A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 09

Let us suppose that which may very likely happen, as ecclesiastics are only men, that the excommunication which they have been led to pronounce has been prompted by some error or some passion; he who is exposed to a censure so precipitate is clearly justified in his conscience before God; the declaration issued against him can produce no effect upon the life to come. Deprived of exterior communion with the true Church, he may still enjoy the consolation of the interior communion. Justified by his conscience, he has nothing to fear in a future existence from the judgment of God, his only true judge.

It is then a great question, as to canonical rights, whether the clergy, their head, or any ecclesiastical body whatever, can excommunicate the sovereign or the magistracy, under any pretext, or for any abuse of their power? This question is essentially scandalous, and the simple doubt a direct rebellion. In fact, the first duty of man in society is to respect the magistrate, and to advance his respectability, and you pretend to have a right to censure and set him aside. Who has given you this absurd and pernicious right? Is it God, who governs the political world by delegated sovereignty, and who ordains that society shall subsist by subordination?

The first ecclesiastics at the rise of Christianity – did they conceive themselves authorized to excommunicate Tiberius, Nero, Claudius, or even Constantine, who was a heretic? How then have pretensions thus monstrous, ideas thus atrocious, wicked attempts equally condemned by reason and by natural and religious rights, been suffered to last so long? If a religion exists which teaches like horrors, society ought to proscribe it, as directly subversive of the repose of mankind. The cry of whole nations is already lifted up against these pretended canonical laws, dictated by ambition and by fanaticism. It is to be hoped that sovereigns, better instructed in their rights, and supported by the fidelity of their people, will terminate abuses so enormous, and which have caused so many misfortunes. The author of the "Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations" has been the first to forcibly expose the atrocity of enterprises of this nature.

SECTION VOf the Superintendence of Doctrine

The sovereign is not the judge of the truth of doctrine; he may judge for himself, like all other men; but he ought to take cognizance of it in respect to everything which relates to civil order, whether in regard to purport or delivery.

This is the general rule from which magistrates ought never to depart. Nothing in a doctrine merits the attention of the police, except as it interests public order: it is the influence of doctrine upon manners that decides its importance. Doctrines which have a distant connection only with good conduct can never be fundamental. Truths which conduce to render mankind gentle, humane, obedient to the laws and to the government, interest the State, and proceed evidently from God.

SECTION VISuperintendence of the Magistracy Over the Administration of the Sacraments

The administration of the sacraments ought to be submitted to the careful inspection of the magistrates in everything which concerns public order.

It has already been observed that the magistrate ought to watch over the form of the public registry of marriages, baptisms, and deaths, without any regard to the creed of the different inhabitants of the State.

Similar reasons in relation to police and good government – do they not require an exact registry in the hands of the magistracy of all those who make vows, and enter convents in those countries in which convents are permitted?

In the sacrament of repentance, the minister who refuses or grants absolution is accountable for his judgment only to God; and in the same manner, the penitent is accountable to God alone, whether he consummates it all, or does so well or ill.

No pastor, himself a sinner, ought to have the right of publicly refusing, on his own private authority, the eucharist to another sinner. The sinless Jesus Christ refused not the communion to Judas.

Extreme unction and the viaticum, if demanded or requested by the sick, should be governed by the same, rule. The simple right of the minister is to exhort the sick person, and it is the duty of the magistrate to take care that the pastor abuse not circumstances, in order to persecute the invalid.

Formerly, it was the Church collectively which called the pastors, and conferred upon them the right of governing and instructing the flock. At present, ecclesiastics alone consecrate others, and the magistracy ought to be watchful of this privilege.

It is doubtless a great, though ancient abuse, that of conferring orders without functions; it is depriving the State of members, without adding to the Church. The magistrate is called upon to reform this abuse.

Marriage, in a civil sense, is the legitimate union of a man with a woman for the procreation of children, to secure their due nurture and education, and in order to assure unto them their rights and properties under the protection of the laws. In order to confirm and establish this union, it is accompanied by a religious ceremony, regarded by some as a sacrament, and by others as a portion of public worship; a genuine logomachy, which changes nothing in the thing. Two points are therefore to be distinguished in marriage – the civil contract, or natural engagement, and the sacrament, or sacred ceremony. Marriage may therefore exist, with all its natural and civil effects, independently of the religious ceremony. The ceremonies of the Church are only essential to civil order, because the State has adopted them. A long time elapsed before the ministers of religion had anything to do with marriage. In the time of Justinian, the agreement of the parties, in the presence of witnesses, without any ceremonies of the Church, legalized marriages among Christians. It was that emperor who, towards the middle of the sixth century, made the first laws by which the presence of priests was required, as simple witnesses, without, however, prescribing any nuptial benediction. The emperor Leo, who died in 886, seems to have been the first who placed the religious ceremony in the number of necessary conditions. The terms of the law itself indeed, which ordains it, prove it to have been a novelty.

From the correct idea which we now form of marriage, it results in the first place, that good order, and even piety, render religious forms adopted in all Christian countries necessary. But the essence of marriage cannot be denationalized, and this engagement, which is the principal one in society, ought uniformly, as a branch of civil and political order, to be placed under the authority of the magistracy.

It follows, therefore, that a married couple, even educated in the worship of infidels and heretics, are not obliged to marry again, if they have been united agreeably to the established forms of their own country; and it is for the magistrate in all such instances to investigate the state of the case.

The priest is at present the magistrate freely nominated by the law, in certain countries, to receive the pledged faith of persons wishing to marry. It is very evident, that the law can modify or change as it pleases the extent of this ecclesiastical authority.

Wills and funerals are incontestably under the authority of the civil magistracy and the police. The clergy have never been allowed to usurp the authority of the law in respect to these. In the age of Louis XIV. however, and even in that of Louis XV., striking examples have been witnessed of the endeavors of certain fanatical ecclesiastics to interfere in the regulation of funerals. Under the pretext of heresy, they refused the sacraments, and interment; a barbarity which Pagans would have held in horror.

SECTION VIIEcclesiastical Jurisdiction

The sovereign or State may, without doubt, give up to an ecclesiastical body, or a single priest, a jurisdiction over certain objects and certain persons, with a power suitable to the authority confided. I examine not into the prudence of remitting a certain portion of civil authority into the hands of any body or person who already enjoys an authority in things spiritual. To deliver to those who ought to be solely employed in conducting men to heaven, an authority upon earth, is to produce a union of two powers, the abuse of which is only too easy; but at least it is evident that any man, as well as an ecclesiastic, may be intrusted with the same jurisdiction. By whomsoever possessed, it has either been conceded by the sovereign power, or usurped; there is no medium. The kingdom of Jesus Christ is not of this world; he refused to be a judge upon earth, and ordered that men should give unto Cæsar the things which belonged unto Cæsar: he forbade all dominations to his apostles, and preached only humility, gentleness, and dependence. From him ecclesiastics can derive neither power, authority, domination, nor jurisdiction in this world. They can therefore possess no legitimate authority, but by a concession from the sovereign or State, from which all authority in a society can properly emanate.

There was a time in the unhappy epoch of the feudal ages in which ecclesiastics were possessed in various countries with the principal functions of the magistracy: the authority of the lords of the lay fiefs, so formidable to the sovereign and oppressive to the people, has been since bounded; but a portion of the independence of the ecclesiastical jurisdictions still exists. When will sovereigns be sufficiently informed and courageous to take back from them the usurped authority and numerous privileges which they have so often abused, to annoy the flock which they ought to protect?

It is by this inadvertence of princes that the audacious enterprises of ecclesiastics against sovereigns themselves have originated. The scandalous history of these attempts has been consigned to records which cannot be contested. The bull "In cœna Domini," in particular, still remains to prove the continual enterprises of the clergy against royal and civil authority.

Extract from the Tariff of the Rights Exacted in France by the Court of Rome for Bulls, Dispensations, Absolutions, etc., which Tariff was Decreed in the King's Council, Sept. 4, 1691, and Which is Reported Entire in the Brief of James Lepelletier, Printed at Lyons in 1699, with the Approbation and Permission of the King. Lyons: Printed for Anthony Boudet, Eighth Edition.

1. For absolution for the crime of apostasy, payable to the pope, twenty-four livres.

2. A bastard wishing to take orders must pay twenty-five livres for a dispensation; if desirous to possess a benefice, he must pay in addition one hundred and eighty livres; if anxious that his dispensation should not allude to his illegitimacy, he will have to pay a thousand and fifty livres.

3. For dispensation and absolution of bigamy, one thousand and fifty livres.

4. For a dispensation for the error of a false judgment in the administration of justice or the exercise of medicine, ninety livres.

5. Absolution for heresy, twenty-four livres.

6. Brief of forty hours, for seven years, twelve livres.

7. Absolution for having committed homicide in self-defence, or undesignedly, ninety-five livres. All in company of the murderer also need absolution, and are to pay for the same eighty-five livres each.

8. Indulgences for seven years, twelve livres.

9. Perpetual indulgences for a brotherhood, forty livres.

10. Dispensation for irregularity and incapacity, twenty-five livres; if the irregularity is great, fifty livres.

11. For permission to read forbidden books, twenty-five livres.

12. Dispensation for simony, forty livres; with an augmentation according to circumstances.

13. Brief to permit the eating of forbidden meats, sixty-five livres.

14. Dispensation for simple vows of chastity or of religion, fifteen livres. Brief declaratory of the nullity of the profession of a monk or a nun, one hundred livres. If this brief be requested ten years after profession, double the amount.

Dispensations in Relation to Marriage.

Dispensations for the fourth degree of relationship, with cause, sixty-five livres; without cause, ninety livres; with dispensation for familiarities that have passed between the future married persons, one hundred and eighty livres.

For relations of the third or fourth degree, both on the side of the father and mother, without cause, eight hundred and eighty livres; with cause, one hundred and forty-five livres.

For relations of the second degree on one side, and the fourth on the other; nobles to pay one thousand four hundred and thirty livres; roturiers, one thousand one hundred and fifty livres.

He who would marry the sister of the girl to whom he has been affianced, to pay for a dispensation, one thousand four hundred and thirty livres.

Those who are relations in the third degree, if they are nobles, or live creditably, are to pay one thousand four hundred and thirty livres; if the relationship is on the side of father as well as mother, two thousand four hundred and thirty livres.

Relations in the second degree to pay four thousand five hundred and thirty livres; and if the female has accorded favors to the male, in addition for absolution, two thousand and thirty livres.

For those who have stood sponsors at the baptism of the children of each other, the dispensation will cost two thousand seven hundred and thirty livres. If they would be absolved from premature familiarity, one thousand three hundred and thirty livres in addition.

He who has enjoyed the favors of a widow during the life of her deceased husband, in order to legitimately espouse her, will have to pay one hundred and ninety livres.

In Spain and Portugal, the marriage dispensations are still dearer. Cousins-german cannot obtain them for less than two thousand crowns.

The poor not being able to pay these taxes, abatements may be made. It is better to obtain half a right, than lose all by refusing the dispensation.

No reference is had here to the sums paid to the pope for the bulls of bishops, abbots, etc., which are to be found in the almanacs; but we cannot perceive by what authority the pope of Rome levies taxes upon laymen who choose to marry their cousins.

RIVERS

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error. It is not long since it was discovered that all rivers originate in those eternal masses of snow which cover the summits of lofty mountains, those snows in rain, that rain in the vapor exhaled from the land and sea; and that thus everything is a link in the great chain of nature.

When a boy, I heard theses delivered which proved that all rivers and fountains came from the sea. This was the opinion of all antiquity. These rivers flowed into immense caverns, and thence distributed their waters to all parts of the world.

When Aristeus goes to lament the loss of his bees to Cyrene his mother, goddess of the little river Enipus in Thessaly, the river immediately divides itself, forming as it were two mountains of water, right and left, to receive him according to ancient and immemorial usage; after which he has a view of those vast and beautiful grottoes through which flow all the rivers of the earth; the Po, which descends from Mount Viso in Piedmont, and traverses Italy; the Teverone, which comes from the Apennines; the Phasis, which issues from Mount Caucasus, and falls into the Black Sea; and numberless others.

Virgil, in this instance, adopted a strange system of natural philosophy, in which certainly none but poets can be indulged.

Such, however, was the credit and prevalence of this system that, fifteen hundred years afterwards, Tasso completely imitated Virgil in his fourteenth canto, while imitating at the same time with far greater felicity Ariosto. An old Christian magician conducts underground the two knights who are to bring back Rinaldo from the arms of Armida, as Melissa had rescued Rogero from the caresses of Alcina. This venerable sage makes Rinaldo descend into his grotto, from which issue all the rivers which refresh and fertilize our earth. It is a pity that the rivers of America are not among the number. But as the Nile, the Danube, the Seine, the Jordan, and the Volga have their source in this cavern, that ought to be deemed sufficient. What is still more in conformity to the physics of antiquity is the circumstance of this grotto or cavern being in the very centre of the earth. Of course, it is here that Maupertuis wanted to take a tour.

After admitting that rivers spring from mountains, and that both of them are essential parts of this great machine, let us beware how we give in to varying and vanishing systems.

When Maillet imagined that the sea had formed the mountains, he should have dedicated his book to Cyrano de Bergerac. When it has been said, also, that the great chains of mountains extend from east to west, and that the greatest number of rivers also flow always to the west, the spirit of system has been more consulted than the truth of nature.

With respect to mountains, disembark at the Cape of Good Hope, you will perceive a chain of mountains from the south as far north as Monomotapa. Only a few persons have visited that quarter of the world, and travelled under the line in Africa. But Calpe and Abila are completely in the direction of north and south. From Gibraltar to the river Guadiana, in a course directly northward, there is a continuous range of mountains. New and Old Castile are covered with them, and the direction of them all is from south to north, like that of all the mountains in America. With respect to the rivers, they flow precisely according to the disposition or direction of the land.

The Guadalquivir runs straight to the south from Villanueva to San Lucar; the Guadiana the same, as far as Badajos. All the rivers in the Gulf of Venice, except the Po, fall into the sea towards the south. Such is the course of the Rhone from Lyons to its mouth. That of the Seine is from the north-northwest. The Rhine, from Basle, goes straight to the north. The Meuse does the same, from its source to the territory overflowed by its waters. The Scheldt also does the same.

Why, then, should men be so assiduous in deceiving themselves, just for the pleasure of forming systems, and leading astray persons of weak and ignorant minds? What good can possibly arise from inducing a number of people – who must inevitably be soon undeceived – to believe that all rivers and all mountains are in a direction from east to west, or from west to east; that all mountains are covered with oyster-shells – which is most certainly false – that anchors have been found on the summit of the mountains of Switzerland; that these mountains have been formed by the currents of the ocean; and that limestone is composed entirely of seashells? What! shall we, at the present day, treat philosophy as the ancients formerly treated history?

To return to streams and rivers. The most important and valuable things that can be done in relation to them is preventing their inundations, and making new rivers – that is, canals – out of those already existing, wherever the undertaking is practicable and beneficial. This is one of the most useful services that can be conferred upon a nation. The canals of Egypt were as serviceable as its pyramids were useless.

With regard to the quantity of water conveyed along the beds of rivers, and everything relating to calculation on the subject, read the article on "River," by M. d'Alembert. It is, like everything else done by him, clear, exact, and true; and written in a style adapted to the subject; he does not employ the style of Telemachus to discuss subjects of natural philosophy.

ROADS

It was not until lately that the modern nations of Europe began to render roads practicable and convenient, and to bestow on them some beauty. To superintend and keep in order the road is one of the most important cares of both the Mogul and Chinese emperors. But these princes never attained such eminence in this department as the Romans. The Appian, the Aurelian, the Flaminian, the Æmilian, and the Trajan ways exist even at the present day. The Romans alone were capable of constructing such roads, and they alone were capable of repairing them.

Bergier, who has written an otherwise valuable book, insists much on Solomon's employing thirty thousand Jews in cutting wood on Mount Lebanon, eighty thousand in building the temple, seventy thousand on carriages, and three thousand six hundred in superintending the labors of others. We will for a moment admit it all to be true; yet still there is nothing said about his making or repairing highways.

Pliny informs us that three hundred thousand men were employed for twenty years in building one of the pyramids of Egypt; I am not disposed to doubt it; but surely three hundred thousand men might have been much better employed. Those who worked on the canals in Egypt; or on the great wall, the canals, or highways of China; or those who constructed the celebrated ways of the Roman Empire were much more usefully occupied than the three hundred thousand miserable slaves in building a pyramidal sepulchre for the corpse of a bigoted Egyptian.

We are well acquainted with the prodigious works accomplished by the Romans, their immense excavations for lakes of water, or the beds of lakes formed by nature, filled up, hills levelled, and a passage bored through a mountain by Vespasian, in the Flaminian way, for more than a thousand feet in length, the inscription on which remains at present. Pausilippo is not to be compared with it.

The foundations of the greater part of our present houses are far from being so solid as were the highways in the neighborhood of Rome; and these public ways were extended throughout the empire, although not upon the same scale of duration and solidity. To effect that would have required more men and money than could possibly have been obtained.

Almost all the highways of Italy were erected on a foundation four feet deep; when a space of marshy ground or bog was on the track of the road, it was filled up; and when any part of it was mountainous, its pretipitousness was reduced to a gentle and trifling inclination from the general line of the road. In many parts, the roads were supported by solid walls.

Upon the four feet of masonry, were placed large hewn stones of marble, nearly one foot in thickness, and frequently ten feet wide; they were indented by the chisel to prevent the slipping of the horses. It was difficult to say which most attracted admiration – the utility or the magnificence of these astonishing works.

Nearly all of these wonderful constructions were raised at the public expense. Cæsar repaired and extended the Appian way out of his own private funds; those funds, however, consisted of the money of the republic.

Who were the persons employed upon these works? Slaves, captives taken in war, and provincials that were not admitted to the distinction of Roman citizens. They worked by "corvée," as they do in France and elsewhere; but some trifling remuneration was allowed them.

Augustus was the first who joined the legions with the people in labors upon the highways of the Gauls, and in Spain and Asia. He penetrated the Alps by the valley which bore his name, and which the Piedmontese and the French corruptly called the "Valley of Aöste." It was previously necessary to bring under subjection all the savage hordes by which these cantons were inhabited. There is still visible, between Great and Little St. Bernard, the triumphal arch erected by the senate in honor of him after this expedition. He again penetrated the Alps on another side leading to Lyons, and thence into the whole of Gaul. The conquered never effected for themselves so much as was effected for them by their conquerors.

The downfall of the Roman Empire was that of all the public works, as also of all orderly police, art, and industry. The great roads disappeared in the Gauls, except some causeways, "chaussées," which the unfortunate Queen Brunehilde kept for a little time in repair. A man could scarcely move on horseback with safety on the ancient celebrated ways, which were now becoming dreadfully broken up, and impeded by masses of stone and mud. It was found necessary to pass over the cultivated fields; the ploughs scarcely effected in a month what they now easily accomplish in a week. The little commerce that remained was limited to a few woollen and linen cloths, and some wretchedly wrought hardwares, which were carried on the backs of mules to the fortifications or prisons called "châteaux" situated in the midst of marshes, or on the tops of mountains covered with snow.