When an author, without knowing either the human mind or the manners of nations, has the misfortune to be obliged to compile from passages of old authors, who are almost all contradictory, he should advance his opinions with modesty and know how to doubt, and to shake off the dust of the college. Above all he should never express himself with outrageous insolence.
Herodotus, or Ctesias, or Diodorus of Sicily, relate a fact: you have read it in Greek, therefore this fact is true. This manner of reasoning, which is not that of Euclid, is surprising enough in the time in which we live; but all minds will not be instructed with equal facility; and there are always more persons who compile than people who think.
We will say nothing here of the confusion of tongues which took place during the construction of the tower of Babel. It is a miracle, related in the Holy Scriptures. We neither explain, nor even examine any miracles, and as the authors of that great work, the Encyclopædia, believed them, we also believe them with a lively and sincere faith.
We will simply affirm that the fall of the Roman Empire has produced more confusion and a greater number of new languages than that of the tower of Babel. From the reign of Augustus till the time of the Attilas, the Clovises, and the Gondiberts, during six ages, "terra erat unius labii"—"the known earth was of one language." They spoke the same Latin at the Euphrates as at Mount Atlas. The laws which governed a hundred nations were written in Latin and the Greek served for amusement, whilst the barbarous jargon of each province was only for the populace. They pleaded in Latin at once in the tribunals of Africa and of Rome. An inhabitant of Cornwall departed for Asia Minor sure of being understood everywhere in his route. It was at least one good effected by the rapacity of the Romans that people found themselves as well understood on the Danube as on the Guadalquiver. At the present time a Bergamask who travels into the small Swiss cantons, from which he is only separated by a mountain, has the same need of an interpreter as if he were in China. This is one of the greatest plagues of modern life.
SECTION II.
Vanity has always raised stately monuments. It was through vanity that men built the lofty tower of Babel. "Let us go and raise a tower, the summit of which shall touch the skies, and render our name celebrated before we are scattered upon the face of the earth." The enterprise was undertaken hi the time of a patriarch named Phaleg, who counted the good man Noah for his fifth ancestor. It will be seen that architecture, and all the arts which accompany it, had made great progress in five generations. St. Jerome, the same who has seen fauns and satyrs, has not seen the tower of Babel any more than I have, but he assures us that it was twenty thousand feet high. This is a trifle. The ancient book, "Jacult" written by one of the most learned Jews, demonstrates the height to be eighty-one thousand Jewish feet, and every one knows that the Jewish foot was nearly as long as the Greek. These dimensions are still more likely than those of Jerome. This tower remains, but it is no longer quite so high; several quite veracious travellers have seen it. I, who have not seen it, will talk as little of it as of my grandfather Adam, with whom I never had the honor of conversing. But consult the reverend father Calmet; he is a man of fine wit and a profound philosopher and will explain the thing to you. I do not know why it is said, in Genesis, that Babel signifies confusion, for, as I have already observed, ba answers to father in the eastern languages, and bel signifies God. Babel means the city of God, the holy city. But it is incontestable that Babel means confusion, possibly because the architects were confounded after having raised their work to eighty-one thousand feet, perhaps, because the languages were then confounded, as from that time the Germans no longer understood the Chinese, although, according to the learned Bochart, it is clear that the Chinese is originally the same language as the High German.
BACCHUS.
Of all the true or fabulous personages of profane antiquity Bacchus is to us the most important. I do not mean for the fine invention which is attributed to him by all the world except the Jews, but for the prodigious resemblance of his fabulous history to the true adventures of Moses.
The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed on the Nile and it is from that event that he is named Mises by the first Orpheus, which, in Egyptian, signifies "saved from the waters," according to those who pretend to understand the ancient Egyptian tongue, which is no longer known. He is brought up near a mountain of Arabia called Nisa, which is believed to be Mount Sinai. It is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous nation and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of men, women, and children. Another time the river Orontes suspended its waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head. He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsis, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses.