A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 02

One thing that surprises me much is that Friar Bacon knew not the direction of the magnetic needle, which, in his time, began to be understood in Italy, but in lieu thereof he was acquainted with the Secret of the hazel rod and many such things Of which he treats in his "Dignity of the Experimental Art."

Yet, notwithstanding this pitiable number of absurdities and chimeras, it must be confessed that Roger Bacon was an admirable man for his age. What age? you will ask – that of feudal government and of the schoolmen. Figure to yourself Samoyedes and Ostiacs who read Aristotle. Such were we at that time.

Roger Bacon knew a little of geometry and optics, which made him pass for a sorcerer at Rome and Paris. He was, however, really acquainted with the matter contained in the Arabian "Alhazen," for in those days little was known except through the Arabs. They were the physicians and astrologers of all the Christian kings. The king's fool was always a native; his doctor an Arab or a Jew.

Transport this Bacon to the times in which we live and he would be, no doubt, a great man. He was gold, encrusted with the rust of the times in which he lived, this gold would now be quickly purified. Poor creatures that we are! How many ages have passed away in acquiring a little reason!

BANISHMENT

Banishment for a term of years, or for life: a penalty inflicted on delinquents, or on individuals who are wished to be considered as such.

Not long ago it was the custom to banish from within the limits of the jurisdiction, for petty thefts, forgeries, and assaults, the result of which was that the offender became a great robber, forger, or murderer in some other jurisdiction. This is like throwing into a neighbor's field the stones that incommode us in our own.

Those who have written on the laws of nations have tormented themselves greatly to determine whether a man who has been banished from his country can justly be said still to belong to that country. It might almost as well be asked whether a gambler, who has been driven away from the gaming-table, is still one of the players at that table.

If by the law of nature a man is permitted to choose his country, still more is the man who has lost the rights of a citizen at liberty to choose himself a new country. May he bear arms against his former fellow-citizens? Of this we have a thousand examples. How many French Protestants, naturalized in England, Holland, or Germany, have served, not only against France, but against armies in which their relatives, their own brothers, have fought? The Greeks in the armies of the king of Persia fought against the Greeks, their old fellow-countrymen. The Swiss in the service of Holland have fired upon the Swiss in the service of France. This is even worse than fighting against those who have banished you, for, after all, drawing the sword in revenge does not seem so bad as drawing it for hire.

BAPTISM

A Greek Word, Signifying ImmersionSECTION I

We do not speak of baptism as theologians; we are but poor men of letters, who shall never enter the sanctuary. The Indians plunge, and have from time immemorial plunged, into the Ganges. Mankind, always guided by their senses, easily imagined that what purified the body likewise purified the soul. In the subterranean apartments under the Egyptian temples there were large tubs for the priests and the initiated.

O nimium faciles qui tristia crimina cædisFluminea tolli posse putatis aqua!

Old Baudier, when he was eighty, made the following comic translation of these lines:

C'est une drôle de maxime,Qu'une lessive efface un crime.One can't but think it somewhat droll,Pump-water thus should cleanse a soul.

Every sign being of itself indifferent, God vouchsafed to consecrate this custom amongst the Hebrew people. All foreigners that came to settle in Palestine were baptized; they were called domiciliary proselytes.

They were not forced to receive circumcision, but only to embrace the seven precepts of the Noachides, and to sacrifice to no strange god. The proselytes of justice were circumcised and baptized; the female proselytes were also baptized, quite naked, in the presence of three men. The most devout among the Jews went and received baptism from the hands of the prophets most venerated by the people. Hence it was that they flocked to St. John, who baptized in the Jordan.

Jesus Christ Himself, who never baptized any one, deigned to receive baptism from St. John. This custom, which had long been an accessory of the Jewish religion, received new dignity, new value from our Saviour, and became the chief rite, the principal seal of Christianity. However, the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were Jews. 'The Christians of Palestine long continued to circumcise. St. John's Christians never received baptism from Christ.

Several other Christian societies applied a cautery to the baptized, with a red-hot iron, being determined to the performance of this extraordinary operation by the words of St. John the Baptist, related by St. Luke: "I baptize you with water, but He that cometh after me shall baptize you with fire."

This was practised by the Seleucians, the Herminians, and some others. The words, "He shall baptize you with fire," have never been explained. There are several opinions concerning the baptism by fire which is mentioned by St. Luke and St. Matthew. Perhaps the most likely opinion is that it was an allusion to the ancient custom of the devotees to the Syrian goddess, who, after plunging into water, imprinted characters on their bodies with a hot iron. With miserable man all was superstition, but Jesus substituted for these ridiculous superstitions a sacred ceremony – a divine and efficacious symbol.

In the first ages of Christianity nothing was more common than to postpone the receiving of baptism until the last agony. Of this the example of the Emperor Constantine is a very strong proof. St. Andrew had not been baptized when he was made bishop of Milan. The custom of deferring the use of the sacred bath until the hour of death was soon abolished.

Baptism of the Dead.

The dead also were baptized. This is established by the passage of St. Paul to the Corinthians: "If we rise not again what shall they do that receive baptism from the dead?" Here is a point of fact. Either the dead themselves were baptized, or baptism was received in their names, as indulgences have since been received for the deliverance of the souls of friends and relatives out of purgatory.

St. Epiphanius and St. Chrysostom inform us that it was a custom in some Christian societies, and principally among the Marcionites, to put a living man under the dead man's bed; he was then asked if he would be baptized; the living man answered yes, and the corpse was taken and plunged into a tub of water. This custom was soon condemned. St. Paul mentions it but he does not condemn it; on the contrary he cites it as an invincible argument to prove resurrection.

Baptism by Aspersion.

The Greeks always retained baptism by immersion. The Latins, about the close of the eighth century, having extended their religion into Gaul and Germany and seeing that immersion might be fatal to infants in cold countries, substituted simple aspersion and thus drew upon themselves frequent anathemas from the Greek Church.

St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was asked if those were really baptized who had only had their bodies sprinkled all over. He answers, in his seventy-sixth letter, that several churches did not believe the sprinkled to be Christians; that, for his own part, he believes that they are so, but that they have infinitely less grace than those who have been thrice dipped, according to custom.

A person was initiated among the Christians as soon as he was dipped; until then he was only a catechumen. To be initiated it was necessary to have sponsors to answer to the Church for the fidelity of the new Christians and that the mysteries should not be divulged. Hence it was that in the first ages the Gentiles had, in general, as little knowledge of the Christian mysteries as the Christians had of the mysteries of Isis and the Eleusinian Ceres.

Cyril of Alexandria, in his writing against the Emperor Julian, expresses himself thus: "I would speak of baptism but that I fear my words would reach them who are not initiated." At that time there was no worship without its mysteries, its associations, its catechumens, its initiated, and its professed. Each sect required new virtues and recommended to its penitents a new life —"initium novæ vitæ"– whence the word initiation. The initiation of Christians, whether male or female, consisted in their being plunged quite naked into a tub of cold water, to which sign was attached the remission of all their sins. But the difference between Christian baptism and the Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, and Roman ceremonies was the difference between truth and falsehood. Jesus Christ was the High Priest of the new law.

In the second century infants began to be baptized; it was natural that the Christians should desire their children, who would have been damned without this sacrament, to be provided with it. It was at length concluded that they must receive it at the expiration of eight days, because that was the period at which, among the Jews, they were circumcised. In the Greek Church this is still the custom.

Such as died in the first week were damned, according to the most rigorous fathers of the Church. But Peter Chrysologos, in the fifth century, imagined limbo, a sort of mitigated hell, or properly, the border, the outskirt of hell, whither all infants dying without baptism go and where the patriarchs remained until Jesus Christ's descent into hell. So that the opinion that Jesus Christ descended into limbo, and not into hell, has since then prevailed.

It was agitated whether a Christian in the deserts of Arabia might be baptized with sand, this was answered in the negative. It was asked if rosewater might be used, it was decided that pure water would be necessary but that muddy water might be made use of. It is evident that all this discipline depended on the discretion of the first pastors who established it.

The Anabaptists and some other communions out of the pale have thought that no one should be baptized without a thorough knowledge of the merits of the case. You require, say they, a promise to be of the Christian society, but a child can make no engagement. You give it a sponsor, but this is an abuse of an ancient custom. The precaution was requisite in the first establishment. When strangers, adult men and women, came and presented themselves to be received into the society and share in the alms there was needed a guarantee to answer for their fidelity; it was necessary to make sure of them; they swore they would be Jews, but an infant is in a diametrically opposite case. It has often happened, that a child baptized by Greeks at Constantinople has afterwards been circumcised by Turks, a Christian at eight days old and a Mussulman at thirty years, he has betrayed the oaths of his godfather.

This is one reason which the Anabaptists might allege; it would hold good in Turkey, but it has never been admitted in Christian countries where baptism insures a citizen's condition. We must conform to the rights and laws of our country.

The Greeks re-baptize such of the Latins as pass from one of our Latin communions to the Greek communion. In the last century it was the custom for these catechumens to pronounce the following words: "I spit upon my father and my mother who had me ill baptized." This custom still exists, and will, perhaps, long continue to exist in the provinces.

Notions of Rigid Unitarians Concerning Baptism.

It is evident to whosoever is willing to reason without prejudice that baptism is neither a mark of grace conferred nor a seal of alliance, but simply a mark of profession.

That baptism is not necessary, neither by necessity of precept, nor by necessity of means. That it was not instituted by Christ and that it may be omitted by the Christian without his suffering any inconvenience therefrom.

That baptism should be administered neither to children, nor to adults, nor, in general, to any individual whatsoever.

That baptism might be of service in the early infancy of Christianity to those who quitted paganism in order to make their profession of faith public and give an authentic mark of it, but that now it is absolutely useless and altogether indifferent.

SECTION II

Baptism, immersion in water, abstersion, purification by water, is of the highest antiquity. To be cleanly was to be pure before the gods. No priest ever dared to approach the altar with a soil upon his body. The natural inclination to transfer to the soul that which appertains to the body led to the belief that lustrations and ablutions took away the stains of the soul as they removed those of the garments and that washing the body washed the soul also. Hence the ancient custom of bathing in the Ganges, the waters of which were thought to be sacred; hence the lustrations so frequent among every people. The Oriental nations, inhabiting hot countries, were the most religiously attached to these customs.

The Jews were obliged to bathe after any pollution – after touching an unclean animal, touching a corpse, and on many other occasions.

When the Jews received among them a stranger converted to their religion they baptized, after circumcising him, and if it was a woman she was simply baptized – that is, dipped in water in the presence of three witnesses. This immersion was reputed to give the persons baptized a new birth, a new life; they became at once Jewish and pure. Children born before this baptism had no share in the inheritance of their brethren, born after them of a regenerated father and mother. So that, with the Jews, to be baptized and to be born again were the same thing, and this idea has remained attached to baptism down to the present day. Thus, when John, the forerunner, began to baptize in the Jordan he did but follow an immemorial usage. The priests of the law did not call him to account for this baptizing as for anything new, but they accused him of arrogating to himself a right which belonged exclusively to them – as Roman Catholic priests would have a right to complain if a layman took upon himself to say mass. John was doing a lawful thing but was doing it unlawfully.

John wished to have disciples, and he had them. He was chief of a sect among the lower orders of the people and it cost him his life. It even appears that Jesus was at first among his disciples, since he was baptized by him in the Jordan, and John sent some of his own party to Him a short time before His death.

The historian Josephus speaks of John but not of Jesus – an incontestable proof that in his time John the Baptist had a greater reputation than He whom he baptized. A great multitude followed him, says that celebrated historian, and the Jews seemed disposed to undertake whatever he should command them.

From this passage it appears that John was not only the chief of a sect, but the chief of a party. Josephus adds that he caused Herod some uneasiness. He did indeed make himself formidable to Herod, who, at length, put him to death, but Jesus meddled with none but the Pharisees. Josephus, therefore, mentions John as a man who had stirred up the Jews against King Herod; as one whose zeal had made him a state criminal, but Jesus, not having approached the court, was unknown to the historian Josephus.

The sect of John the Baptist differed widely in discipline from that of Jesus. In the Acts of the Apostles we see that twenty years after the execution of Jesus, Apollos of Alexandria, though become a Christian, knew no baptism but that of John, nor had any idea of the Holy Ghost. Several travellers, and among others Chardin, the most accredited of all, say that in Persia there still are disciples of John, called Sabis, who baptize in his name and acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, but not as a god.

As for Jesus Christ Himself He received baptism but conferred it on no one; His apostles baptized the catechumens, or circumcised them as occasion required; this is evident from the operation of circumcision performed by Paul on his disciple Timothy.

It also appears that when the apostles baptized it was always in the name of Jesus Christ alone. The Acts of the Apostles do not mention any one baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – whence it may be concluded that the author of the Acts of the Apostles knew nothing of Matthew's gospel, in which it is said: "Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The Christian religion had not yet received its form. Even the Symbol, which was called the Symbol of the Apostles, was not made until after their time, of this no one has any doubt. In Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians we find a very singular custom which was then introduced – that of baptizing the dead, but the rising Church soon reserved baptism for the living alone; at first none were baptized but adults, and the ceremony was often deferred until the age of fifty, or the last sickness, that the individual might carry with him into the other world the unimpaired virtue of a baptism recently performed.

Now, all children are baptized: none but the Anabaptists reserve this ceremony for the mature age; they plunge their whole bodies into the water. The Quakers, who compose a very numerous society in England and in America, do not use baptism: the reason is that Jesus Christ did not baptize any of His disciples, and their aim is to be Christians only as His disciples were – which occasions a very wide difference between them and other communions.

Addition to the Article "Baptism" by Abbé Nicaise.

The Emperor Julian, the philosopher, in his immortal "Satire on the Cæsars," puts these words into the mouth of Constantius, son of Constantine: "Whosoever feels himself guilty of rape, murder, plunder, sacrilege, and every most abominable crime, so soon as I have washed him with this water, he shall be clean and pure."

It was, indeed, this fatal doctrine that occasioned the Christian emperors, and the great men of the empire, to defer their baptism until death. They thought they had found the secret of living criminal and dying virtuous.

How strange an idea – that a pot of water should wash away every crime! Now, all children are baptized because an idea no less absurd supposes them all criminal; they are all saved until they have the use of reason and the power to become guilty! Cut their throats, then, as quickly as possible, to insure their entrance into paradise. This is so just a consequence that there was once a devout sect that went about poisoning and killing all newly-baptized infants. These devout persons reasoned with perfect correctness, saying: "We do these little innocents the greatest possible good; we prevent them from being wicked and unhappy in this life and we give them life eternal."

BARUCH, OR BARAK, AND DEBORAH;

AND, INCIDENTALLY, ON CHARIOTS OF WAR

We have no intention here to inquire at what time Baruch was chief of the Jewish people; why, being chief, he allowed his army to be commanded by a woman; whether this woman, named Deborah, had married Lapidoth; whether she was the friend or relative of Baruch, or perhaps his daughter or his mother; nor on what day the battle of Tabor, in Galilee, was fought between this Deborah and Sisera, captain-general of the armies of King Jabin – which Sisera commanded in Galilee an army of three hundred thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and three thousand chariots of war, according to the historian Josephus.

We shall at present leave out of the question this Jabin, king of a village called Azor, who had more troops than the Grand Turk. We very much pity the fate of his grand-vizier Sisera, who, having lost the battle in Galilee, leaped from his chariot and four that he might fly more swiftly on foot. He went and begged the hospitality of a holy Jewish woman, who gave him some milk and drove a great cart-nail through his head while he was asleep. We are very sorry for it, but this is not the matter to be discussed. We wish to speak of chariots of war.

The battle was fought at the foot of Mount Tabor, near the river Kishon. Mount Tabor is a steep mountain, the branches of which, somewhat less in height, extend over a great part of Galilee. Between this mountain and the neighboring rocks there is a small plain, covered with great flint-stones and impracticable for cavalry. The extent of this plain is four or five hundred paces. We may venture to believe that Sisera did not here draw up his three hundred thousand men in order of battle; his three thousand chariots would have found it difficult to manœuvre on such a field.

We may believe that the Hebrews had no chariots of war in a country renowned only for asses, but the Asiatics made use of them in the great plains. Confucius, or rather Confutze, says positively that, from time immemorial, each of the viceroys of the provinces was expected to furnish to the emperor a thousand war-chariots, each drawn by four horses. Chariots must have been in use long before the Trojan war, for Homer does not speak of them as a new invention, but these chariots were not armed like those of Babylon, neither the wheels nor the axles were furnished with steel blades.

At first this invention must have been very formidable on large plains, especially when the chariots were numerous, driven with impetuosity, and armed with long pikes and scythes, but when they became familiar it seemed so easy to avoid their shock that they fell into general disuse.

In the war of 1741 it was proposed to renew and reform this ancient invention. A minister of state had one of these chariots constructed and it was tried. It was asserted that in large plains, like that of Lützen, they might be used with advantage by concealing them behind the cavalry, the squadrons of which would open to let them pass and then follow them, but the generals judged that this manœuvre would be useless, and even dangerous, now that battles are gained by cannon only. It was replied that there would be as many cannon hi the army using the chariots of war to defend them as in the enemy's army to destroy them. It was added that these chariots would, in the first instance, be sheltered from the cannon behind the battalions or squadrons, that the latter would open and let the chariots run with impetuosity and that this unexpected attack might have a prodigious effect. The generals advanced nothing in opposition to these arguments, but they would not revive this game of the ancient Persians.

BATTALION

Let us observe that the arrangements, the marching, and the evolutions of battalions, nearly as they are now practised, were revived in Europe by one who was not a military man – by Machiavelli, a secretary at Florence. Battalions three, four, and five deep; battalions advancing upon the enemy; battalions in square to avoid being cut off in a rout; battalions four deep sustained by others in column; battalions flanked by cavalry – all are his. He taught Europe the art of war; it had long been practised without being known.

The grand duke would have had his secretary teach his troops their exercises according to his new method. But Machiavelli was too prudent to do so; he had no wish to see the officers and soldiers laugh at a general in a black cloak; he reserved himself for the council.

There is something singular in the qualities which he requires in a soldier. He must first have gagliardia, which signifies alert vigor; he must have a quick and sure eye – in which there must also be a little gayety; a strong neck, a wide breast, a muscular arm, round loins, but little belly, with spare legs and feet – all indicating strength and agility. But above all the soldier must have honor, and must be led by honor alone. "War," says he, "is but too great a corrupter of morals," and he reminds us of the Italian proverb: War makes thieves, and peace finds them gibbets.

Machiavelli had but a poor opinion of the French infantry, and until the battle of Rocroi it must be confessed that it was very bad. A strange man this Machiavelli! He amused himself with making verses, writing plays, showing his cabinet the art of killing with regularity, and teaching princes the art of perjuring themselves, assassinating, and poisoning as occasion required – a great art which Pope Alexander VI., and his bastard Cæsar Borgia, practised in wonderful perfection without the aid of his lessons.