A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 03

It is our duty to adore Providence in all its dispensations; but I confine myself to political history. Manes, under the reign of Probus, about the year 278, formed a new religion in Alexandria. The principles of this sect were made up of some ancient doctrines of the Persians and certain tenets of Christianity. Probus, and his successor, Carus, left Manes and the Christians in the enjoyment of peace. Numerien permitted them entire liberty. Diocletian protected the Christians, and tolerated the Manichæans, during twelve years; but in 296 he issued an edict against the Manichæans, and proscribed them as enemies to the empire and adherents of the Persians. The Christians were not comprehended in the edict; they continued in tranquillity under Diocletian, and made open profession of their religion throughout the whole empire until the latter years of that prince's reign.

To complete the sketch, it is necessary to describe of what at that period the Roman Empire consisted. Notwithstanding internal and foreign shocks, notwithstanding the incursions of barbarians, it comprised all the possessions of the grand seignor at the present day, except Arabia; all that the house of Austria possesses in Germany, and all the German provinces as far as the Elbe; Italy, France, Spain, England, and half of Scotland; all Africa as far as the desert of Sahara, and even the Canary Isles. All these nations were retained under the yoke by bodies of military less considerable than would be raised by Germany and France at the present day, when in actual war.

This immense power became more confirmed and enlarged, from Cæsar down to Theodosius, as well by laws, police, and real services conferred on the people, as by arms and terror. It is even yet a matter of astonishment that none of these conquered nations have been able, since they became their own rulers, to form such highways, and to erect such amphitheatres and public baths, as their conquerors bestowed upon them. Countries which are at present nearly barbarous and deserted, were then populous and well governed. Such, were Epirus, Macedonia, Thessaly, Illyria, Pannonia, with Asia Minor, and the coasts of Africa; but it must also be admitted that Germany, France, and Britain were then very different from what they are now. These three states are those which have most benefited by governing themselves; yet it required nearly twelve centuries to place those kingdoms in the flourishing situation in which we now behold them; but it must be acknowledged that all the rest have lost much by passing under different laws. The ruins of Asia Minor and Greece, the depopulation of Egypt and the barbarism of Africa, are still existing testimonials of Roman greatness. The great number of flourishing cities which covered those countries had now become miserable villages, and the soil had become barren under the hands of a brutalized population.

SECTION IICharacter of Constantine

I will not here speak of the confusion which agitated the empire after the abdication of Diocletian. There were after his death six emperors at once. Constantine triumphed over them all, changed the religion of the empire, and was not merely the author of that great revolution, but of all those which have since occurred in the west. What was his character? Ask it of Julian, of Zosimus, of Sozomen, and of Victor; they will tell you that he acted at first like a great prince, afterwards as a public robber, and that the last stage of his life was that of a sensualist, a trifler, and a prodigal. They will describe him as ever ambitious, cruel, and sanguinary. Ask his character of Eusebius, of Gregory Nazianzen, and Lactantius; they will inform you that he was a perfect man. Between these two extremes authentic facts alone can enable us to obtain the truth. He had a father-in-law, whom he impelled to hang himself; he had a brother-in-law whom he ordered to be strangled; he had a nephew twelve or thirteen years old, whose throat he ordered to be cut; he had an eldest son, whom he beheaded; he had a wife, whom he ordered to be suffocated in a bath. An old Gallic author said that "he loved to make a clear house."

If you add to all these domestic acts that, being on the banks of the Rhine in pursuit of some hordes of Franks who resided in those parts, and having taken their kings, who probably were of the family of our Pharamond or Clodion le Chevelu, he exposed them to beasts for his diversion; you may infer from all this, without any apprehension of being deceived, that he was not the most courteous and accommodating personage in the world.

Let us examine, in this place, the principal events of his reign. His father, Constantius Chlorus, was in the heart of Britain, where he had for some months assumed the title of emperor. Constantine was at Nicomedia, with the emperor Galerius. He asked permission of the emperor to go to see his father, who was ill. Galerius granted it, without difficulty. Constantine set off with government relays, called veredarii. It might be said to be as dangerous to be a post-horse as to be a member of the family of Constantine, for he ordered all the horses to be hamstrung after he had done with them, fearful lest Galerius should revoke his permission and order him to return to Nicomedia. He found his father at the point of death, and caused himself to be recognized emperor by the small number of Roman troops at that time in Britain.

An election of a Roman emperor at York, by five or six thousand men, was not likely to be considered legitimate at Rome. It wanted at least the formula of "Senatus populusque Romanus." The senate, the people, and the prætorian bands unanimously elected Maxentius, son of the Cæsar Maximilian Hercules, who had been already Cæsar, and brother of that Fausta whom Constantine had married, and whom he afterwards caused to be suffocated. This Maxentius is called a tyrant and usurper by our historians, who are uniformly the partisans of the successful. He was the protector of the pagan religion against Constantine, who already began to declare himself for the Christians. Being both pagan and vanquished, he could not but be an abominable man.

Eusebius tells us that Constantine, when going to Rome to fight Maxentius, saw in the clouds, as well as his whole army, the grand imperial standard called the labarum, surmounted with a Latin P. or a large Greek R. with a cross in "saltier," and certain Greek words which signified, "By this sign thou shalt conquer." Some authors pretend that this sign appeared to him at Besancon, others at Cologne, some at Trier and others at Troyes. It is strange that in all these places heaven should have expressed its meaning in Greek. It would have appeared more natural to the weak understandings of men that this sign should have appeared in Italy on the day of the battle; but then it would have been necessary that the inscription should have been in Latin. A learned antiquary, of the name of Loisel, has refuted this narrative; but he was treated as a reprobate.

It might, however, be worth while to reflect that this war was not a war of religion, that Constantine was not a saint, that he died suspected of being an Arian, after having persecuted the orthodox; and, therefore, that there is no very obvious motive to support this prodigy.

After this victory, the senate hastened to pay its devotion to the conqueror, and to express its detestation of the memory of the conquered. The triumphal arch of Marcus Aurelius was speedily dismantled to adorn that of Constantine. A statue of gold was prepared for him, an honor which had never been shown except to the gods. He received it, notwithstanding the labarum, and received further the title of Pontifex Maximus, which he retained all his life. His first care, according to Zosimus, was to exterminate the whole race of the tyrant, and his principal friends; after which he assisted very graciously at the public spectacles and games.

The aged Diocletian was at that time dying in his retreat at Salonica. Constantine should not have been in such haste to pull down his statues at Rome; he should have recollected that the forgotten emperor had been the benefactor of his father, and that he was indebted to him for the empire. Although he had conquered Maxentius, Licinius, his brother-in-law, an Augustus like himself, was still to be got rid of; and Licinius was equally anxious to be rid of Constantine, if he had it in his power. However, their quarrels not having yet broken out in hostility, they issued conjointly at Milan, in 313, the celebrated edict of liberty of conscience. "We grant," they say, "to all the liberty of following whatever religion they please, in order to draw down the blessing of heaven upon us and our subjects; we declare that we have granted to the Christians the free and full power of exercising their religion; it being understood that all others shall enjoy the same liberty, in order to preserve the tranquillity of our government." A volume might be written on such an edict, but I shall merely venture a few lines.

Constantine was not as yet a Christian; nor, indeed, was his colleague, Licinius, one. There was still an emperor or a tyrant to be exterminated; this was a determined pagan, of the name of Maximin. Licinius fought with him before he fought with Constantine. Heaven was still more favorable to him than to Constantine himself; for the latter had only the apparition of a standard, but Licinius that of an angel. This angel taught him a prayer, by means of which he would be sure to vanquish the barbarian Maximin. Licinius wrote it down, ordered it to be recited three times by his army, and obtained a complete victory. If this same Licinius, the brother-in-law of Constantine, had reigned happily, we should have heard of nothing but his angel; but Constantine having had him hanged, and his son slain, and become absolute master of everything, nothing has been talked of but Constantine's labarum.

It is believed that he put to death his eldest son Crispus, and his own wife Fausta, the same year that he convened the Council of Nice. Zosimus and Sozomen pretend that, the heathen priests having told him that there were no expiations for such great crimes, he then made open profession of Christianity, and demolished many temples in the East. It is not very probable that the pagan pontiffs should have omitted so fine an opportunity of getting back their grand pontiff, who had abandoned them. However, it is by no means impossible that there might be among them some severe men; scrupulous and austere persons are to be found everywhere. What is more extraordinary is, that Constantine, after becoming a Christian, performed no penance for his parricide. It was at Rome that he exercised that cruelty, and from that time residence at Rome became hateful to him. He quitted it forever, and went to lay the foundations of Constantinople. How dared he say, in one of his rescripts, that he transferred the seat of empire to Constantinople, "by the command of God himself?" Is it anything but an impudent mockery of God and man? If God had given him any command, would it not have been – not to assassinate his wife and son?

Diocletian had already furnished an example of transferring the empire towards Asia. The pride, the despotism, and the general manners of the Asiatics disgusted the Romans, depraved and slavish as they had become. The emperors had not ventured to require, at Rome, that their feet should be kissed, nor to introduce a crowd of eunuchs into their palaces. Diocletian began in Nicomedia, and Constantine completed the system at Constantinople, to assimilate the Roman court to the courts of the Persians. The city of Rome from that time languished in decay, and the old Roman spirit declined with her. Constantine thus effected the greatest injury to the empire that was in his power.

Of all the emperors, he was unquestionably the most absolute. Augustus had left an image of liberty; Tiberius, and even Nero, had humored the senate and people of Rome; Constantine humored none. He had at first established his power in Rome by disbanding those haughty prætorians who considered themselves the masters of the emperors. He made an entire separation between the gown and the sword. The depositories of the laws, kept down under military power, were only jurists in chains. The provinces of the empire were governed upon a new system.

The grand object of Constantine was to be master in everything; he was so in the Church, as well as in the State. We behold him convoking and opening the Council of Nice; advancing into the midst of the assembled fathers, covered over with jewels, and with the diadem on his head, seating himself in the highest place, and banishing unconcernedly sometimes Arius and sometimes Athanasius. He put himself at the head of Christianity without being a Christian; for at that time baptism was essential to any person's becoming one; he was only a catechumen. The usage of waiting for the approach of death before immersing in the water of regeneration, was beginning to decline with respect to private individuals. If Constantine, by delaying his baptism till near the point of death, entertained the notion that he might commit every act with impunity in the hope of a complete expiation, it was unfortunate for the human race that such an opinion should have ever suggested itself to the mind of a man in possession of uncontrolled power.

CONTRADICTIONS

SECTION I

The more we see of the world, the more we see it abounding in contradictions and inconsistencies. To begin with the Grand Turk: he orders every head that he dislikes struck off, and can very rarely preserve his own. If we pass from the Grand Turk to the Holy Father, he confirms the election of emperors, and has kings among his vassals; but he is not so powerful as a duke of Savoy. He expedites orders for America and Africa, yet could not withhold the slightest of its privileges from the republic of Lucca. The emperor is the king of the Romans; but the right of their king consists in holding the pope's stirrup, and handing the water to him at mass. The English serve their monarch upon their knees, but they depose, imprison, and behead him.

Men who make a vow of poverty, gain in consequence an income of about two hundred thousand crowns; and, in virtue of their vow of humility, they become absolute sovereigns. The plurality of benefices with care of souls is severely denounced at Rome, yet every day it despatches a bull to some German, to enable him to hold five or six bishoprics at once. The reason, we are told, is that the German bishops have no cure of souls. The chancellor of France is the first person in the State, but he cannot sit at table with the king, at least he could not till lately, although a colonel, who is scarcely perhaps a gentleman —gentil-homme– may enjoy that distinction. The wife of a provincial governor is a queen in the province, but merely a citizen's wife at court.

Persons convicted of the crime of nonconformity are publicly roasted, and in all our colleges the second eclogue of Virgil is explained with great gravity, including Corydon's declarations of love to the beautiful Alexis; and it is remarked to the boys that, although Alexis be fair and Amyntas brown, yet Amyntas may still deserve the preference.

If an unfortunate philosopher, without intending the least harm, takes it into his head that the earth turns round, or to imagine that light comes from the sun, or to suppose that matter may contain some other properties than those with which we are acquainted, he is cried down as a blasphemer, and a disturber of the public peace; and yet there are translations in usum Delphini of the "Tusculan Questions" of Cicero, and of Lucretius, which are two complete courses of irreligion.

Courts of justice no longer believe that persons are possessed by devils, and laugh at sorcerers; but Gauffredi and Grandier were burned for sorcery; and one-half of a parliament wanted to sentence to the stake a monk accused of having bewitched a girl of eighteen by breathing upon her.

The skeptical philosopher Bayle was persecuted, even in Holland. La Motte le Vayer, more of a skeptic, but less of a philosopher, was preceptor of the king Louis XIV., and of the king's brother. Gourville was hanged in effigy at Paris, while French minister in Germany.

The celebrated atheist Spinoza lived and died in peace. Vanini, who had merely written against Aristotle, was burned as an atheist; he has, in consequence, obtained the honor of making one article in the histories of the learned, and in all the dictionaries, which, in fact, constitute immense repositories of lies, mixed up with a very small portion of truth. Open these books, and you will there find not merely that Vanini publicly taught atheism in his writings, but that twelve professors of his sect went with him to Naples with the intention of everywhere making proselytes. Afterwards, open the books of Vanini, and you will be astonished to find in them nothing but proofs of the existence of God. Read the following passage, taken from his "Amphitheatrum," a work equally unknown and condemned; "God is His own original and boundary, without end and without beginning, requiring neither the one nor the other, and father of all beginning and end; He ever exists, but not in time; to Him there has been no past, and will be no future; He reigns everywhere, without being in any place; immovable without rest, rapid without motion; He is all, and out of all; He is in all, without being enclosed; out of everything, without being excluded from anything; good, but without quality; entire, but without parts; immutable, while changing the whole universe; His will is His power; absolute, there is nothing of Him of what is merely possible; all in Him is real; He is the first, the middle, and the last; finally, although constituting all, He is above all beings, out of them, within them, beyond them, before them, and after them." It was after such a profession of faith that Vanini was declared an atheist. Upon what grounds was he condemned? Simply upon the deposition of a man named Francon. In vain did his books depose in favor of him; a single enemy deprived him of life, and stigmatized his name throughout Europe.

The little book called "Cymbalum Mundi," which is merely a cold imitation of Lucian, and which has not the slightest or remotest reference to Christianity, was condemned to be burned. But Rabelais was printed "cum privilegio"; and a free course was allowed to the "Turkish Spy," and even to the "Persian Letters"; that volatile, ingenious, and daring work, in which there is one whole letter in favor of suicide; another in which we find these words: "If we suppose such a thing as religion;" a third, in which it is expressly said that "the bishops have no other functions than dispensing with the observance of the laws"; and, finally, another in which the pope is said to be a magician, who makes people believe that three are one, and that the bread we eat is not bread, etc.

The Abbé St. Pierre, a man who could frequently deceive himself, but who never wrote without a view to the public good, and whose works were called by Cardinal Dubois, "The dreams of an honest citizen"; the Abbé St. Pierre, I say, was unanimously expelled from the French Academy for having, in some political work, preferred the establishment of councils under the regency to that of secretaries of state under Louis XIV.; and for saying that towards the close of that glorious reign the finances were wretchedly conducted. The author of the "Persian Letters" has not mentioned Louis XIV. in his book, except to say that he was a magician who could make his subjects believe that paper was money; that he liked no government but that of Turkey; that he preferred a man who handed him a napkin to a man who gained him battles; that he had conferred a pension on a man who had run away two leagues, and a government upon another who had run away four; that he was overwhelmed with poverty, although it is said, in the same letter, that his finances are inexhaustible. Observe, then, I repeat, all that this writer, in the only work then known to be his, has said of Louis XIV., the patron of the French Academy. We may add, too, as a climax of contradiction, that that society admitted him as a member for having turned them into ridicule; for, of all the books by which the public have been entertained at the expense of the society, there is not one in which it has been treated more disrespectfully than in the "Persian Letters." See that letter wherein he says, "The members of this body have no other business than incessantly to chatter; panegyric comes and takes its place as it were spontaneously in their eternal gabble," etc. After having thus treated this society, they praise him, on his introduction, for his skill in drawing likenesses.

Were I disposed to continue the research into the contraries to be found in the empire of letters, I might give the history of every man of learning or wit; just in the same manner as, if I were inclined to detail the contradictions existing in society, it would be necessary to write the history of mankind. An Asiatic, who should travel to Europe, might well consider us as pagans; our week days bear the names of Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus; and the nuptials of Cupid and Psyche are painted in the pope's palace; but, particularly, were this Asiatic to attend at our opera, he would not hesitate in concluding it to be a festival in honor of the pagan deities. If he endeavored to gain more precise information respecting our manners, he would experience still greater astonishment; he would see, in Spain, that a severe law forbids any foreigner from having the slightest share, however indirect, in the commerce of America; and that, notwithstanding, foreigners – through the medium of Spanish factors – carry on a commerce with it to the extent of fifteen millions a year. Thus Spain can be enriched only by the violation of a law always subsisting and always evaded. He would see that in another country the government establishes and encourages a company for trading to the Indies, while the divines of that country have declared the receiving of dividends upon the shares offensive in the sight of God. He would see that the offices of a judge, a commander, a privy counsellor, are purchased; he would be unable to comprehend why it is stated in the patents appointing to such offices that they have been bestowed gratis and without purchase, while the receipt for the sum given for them is attached to the commission itself. Would not our Asiatic be surprised, also, to see comedians salaried by sovereigns, and excommunicated by priests? He would inquire why a plebeian lieutenant-general, who had won battles, should be subject to the taille, like a peasant; and a sheriff should be considered, at least in reference to this point, as noble as a Montmorency; why, while regular dramas are forbidden to be performed during a week sacred to edification, merry-andrews are permitted to offend even the least delicate ears with their ribaldry. He would almost everywhere see our usages in opposition to our laws; and were we to travel to Asia, we should discover the existence of exactly similar contradictions.

Men are everywhere inconsistent alike. They have made laws by piecemeal, as breaches are repaired in walls. Here the eldest sons take everything they are able from the younger ones; there all share equally. Sometimes the Church has ordered duels, sometimes it has anathematized them. The partisans and the opponents of Aristotle have been both excommunicated in their turn; as have also the wearers of long hair and short hair. There has been but one perfect law in the world, and that was designed to regulate a species of folly – that is to say, play. The laws of play are the only ones which admit of no exception, relaxation, change or tyranny. A man who has been a lackey, if he plays at lansquenet with kings, is paid with perfect readiness when he wins. In other cases the law is everywhere a sword, with which the strongest party cuts in pieces the weakest.

In the meantime the world goes on as if everything was wisely arranged; irregularity is part of our nature. Our social world is like the natural globe, rude and unshapely, but possessing a principle of preservation; it would be folly to wish that mountains, seas, and rivers were traced in regular and finished forms; it would be a still greater folly to expect from man the perfection of wisdom; it would be as weak as to wish to attach wings to dogs or horns to eagles.