SECOND COLLOQUY.
LUCRETIUS.—I begin to recognize a Supreme Being, inaccessible to our senses, and proved by our reason, who made the world, and preserves it; but with regard to what I have said of the soul, in my third book, which has been so much admired by all the learned men of Rome, I hardly think you can oblige me to alter my opinion.
POSIDONIUS.—You say: “Idque situm media regione in pectoris hæret.”—“The mind is in the middle of the breast.”—But, when you composed your beautiful verses, did you never make any effort of the head? When you speak of the orators Cicero and Mark Antony, do you not say that they had good heads? And were you to say that they had good breasts, would not people imagine that you were talking of their voice and lungs?
LUCRETIUS.—Are you not convinced, from experience, that the feelings of joy, of sorrow, and of fear, are formed about the heart?
Hic exultat enim pavor ac metus; hæc loca circum
Lætitiæ mulcent.
For there our passions live, our joy, our fear,
And hope.
Do you not feel your heart dilate or contract itself on the hearing of good or bad news? Is it not possessed of some secret springs of a yielding and elastic quality? This, therefore, must be the seat of the soul.
POSIDONIUS.—There are two nerves which proceed from the brain, pass through the heart and stomach, reach to the parts of generation, and communicate motion to them; but would you therefore say, that the human mind resides in the parts of generation?
LUCRETIUS.—No; I dare not say so. But though I should place the soul in the head, instead of placing it in the breast, my principles will still subsist: the soul will still be an infinitely subtile matter, resembling the elementary fire that animates the whole machine.
POSIDONIUS.—And why do you imagine that a subtile matter can have thoughts and sentiments of itself?
LUCRETIUS.—Because I experience it; because all the parts of my body, when touched, presently feel the impression; because this feeling is diffused through my whole machine; because it could not be diffused through it but by a matter of a very subtile nature, and of a very rapid motion; because I am a body, and one body cannot be affected but by another; because the interior part of my body could not be penetrated but by very small corpuscles; and, in consequence, my soul must be an assemblage of these corpuscles.
POSIDONIUS.—We have already agreed, in our first colloquy, that it is extremely improbable that a rock could compose the “Iliad.” Will a ray of the sun be more capable of composing it? Suppose this ray a hundred thousand times more subtile and rapid than usual, will this light, or this tenuity of parts, produce thoughts and sentiments?
LUCRETIUS.—Perhaps it may, when placed in organs properly prepared.
POSIDONIUS.—You are perpetually reduced to your perhaps. Fire, of itself, is no more capable of thinking than ice. Should I suppose that it is fire that thinks, perceives, and wills in you, you would then be forced to acknowledge that it is not by its own virtue that it has either will, thought, or perception.
LUCRETIUS.—No; these sensations will be produced not by its own virtue, but by the assemblage of the fire, and of my organs.
POSIDONIUS.—How can you imagine that two bodies, neither of which can think apart, should be able to produce thought, when joined together?
LUCRETIUS.—In the same manner as a tree and earth, when taken separately, do not produce fruit, but do so when the tree is planted in the earth.
POSIDONIUS.—The comparison is only specious. This tree has in it the seeds of fruit: we plainly perceive them in the buds, and the moisture of the earth unfolds the substance of these fruits. Fire, therefore, must possess in itself the seeds of thought, and the organs of the body serve only to develop these seeds.
LUCRETIUS.—And do you find anything impossible in this?
POSIDONIUS.—I find that this fire, this highly refined matter, is as devoid of the faculty of thinking as a stone. The production of a being must have something similar to that which produced it; but thought, will, and perception have nothing similar to fiery matter.
LUCRETIUS.—Two bodies, struck against each other, produce motion, and yet this motion has nothing similar to the two bodies; it has none of their three dimensions, nor has it any figure. A being, therefore, may have nothing similar to that which produced it, and, in consequence, thought may spring from an assemblage of two bodies which have no thought.
POSIDONIUS.—This comparison likewise is more specious than just. I see nothing but matter in two bodies in motion: I only see bodies passing from one place to another. But when we reason together I see no matter in your ideas, or in my own. I shall only observe that I can no more conceive how one body has the power of moving another, than I can comprehend the manner of my having ideas. To me both are equally inexplicable, and both equally prove the existence and the power of a Supreme Being, the author of thought and motion.
LUCRETIUS.—If our soul is not a subtile fire, an ethereal quintessence, what is it?
POSIDONIUS.—Neither you nor I know aught of the matter. I will tell you plainly what it is not; but I cannot tell you what it actually is. I see that it is a power lodged in my body; that I did not give myself this power; and, in consequence, that it must have come from a Being superior to myself.
LUCRETIUS.—You did not give yourself life; you received it from your father; from whom, likewise, together with life, you received the faculty of thinking, as he had received both from his father, and so on backwards to infinity. You no more know the true principle of life than you do that of thought. This succession of living and thinking beings has always existed.
POSIDONIUS.—I plainly see that you are always obliged to abandon the system of Epicurus, and that you dare no longer maintain that the declination of atoms produced thought. I have already, in our last colloquy, refuted the eternal succession of sensible and thinking beings. I showed you that, if there are material beings capable of thinking by their own power, thought must necessarily be an attribute essential to all matter; that, if matter thought necessarily, and by its own virtue, all matter must of course think: but this is not the case, and therefore it is impossible to maintain a succession of material beings, who, of themselves, possess the faculty of thinking.
LUCRETIUS.—Notwithstanding this reasoning, which you repeat, it is certain that a father communicates a soul to his son at the same time that he forms his body. This soul and this body grow together; they gradually acquire strength; they are subject to calamities, and to the infirmities of old age. The decay of our strength draws along with it that of our judgment; the effect at last ceases with the cause, and the soul vanishes like smoke into air.
Præterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, & una
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.
Nam velet infirmo pueri, teneroque vagantur
Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis.
Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus ætas,
Consilium quoque majus, & auctior est animi vis.
Post ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi
Corpus, & obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus:
Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque, mensque;
Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt,
Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai
Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras:
Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus
Crescere, & (ut docui) simul ævo fessa fatiscit.
Besides, ’tis plain that souls are born, and grow;
And all by age decay, as bodies do;
To prove this truth: in infants, minds appear
Infirm, and tender as their bodies are:
In man, the mind is strong; when age prevails,
And the quick vigor of each member fails,
The mind’s powers, too, decrease, and waste apace;
And grave and reverend folly takes the place.
’Tis likely then the soul and mind must die;
Like smoke in air, its scattered atoms fly;
Since all these proofs have shown, these reasons told,
’Tis with the body born, grows strong, and old.
—CREECH.
POSIDONIUS.—These, to be sure, are very fine verses; but do you thereby inform me of the nature of the soul?
LUCRETIUS.—No; I only give you its history, and I reason with probability.
POSIDONIUS.—Where is the probability of a father’s communicating to his son the faculty of thinking?
LUCRETIUS.—Do you not daily see children resembling their fathers in their inclinations, as well as in their features?
POSIDONIUS.—But does not a father, in begetting his son, act as a blind agent? Does he pretend, when he enjoys his wife, to make a soul, or to make thoughts? Do either of them know the manner in which a child is formed in the mother’s womb? Must we not, in this case, have recourse to a superior cause, as well as in all the other operations of nature which we have examined? Must you not see, if you are in earnest, that men give themselves nothing, but are under the hand of an absolute master?
LUCRETIUS.—If you know more of the matter than I do, tell me what the soul is.
POSIDONIUS.—I do not pretend to know what it is more than you. Let us endeavor to enlighten each other. Tell me, first, what is vegetation.
LUCRETIUS.—It is an internal motion, that carries the moisture of the earth into plants, makes them grow, unfolds their fruits, expands their leaves, etc.
POSIDONIUS.—Surely you do not think that there is a being called Vegetation that performs these wonders?
LUCRETIUS.—Who ever thought so?
POSIDONIUS.—From our former colloquy you ought to conclude that the tree did not give vegetation to itself.
LUCRETIUS.—I am forced to allow it.
POSIDONIUS.—Tell me next what life is.
LUCRETIUS.—It is vegetation joined with perception in an organized body.
POSIDONIUS.—And is there not a being called life, that gives perception to an organized body?
LUCRETIUS.—Doubtless vegetation and life are words which signify things that live and vegetate.
POSIDONIUS.—If a tree and an animal cannot give themselves life and vegetation, can you give yourself thoughts?
LUCRETIUS.—I think I can, for I think of whatever I please. My intention was to converse with you about metaphysics, and I have done so.
POSIDONIUS.—You think that you are master of your ideas; do you know, then, what thoughts you will have in an hour, or in a quarter of an hour?
LUCRETIUS.—I must own that I do not.
POSIDONIUS.—You frequently have ideas in your sleep; you make verses in a dream: Cæsar takes cities: I resolve problems; and hounds pursue the stag in their dreams. Ideas, therefore, come to us independently of our own will; they are given us by a Superior Being.
LUCRETIUS.—In what manner do you mean? Do you suppose that the Supreme Being is continually employed in communicating ideas; or that he created incorporeal substances, which were afterwards capable of forming ideas of themselves, sometimes with the assistance of the senses, and sometimes without it? Are these substances formed at the moment of the animal’s conception? Or are they formed before its conception? Do they wait for bodies, in order to insinuate themselves into them? or are they not lodged there till the animal is capable of receiving them? Or, in fine, is it in the Supreme Being that every animated being sees the ideas of things? What is your opinion?
POSIDONIUS.—When you tell me how our will produces an instantaneous motion in our bodies, how your arm obeys your will, how we receive life, how food digests in the stomach, and how corn is transformed into blood, I will then tell you how we have ideas. With regard to all these particulars I frankly confess my ignorance. The world, perhaps, may one day obtain new lights; but from the time of Thales to the present age we have not had any. All we can do is to be sensible of our own weakness, to acknowledge an Almighty Being, and to be upon our guard against these systems.
DIALOGUE BETWEEN A CLIENT AND HIS LAWYER.
CLIENT.—Well, sir! with regard to the cause of those poor orphans?
LAWYER.—What do you mean? It is but eighteen years since their estate has been in litigation.
CLIENT.—I don’t complain of that trifling matter; I know the custom well enough; I respect it, but how in the name of heaven comes it to pass that you have been these three months soliciting a hearing and have not yet obtained it?
LAWYER.—The reason is because you have not solicited an audience in person in behalf of your pupils; you ought to have waited on the judge several different times, to entreat him to try your cause.
CLIENT.—It is their duty to do justice of their own accord without waiting till it is asked them. He is a very great man that has it in his power to sit in judgment on men’s lives and fortunes, but he is by no means so to desire that the miserable should wait in his antechamber. I do not go to our parson’s levee to pray and beseech him to have the goodness to sing high mass, why ought I then to petition my judge to discharge the function of his office? In short, after so many and such tedious delays, are we at length going to be so happy as to have our cause tried to-day?
LAWYER.—Why yes, and there is great likelihood of your carrying a very material point in your process; you have a very decisive article in “Charondas” on your side.
CLIENT.—This same Charondas was, in all probability, some lord-chancellor in the time of one of the kings of the first race who has passed a law in favor of orphans?
LAWYER.—By no means, he is no more than a private person who has given his opinion in a great volume which nobody reads, but then your advocate quotes him, the judges take it upon his credit, so there’s your cause gained in a trice.
CLIENT.—What! do you tell me the opinion of this Judge Charondas passes current for a law?
LAWYER.—But there is one devilish bad circumstance attends us. Turnet and Brodeau are both against us.
CLIENT.—These, I suppose, are two other legislators whose laws have much the same authority with those of that other hard-named gentleman.
LAWYER.—Yes, certainly, as it was impossible to explain the Roman law sufficiently in the present case the world took different sides of the question.
CLIENT.—What the devil signifies it to bring in the Roman law in this affair? Do we live in the present age under Theodosius or Justinian?
LAWYER.—By no means, but our forefathers, you must know, had a prodigious passion for tilting and fox hunting; they ran all, as if they were mad, to the Holy Land with their doxies. You will grant me that men in such a hurry of business of consequence could not be supposed to have time on their hands to frame a complete body of universal jurisprudence.
CLIENT.—Aye, aye, I understand you. For want of laws of your own you are forced to beg of Charondas and Justinian to be so good as tell you how you should proceed when an inheritance is to be divided.
LAWYER.—There you are mistaken, we have more laws than all Europe besides; almost every city has a body of laws of its own.
CLIENT.—Your most obedient. Here’s another miracle.
LAWYER.—Ah! had your wards been born at Guignes-la-Putain instead of being natives of Melun near Corbeil!
CLIENT.—Very well; what had happened then, for God’s sake?
LAWYER.—You should have gained your cause as sure as two and two make four, that’s all, for at this same Guignes-la-Putain there is a custom which is wholly in your favor; but were you to go but two leagues beyond this, you would then be in a very different situation.
CLIENT.—But pray are not Guignes and Melun both in France? And can anything be more absurd or horrible than to tell me that what’s right in one village is wrong in another? By what fatal barbarity does it happen that people born in the same country do yet live under different laws?
LAWYER.—The reason is, that formerly the inhabitants of Guignes and those of Melun were not inhabitants of the same country: these two fine cities formed in the golden days of yore two distinct empires, and the august sovereign of Guignes, though a vassal to the king of France, gave laws to his own subjects. Those laws depended on the good will and pleasure of his major domo, who, it seems, could not read, so that they have been handed down by a most venerable tradition from father to son, so that the whole race of the barons de Guignes becoming extinct, to the irrecoverable loss of all mankind, the conceits of their first lackeys still exist and are held for the fundamental law of the land. The case is exactly the same in every six leagues in the whole kingdom, so that you change laws every time you change horses, so you may judge what a taking we poor advocates are in when we are to plead, for instance, for an inhabitant of Poictou against an inhabitant of Auvergne.
CLIENT.—But these same men of Poictou, Auvergne, with your Guignes gentry, are they not all dressed in the same manner? Is it a harder matter to use the same laws than it is to wear the same clothes? And since it is evident the tailors and cobblers understand one another from one end of the kingdom to the other, why cannot the judges learn of them, and follow so excellent an example?
LAWYER.—You desire a thing altogether as impossible as it would be to bring the nation to make use of one sort of weights and measures. Why would you have the laws everywhere the same when you see the point is different in all places? For my own part, after thinking till my head was like to split, all I have been able to conclude for the soul of me, is this: That as the measure of Paris is different from that at St. Denis, it follows that men’s judgments must also be different in both. The varieties of nature are infinite, and it would be wrong in us to endeavor to render uniform what she intends shall not be so.
CLIENT.—Yet, now I think on it, I have a strong notion the English have but one sort of weight and measures.
LAWYER.—The English! aye. Why the English are mere barbarians; they have, it is true, but one kind of measure, but, to make amends, they have a score of different religions.
CLIENT.—There you mention something strange indeed! Is it possible that a nation who live under the same laws, should not likewise live under the same religion?
LAWYER.—It is; which makes it plain they are abandoned to their own reprobate understandings.
CLIENT.—But may not it also prove that they think laws made for regulating the external actions of men and religion the internal? Possibly the English, and other nations, were of opinion that laws related to the concernments of man with man and that religion regarded man’s relation to God. I am sure I should never quarrel with an Anabaptist who should take it into his head to be christened at thirty years old, but I should be horridly offended with him should he fail paying his bill of exchange. They who sin against God ought to be punished in the other world; they who sin against man ought to be chastised in this.
LAWYER.—I understand nothing of all this. I am just going to plead your cause.
CLIENT.—I wish to God you understood it better first.
DIALOGUE BETWEEN MADAME DE MAINTENON AND MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.[*]
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—’Tis true, I did request you to come to see me privately, perhaps you [*] Madame de Maintenon and Mademoiselle Ninon de l’Enclos had lived long together. The author has often heard the late Abbé de Châteauneuf say, that Madame de Maintenon had used her utmost endeavors to engage Ninon to turn nun, and to come and comfort her at Versailles.
may think it was only to make a display of my grandeur; by no means, I really meant it that I might receive in you a real consolation—
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Consolation, madam! I must acknowledge that, having never been favored with hearing of you since you were grown great, I concluded you must be perfectly happy.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I have the good fortune to be thought so. There are people in the world who are satisfied with this, though, to be plain with you, it is not at all my case, I have always exceedingly regretted your company.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I understand you. In the midst of your grandeur you were sensible of the want of friendship; and I, on the other hand, who am entirely engrossed by friendship, never had occasion to wish for grandeur; but how then comes it to pass you forgot me so long?
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—You know the necessity I was under to seem at least to forget you. Believe me, amidst all the misfortunes attached to my elevation I always considered this restraint the chief.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—As for my part, I neither forget my former pleasures nor my old friends; but if you are really unhappy, as you say you are, you impose prodigiously on the whole world who believe you otherwise.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I was the first person deceived in this manner myself. If, while we were at supper together, in company with Villarfaux and Nantouillet at our little house the Tournelles, when the mediocrity of our fortune was scarce worth thinking of, somebody had said, You will, before ’tis long, approach very near to the throne; the most powerful monarch in the world will soon make you his sole confidante; all favors will pass through your hands; you will be regarded as a sovereign: if, said I, any one had made me such predictions I should have answered, The accomplishment of this strange prognostication must certainly kill one with mere astonishment. The whole of it was actually accomplished. I felt some surprise in the first moments but, in hoping for joy, I found myself entirely mistaken.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—A philosopher might possibly believe this, but the public will with great difficulty be brought to believe you were dissatisfied, and should they really think so they would certainly blame you for it.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—The world must then be as much in the wrong as I was. This world of ours is a vast amphitheatre where every one is placed on his bench by mere chance. They imagine the supreme degree of felicity to be on the uppermost benches. What an egregious mistake!
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I take this mistake to be necessary to human nature: they would never give themselves any trouble about getting higher were they not led by an opinion that happiness is placed above them. Both of us are acquainted with pleasures infinitely less deceiving or fanciful, but, for Heaven’s sake, how did you contrive to be so exceedingly wretched on your exalted seat?
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Alas! my dear Ninon! from the time I left off calling you anything but Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, I from that moment began to be less happy. It was decreed I must be a prude. This is telling all in one word. My heart is empty, my mind under restraint. I make the first figure in France, but it is really no more than a figure, a shadow! I live only a kind of borrowed life. Ah! did you but know what a burden it must be to a drooping soul to animate another soul or to amuse a mind no longer capable of amusement!
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I easily guess the uneasiness of your situation. I fear insulting you should I mention the reflection that Ninon is happier at Paris in her little house with the Abbé de Châteauneuf, and some friends, than you at Versailles in the company of the most respectable personage in all Europe, who lays all his power at your feet. I am afraid to show you the superiority of my situation; I know it is wrong to discover too sensible a relish of our felicity in the presence of the unhappy. Endeavor, madam, to bear the load of your grandeur with patience, try to forget that delightful obscurity in which we formerly lived together, in the same manner you have been obliged to forget your ancient friends. The sole remedy in your painful state is to avoid reflection as much as possible, crying out with the poet,
Félicité passée,
Qui ne peut revenir,
Tourment de ma pensée,
Que n’ai-je en te perdant, perdu le souvenir!
Tormenting thought of former happiness gone, never to return! Why, when I was bereft of the joy, did I not lose the remembrance of it also!
Drink of the river Lethe, and above all, comfort yourself with having before your eyes so many royal dames whose time lies as heavy on their hands as yours can do.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Ah, my dear! what felicity can one find in being alone? I would fain make a proposal to you but I am afraid to open myself.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Indeed, madam, to be plain with you, you have reason to be a little mistrustful, but take courage.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I mean that you will barter, at least in appearance, your philosophy for prudery, and then you will become a truly respectable woman. You shall live with me in Versailles, you shall be more my friend than ever, and help me to support my present condition.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I still have a great affection for you, madam, but I must freely own to you I love myself still better, and can never consent to turn hypocrite and render myself miserable forever because fortune has treated you cruelly.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Ah, cruel Ninon! you have a heart more hard than even the very courtiers themselves. Can you then abandon me without the least remorse?
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—By no means; I am still but too sensible. You really melt me, and, to convince you I have the same regard for you as ever I now make you the last offer in my power; quit Versailles and come and live with me at the rues des Tournelles.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—You pierce my very heart. I cannot be happy near the throne, nor can I enjoy pleasure in a retired life. This is one of the fatal effects of living in a court.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—There is no remedy for an incurable disorder. I shall take the opinion of the philosophers who frequent my house concerning your malady, but I cannot promise you they will effect impossibilities.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Good heavens! what a cruel situation! to behold myself on the very pinnacle of greatness, to be worshipped as a deity, and yet not to be able to taste of happiness!
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Hold, my dear friend, I fancy there is some mistake in this; you believe yourself unhappy merely on account of your greatness, but may not the misfortune proceed from another cause, that your eyes have no longer the same lustre, your appetite no longer so good, nor your relish for pleasures so lively as heretofore? You have lost your youth, beauty, and feelings; this, this is your real misfortune. This is the reason why so many women turn devotees at fifty and so fly from one chagrin into the arms of another.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—But, after all, you have more years over your head than I have and you are neither unhappy nor a devotee.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Let us understand each other. We ought not to imagine that at your age and mine we can enjoy complete happiness. It requires a soul glowing with the most exquisite sensations and the five senses in their highest perfection to taste this kind of felicity. But with a few friends, a little philosophy, and liberty, one may be as much at one’s ease as this age will admit of. The mind is never unhappy but when out of its sphere. So e’en take my advice and come and live with me and my philosophical friends.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I see two ministers of state coming this way. They are very different company from philosophers, so fare you well, my dear Ninon.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Adieu, illustrious unfortunate.
DIALOGUE BETWEEN A SAVAGE AND A BACHELOR OF ARTS.
A governor of Cayenne, having brought over with him a savage from Guiana, who had a great share of good natural understanding, and spoke French tolerably well; a bachelor of arts at Paris had the honor of entering into the following conversation with him:
BACHELOR.—I suppose, Mr. Savage, you have seen a number of your country people who pass their lives all alone, for it is said that this is the true way of living natural to man, and that society is only an artificial depravity?
SAVAGE.—Indeed I never did see any of those people you speak of. Man appears to me to be born for society, as well as several other species of animals. Each species follows the dictates of its nature; as for us, we live all together in a community.
BACHELOR.—How! in community? Why, then, you have fine towns, and cities with walls, and kings who keep a court. You have shows, convents, universities, libraries, and taverns, have you?
SAVAGE.—No; but have I not frequently heard it said that in your continent you have Arabians and Scythians who never knew anything of these matters, and yet form considerable nations? Now we live like these people; neighboring families assist each other. We inhabit a warm climate, and so have very few necessities; we can easily procure ourselves food; we marry; we get children; we bring them up, and then we die. You see this is just the same as among you; some few ceremonies excepted.
BACHELOR.—Why, my good sir, then you are not a savage?
SAVAGE.—I do not know what you mean by that word.
BACHELOR.—Nor, to tell you the truth, do I myself—stay—let me consider a little—Oh!—a savage?—Why—a savage is—what we call a savage, is a man of a morose, unsociable disposition, who flies all company.
SAVAGE.—I have told you already that we live together in families.
BACHELOR.—We also give the name of savage to those beasts who are not tamed, but roam wild about the forests; and from hence we have transferred that appellation to men who inhabit the woods.
SAVAGE.—I go into the woods sometimes, as well as you do, to hunt.
BACHELOR.—Pray, now, do you think sometimes?
SAVAGE.—It is impossible to be without some sort of ideas.
BACHELOR.—I have a great curiosity to know what your ideas are. What think you of man?
SAVAGE.—Think of him! Why, that he is a two-footed animal, who has the faculty of reasoning, speaking, and who uses his hands much more dexterously than the monkey. I have seen several kinds of men, some white, like you, others copper-colored, like me, and others black, like those that wait upon the governor of Cayenne. You have a beard, we have none; the negroes have wool, you and I have hair. They say, that in your more northerly climates the inhabitants have white hair, whereas that of the Americans is black. This is all I know about man.
BACHELOR.—But your soul, my dear sir? your soul? what notion have you of that? whence comes it? what is it? what does it do? how does it act? where does it go?
SAVAGE.—I know nothing about all this, indeed; for I never saw the soul.
BACHELOR.—Apropos; do you think that brutes are machines?
SAVAGE.—They appear to me to be organized machines, that have sentiment and memory.
BACHELOR.—Well; and pray now, Mr. Savage, what do you think that you, you yourself, I say, possess above those brutes?
SAVAGE.—The gifts of an infinitely superior memory, a much greater share of ideas, and, as I have already told you, a tongue capable of forming many more sounds than those of brutes; with hands more ready at executing; and the faculty of laughing, which a long-winded argumentator always makes me exercise.
BACHELOR.—But tell me, if you please, how came you by all this? What is the nature of your mind? How does your soul animate your body? Do you always think? Is your will free?
SAVAGE.—Here are a great number of questions; you ask me how I came to possess what God has given to man? You might as well ask me how I was born? For certainly, since I am born a man, I must possess the things that constitute a man in the same manner as a tree has its bark, roots, and leaves. You would have me to know what is the nature of my mind. I did not give it to myself, and therefore I cannot know what it is; and as to how my soul animates my body, I am as much a stranger to that, too; and, in my opinion, you must first have seen the springs that put your watch in motion before you can tell how it shows the hour. You ask me if I always think? No, for sometimes I have half-formed ideas, in the same manner as I see objects at a distance, confusedly; sometimes my ideas are much stronger, as I can distinguish an object better when it is nearer to me; sometimes I have no ideas at all, as when I shut my eyes I can see nothing. Lastly, you ask me, if my will is free? Here I do not understand you; these are things with which you are perfectly well acquainted, no doubt, therefore I shall be glad you will explain them to me.
BACHELOR.—Yes, yes, I have studied all these matters thoroughly; I could talk to you about them for a month together without ceasing, in such a manner as would surpass your understanding. But tell me, do you know good and evil, right and wrong? Do you know which is the best form of government? which the best worship? what is the law of nations? the common law? the civil law? the canon law? Do you know the names of the first man and woman who peopled America? Do you know the reason why rain falls into the sea; and why you have no beard?
SAVAGE.—Upon my word, sir, you take rather too great advantage of the confession I made just now, that man has a superior memory to the brutes; for I can hardly recollect the many questions you have asked me; you talk of good and evil, right and wrong; now, I think that whatever gives you pleasure, and does injury to no one, is very good and very right; that what injures our fellow-creatures, and gives us no pleasure, is abominable; and what gives us pleasure but, at the same time, hurts others, may be good with respect to us for the time, but it is in itself both dangerous to us, and very wrong in regard to others.
BACHELOR.—And do you live in society with these maxims?
SAVAGE.—Yes, with our relatives and neighbors, and, without much pain or vexation, we quietly attain our hundredth year; some indeed reach to a hundred and twenty, after which our bodies serve to fertilize the earth that has nourished us.
BACHELOR.—You seem to me to have a clear understanding, I would very fain puzzle it. Let us dine together, after which we will philosophize methodically.
SAVAGE.—I find that I have swallowed foods that are not made for me, notwithstanding I have a good stomach; you have made me eat after my stomach was satisfied, and drink when I was no longer dry. My legs are not so firm under me as they were before dinner; my head feels heavy, and my ideas are confused. I never felt this diminution of my faculties in my own country. For my part, I think the more a man puts into his body here, the more he takes away from his understanding. Pray, tell me, what is the reason of all this damage and disorder?
BACHELOR.—I will tell you. In the first place, as to what passes in your legs, I know nothing about the matter, you must consult the physicians about that; they will satisfy you in a trice. But I am perfectly well acquainted with how things go in your head. You must know, then, that the soul being confined to no place, has fixed her seat either in the pineal gland, or callous body in the middle of the brain. The animal spirits that rise from the stomach fly up to the soul, which they cannot affect, they being matter and it immaterial. Now, as neither can act upon the other, therefore the soul takes their impression, and, as it is a simple principle, and consequently subject to no change, therefore it suffers a change, and becomes heavy and dull when we eat too much; and this is the reason that so many great men sleep after dinner.
SAVAGE.—What you tell me appears very ingenious and profound, but I should take it as a favor if you would explain it to me in such a manner as I might comprehend.
BACHELOR.—Why, I have told you everything that can be said upon this weighty affair; but, to satisfy you, I will be a little more explicit. Let us go step by step. First, then, do you know that this is the best of all possible worlds?
SAVAGE.—How! is it impossible for the Infinite Being to create anything better than what we now see?
BACHELOR.—Undoubtedly; for nothing can be better than what we see. It is true, indeed, that mankind rob and murder each other, but they all the while extol equity and moderation. Several years ago they massacred about twelve millions of your Americans, but then it was to make the rest more reasonable. A famous calculator has proved that from a certain war of Troy, which you know nothing of, to the last war in North America, which you do know something of, there have been killed in pitched battles no less than five hundred and fifty-five million six hundred and fifty thousand men, without reckoning young children and women buried under the ruins of cities and towns which have been set on fire; but this was all for the good of community; four or five thousand dreadful maladies, to which mankind are subject, teach us the true value of health; and the crimes that cover the face of the earth greatly enhance the merit of religious men, of which I am one; you see that everything goes in the best manner possible, at least as to me.
Now things could never be in this state of perfection, if the soul was not placed in the pineal gland. For—but let me take you along with me in the argument. Let us go step by step. What notion have you of laws, and of the rule of right and wrong; of the to Kalon, as Plato calls it?
SAVAGE.—Well, but my good sir, while you talk of going step by step, you speak to me of a hundred different things at a time.
BACHELOR.—Every one converses in this manner. But tell me who made the laws in your country?
SAVAGE.—The public good.
BACHELOR.—That word public good means a great deal. We have not any so expressive; pray, in what sense do you understand?
SAVAGE.—I understand by it that those who have a plantation of cocoa trees or maize, have forbidden others to meddle with them, and that those who had them not, are obliged to work, in order to have a right to eat part of them. Everything that I have seen, either in your country or my own, teaches me that there can be no other spirit of the laws.
BACHELOR.—But as to women, Mr. Savage, women?
SAVAGE.—As to women, they please me when they are handsome and sweet-tempered; I prize them even before our cocoa trees; they are a fruit which we are not willing to have plucked by any but ourselves. A man has no more right to take my wife from me than to take my child. However, I have heard it said, that there are people who will suffer this; they have it certainly in their will; every one may do what he pleases with his own property.
BACHELOR.—But as to successors, legatees, heirs, and collateral kindred?
SAVAGE.—Every one must have a successor. I can no longer possess my field when I am buried in it, I leave it to my son; if I have two, I divide it equally between them. I hear that among you Europeans, there are several nations where the law gives the whole to the eldest child, and nothing to the younger. It must have been sordid interest that dictated such unequal and ridiculous laws. I suppose either the elder children made it themselves, or their fathers, who were willing they should have the pre-eminence.
BACHELOR.—What body of laws appears to you the best?
SAVAGE.—Those in which the interests of mankind, my fellow creatures, have been most consulted.
BACHELOR.—And where are such laws to be found?
SAVAGE.—In no place that I have ever heard of.
BACHELOR.—You must tell me from whence the inhabitants of your country first came? Who do you think first peopled America?
SAVAGE.—God—whom else should we think?
BACHELOR.—That is no answer. I ask you from what country your people first came?
SAVAGE.—The same country from which our trees came; really the Europeans appear to me a very pleasant kind of people, to pretend that we can have nothing without them; we have just as much reason to suppose ourselves your ancestors as you have to imagine yourselves ours.
BACHELOR.—You are an obstinate little savage.
SAVAGE.—You a very babbling bachelor.
BACHELOR.—But, hark ye, Mr. Savage, one word more with you, if you please. Do you think it right in Guiana to put those to death who are not of the same opinion with yourselves?
SAVAGE.—Undoubtedly, provided you eat them afterwards.
BACHELOR.—Now you are joking. What do think of the constitution?
SAVAGE.—Your servant.