths.

### Letter XV

History of Attraction

I will not give a mathematical explanation here of what is called attraction or gravitation. I will stick to the history of this new property of matter, which people guessed at long before Newton and which he demonstrated. In a way, that is the history of a new creation.

Copernicus, the Christopher Columbus of astronomy, had barely taught people the true arrangement of the universe, which had been misrepresented for so long. He had barely shown that the earth turns both on its own axis and through an immense space when all the scholars raised much the same objections that their predecessors had raised against the antipodes. Saint Augustine, denying that the antipodes existed, had said: “What? Would their heads be pointing down? Would they fall into the sky?” The scholars said to Copernicus: “If the earth turned on its axis, all its parts would break away and fall into the sky.” “The earth certainly turns,” Copernicus replied, “and its parts do not fly off. Some force must therefore direct them all toward the center of the earth. And this property probably exists in all heavenly bodies: in the sun, the moon, and the stars. Divine Providence gave it to matter.” That is how he puts it in his first book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, without daring, or perhaps being able, to go any further.

Kepler followed Copernicus and improved on his remarkable discovery of the true system of the world. He came a little closer to the theory of universal gravity. In his treatise on the planet Mars, you can see early, still poorly formed traces of the vein from which Newton extracted his gold. Kepler accepts not only that all earthly bodies tend toward the center, but also that the heavenly bodies tend toward one another. He even dares to suggest, and to say, that if the earth and the moon were not kept in their orbits, they would move toward one another and come together. So many obscurities and mistakes clouded this astonishing truth in his work that people have said he guessed it by instinct.

Meanwhile, the great Galileo began with a more mechanical principle. He examined how bodies fall to the earth and how, and by what proportion, their fall speeds up. Chancellor Bacon wanted experiments to test whether bodies fell in the same way at the greatest depths and the greatest heights that people could reach.

It is very strange that Descartes, the greatest geometer of his time, did not use this thread to find his way through the labyrinth he had built for himself. There is no trace of these truths in his work, so it is no surprise that he lost his way. He wanted to create a universe. He built a philosophy the way one writes a good novel: everything seemed plausible, and nothing was true. He imagined elements and vortices that seemed to offer a plausible explanation for every mystery of nature. But in philosophy we should distrust things we think we understand too easily as much as things we do not understand at all. Descartes was more dangerous than Aristotle because he appeared more reasonable. Mr. Conduit, Sir Newton's nephew, assured me that his uncle had read Descartes at the age of twenty. He marked the margins of the first pages, writing just one note over and over: “error.” But he grew tired of writing “error” everywhere, threw the book aside, and never read it again.

Newton had left behind the depths of theology in which he had been raised and turned to mathematical truths. By the age of twenty-three, he had already found his infinitesimal calculus, after his teacher Wallis had shown him the way. He was trying to find the secret, universal principle of nature that Copernicus, Kepler, and Bacon had pointed to and the famous Hooke had already grasped: the cause of gravity and of the motion of all matter. In 1666 he went to the countryside near Cambridge because of the plague. One day, as he walked in his garden and watched fruit falling from a tree, he fell into deep thought about gravity. Philosophers had searched in vain for its cause for so long, while ordinary people do not even suspect that there is a mystery in it. He said to himself: “No matter how high these bodies might fall from in our hemisphere, their fall would surely follow the progression Galileo discovered. The distances they covered would be proportional to the squares of the times. The force that makes heavy bodies descend shows no noticeable decrease, however deep we go into the earth or even on the highest mountain. Why should this force not reach as far as the moon? And if it really reaches that far, is it not very likely that it keeps the moon in its orbit and governs its motion? But if the moon obeys this principle, whatever it is, is it not also very reasonable to think that the other planets obey it too?”

“If this force exists, it must increase as the inverse square of the distance, as is proved on other grounds. So all that remains is to examine how far a heavy body falls toward the earth from a moderate height, and how far, in the same amount of time, a body would fall from the moon's orbit. To find out, we only need the size of the earth and the distance from the moon to the earth.”

That is how Mr. Newton reasoned. But at the time England had very inaccurate measurements of our planet. People relied on sailors' uncertain estimates: they allowed sixty English miles to a degree, when they should have allowed nearly seventy. Because this wrong figure did not agree with the conclusions Mr. Newton hoped to draw, he abandoned them. A lesser philosopher concerned only with his own vanity would somehow have made the earth's measurements fit his theory. Mr. Newton preferred to set his project aside. Later, Mr. Picart measured the earth accurately by plotting the meridian line that does France so much credit. Mr. Newton returned to his first ideas and found that Mr. Picart's figures worked. The other planets must obey this general law. And if the law exists, the planets must follow the rules Kepler discovered. The planets do indeed follow all these rules and relationships. His single principle of the laws of gravitation explains all the apparent irregularities in the movements of heavenly bodies. The variations in the moon's movement follow necessarily from these laws. The rise and fall of the sea are another very simple effect of this attraction. The moon's closeness when it is full or new, and its greater distance in its quarters, combined with the action of the sun, provide a clear explanation of the ocean's rise and fall.

After his remarkable theory had explained the movements and irregularities of the planets, he brought comets under the control of the same law.

He proves that comets are solid bodies moving within the range of the sun's action. They trace an ellipse so elongated and so close to a parabola that some comets must take more than five hundred years to complete an orbit.

The learned Mr. Halley believes that the comet of 1680 is the same one that appeared in the time of Julius Caesar. That comet, more than any other, helps show that comets are hard, opaque bodies. It came so close to the sun that it was only a sixth of the sun's diameter away. As a result, it must have reached a level of heat two thousand times more intense than that of the hottest glowing iron. It would have melted and been consumed in a short time if it had not been an opaque body. At the time, predicting the paths of comets was becoming fashionable. The famous mathematician Jacques Bernoulli concluded from his system that this famous comet of 1680 would return on May 17, 1719. No astronomer in Europe went to bed that night of May 17, but the famous comet did not appear. It takes at least more cleverness, if not more certainty, to give it five hundred and seventy-five years before its return. As for Mr. Wilston, he has seriously claimed that there was a comet at the time of the Flood that inundated our planet. He was unfair enough to be surprised when people made fun of him. The ancients thought much as Wilston does. They believed comets always came ahead of some great disaster on earth. Newton, on the contrary, suspects that comets are very beneficial. He thinks the vapors coming from them serve to replenish and revive the planets, which soak up along their paths all the particles the sun has drawn from the comets. His view is at least more likely than the other one.

There is more. If this force of gravitation or attraction acts on all heavenly bodies, it surely acts on every part of them. If bodies attract one another in proportion to their masses, that can only be because of the number of their parts. If this power resides in the whole, it must reside in half of it, in a quarter, in an eighth, and so on without end. Attraction, then, is the great driving force that sets all nature in motion.

After proving that this principle exists, Newton expected people to object to the name alone. In several places in his book he warns readers against misunderstanding attraction itself. He tells them not to confuse it with the hidden qualities invoked by the ancients. They should be satisfied to know that all bodies have a force directed toward a center. It acts across the universe on both the nearest and the farthest bodies, according to the unchanging laws of mechanics.

It is surprising that, despite this great philosopher's solemn statements, Mr. Saurin and Mr. de Fontenelle, who themselves deserve to be called philosophers, plainly accused him of the fantasies of Aristotelian philosophy. Mr. Saurin did so in the Academy's Memoirs of 1709, and Mr. de Fontenelle in his very tribute to Mr. Newton.

Almost everyone in France, scholars and others alike, has repeated the accusation. Everywhere one hears: “Why did Newton not use the word ‘impulsion,’ which we understand so well, instead of the word ‘attraction,’ which we do not understand?”

Newton could have answered these critics:

“First, you understand the word ‘impulsion’ no better than ‘attraction.’ If you cannot understand why a body moves toward the center of another body, you cannot imagine what power allows one body to push another either.

“Second, I could not accept impulsion. For that, I would have had to know that some heavenly matter really does push the planets. But not only do I know of no such matter; I have proved it does not exist.

“Third, I use the word ‘attraction’ only to describe an effect I have discovered in nature. It is a certain, undeniable effect of an unknown principle, a property inherent in matter. People more capable than I am may find its cause, if they can.”

“What have you taught us, then?” people keep asking. “Why make so many calculations to tell us something you yourself do not understand?”

“I have taught you,” Newton might continue, “that only the mechanics of forces directed toward centers make the planets and comets move in definite proportions. My case,” he would go on, “is quite different from that of the ancients. They saw, for example, that water rises in pumps, and they said: ‘Water rises because it hates a vacuum.’ But my position is like that of a person who first noticed that water rises in pumps and left it to others to explain why. The anatomist who first said that an arm moves because its muscles contract taught people an undeniable truth. Should we be any less grateful to him because he did not know why muscles contract? We do not know the cause of the springiness of air, but the person who discovered that springiness did physics a great service. The force I have discovered was more hidden and more universal, so I deserve still more thanks. I have discovered a property of matter, one of the Creator's secrets. I have calculated and proved its effects. Can you really quibble over the name I give it?”

Vortices are what one can call a hidden quality, since no one has ever proved they exist. Attraction, by contrast, is real: its effects can be demonstrated and their proportions calculated. The cause behind this cause lies with God. Come this far, and you will go no further.

### Letter XVI

On Newton's Optics

The philosophers of the last century discovered a new universe. This new world was all the harder to understand because no one had even suspected that it existed. The wisest people thought it rash even to imagine that we could discover the laws that govern how heavenly bodies move and how light works.

Galileo, through his astronomical discoveries, Kepler, through his calculations, Descartes, at least in his Optics, and Newton, in all his works, have seen the mechanics that drive the world. In geometry, infinity has been brought within the reach of calculation. The discovery that blood circulates in animals and sap in plants has changed our understanding of nature. The air pump has given bodies a new way of existing. Telescopes have brought objects closer to our eyes. Finally, what Newton discovered about light is as bold as anything human curiosity could have hoped for, even after so many new discoveries.

Until Antonio de Dominis, the rainbow had seemed an inexplicable miracle. This philosopher guessed that it was a necessary result of rain and sunshine. Descartes made his name immortal by explaining this perfectly natural event mathematically. He calculated how light is reflected in raindrops, and his insight seemed almost divine at the time.

But what would he have said if someone had told him that he was wrong about the nature of light? That he had no reason to insist it was made of tiny spheres? That it was false to say that this matter, spread throughout the universe, merely waits to be set in motion by a push from the sun, like a long stick that moves at one end when the other is pushed? That light is in fact sent out by the sun and takes nearly seven minutes to travel from the sun to the earth, while a cannonball, even if it kept up its speed, could travel that distance only in twenty-five years?

How surprised would he have been to hear someone say: “It is false that light is reflected directly by bouncing off the solid parts of a body. It is false that bodies are transparent when they have wide pores. A man will come who will prove these unlikely claims and take apart a single ray of light more skillfully than the best practitioner dissects the human body!”

He understood light so well that he determined the limits of what we can do to make it stronger and help our eyes with telescopes.

Descartes had a noble confidence, quite forgivable in light of his excitement at the beginnings of a field that he had almost discovered himself. He hoped that telescopes would let us see objects among the stars as small as those we can distinguish on earth.

Newton showed that telescopes cannot be improved any further because of refraction itself. Refraction brings objects closer to us but spreads the basic rays too far apart. He calculated how much the red and blue rays spread apart in these lenses. He even proved things whose existence no one had suspected. He examined the irregularities caused by the shape of the glass and those caused by the different refrangibility of the rays. He found that if the telescope's objective lens is convex on one side and flat on the other, with the flat side facing the object, the defect caused by the lens's shape and position is five thousand times smaller than the defect caused by refrangibility. So it is not the shape of the lenses that prevents further improvement of telescopes. The problem lies in the nature of light itself.

That is why he invented a telescope that shows objects by reflection rather than refraction.

He was still little known in Europe when he made this discovery. I saw a little book written around that time that calls him a maker of eyeglasses when it mentions Newton's telescope: “A certain English craftsman named Newton.” Later generations have more than made up for the slight.

### Letter XVII

On Infinity and Chronology

The maze and the bottomless depths of infinity are another new field that Newton explored. He gave us the thread that lets us find our way through it.

Descartes was once again a forerunner of this amazing discovery. He took great strides toward infinity in his geometry, but stopped at the edge. Around the middle of the last century, Mr. Wallis was the first to turn a fraction, by dividing it without end, into an infinite series.

Lord Brouncker used this series to find the area of the hyperbola.

Mercator published a proof of how to find this area. At about the same time, Newton, at the age of twenty-three, had invented a general method for doing with every curve what had just been tried with the hyperbola.

This method of bringing infinity everywhere within the reach of algebraic calculation is called differential calculus, or the calculus of fluxions, and integral calculus. It is the art of counting and measuring exactly what we cannot even imagine existing.

Really, wouldn't you think someone was making fun of you if they told you that infinitely long lines form an infinitely small angle?

Or that a straight line which remains straight as long as it is finite can change direction by an infinitely small amount and become an infinite curve? Or that one curve can become infinitely less curved?

Or that there are squares of infinity, cubes of infinity, and infinities of infinity, in which the next-to-last is nothing beside the last?

All this seems at first to be completely unreasonable. In fact, it shows how subtle and far-reaching the human mind can be. It is a way of finding truths that were unknown until then.

This daring structure is even based on simple ideas. The problems are to measure the diagonal of a square, to find the area bounded by a curve, and to find a square root for a number that has none in ordinary arithmetic.

After all, these many kinds of infinity should be no more shocking to the imagination than the familiar claim that you can always draw curves between a circle and a line tangent to it. Or than the claim that matter can always be divided. Both truths were proved long ago, and they are no easier to understand than the rest.

For a long time, people disputed Newton's claim to have invented this famous calculus. Mr. Leibnitz was regarded in Germany as the inventor of the differences that Newton calls fluxions, and Bernoulli claimed the integral calculus. But Newton kept the honor of having made the first discovery. The others kept the credit for having given people reason to wonder whether the discovery was theirs instead of his.

In the same way, people challenged Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, and Mr. Perrault's discovery of the circulation of sap. Hartsoeker and Leuvenhoeck disputed which of them first saw the tiny worms we are made of. The same Hartsoeker challenged Mr. Huyghens's claim to have invented a new way of calculating the distance of a fixed star. We still do not know which philosopher solved the problem of the cycloid.

Whatever the case, this geometry of infinity enabled Newton to reach his most remarkable insights.

I still have to tell you about another work of his that is easier for most people to understand. Yet it too shows the inventive mind that Newton brought to all his research: an entirely new chronology. In everything he undertook, he had to change the ideas other people had accepted. Used to bringing order to chaos, he wanted at least to shed some light on the chaos of ancient stories mixed up with history, and to establish a chronology that had been uncertain. It is true that every family, city, and nation tries to push its origins further back. Also, the earliest historians are the least careful about recording dates. Books were a thousand times less common than they are now. So people faced less criticism and could deceive the world more easily. Since events have plainly been invented, it is quite likely that dates have been invented too. In general, Newton thought the world was five hundred years younger than the experts in chronology say. He based this view on the ordinary course of nature and on astronomical observations.

By the course of nature here I mean the length of a human generation. The Egyptians were the first to use this uncertain way of counting. When they wanted to write the beginnings of their history, they counted three hundred and forty-one generations from Menes to Sethon. As they had no fixed dates, they gave three generations a hundred years. In this way, they counted eleven thousand three hundred and forty years from the reign of Menes to the reign of Sethon. Before the Greeks counted time by Olympiads, they followed the Egyptian method. They even made generations a little longer, stretching each one to forty years. But both the Egyptians and the Greeks got this calculation wrong. It is quite true that in the ordinary course of nature, three generations last about a hundred to a hundred and twenty years. But three reigns come nowhere near lasting so long. It is very clear that, in general, people live longer than kings reign. So anyone writing a history without exact dates who knows that a nation had nine kings would be very wrong to give those nine kings three hundred years. A generation lasts about thirty-six years; a reign about twenty, on average. Take the thirty kings of England from William the Conqueror to George I. They reigned for six hundred and forty-eight years. Divided among the thirty kings, that gives each one twenty-one and a half years on the throne. Sixty-three kings of France reigned for about twenty years each, on average. This is the ordinary course of nature. So the ancients were wrong when they generally made reigns as long as generations. They counted too many years, and it makes sense to reduce their totals a little.

Astronomical observations seem to give our philosopher even more help. He looks stronger when he is working in his own field.

You know that the earth moves around the sun from west to east over the course of a year. It also makes another unusual movement, one that people only suspected rather than understood until recent times. Its poles move very slowly backward, from east to west, so that from one day to the next their positions do not line up with exactly the same points in the sky. This difference is too small to notice in one year, but it grows over time. After seventy-two years, the difference amounts to one degree, or one three-hundred-and-sixtieth of the entire sky. Thus after seventy-two years, the circle through the poles and the spring equinox, which once passed through one fixed star, lines up with another fixed star one degree away. That is why the sun no longer lines up with the part of the sky where Aries stood in the time of Hipparchus. Instead it lines up with the part where Pisces stands, while Gemini has taken the place where Taurus stood then. All the signs have changed places. Yet we still speak as the ancients did. We say that the sun is in Aries in spring, just as we go along with saying that the sun turns.

Hipparchus was the first among the Greeks to notice some changes in where the constellations stood in relation to the equinoxes—or rather, to learn of them from the Egyptians. The philosophers attributed this motion to the stars. At that time, no one was close to imagining such a movement of the earth. They thought it stood still in every way. So they invented a sphere to which they attached all the stars. They gave that sphere a special movement that carried it eastward, while all the stars appeared to make their daily journey from east to west. To this mistake they added a second, much more important one: they thought their supposed sphere of fixed stars moved eastward by one degree every hundred years. So they were wrong in their astronomical calculations as well as in their physical theory. For example, an astronomer then might have said: “In the time of such-and-such an observer, the spring equinox was in a particular sign, at a particular star. It has moved two degrees between his time and ours. Two degrees represent two hundred years, so this observer lived two hundred years before me.” An astronomer reasoning this way would certainly have been wrong by about fifty years. These two mistakes led the ancients to make their great year of the world, the time for the entire sky to complete its revolution, about thirty-six thousand years long. But modern observers know that this imaginary revolution of the sphere of stars is really just the movement of the earth's poles, which takes twenty-five thousand nine hundred years. It is worth mentioning here that, by establishing the shape of the earth, Newton gave a very good explanation for this movement.

Given all this, to fix the chronology we need to see which star marks the point where the circle through the poles and the equinoxes crosses the ecliptic in spring today. We also need to know whether any ancient writer has told us where that same circle crossed the ecliptic in his own time.

Clement of Alexandria reports that Chiron, who took part in the Argonauts' expedition, observed the constellations during that famous expedition. He placed the spring equinox in the middle of Aries, the autumn equinox in the middle of Libra, our summer solstice in the middle of Cancer, and the winter solstice in the middle of Capricorn.

Long after the Argonauts' expedition, and one year before the Peloponnesian War, Meton observed that the point of the summer solstice passed through the eighth degree of Cancer.

Each sign of the zodiac has thirty degrees. In Chiron's time the solstice was halfway through the sign, at the fifteenth degree. One year before the Peloponnesian War, it was at the eighth degree. So it had moved back seven degrees. One degree represents seventy-two years. Therefore, between the beginning of the Peloponnesian War and the Argonauts' expedition there were only seven times seventy-two years, or five hundred and four years, not seven hundred as the Greeks said. By comparing the sky today with the sky then, we can see that the Argonauts' expedition should be placed about nine hundred years before Jesus Christ, not about fourteen hundred years before. As a result, the world is about five hundred years younger than people thought. This brings every date closer to us: everything happened later than people say. I do not know whether this clever theory will catch on, or whether people will agree to revise the chronology of the world on the basis of these ideas. Perhaps scholars would think it too much to give one man the honor of improving physics, geometry, and history all at once. That would be a kind of monarchy that their pride could hardly accept. Indeed, while supporters of vortices and grooved matter were attacking the proven theory of gravitation, Reverend Father Souciet and Mr. Fréret were writing against Newton's chronology before it had even been printed.

### Letter XVIII

On Tragedy

The English already had a theater, as the Spanish did, when the French still had nothing but makeshift stages. Shakespeare, whom the English regard as a Sophocles, flourished around the time of Lope de Vega. He created their theater. He had a powerful and fertile imagination, a natural touch, and a gift for the sublime, but not a spark of good taste or the slightest knowledge of the rules. I will say something bold but true: this writer's talent ruined the English theater. His monstrous farces, which people call tragedies, contain scenes of such beauty and passages so grand and terrifying that his plays have always been staged to great success. Time alone establishes people's reputations, and in the end it makes their faults respectable. After two hundred years, most of this writer's strange, enormous ideas have gained the right to be called sublime. Nearly all modern writers have copied him. But what worked in Shakespeare gets booed in their plays. You can imagine how much more the public reveres this old writer as it comes to despise the modern ones. People do not stop to think that he should not be imitated. His imitators' failures merely persuade them that he cannot be imitated.

You know that in the very moving tragedy The Moor of Venice, a husband strangles his wife onstage. Once the poor woman has been strangled, she cries out that she is dying very unjustly. You also know that in Hamlet, gravediggers dig a grave while drinking, singing popular songs, and making jokes about the heads of dead people they come across, the sort of jokes suited to their trade. But what will surprise you is that people have imitated these absurdities. Under Charles II, whose reign was an age of refinement and fine art, Otway puts the senator Antonio and his courtesan Naki into Venice Preserved amid the horrors of the Marquis of Bedmar's conspiracy. The old senator Antonio plays every silly trick of a senile, impotent libertine with his courtesan. He pretends to be a bull and a dog. He bites his mistress's legs, and she kicks and whips him. These clownish scenes, made for the lowest rabble, have been cut from Otway's play. But Shakespeare's Julius Caesar still includes the jokes of Roman shoemakers and cobblers brought onstage with Brutus and Cassius.

You will surely complain that the people who have talked to you so far about the English theater, especially about the famous Shakespeare, have shown you only his mistakes. No one has translated any of the striking passages that make up for all his faults. I would answer that it is very easy to recount a poet's nonsense in prose, but very hard to translate his fine verse. All those who set themselves up as critics of famous writers compile volumes. I would rather have two pages that showed us a few beautiful passages. I will always insist, along with everyone of good taste, that we have more to gain from twelve lines of Homer and Virgil than from every critique ever written about those two great men.

I have ventured to translate a few passages from the best English poets. Here is one from Shakespeare. Forgive the copy for the sake of the original. Whenever you look at a translation, remember that you are looking at a faint print of a beautiful painting.

I have chosen the monologue from the tragedy Hamlet, which everyone knows and which begins with these lines:

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Hamlet, prince of Denmark, is speaking:

Wait; I must choose, and in a moment pass

From life to death, from being into nothing.

Just gods, if there are any, give me courage.

Must I grow old beneath the hand that wrongs me,

Endure my wretched fate, or end it now?

Who am I? What holds me back? And what is death?

The end of all our troubles, my one refuge;

After such long distress, a peaceful sleep.

We fall asleep, and everything dies. But perhaps

A terrible awakening follows that sweet sleep.

We are warned that this brief life is followed

At once by everlasting pain.

O death! Fatal moment! Frightening eternity!

Your very name freezes every heart with fear.

And without you, who could bear this life,

Praise the hypocrisy of powerful cheats,

Flatter the faults of an unworthy lover,

Grovel before a minister, worship his rank,

And show the pain of a crushed spirit

To ungrateful friends who look away?

Death would be too sweet amid these trials.

But our scruples speak and shout, “Stop.”

They forbid our hands that welcome act of self-killing

And turn a warrior hero into a timid Christian, etc.

After this passage of poetry, readers are asked to look at the literal translation:

To be or not to be: that is the question:

Is it nobler in the mind to suffer

The stings and arrows of dreadful fortune,

Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles

And, by resisting them, end them? To die, to sleep,

Nothing more, and by that sleep to say: We end

The pains of the heart and ten thousand natural shocks

That flesh inherits. This is an ending

We should long for. To die, to sleep:

To sleep, perhaps to dream? Ah, there is the problem!

For what dreams will come in that sleep of death

When we have cast off this mortal covering?

That gives us pause; that is the reason

Why misery lasts so long:

For who would bear the blows and insults of time,

The wrongs of an oppressor, the scorn of the proud,

The anguish of rejected love, the delays of justice,

The insolence of people in high office, and the insults

That patient merit takes from the unworthy,

When a person could settle the account

With a simple pin? Who would carry these burdens,

Sobbing and sweating through a weary life?

But the fear of something after death,

That unknown country from whose borders

No traveler returns, confuses our will

And makes us bear the troubles we have

Rather than run toward others we do not know.

Thus conscience makes cowards of us all;

Thus the natural color of resolve

Is dulled by the pale shades of thought;

And the most important enterprises,

Through this hesitation, are diverted from their course

And lose the name of action…

Do not think I have translated the English word for word here. Pity those who make literal translations: they translate each word and drain the meaning of its strength! Here, if anywhere, we can say that the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Here is another passage from a famous English tragedian. It is by Dryden, a poet of Charles II's time, more prolific than discerning. His reputation would be spotless if he had written only a tenth of his works.

The passage begins like this:

When I consider life, it's all a cheat,

Yet fooled by hope men favor the deceit.

From plans to regrets, from mistakes to desires,

Foolish mortals carry their folly around.

Amid present troubles, hoping for pleasure,

We never live; we wait for life to begin.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, we say, will grant our every wish;

Tomorrow comes and leaves us unhappier still.

What a mistake, alas, to let care consume us!

None of us would want to start our course again:

We curse the dawn of our earliest days,

Yet we still expect from the coming night

What the best of our days promised us in vain, etc.

So far, English tragedians have excelled in these isolated passages. Nearly all their plays are barbaric, lacking propriety, order, and plausibility. Yet surprising flashes of light break through the darkness. Their style is too inflated, too far from nature, too closely copied from Hebrew writers, who are so full of Asian extravagance. But the stilts of figurative language that lift English so unnaturally also raise the mind very high, even if its steps are uneven.

At times nature itself seems to work differently in England than elsewhere. In his farce Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, which he calls a tragedy, Dryden has an officer speak to that monarch like this:

KING SEBASTIAN.

Don't you know me, insolent traitor?

ALONZE.

Me? I know you very well, but not as my king.

You are no longer in Lisbon, where your contemptible court

Fed your heart's unbearable pride.

A mob of celebrated fools and titled crooks,

Fashionable beggars and slaves dressed in gold,

Flattered your ears and dazzled your eyes.

They stood around you in a circle, as around a statue.

When you said a word, everyone strained to applaud

Before even hearing what you said.

And that servile flock silently admired

Your royal stupidity and noble arrogance.

But now you are reduced to what you're really worth…

That speech is a little English, and the play as a whole is ridiculous. How, our critics ask, can so much absurdity coexist with so much good sense, so much vulgarity with such greatness? Nothing is easier to understand: remember that human beings wrote these plays. The Spanish stage has all the faults of the English one, and perhaps none of its beauties. And honestly, what about the Greeks? What about Euripides? In the same play, he paints so moving and noble a picture of Alcestis sacrificing herself for her husband, yet puts such crude childish talk into the mouths of Admetus and his father that even the commentators are at a loss. You have to be very bold not to find that Homer sometimes sleeps a little too long, and that the dreams he has while sleeping are rather dull. It takes many centuries for good taste to become refined. Among the Romans, Virgil was the first, and among the French, Racine, whose taste remained pure throughout their great works.

Mr. Addison is the first Englishman to have written a sensible tragedy. I would feel sorry for him if he had put nothing but sense into it. His tragedy Cato is written from beginning to end with the strong, vigorous elegance of which Corneille first gave us such fine examples in his uneven style. This play seems to me made for a somewhat philosophical and deeply republican audience. I doubt our young ladies and fashionable young men would have liked Cato in his dressing gown, reading Plato's dialogues and reflecting on the immortality of the soul. But people who rise above the customs, prejudices, and weaknesses of their nation, who belong to all ages and all countries, and who prefer philosophical greatness to declarations of love, will be glad to find here a copy, imperfect though it is, of this sublime passage. In this fine monologue of Cato's, Addison seems to have wanted to rival Shakespeare. I will translate one as I translated the other: freely. Trying too hard to resemble the original would take me too far from it. The basic meaning is very faithful; I add few details. I had to go further than he did because I could not equal him.

Yes, Plato, you speak the truth; our soul is immortal.

A god speaks to it, a god living within it.

Without him, where would this great feeling come from,

This dislike of false goods, this fear of nothingness?

I feel you drawing me toward endless ages.

I will break the chains of the world and of my senses

And, far from a body stuck in the mud, open

The gates of life and eternity.

Eternity! What a comforting and frightening word!

O light! O cloud! O dreadful depth!

What am I? Where am I? Where am I going? Where did I come from?

Into what new lands, what unknown world,

Will the moment of death plunge my being?

Where will this spirit be, which cannot know itself?

What do you hold for me, dark abysses?

Come, if there is a god, Cato must find happiness.

There certainly is one, and I am his creation.

He himself stamps his image on the heart of the just.

He must defend his cause and punish the wicked.

But how? When? And in what universe?

Here virtue weeps, and the bold oppress it;

Innocence kneels and offers its throat to crime.

Fortune rules here, and everything follows her chariot.

This unhappy world was made for Caesar.

Let us hurry out of this deadly prison:

I shall see you without shadows, heavenly truth!

You hide from us during our days of sleep.

This life is a dream, and death an awakening.

In this tragedy about a patriot and philosopher, Cato's role seems to me one of the finest characters on any stage. I think Addison's Cato is far superior to Pierre Corneille's Cornelia. He is great at every moment without being pompous. Cornelia's role, besides being unnecessary to the play, sounds too much like grandstanding in places. She always wants to be a heroine, but Cato never realizes he is a hero.

It is very sad that something so beautiful is not a beautiful tragedy. Disconnected scenes that often leave the stage empty, long and clumsy asides, cold and dull love affairs, a conspiracy that adds nothing to the play, and a certain Sempronius who is disguised and killed onstage: all these make the famous tragedy Cato a play our actors would never dare perform, even if we thought like the Romans or the English. The barbarity and irregularity of the London stage have found their way into Addison's good sense. I seem to see Tsar Peter, who still kept something of his upbringing and his country's customs even as he reformed the Russians.

The custom of putting love into dramatic works whether it belongs there or not traveled from Paris to London around the year 1660, along with our ribbons and wigs. Women, who adorn the theater there as they do here, no longer want to hear about anything but love. The wise Addison weakly gave in to the tastes of his time, bending his stern nature and spoiling a masterpiece because he wanted to please.

Since then, plays have become more orderly, audiences more demanding, and writers more correct but less daring. I have seen new plays that are very sensible but cold. So far the English seem fit only to produce irregular beauties. Shakespeare's brilliant monsters please people a thousand times more than modern restraint. Up to now the English poetic genius has been like a dense tree planted by nature. It throws out a thousand branches at random and grows strongly but unevenly. It dies if you try to change its nature and prune it into one of the garden trees at Marly.

### Letter XIX

On Comedy

If heroes in most English tragedies are pompous and heroines are extravagant, at least the style is more natural in comedy. But we would often find that naturalness more like indecency than good manners. They call everything by its name. A woman angry with her lover wishes him the p…… An actor playing a drunkard in a play performed every day disguises himself as a priest, causes a disturbance, and is arrested by the watch. He says he is a parish priest. Someone asks him if he has a parish living; he replies that he has an excellent cure for the c…… One of the most decent comedies, called The Careless Husband, begins with this husband having a servant scratch his head as she sits beside him. His wife comes in and cries, “What authority you can gain by being a w……!” Some cynics defend such crude expressions. They appeal to Horace, who calls every part of the human body and all the pleasures it gives by name. We prefer to keep such images veiled. But Horace seems as well suited to brothels as to court, and understands the customs of both worlds perfectly. He speaks as openly about what a respectable man can do with a young girl when he needs to as he would about a walk or a supper. People add that Romans in Augustus's day were as polite as Parisians, and that Horace himself praised Emperor Augustus for reforming morals. Yet he followed, without shame, the custom of his century, which allowed girls, boys, and plain names for things. How strange, if anything could be strange, that Horace became a reformer's favorite by using the language of debauchery, while Ovid was exiled for using the language of courtship by a libertine, a cheat, and a murderer named Octavius, who reached the throne through crimes deserving the harshest punishment.

Whatever the case, Bayle claims that the words used make no difference. He, the cynics, and the Stoics seem wrong about this. Each thing has different names that show it in different lights and give us very different ideas of it. A magistrate is not a petty lawyer, a gentleman is not a pretentious imitation of one, an officer is not a swindler, and a religious person is not the same as a monk. A priest, a husband, a doctor, and a young man in love will each speak differently of consummating a marriage and everything that helps bring it about. The young man's word will suggest an image of pleasure. The doctor's terms will call up only anatomical diagrams. The husband will say decently what the indiscreet young man says boldly. The priest will try to convey the idea of a sacrament. Words do matter, then, since there are no synonyms.

We should also consider that, although the Romans allowed crude language in satires read by only a few people, they did not tolerate indecent words onstage. As La Fontaine says,

Ears remain chaste,

Even when eyes behave badly.

In short, no word should be spoken in public that a respectable woman could not repeat.

The English have taken, disguised, and spoiled most of Molière's plays. They tried to write a Tartuffe. That subject could never succeed in London, for people hardly enjoy portraits of people they do not know. One of the great advantages of the English nation is that it has no Tartuffes. To have false devotees, it would first need real ones. The very word “devout” is hardly known there, though people often speak of “a decent man.” You find no fools putting their souls in other people's hands, nor those petty climbers who set up despotic power over a few women in one part of town, women once involved in love affairs and still weak, and over a few men even weaker and more contemptible. Philosophy, freedom, and climate lead to misanthropy. London, which has no Tartuffes, is full of Timons. So The Misanthrope, or The Plain Dealer, is one of London's good comedies. It was written while Charles II and his brilliant court were trying to rid the nation of its gloomy temper. Wicherley, who wrote it, was openly the lover of the Duchess of Cleveland, the king's mistress. This man spent his life among high society and painted its absurdities and weaknesses in the strongest colors. The points made in Wicherley's play are bolder than Molière's, but also less subtle and less proper. The English writer corrected the only flaw in Molière's play: it lacks a plot and anything to hold the audience's interest. The English play does hold our interest, and its plot is clever, but it is too daring for our customs.

Its hero is a ship's captain, brave and honest but contemptuous of humanity. He has a wise and sincere friend whom he distrusts, and a woman who loves him dearly whom he does not even bother to look at. Instead, he puts all his trust in a false friend, the most unworthy man alive, and gives his heart to the most flirtatious and treacherous of women. He is quite sure that this woman is a Penelope and the false friend a Cato. He leaves to fight the Dutch, entrusting all his money, jewels, and everything else he owns to this virtuous woman. He also places the woman herself in the care of that faithful friend, whom he trusts so deeply. Meanwhile, the truly honest man whom he distrusts so much boards the ship with him. The woman he has not even deigned to look at disguises herself as a page and goes along. The captain does not notice her sex throughout the whole campaign.

After blowing up his ship during a battle, the captain returns to London without help, without a ship, and without money, accompanied by his page and his friend. He knows neither the friend's loyalty nor the page's love. He goes straight to that pearl among women, expecting to find her still there with his money box and her fidelity. He finds her married to the upright crook he had trusted. Neither his deposit nor anything else has been kept for him. My man finds it terribly hard to believe a virtuous woman could play such tricks. To convince him all the better, this fine lady falls in love with the little page and tries to take the page by force. But justice must be done, and in a play vice must be punished and virtue rewarded. So in the end the captain takes the page's place, sleeps with his unfaithful lover, makes a cuckold of his treacherous friend, runs a sword right through his body, gets his money box back, and marries his page. You will notice that the play also has a Countess of Pimbesche thrown in: an old woman who loves lawsuits and is related to the captain. She really is the funniest creature and the best character on the stage.

Wicherley also took from Molière another play no less unusual or daring. It is a sort of School for Wives.

The main character is a rogue with a string of lovers, the terror of London's husbands. To make his affairs safer, he decides to spread a rumor that, during his last illness, surgeons thought it best to make him a eunuch. With this fine reputation, all the husbands bring their wives to him. The poor man now has only the difficulty of choosing among them. He especially favors a young country woman with a great deal of innocence and passion. She makes a cuckold of her husband with a sincerity better than the scheming of the most experienced ladies. You may say this play is not a school for good morals. But it truly is a school for wit and good comedy.

A knight named Van Brugh wrote comedies that were even funnier but less inventive. This knight loved pleasure and was also a poet and an architect. People say that he wrote as delicately and elegantly as he built crudely. He built the famous Blenheim Palace, a heavy, lasting monument to our unfortunate battle of Hochstedt. If its rooms were only as wide as its walls are thick, it would be a comfortable building.

Van Brugh's epitaph says that people hoped the earth would not lie lightly on him, since during his life he had so mercilessly loaded it down. This knight made a trip to France before the fine war of 1701. He was put in the Bastille and stayed there for some time, never able to find out what had earned him this distinction from our ministers. He wrote a comedy in the Bastille. What seems very strange to me is that the play contains not one attack on the country where he suffered this abuse.

Of all the English, the man who has done the most for the reputation of comedy is the late Mr. Congreve. He wrote only a few plays, but all are excellent in their kind. They follow the rules of theater strictly. They are full of characters drawn with extreme subtlety. You will not find a single bad joke in them. Everywhere you hear decent people's language alongside crooks' behavior. This shows how well he knew his world and that he moved in what is called good society.

His plays are the wittiest and most precise; Van Brugh's are the most cheerful, and Wicherley's are the strongest.

It is worth noting that none of these talented writers spoke badly of Molière. Only bad English writers have said anything bad about this great man.

For the rest, do not ask me to give even the smallest details of these English plays, which I admire so much, or to quote a witty line or a joke by Wicherley or Congreve. No one laughs at a joke in translation. If you want to know English comedy, there is only one way: go to London, stay there three years, learn English well, and go to a play every day. I do not take much pleasure in reading Plautus and Aristophanes. Why? Because I am neither Greek nor Roman. The fine points of wit, the allusions, and the right timing are all lost on a foreigner.

Tragedy is different. It deals only with great passions and heroic follies made familiar by old errors in myth or history. Oedipus and Electra belong to the Spanish, the English, and us, just as they belong to the Greeks. But good comedy is a vivid picture, with people talking, of a nation's absurdities. Unless you know the nation thoroughly, you can hardly judge the picture.

People criticize the English for stages that are often bloody and strewn with dead bodies. They criticize their gladiators, who fight half naked in front of young girls and sometimes leave missing a nose and a cheek. The English say in defense that they imitate the Greeks in the art of tragedy and the Romans in the art of cutting off noses. But their theater is rather far from the theater of Sophocles and Euripides. As for the Romans, we must admit that a nose and a cheek are very little compared with the crowds of victims who slaughtered one another in the arena for the pleasure of Roman ladies.

They have sometimes had dances in their comedies, and these dances have been allegories of an unusual kind. In 1709, despotic power and republican government were represented by a very elegant dance. First you saw a king who, after a jump, gave his chief minister a mighty kick in the backside. The minister gave the same kick to a second man, the second to a third, and the man who got the last kick represented the mass of the nation. He had nobody to kick in turn. It was all done in time to the music. Republican government was shown by a round dance in which everyone gave and received kicks equally. And this is the country that produced people like Addison, Pope, Locke, and Newton!

### Letter XX

On Noblemen Who Cultivate Literature

There was a time in France when the leading people of the state cultivated the fine arts. Courtiers especially took part, despite the distractions, the taste for trivial things, and the passion for intrigue—all the gods of that country.

It seems to me that the court now has a taste for everything except literature. Perhaps it will soon become fashionable to think again. A king only has to want it: he can make this nation do whatever he wishes. In England, people generally think, and literature is held in higher regard than in France. This advantage follows directly from the form of their government. In London, about eight hundred people have the right to speak in public and defend the nation's interests. Around five or six thousand hope to have the same honor in their turn. Everyone else sets themselves up as judges of these people, and anyone can print their thoughts on public affairs. The whole nation therefore has to become informed. People talk constantly of the governments of Athens and Rome. However unwillingly, one has to read the authors who wrote about them. Such reading naturally leads to literature. In general, people's minds are shaped by their work. Why do our judges, lawyers, doctors, and many clergymen usually have more learning, taste, and intelligence than people in all other professions? Because cultivating the mind is truly part of their work, just as knowing his business is part of a merchant's work. Not long ago, a very young English lord visited me in Paris on his way back from Italy. He had written a description of that country in verse, as finely written as anything by the Earl of Rochester or our own Chaulieu, Sarrasin, and Chapelle.

My translation is so far from matching the original's force and good humor that I must sincerely apologize to the author and to those who know English. Still, I have no other way to introduce Lord Harvey's verses, so here they are in my language:

What did I see, then, in Italy?

Pride, cunning, and poverty,

Grand compliments, little kindness,

And a great deal of ceremony;

The outrageous comedy

That the Inquisition often demands

We call religion,

But that here we call madness.

Nature generously tries in vain

To enrich these lovely places;

The priests' destructive hands

Crush her finest gifts.

The monsignors, who call themselves great,

Alone in their splendid palaces,

Are celebrated idlers there,

Without money or servants.

As for ordinary people, without freedom,

Suffering under the yoke that rules them,

They have taken a vow of poverty,

Praying to God because they have nothing to do,

And always fasting because they are starving.

These lovely lands, blessed by the pope,

Seem to be home to devils,

And their miserable inhabitants

Are damned in paradise.

I do not agree with Lord Harvey. Some places in Italy are very unfortunate because foreigners have long been fighting over who will govern them. But in others, people are neither as poor nor as foolish as he says.

### Letter XXI

On the Count of Rochester and Mr. Waller

Everyone knows the Count of Rochester's reputation. Mr. de Saint-Évremond has said a great deal about him. But he has shown us only the pleasure seeker and the successful lover in the famous Rochester. I want to show the man of genius and the great poet. Among other works that show his uniquely fiery imagination, he wrote some satires on the same subjects our famous Despréaux had chosen. I know nothing more useful for improving one's taste than comparing great minds who have worked on the same subjects.

Here is how Mr. Despréaux speaks against human reason in his satire on man:

Yet look at him, full of passing fancies,

Rocking himself with his own illusions.

He alone is nature's foundation and support,

And the tenth Heaven turns only for him.

He is master of all the animals here.

Who could deny it, you go on to ask?

Perhaps I could.

This supposed master who gives them laws,

This king of the animals—how many kings does he have?

Here is roughly how the Count of Rochester puts it in his satire on man. But readers must always remember that these are free translations of English poets. The constraints of our verse and the delicate standards of our language cannot match the forceful freedom of English style.

That mind I hate, that mind so full of error,

Is not my reason, Doctor. It is yours.

It is your shallow, restless, proud reason,

Which looks down on wise animals as its rivals,

Believes it holds a place between them and the Angel,

And thinks itself God's image here on earth.

A vile, troublesome atom, it believes, doubts, argues,

Crawls, rises, falls, and still denies its fall.

It tells us, “I am free,” while showing us its chains,

And its clouded, false eye thinks it sees through the Universe.

Go on, reverend fools, happy fanatics!

Keep compiling your heaps of scholastic nonsense!

Fathers of visions and sacred riddles,

Makers of the maze in which you lose your way,

Go explain your mysteries in obscure terms,

And hurry to the school to worship your illusions!

There are other errors. There are devotees

Who condemn themselves to the boredom of rest.

That cloistered mystic, proud of his idleness,

At peace in God's embrace—what can he do there? He thinks.

No, miserable man, you do not think. You sleep,

Useless to the earth and counted among the dead.

Your weakened mind rots in its ease.

Wake up, be a man, and shake off your daze.

Man was born to act, and you claim to think!

Whether these ideas are true or false, they are certainly expressed with the power that makes a poet.

I will be careful not to examine the matter as a philosopher and trade my paintbrush for a compass here. My only purpose in this letter is to introduce the genius of the English poets.

People in France have heard a great deal about the famous Waller. Messrs. de La Fontaine, Saint-Évremond, and Bayle have praised him, but all that people know of him is his name. He had about the same reputation in London that Voiture had in Paris, and I think he deserved it more. Voiture came along when people were emerging from barbarism but were still ignorant. They wanted to be clever but did not yet know how. They looked for verbal tricks instead of ideas. Fake gems are easier to find than precious stones. Voiture, born with an easy, frivolous talent, was the first to shine in that dawn of French literature. If he had come after the great men who made the age of Louis XIV famous, he would either have been unknown, or mentioned only with contempt, or he would have changed his style. Mr. Despréaux praises him, but only in his earliest satires, when Despréaux's taste had not yet developed. He was young, at an age when people judge others by their reputations rather than for themselves. Besides, Despréaux was often quite unfair in both praise and criticism. He praised Segrais, whom no one reads. He insulted Quinault, whom everyone knows by heart. And he said nothing about La Fontaine. Waller was better than Voiture, but still not perfect. His love poems have grace, but carelessness makes them drag, and false ideas often spoil them. In his day, the English had not yet learned to write correctly. His serious works have a vigor you would not expect from the softness of his other pieces. He wrote a funeral tribute to Cromwell which, despite its faults, is considered a masterpiece. To understand it, you must know that Cromwell died on the day of an extraordinary storm.

The piece begins like this:

He is gone. It is done. Let us submit to fate.

Heaven has marked this day with storms,

And the thunder's voice, bursting over our heads,

                    Has just announced his death.

With his last breaths he shakes this island,

This island his arm so often made tremble

                    When, in the course of his exploits,

                    He broke the heads of kings

And forced a people to obey his yoke alone.

Sea, you have been thrown into turmoil. O sea! Your stirred-up waves

Seem to tell the farthest shores with their roar

That the terror of the earth, and your master, is gone.

So Romulus once rose to Heaven,

So he left the earth amid storms,

So he received the homage of a warrior people:

Obeyed in life, worshiped after death,

His palace became a temple, etc.

It was in connection with this tribute to Cromwell that Waller gave King Charles second the reply recorded in Bayle's dictionary. Waller had just presented the king with a piece stuffed with praise, as kings and poets customarily expect. The king reproached him for having done better for Cromwell. Waller replied, “Sire, we poets do better with fiction than with truth.” That answer was not as sincere as the Dutch ambassador's. When the same king complained that he received less consideration than Cromwell had, the ambassador replied, “Ah, Sire, that Cromwell was quite another matter.” There are courtiers even in England, and Waller was one. But after people die, I consider only their works. Everything else has vanished for me. I will simply note that Waller, born at court with an income of sixty thousand livres a year, never had the foolish pride or the laziness to give up his talent. The Counts of Dorset and Roscommon, the two Dukes of Buckingham, Lord Halifax, and many others did not think it beneath them to become great poets and distinguished writers. Their works bring them more honor than their names. They worked at literature as if their fortunes depended on it. They also made the arts respectable in the eyes of ordinary people. In everything, the people need to be led by the great, though in England they follow their lead less than anywhere else in the world.

### Letter XXII

On Mr. Pope and Some Other Famous Poets

People in France did not imagine that Prior was a poet. He came on Queen Anne's behalf to offer peace to Louis XIV before Baron Bolingbroke came to sign it. No one guessed, I say, that this envoy was a poet. France later paid England back in kind. Cardinal Dubois sent our Destouches to London, and the English thought him no more of a poet than the French thought Prior. Prior the envoy had originally been a tavern boy. The Count of Dorset, himself a good poet and something of a drunk, once found him reading Horace on a tavern bench. In the same way, Lord Aila found his gardener's boy reading Newton. Aila made the gardener a good mathematician, and Dorset made the tavern boy a very agreeable poet.

Prior wrote the History of the Soul. It is the most natural account written so far of this being that we feel so clearly and know so poorly. At first the soul is at the ends of the body, in children's feet and hands. From there it gradually moves to the middle of the body at puberty. Next it rises to the heart, where it produces feelings of love and heroism. At a more mature age it rises to the head. There it reasons as best it can. In old age, no one knows what becomes of it. It is like the sap of an old tree, evaporating and no longer renewed. Perhaps this work is too long. Every joke should be short, and even serious writing would do well to be short too.

The same Prior wrote a short poem about the famous battle of Hochstedt. It is not as good as his History of the Soul. Its only good part is this address to Boileau:

Flattering satirist, you who worked so hard

To sing that Louis did not cross the Rhine.

Our envoy ended by expanding into fifteen hundred lines these words attributed to Solomon: All is vanity. One could write fifteen thousand on the subject. But pity the person who says everything he can say.

At last Queen Anne died, the government changed, and the peace Prior had begun became hated. His only recourse was to publish an edition of his works by subscription among members of his party. After that he died like a philosopher, as every respectable Englishman dies or thinks he dies.

I would also like to give some idea of the poems of Lord Roscommon and Lord Dorset. But I can see that I would have to write a large book. Even after much work, I would give you only a very incomplete idea of all these works. Poetry is a kind of music: you have to hear it to judge it. When I translate some passages from these foreign poems for you, I make an imperfect notation of their music. But I cannot convey the quality of their song.

There is an English poem that is hard to explain to foreigners. It is called Hudibras. It is entirely comic, yet its subject is the civil war in Cromwell's time. What caused so much bloodshed and so many tears has produced a poem that forces even the most serious reader to laugh. There is an example of this contrast in our Satyre Ménippée. The Romans certainly would not have written a burlesque poem about the wars of Caesar and Pompey or the proscriptions of Octave and Antony. Why, then, could the terrible disasters caused by the League in France, and by the wars between king and Parliament in England, become material for jokes? Because these deadly conflicts had something ridiculous hidden underneath them. The citizens of Paris who led the faction of the Sixteen mixed absurdity with the horrors of factional fighting. The plots of women, papal envoys, and monks had a comic side despite the disasters they brought about. The theological arguments and the puritans' zeal in England were easy to mock. Once brought out and separated from the tragic horrors that covered it, this underlying absurdity could become funny. If the bull Unigenitus caused blood to be shed, the little poem Philotaus would still suit the subject. The only criticism one could make is that it is not as lively, funny, or varied as it could be. The body of the work fails to deliver what its beginning promises.

The poem Hudibras, which I have been telling you about, seems to combine the Satyre Ménippée and Don Quixote. It has the advantage over them of being in verse. It also has wit. The Satyre Ménippée comes nowhere near it on that score; it is a very mediocre work. But the author of Hudibras has managed, through an excess of wit, to fall far below Don Quixote. Taste, naturalness, the art of storytelling, skill at weaving adventures together, and knowing when not to overdo things are worth much more than wit. That is why people of every nation read Don Quixote, while only the English read Hudibras.

The author of this very unusual poem was named Butler. He lived at the same time as Milton and had a far greater reputation, because he was funny and Milton's poem was very gloomy. Butler made the enemies of King Charles II look ridiculous. His only reward was that the king often quoted his verses. The battles of the knight Hudibras were better known than the battles of the angels and devils in Paradise Lost. But the English court treated the funny Butler no better than the heavenly court treated the serious Milton. Both nearly starved to death.

The hero of Butler's poem was not an invented character like Michel Cervantes's Don Quixote. He was a real knight and baronet who had been one of Cromwell's zealots and one of his colonels. His name was Sir Samuel Luke. To give an idea of the spirit of this one-of-a-kind poem, one must cut three-quarters of any passage one wants to translate, because Butler never stops. So I have reduced the first four hundred lines of Hudibras to about eighty, to avoid going on too long.

When the profane and the holy

Were fighting each other in England,

When they fought over churches

As fiercely as over prostitutes,

When Anglicans and puritans

Were waging such a bitter war,

And, straight out of the tavern,

The orators of Nazareth

Went to beat the drum in the pulpit,

When everywhere, without knowing why,

In heaven's name, in the king's name,

Armed men covered the land,

Then the noble knight,

Long idle, like Achilles,

Full of holy anger,

Followed by his great squire,

Escaped from his chicken coop

With his saber and the Gospel

And decided to go to war.

Sir Hudibras, that remarkable man,

Was, they say, full of honor.

He had brains and courage,

But was very stingy with both.

Besides, he had a rare talent:

He was as fit for the law courts

As for cruel warfare.

Great on the bench, great in the saddle,

In camp and at a desk alike,

Like those amphibious rats

Which seem to have two lives,

Being field rats and water rats.

But despite his great eloquence,

His ability, and his good sense,

Some learned people took him

For one of those tools

That crooks cleverly use

Without saying a word

And turn any way they please:

The tool is called a fool.

Not that he was not an expert

In theology, logic, and astrology.

He could split one hair into four,

Argue without ever giving in,

Suddenly change the question,

And always speak at length

When no one was meant to understand.

Hudibras's religion

Was just like his reason:

Meaningless and very deep.

It was divine puritanism,

The finest sect in the world,

And certainly not human at all.

The true church militant,

Which preaches with a pistol in hand,

Uses heavy saber blows as arguments

To convert its neighbors more effectively,

And promises heavenly rewards

Through the gallows and the rope.

It damns other Christians' sins

Without a trace of mercy,

So it can pardon its own more easily.

Always bent on destruction,

The sect finally destroys itself.

So Samson, with his mighty hand,

Broke the Philistine temple,

But died in taking his revenge.

He himself was buried,

Crushed in the great collapse

Of the temple he tore down.

From the old knight's nose

Hung two large mustaches,

To which the Fates had tied

The fate of the republic.

He guarded them carefully.

If ever they were torn away,

Parliament would fall.

The entire State, at that moment,

Would fall with his mustache.

So Taliacotius,

The great doctor of Etruria,

Restored every lost nose

By a new technique:

He would skillfully take

A piece of a poor man's backside

And neatly fit it to the nose.

At last it turned out that

The borrower's nose fell off

Just when the lender died.

Often, in the same coffin,

By justice and mutual agreement,

They put the nose, as the dead man wished,

Back beside his backside.

Our great hero of Albion,

Mounted on his broken-down horse

To avenge religion,

Had fastened to his saddle bow

Two pistols and some ham.

But he had only one spur.

That had always been his way.

He knew that if the heel spur

Prodded one half of the horse,

The animal's other half

Would not stay behind.

So Hudibras set off.

May God bless his journey,

His arguments and his party,

His red beard and his courage!

Anyone with a tenth of the comic imagination, good or bad, that runs through this work would still be very funny. But he would take care not to translate Hudibras. How could you make foreign readers laugh at absurdities already forgotten even by the nation where they were once famous? Dante is no longer read across Europe because everything in him alludes to events people do not know. The same goes for Hudibras. Most of this book's jokes target the theology and theologians of its day. You would need a commentary at every turn. Once a joke is explained, it stops being funny. And a commentator on jokes is hardly likely to make any of his own.

That is why people in France will never fully understand the books of the clever Dr. Swift, whom they call the Rabelais of England. Like Rabelais, he has the honor of being a priest and making fun of everything. But Rabelais did not rise above his century, whereas Swift stands far above Rabelais. Our priest of Meudon filled his wild, unintelligible book with great high spirits and still greater foolishness. He piled on learning, filth, and boredom. To get one good two-page story you have to buy volumes of nonsense. Only a few people with odd tastes pride themselves on understanding and admiring the whole work. The rest of the nation laughs at Rabelais's jokes and despises the book. People see him as the leading clown. They regret that a man with so much talent made such poor use of it. He is a drunken philosopher who wrote only while drunk.

Mr. Swift is Rabelais in his right mind and at ease in good company. He does not, it is true, have the same high spirits. But he has all the subtlety, reason, judgment, and good taste that our priest of Meudon lacks. His verse has a distinctive style that is almost impossible to imitate. He excels at good jokes in both verse and prose. But to understand him properly, you must take a little trip to his country.

In that country, which seems so strange to part of Europe, people have not found it too strange that the Reverend Swift, dean of a cathedral, mocked Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism in his Tale of a Tub. His defense is that he did not touch Christianity. He claims to have respected the father while giving his three children a hundred lashes each. Some hard-to-please people thought the switches were so long they reached the father too.

The famous Tale of a Tub imitates the old story of the three indistinguishable rings a father left to his three children. Those three rings were the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions. It also imitates Fontenelle's History of Mero and Enegu. Mero was an anagram of Rome, and Enegu of Geneva. They are two sisters who claim to inherit their father's kingdom. Mero rules first. Fontenelle portrays her as a witch who made bread disappear and cast spells with corpses. That is exactly Swift's Lord Peter. He shows a piece of bread to his two brothers and says, “Here is excellent Burgundy wine, my friends. Here are partridges with a wonderful smell.” Swift's Lord Peter plays the same part throughout as Mero does in Fontenelle.

So almost everything is imitation. The idea for the Persian Letters comes from the Turkish Spy. Boiardo imitated Pulci; Ariosto imitated Boiardo. The most original minds borrow from one another. Michel Cervantes makes Don Quixote a madman. But what is Roland if not a madman? It would be hard to decide whether Cervantes's grotesque pictures or Ariosto's fertile imagination make more fun of wandering knights. Metastasio took most of his operas from our French tragedies. Several English writers have copied us without saying so. Books are like the fire in our hearths. We fetch fire from a neighbor, light our own hearth, pass it on to others, and then it belongs to everyone.

You can more easily get some idea of Mr. Pope. I think he is the most elegant, most precise, and, just as importantly, most musical poet England has had. He has turned the harsh blasts of the English trumpet into the gentle sounds of a flute. He can be translated because he is extremely clear and because most of his subjects are general ones that concern every nation.

People in France will soon know his Essay on Criticism through the verse translation Mr. Abbé du Resnel is making.

Here is a passage from his poem The Lock of Hair, which I have just translated with my usual freedom. For I repeat, I know nothing worse than translating a poet word for word.

Umbriel, an old, sour-tempered gnome, at once

Flies heavily, wearing a scowl,

Muttering as he seeks the deep cave

Where, far from the sweet rays shed by the world's eye,

The goddess of the vapors has made her home.

Sad north winds whistle all around it,

And their unhealthy, dry breath

Brings fever and migraines nearby.

On a fine sofa, behind a screen,

Away from lights, noise, talkers, and wind,

The moody goddess lies resting without end,

Her heart weighed down by troubles whose cause she does not know.

She has never had a thought, her mind is always troubled,

Her eyes are heavy, her face pale, her lower belly swollen.

Slanderous Envy sits beside her,

An old female specter, a worn-out maiden,

Piously tearing her neighbors apart

And mocking the senses with the Gospel in her hand.

Reclining carelessly on a flower-covered bed

Not far away lies a young beauty:

It is Affectation, who speaks in a drawl,

Listens without hearing and gives flirtatious looks,

Blushes without shame and laughs without joy at everything,

Claims to suffer from a hundred different ailments,

And, perfectly healthy under her rouge and makeup,

Complains languidly and faints with practiced skill.

If you read this passage in the original instead of in this weak translation, you would compare it with the description of Softness in Le Lutrin.

Pope's Essay on Man seems to me the finest, most useful, most lofty teaching poem ever written in any language. It is true that all its main ideas can be found in Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics. I do not know why Mr. Pope gives Mr. de Bolingbroke all the credit for them and does not say a word about the famous Shaftesbury, who was Locke's student.

Everything connected with metaphysics has been thought about in every age and among every people that cultivates its mind. So this system has much in common with Leibnitz's. He claims that God must have chosen the best of all possible worlds, and that in this best world the irregularities of our globe and the foolishness of its inhabitants had to have their place. It also resembles Plato's idea that our earth, our bodies, and our souls are necessary links in an infinite chain of beings. But neither Leibnitz nor Pope accepts the changes Plato imagines have happened to these links, to our souls and our bodies. Plato spoke as a poet in his hard-to-understand prose. Pope speaks as a philosopher in his wonderful verse. He says everything has been from the beginning as it had to be, and as it is now.

I admit I was pleased to see that he agreed with something I had said several years ago. “You are surprised that God made man so limited, so ignorant, so little happy. Why are you not surprised that he did not make him still more limited, more ignorant, and more unhappy?” When a Frenchman and an Englishman think alike, surely they must be right.

The son of the famous Racine has published a letter addressed to him by Pope in which Pope takes back what he said. This letter is written in Mr. de Fénelon's style and manner. Racine's son says Ramsay brought it to him—Ramsay, the editor of Télémaque; Ramsay, the imitator of Télémaque, as Boyer imitated Corneille; Ramsay the Scot, who wanted to join the French Academy; Ramsay, who regretted not being a doctor of the Sorbonne. What I know, as everyone in England's literary world knows, is that Pope, with whom I spent a great deal of time, could barely read French. He did not speak a word of our language, never wrote a letter in French, and was incapable of doing so. If he wrote this letter to our Racine's son, God must suddenly have given him the gift of languages at the end of his life, to punish him for writing such an admirable work as his Essay on Man.

### Letter XXIII

On the Respect Owed to Writers

Neither England nor any other country in the world has institutions supporting the arts like those in France. There are universities almost everywhere. But only France offers such useful support for astronomy, every branch of mathematics, branches of medicine, the study of antiquity, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Louis XIV made his name last forever through all these foundations. And that lasting fame cost him less than two hundred thousand francs a year.

I admit that one thing astonishes me. The English Parliament thought to promise twenty thousand guineas to anyone who made the impossible discovery of a way to determine longitude. Yet it never thought to imitate Louis XIV's generosity toward the arts.

Talent does, it is true, receive other rewards in England, and these bring more honor to the nation. The people respect ability so much that a talented man can always make his fortune there. In France, Mr. Addison would have belonged to some academy and might have obtained a pension of twelve hundred livres through the influence of some woman. More likely, he would have been made to suffer because someone claimed to find a few lines in his tragedy Cato directed against the doorman of a man in office. In England he became secretary of state. Mr. Newton was superintendent of the kingdom's mint. Mr. Congreve held an important office. Mr. Prior was a plenipotentiary. Dr. Swift is a dean in Ireland and is held in much higher regard there than the primate. Mr. Pope's religion keeps him from holding office. It has not kept his translation of Homer from earning him two hundred thousand francs. In France, I long saw the author of Rhadamiste close to starving. The son of one of the greatest men France has had was beginning to follow in his father's footsteps, yet would have been left in poverty without Mr. Fagon. What encourages writers most in England is the respect they receive. The prime minister's portrait hangs above the fireplace in his own study. But I have seen Mr. Pope's portrait in twenty houses.

Mr. Newton received the honors he deserved while alive and after his death. The leading men of the nation competed for the honor of carrying the funeral pall at his procession. Go into Westminster: the tombs you admire there are not the kings' tombs. They are the monuments the grateful nation has raised to the greatest men who helped make it famous. You see their statues there, just as people saw the statues of Sophocles and Plato in Athens. I am convinced that merely seeing those glorious monuments has inspired more than one mind and helped make more than one great man.

People have even accused the English of going too far in honoring talent alone. Some objected when they buried the famous actress Miss Oldfield in Westminster with almost the same honors paid to Mr. Newton. Some claimed that the English deliberately honored this actress's memory so highly to make us feel more keenly the barbaric and cowardly injustice they accuse us of: throwing Miss Lecouvreur's body onto a rubbish heap.

But I can assure you that when the English held Miss Oldfield's splendid funeral and buried her in their equivalent of Saint-Denis, they followed nothing but their own taste. They are far from branding the art of Sophocles and Euripides as shameful. Nor do they exclude from the ranks of their citizens people who devote themselves to performing works that their nation takes pride in.

In the time of Charles I, at the beginning of the civil wars started by fanatical hardliners who eventually became their victims themselves, many people wrote against the theater. They did so all the more because Charles I and his wife, the daughter of our Henry the Great, loved it dearly.

A doctor named Prynne was strict about every little point. He would have thought himself damned if he wore a short cloak instead of a clerical gown. He would have liked half of humanity to massacre the other half for the glory of God and the spread of the faith. He decided to write a very bad book against the quite good plays performed daily, without doing anyone harm, before the king and queen. He cited the authority of rabbis and some passages from Saint Bonaventure to prove that Sophocles' Oedipus was the Devil's work and that Terence was automatically excommunicated. He added that Brutus, who was a very strict Jansenist, must have murdered Caesar only because Caesar, as high priest, had written a tragedy about Oedipus. Finally, he said that everyone who attended a performance was excommunicated and had renounced their faith and baptism. This was an insult to the king and the whole royal family. The English still respected Charles I then. They would not tolerate the excommunication of the same prince whom they later had beheaded. Mr. Prynne was summoned before the Star Chamber. It sentenced his fine book, on which Father Le Brun based his own, to be burned by the executioner, and Prynne to have his ears cut off. The record of his trial is in the public archives.

In Italy, people take care not to disgrace opera or excommunicate Signor Tenezini or Signora Cuzzoni. For my part, I wish we could get rid of certain bad books published in France against our theater. The Italians and English hear that we brand an art in which we excel with the deepest shame. They hear that we excommunicate people paid by the king, condemn as godless a performance put on in religious houses and convents, and disgrace entertainments in which great princes have acted. They hear that we declare plays to be the Devil's work even though the strictest officials have reviewed them and they have been performed before a virtuous queen. When foreigners hear, as I say, of this insolence, this Gothic barbarism that people dare call Christian strictness, what do you expect them to think of our nation? How can they understand either that our laws permit an art declared so disgraceful, or that people dare heap such disgrace on an art permitted by law, rewarded by rulers, practiced by the greatest men, and admired by nations? And how can they understand finding, in the same bookseller's shop, the foolish attack on our theater next to the immortal works of Corneille, Racine, Molière, and Quinault?

### Letter XXIV

On the Academies

All great men developed their abilities either before academies existed or independently of them. Homer and Phidias, Sophocles and Apelles, Virgil and Vitruvius, Ariosto and Michelangelo belonged to no academy. The Crusca gave Tasso nothing but unfair criticism. Newton did not owe his discoveries about optics, gravity, integral calculus, and chronology to the Royal Society of London. So what good can academies do? They can keep alive the fire that great minds have lit.

The Royal Society of London was founded in 1660, six years before our Academy of Sciences. It has no rewards like ours, but then it is free. It has none of the unpleasant distinctions invented by Abbé Bignon, who split the Academy of Sciences into scholars who were paid and honorary members who were not scholars. The London society is independent and has no support but its own. Among its members have been people who discovered the calculus of infinity, the laws of light and gravity, the aberration of the stars, the reflecting telescope, the steam pump, the solar microscope, and many other inventions as useful as they are remarkable. What more would these great men have done if they had been paid or honorary members?

In the last years of Queen Anne's reign, the famous Dr. Swift planned to establish an academy for the English language on the model of the French Academy. The Earl of Oxford, the lord treasurer, supported the plan. It had even stronger support from Viscount Bolingbroke, the secretary of state. Bolingbroke could speak off the cuff in Parliament as clearly as Swift wrote in his study. He would have been both this academy's patron and its pride. The intended members were men whose works will last as long as the English language. They included Dr. Swift himself; Mr. Prior, whom we saw here as a diplomat and who has the same reputation in England that La Fontaine has among us; Mr. Pope, England's Boileau; and Mr. Congreve, whom we might call its Molière. Several others whose names escape me now would all have helped this society flourish from the start. But the queen suddenly died. The Whigs took it into their heads to hang the academy's patrons. As you can imagine, this was fatal to literature. The members of this proposed academy would have had a great advantage over the first members of the French Academy. Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Addison, and others had established the English language through their writing. Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, and Cotin, our first academicians, were a disgrace to our nation. Their names have become so ridiculous that any passable author today unlucky enough to be named Chapelain or Cotin would have to change his name. Above all, the English Academy should have set itself tasks quite different from ours. One day an educated man from that country asked me for the memoirs of the French Academy. "It doesn't write memoirs," I answered, "but it has published sixty or eighty volumes of compliments." He looked through one or two volumes. He could never understand that style, though he understood all our good writers very well. "All I can make out from these fine speeches," he told me, "is that the incoming member declares his predecessor a great man, Cardinal Richelieu a very great man, and Chancellor Séguier a fairly great man. The director then says the same thing back to him and adds that the incoming member might also be some kind of great man and that he, the director, claims his share of greatness too."

It is easy to see why nearly all these academy speeches have brought so little honor to that institution: the fault lies with the times rather than with the people. A custom slowly took hold requiring every new member to repeat these praises when admitted. The academicians have made a kind of rule of boring the public. Why, then, have even the greatest minds admitted to the academy sometimes made the worst speeches? The reason is just as clear. They wanted to shine. They wanted to say something new about a worn-out subject. Having to speak, having nothing to say, and wanting to sound clever: those three things can make even the greatest man ridiculous. Since they could find no new thoughts, they looked for new ways of saying things. They spoke without thinking, like people chewing on nothing and pretending to eat as they starved.

The French Academy has a rule that all these speeches must be printed, and they are the only thing for which it is known. It ought instead to have a rule against printing them.

The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres has set itself a wiser and more useful goal. It publishes a collection of papers full of interesting research and criticism. Those papers are already respected abroad. One might only wish it went deeper into some subjects and left others alone. For example, we could easily have done without a certain essay on the advantages of the right hand over the left, and without some other studies whose titles are less ridiculous but whose subjects are hardly less trivial.

The Academy of Sciences pursues more difficult research with more visible benefits. It studies nature and works to improve the practical arts. Such deep, sustained studies, such exact calculations, such subtle discoveries, and such broad ideas will surely produce something that benefits the whole world in the end.

The most useful discoveries were made in the most uncivilized centuries. It seems that the task left to the most enlightened ages and the most learned societies is to reason about what uneducated people invented. Today, after the long debates between Mr. Huygens and Mr. Renaud, we know the best angle for a ship's rudder relative to its keel. But Christopher Columbus discovered America without knowing anything about that angle.

I am far from concluding that we should rely only on blind practice. But it would be good if physicists and mathematicians joined practice to theory as much as possible. Must the things that do most credit to the human mind so often be the least useful? With the four basic operations of arithmetic and good sense, a man can become a great merchant, a Jacques Cœur, a Delmet, or a Bernard. Meanwhile, a poor algebraist spends his life looking for amazing patterns and properties in numbers that have no practical use and will not teach him how currency exchange works. Nearly all the arts are like this. Beyond a certain point, research serves only curiosity. These clever but useless truths are like stars too far away to give us any light.

Think what a service the French Academy could do for literature, the language, and the nation. Instead of publishing compliments every year, it could publish the great works of the age of Louis XIV, cleansed of all the errors of language that slipped into them. Corneille and Molière are full of such errors; La Fontaine's work swarms with them. Errors that could not be corrected could at least be pointed out. Europeans who read these writers could then learn our language reliably from them. Its proper form would be established forever. Good French books printed with this care at the king's expense would be among the nation's most glorious monuments. I have heard that Mr. Despréaux once made this proposal and that a man known for his intelligence, wisdom, and sound criticism proposed it again. But this idea met the fate of many other useful plans: people approved it and then neglected it.

One rather strange thing is that Corneille wrote his first good tragedies with reasonably correct language and great dignity, when the language was only beginning to take shape. Yet he wrote all his later ones with very poor grammar and a very low style. He did this at the very time when Racine was giving French such correctness, genuine dignity, and grace, and Despréaux was establishing its standards through strict accuracy, precision, force, and harmony. Compare Racine's Bérénice with Corneille's and you would think Corneille lived in Tristan's time. Corneille seemed to neglect his style more and more as he had more need to maintain it. He seemed eager only to write, not to write well. His last twelve or thirteen tragedies are not just bad; their style is very bad. Stranger still, even in our own time we have had plays, prose works, and poems by academicians who have neglected their language so badly that you cannot find ten consecutive lines of verse or prose without a mistake in proper usage. An author can be very good despite a few mistakes, but not despite many. One day a group of intelligent, well-informed people counted more than six hundred intolerable grammatical errors in a tragedy that had enjoyed the greatest success in Paris and the greatest favor at court. Two or three successes like that would be enough to corrupt the language beyond repair. They would drag it back into the old barbarism from which so many great men worked tirelessly to rescue it.

END OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL LETTERS.