A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 03

Confiscation is not admitted in countries where the Roman law is established, except within the jurisdiction of the parliament of Toulouse. It was formerly established at Calais, where it was abolished by the English when they were masters of that place. It appears very strange that the inhabitants of the capital live under a more rigorous law than those of the smaller towns; so true is it, that jurisprudence has often been established by chance, without regularity, without uniformity, as the huts are built in a village.

The following was spoken by Advocate-General Omer Talon, in full parliament, at the most glorious period in the annals of France, in 1673, concerning the property of one Mademoiselle de Canillac, which had been confiscated. Reader, attend to this speech; it is not in the style of Cicero's oratory, but it is curious:

"In the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, God says, 'If thou shalt find a city where idolatry prevails, thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein. And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city and all the spoil thereof, every whit, for the Lord thy God.'

"So, in the crime of high treason, the king seized the property, and the children were deprived of it. Naboth having been proceeded against, 'quia maledixerat regi,' King Ahab took possession of his inheritance. David, being apprised that Mephibosheth had taken part in the rebellion, gave all his goods to Sheba, who brought him the news – 'Tibi sunt omnia quæ fuerunt Mephibosheth.'"

The question here was, who should inherit the property of Mademoiselle de Canillac – property formerly confiscated from her father, abandoned by the king to a keeper of the royal treasure, and afterwards given by this keeper of the royal treasure to the testatrix. And in this case of a woman of Auvergne a lawyer refers us to that of Ahab, one of the petty kings of a part of Palestine, who confiscated Naboth's vineyard, after assassinating its proprietor with the poniard of Jewish justice – an abominable act, which has become a proverb to inspire men with a horror for usurpation. Assuredly, Naboth's vineyard has no connection with Mademoiselle de Canillac's inheritance. Nor do the murder and confiscation of the goods of Mephibosheth, grandson of King Saul, and son of David's friend Jonathan, bear a much greater affinity to this lady's will.

With this pedantry, this rage for citations foreign to the subject; with this ignorance of the first principles of human nature; with these ill-conceived and ill-adapted prejudices, has jurisprudence been treated on by men who, in their sphere, have had some reputation.

CONSCIENCE

SECTION I

Of the Conscience of Good and of Evil.

Locke has demonstrated – if we may use that term in morals and metaphysics – that we have no innate ideas or principles. He was obliged to demonstrate this position at great length, as the contrary was at that time universally believed. It hence clearly follows that it is necessary to instil just ideas and good principles into the mind as soon as it acquires the use of its faculties.

Locke adduces the example of savages, who kill and devour their neighbors without any remorse of conscience; and of Christian soldiers, decently educated, who, on the taking of a city by assault, plunder, slay, and violate, not merely without remorse, but with rapture, honor, and glory, and with the applause of all their comrades.

It is perfectly certain that, in the massacres of St. Bartholomew, and in the "autos-da-fé" the holy acts of faith of the Inquisition, no murderer's conscience ever upbraided him with having massacred men, women, and children, or with the shrieks, faintings, and dying tortures of his miserable victims, whose only crime consisted in keeping Easter in a manner different from that of the inquisitors. It results, therefore, from what has been stated, that we have no other conscience than what is created in us by the spirit of the age, by example, and by our own dispositions and reflections.

Man is born without principles, but with the faculty of receiving them. His natural disposition will incline him either to cruelty or kindness; his understanding will in time inform him that the square of twelve is a hundred and forty-four, and that he ought not to do to others what he would not that others should do to him; but he will not, of himself, acquire these truths in early childhood. He will not understand the first, and he will not feel the second.

A young savage who, when hungry, has received from his father a piece of another savage to eat, will, on the morrow, ask for the like meal, without thinking about any obligation not to treat a neighbor otherwise than he would be treated himself. He acts, mechanically and irresistibly, directly contrary to the eternal principle.

Nature has made a provision against such horrors. She has given to man a disposition to pity, and the power of comprehending truth. These two gifts of God constitute the foundation of civil society. This is the reason there have ever been but few cannibals; and which renders life, among civilized nations, a little tolerable. Fathers and mothers bestow on their children an education which soon renders them social, and this education confers on them a conscience.

Pure religion and morality, early inculcated, so strongly impress the human heart that, from the age of sixteen or seventeen, a single bad action will not be performed without the upbraidings of conscience. Then rush on those headlong passions which war against conscience, and sometimes destroy it. During the conflict, men, hurried on by the tempest of their feelings, on various occasions consult the advice of others; as, in physical diseases, they ask it of those who appear to enjoy good health.

This it is which has produced casuists; that is, persons who decide on cases of conscience. One of the wisest casuists was Cicero. In his book of "Offices," or "Duties" of man, he investigates points of the greatest nicety; but long before him Zoroaster had appeared in the world to guide the conscience by the most beautiful precept, "If you doubt whether an action be good or bad, abstain from doing it." We treat of this elsewhere.

Whether a Judge Should Decide according to his Conscience, or according to the Evidence.

Thomas Aquinas, you are a great saint, and a great divine, and no Dominican has a greater veneration for you than I have; but you have decided, in your "Summary," that a judge ought to give sentence according to the evidence produced against the person accused, although he knows that person to be perfectly innocent. You maintain that the deposition of witnesses, which must inevitably be false, and the pretended proofs resulting from the process, which are impertinent, ought to weigh down the testimony of his own senses. He saw the crime committed by another; and yet, according to you, he ought in conscience to condemn the accused, although his conscience tells him the accused is innocent. According to your doctrine, therefore, if the judge had himself committed the crime in question, his conscience ought to oblige him to condemn the man falsely accused of it.

In my conscience, great saint, I conceive that you are most absurdly and most dreadfully deceived. It is a pity that, while possessing such a knowledge of canon law, you should be so little acquainted with natural law. The duty of a magistrate to be just, precedes that of being a formalist. If, in virtue of evidence which can never exceed probability, I were to condemn a man whose innocence I was otherwise convinced of, I should consider myself a fool and an assassin.

Fortunately all the tribunals of the world think differently from you. I know not whether Farinaceus and Grillandus may be of your opinion. However that may be, if ever you meet with Cicero, Ulpian, Trebonian, Demoulin, the Chancellor de l'Hôpital, or the Chancellor d'Aguesseau, in the shades, be sure to ask pardon of them for falling into such an error.

Of a Deceitful Conscience.

The best thing perhaps that was ever said upon this important subject is in the witty work of "Tristram Shandy," written by a clergyman of the name of Sterne, the second Rabelais of England. It resembles those small satires of antiquity, the essential spirit of which is so piquant and precious.

An old half-pay captain and his corporal, assisted by Doctor Slop, put a number of very ridiculous questions. In these questions the French divines are not spared. Mention is particularly made of a memoir presented to the Sorbonne by a surgeon, requesting permission to baptize unborn children by means of a clyster-pipe, which might be introduced into the womb without injuring either the mother or the child. At length the corporal is directed to read to them a sermon, composed by the same clergyman, Sterne.

Among many particulars, superior even to those of Rembrandt and Calot, it describes a gentleman, a man of the world, spending his time in the pleasures of the table, in gaming, and debauchery, yet doing nothing to expose himself to the reproaches of what is called good company, and consequently never incurring his own. His conscience and his honor accompany him to the theatres, to the gaming houses, and are more particularly present when he liberally pays his lady under protection. He punishes severely, when in office, the petty larcenies of the vulgar, lives a life of gayety, and dies without the slightest feeling of remorse.

Doctor Slop interrupts the reading to observe that such a case was impossible with respect to a follower of the Church of England, and could happen only among papists. At last the sermon adduces the example of David, who sometimes possessed a conscience tender and enlightened, at others hardened and dark.

When he has it in his power to assassinate his king in a cavern, he scruples going beyond cutting off a corner of his robe – here is the tender conscience. He passes an entire year without feeling the slightest compunction for his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah – here is the same conscience in a state of obduracy and darkness.

Such, says the preacher, are the greater number of mankind. We concede to this clergyman that the great ones of the world are very often in this state; the torrent of pleasures and affairs urges them almost irresistibly on; they have no time to keep a conscience. Conscience is proper enough for the people; but even the people dispense with it, when the question is how to gain money. It is judicious, however, at times, to endeavor to awaken conscience both in mantua-makers and in monarchs, by the inculcation of a morality calculated to make an impression upon both; but, in order to make this impression, it is necessary to preach better than modern preachers usually do, who seldom talk effectively to either.

Liberty of Conscience.

[Translated from the German.]

[We do not adopt the whole of the following article; but, as it contains some truths, we did not consider ourselves obliged to omit it; and we do not feel ourselves called upon to justify what may be advanced in it with too great rashness or severity. —Author.]

"The almoner of Prince – , who is a Roman Catholic, threatened an anabaptist that he would get him banished from the small estates which the prince governed. He told him that there were only three authorized sects in the empire – that which eats Jesus Christ, by faith alone, in a morsel of bread, while drinking out of a cup; that which eats Jesus Christ with bread alone; and that which eats Jesus Christ in body and in soul, without either bread or wine; and that as for the anabaptist who does not in any way eat God, he was not fit to live in monseigneur's territory. At last, the conversation kindling into greater violence, the almoner fiercely threatened the anabaptist that he would get him hanged. 'So much the worse for his highness,' replied the anabaptist; 'I am a large manufacturer; I employ two hundred workmen; I occasion the influx of two hundred thousand crowns a year into his territories; my family will go and settle somewhere else; monseigneur will in consequence be a loser.'

"'But suppose monseigneur hangs up your two hundred workmen and your family,' rejoined the almoner, 'and gives your manufactory to good Catholics?'

"'I defy him to do it,' says the old gentleman. 'A manufactory is not to be given like a farm; because industry cannot be given. It would be more silly for him to act so than to order all his horses to be killed, because, being a bad horseman, one may have thrown him off his back. The interest of monseigneur does not consist in my swallowing the godhead in a wafer, but in my procuring something to eat for his subjects, and increasing the revenues by my industry. I am a gentleman; and although I had the misfortune not to be born such, my occupation would compel me to become one; for mercantile transactions are of a very different nature from those of a court, and from your own. There can be no success in them without probity. Of what consequence is it to you that I was baptized at what is called the age of discretion, and you while you were an infant? Of what consequence is it to you that I worship God after the manner of my fathers? Were you able to follow up your wise maxims, from one end of the world to the other, you will hang up the Greek, who does not believe that the spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; all the English, all the Hollanders, Danes, Swedes, Icelanders, Prussians, Hanoverians, Saxons, Holsteiners, Hessians, Würtembergers, Bernese, Hamburgers, Cossacks, Wallachians, and Russians, none of whom believe the pope to be infallible; all the Mussulmans, who believe in one God, and who give him neither father nor mother; the Indians, whose religion is more ancient than the Jewish; and the lettered Chinese, who, for the space of four thousand years, have served one only God without superstition and without fanaticism. This, then, is what you would perform had you but the power!' 'Most assuredly,' says the monk, 'for the zeal of the house of the Lord devours me.' 'Zelus domus suæ comedit me.'

"'Just tell me now, my good almoner,' resumed the anabaptist, 'are you a Dominican, or a Jesuit, or a devil?' 'I am a Jesuit,' says the other. 'Alas, my friend, if you are not a devil, why do you advance things so utterly diabolical?' 'Because the reverend father, the rector, has commanded me to do so.' 'And who commanded the reverend father, the rector, to commit such an abomination?' 'The provincial.' 'From whom did the provincial receive the command?' 'From our general, and all to please the pope.'

"The poor anabaptist exclaimed: 'Ye holy popes, who are at Rome in possession of the throne of the Cæsars – archbishops, bishops, and abbés, become sovereigns, I respect and fly you; but if, in the recesses of your heart, you confess that your opulence and power are founded only on the ignorance and stupidity of our fathers, at least enjoy them with moderation. We do not wish to dethrone you; but do not crush us. Enjoy yourselves, and let us be quiet. If otherwise, tremble, lest at last people should lose their patience, and reduce you, for the good of your souls, to the condition of the apostles, of whom you pretend to be the successors.'

"'Wretch! you would wish the pope and the bishop of Würtemberg to gain heaven by evangelical poverty!' 'You, reverend father, would wish to have me hanged!'"

CONSEQUENCE

What is our real nature, and what sort of a curious and contemptible understanding do we possess? A man may, it appears, draw the most correct and luminous conclusions, and yet be destitute of common sense. This is, in fact, too true. The Athenian fool, who believed that all the vessels which came into the port belonged to him, could calculate to a nicety what the cargoes of those vessels were worth, and within how many days they would arrive from Smyrna at the Piræus.

We have seen idiots who could calculate and reason in a still more extraordinary manner. They were not idiots, then, you tell me. I ask your pardon – they certainly were. They rested their whole superstructure on an absurd principle; they regularly strung together chimeras. A man may walk well, and go astray at the same time; and, then, the better he walks the farther astray he goes.

The Fo of the Indians was son of an elephant, who condescended to produce offspring by an Indian princess, who, in consequence of this species of left-handed union, was brought to bed of the god Fo. This princess was sister to an emperor of the Indies. Fo, then, was the nephew of that emperor, and the grandson of the elephant and the monarch were cousins-german; therefore, according to the laws of the state, the race of the emperor being extinct, the descendants of the elephant become the rightful successors. Admit the principle, and the conclusion is perfectly correct.

It is said that the divine elephant was nine standard feet in height. You reasonably suppose that the gate of his stable should be above nine feet in height, in order to admit his entering with ease. He consumed twenty pounds of rice every day, and twenty pounds of sugar, and drank twenty-five pounds of water. You find, by using your arithmetic, that he swallows thirty-six thousand five hundred pounds weight in the course of a year; it is impossible to reckon more correctly. But did your elephant ever, in fact, exist? Was he the emperor's brother-in-law? Had his wife a child by this left-handed union? This is the matter to be investigated. Twenty different authors, who lived in Cochin China, have successively written about it; it is incumbent on you to collate these twenty authors, to weigh their testimonies, to consult ancient records, to see if there is any mention of this elephant in the public registers; to examine whether the whole account is not a fable, which certain impostors have an interest in sanctioning. You proceed upon an extravagant principle, but draw from it correct conclusions.

Logic is not so much wanting to men as the source of logic. It is not sufficient for a madman to say six vessels which belong to me carry two hundred tons each; the ton is two thousand pounds weight; I have therefore twelve hundred thousand pounds weight of merchandise in the port of the Piræus. The great point is, are those vessels yours? That is the principle upon which your fortune depends; when that is settled, you may estimate and reckon up afterwards.

An ignorant man, who is a fanatic, and who at the same time strictly draws his conclusions from his premises, ought sometimes to be smothered to death as a madman. He has read that Phineas, transported by a holy zeal, having found a Jew in bed with a Midianitish woman, slew them both, and was imitated by the Levites, who massacred every household that consisted one-half of Midianites and the other of Jews. He learns that Mr. – , his Catholic neighbor, intrigued with Mrs. – , another neighbor, but a Huguenot, and he will kill both of them without scruple. It is impossible to act in greater consistency with principle; but what is the remedy for this dreadful disease of the soul? It is to accustom children betimes to admit nothing which shocks reason, to avoid relating to them histories of ghosts, apparitions, witches, demoniacal possessions, and ridiculous prodigies. A girl of an active and susceptible imagination hears a story of demoniacal possessions; her nerves become shaken, she falls into convulsions, and believes herself possessed by a demon or devil. I actually saw one young woman die in consequence of the shock her frame received from these abominable histories.

CONSTANTINE

SECTION IThe Age of Constantine

Among the ages which followed the Augustan, that of Constantine merits particular distinction. It is immortalized by the great changes which it ushered into the world. It commenced, it is true, with bringing back barbarism. Not merely were there no Ciceros, Horaces, and Virgils, any longer to be found, but there was not even a Lucan or a Seneca; there was not even a philosophic and accurate historian. Nothing was to be seen but equivocal satires or mere random panegyrics.

It was at that time that the Christians began to write history, but they took not Titus Livy, or Thucydides as their models. The followers of the ancient religion wrote with no greater eloquence or truth. The two parties, in a state of mutual exasperation, did not very scrupulously investigate the charges which they heaped upon their adversaries; and hence it arises that the same man is sometimes represented as a god and sometimes as a monster.

The decline of everything, in the commonest mechanical arts, as well as in eloquence and virtue, took place after the reign of Marcus Aurelius. He was the last emperor of the sect of stoics, who elevated man above himself by rendering him severe to himself only, and compassionate to others. After the death of this emperor, who was a genuine philosopher, there was nothing but tyranny and confusion. The soldiers frequently disposed of the empire. The senate had fallen into such complete contempt that, in the time of Gallienus, an express law was enacted to prevent senators from engaging in war. Thirty heads of parties were seen, at one time, assuming the title of emperor in thirty provinces of the empire. The barbarians already poured in, on every side, in the middle of the third century, on this rent and lacerated empire. Yet it was held together by the mere military discipline on which it had been founded.

During all these calamities, Christianity gradually established itself, particularly in Egypt, Syria, and on the coasts of Asia Minor. The Roman Empire admitted all sorts of religions, as well as all sects of philosophy. The worship of Osiris was permitted, and even the Jews were left in the enjoyment of considerable privileges, notwithstanding their revolts. But the people in the provinces frequently rose up against the Christians. The magistrates persecuted them, and edicts were frequently obtained against them from the emperors. There is no ground for astonishment at the general hatred in which Christians were at first held, while so many other religions were tolerated. The reason was that neither Egyptians nor Jews, nor the worshippers of the goddess of Syria and so many other foreign deities, ever declared open hostility to the gods of the empire. They did not array themselves against the established religion; but one of the most imperious duties of the Christians was to exterminate the prevailing worship. The priests of the gods raised a clamor on perceiving the diminution of sacrifices and offerings; and the people, ever fanatical and impetuous, were stirred up against the Christians, while in the meantime many emperors protected them. Adrian expressly forbade the persecution of them. Marcus Aurelius commanded that they should not be prosecuted on account of religion. Caracalla, Heliogabalus, Alexander, Philip, and Gallienus left them entire liberty. They had, in the third century, public churches numerously attended and very opulent; and so great was the liberty they enjoyed that, in the course of that century, they held sixteen councils. The road to dignities was shut up against the first Christians, who were nearly all of obscure condition, and they turned their attention to commerce, and some of them amassed great affluence. This is the resource of all societies that cannot have access to offices in the state. Such has been the case with the Calvinists in France, all the Nonconformists in England, the Catholics in Holland, the Armenians in Persia, the Banians in India, and the Jews all over the world. However, at last the toleration was so great, and the administration of the government so mild, that the Christians gained access to all the honors and dignities of the state. They did not sacrifice to the gods of the empire; they were not molested, whether they attended or avoided the temples; there was at Rome the most perfect liberty with respect to the exercises of their religion; none were compelled to engage in them. The Christians, therefore, enjoyed the same liberty as others. It is so true that they attained to honors, that Diocletian and Galerius deprived no fewer than three hundred and three of them of those honors, in the persecution of which we shall have to speak.