We say a happy thought, a happy feature, a happy repartee, a happy physiognomy, happy climate, etc. These thoughts, these happy traits, which strike like sudden inspirations, and which are called the happy sallies of a man of wit, strike like flashes of light across our eyes, without our seeking it. They are no more in our power than a happy physiognomy; that is to say, a sweet and noble aspect, so independent of us, and so often deceitful. The happy climate is that which nature favors: so are happy imaginations, so is happy genius, or great talent. And who can give himself genius? or who, when he has received some ray of this flame, can preserve it always brilliant?
When we speak of a happy rascal, by this word we only comprehend his success. "Felix Sulla"—the fortunate Sulla, and Alexander VI., a duke of Borgia, have happily pillaged, betrayed, poisoned, ravaged, and assassinated. But being villains, it is very likely that they were very unhappy, even when not in fear of persons resembling themselves.
It may happen to an ill-disposed person, badly educated—a Turk, for example, of whom it ought to be said, that he is permitted to doubt the Christian faith—to put a silken cord round the necks of his viziers, when they are rich; to strangle, massacre, or throw his brothers into the Black Sea, and to ravage a hundred leagues of country for his glory. It may happen, I say, that this man has no more remorse than his mufti, and is very happy—on all which the reader may duly ponder.
There were formerly happy planets, and others unhappy, or unfortunate; unhappily, they no longer exist. Some people would have deprived the public of this useful Dictionary—happily, they have not succeeded.
Ungenerous minds, and absurd fanatics, every day endeavor to prejudice the powerful and the ignorant against philosophers. If they were unhappily listened to, we should fall back into the barbarity from which philosophers alone have withdrawn us.
HEAVEN (CIEL MATÉRIEL).
The laws of optics, which are founded upon the nature of things, have ordained that, from this small globe of earth on which we live, we shall always see the material heaven as if we were the centre of it, although we are far from being that centre; that we shall always see it as a vaulted roof, hanging over a plane, although there is no other vaulted roof than that of our atmosphere, which has no such plane; that our sun and moon will always appear one-third larger at the horizon than at their zenith, although they are nearer the spectator at the zenith than at the horizon.
Such are the laws of optics, such is the structure of your eyes, that, in the first place, the material heaven, the clouds, the moon, the sun, which is at so vast a distance from you; the planets, which in their apogee are still at a greater distance from it; all the stars placed at distances yet vastly greater, comets and meteors, everything, must appear to us in that vaulted roof as consisting of our atmosphere.
The sun appears to us, when in its zenith, smaller than when at fifteen degrees below; at thirty degrees below the zenith it will appear still larger than at fifteen; and finally, at the horizon, its size will seem larger yet; so that its dimensions in the lower heaven decrease in consequence of its elevations, in the following proportions: