The Project Gutenberg eBook of Essays, or discourses, vol. 2 (of 4),
by Benito Jerónimo Feijóo

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Title: Essays, or discourses, vol. 2 (of 4)
       Selected from the works of Feyjoo, and translated from the
       Spanish

Author: Benito Jerónimo Feijóo

Translator: John Brett

Release Date: July 26, 2023 [eBook #71278]

Language: English

Credits: Josep Cols Canals, Krista Zaleski and the Online Distributed
         Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
         produced from images generously made available by The Internet
         Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS, OR DISCOURSES, VOL. 2
(OF 4) ***






                                ESSAYS,

                                  OR

                              DISCOURSES,

                             SELECTED FROM

                         THE WORKS OF FEYJOO,

                                  AND

                     TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH,

                                  BY

                           JOHN BRETT, ESQ.

                          VOLUME THE SECOND.

                                LONDON:

                      Printed for the TRANSLATOR:

             Sold by H. PAYNE, Pall-Mall; C. DILLY, in the
                 Poultry; and T. EVANS, in the Strand.

                               MDCCLXXX.




CONTENTS

OF THE SECOND VOLUME


    THE BALANCE OF ASTREA; OR, UPRIGHT ADMINISTRATION OF
    JUSTICE.                                                 Page 1

    ON THE IMPUNITY OF LYING.                                 p. 41

    ON THE LOVE OF OUR COUNTRY, AND NATIONAL PREJUDICE OR
    PREPOSSESSION.                                            p. 66

    ON TRUE AND FALSE URBANITY.                              p. 109

    A DEFENCE OR VINDICATION OF THE WOMEN.                   p. 189

    ON CHURCH MUSIC.                                         p. 313

    THE WONDERFUL EFFECTS OF MUSIC, AND A COMPARISON OF THE
    ANTIENT WITH THE MODERN.                                 p. 357




[Illustration]




THE

BALANCE OF ASTREA;

OR,

Upright Administration of Justice:

In a LETTER from an OLD JUDGE, to his SON who was newly raised to the
Bench.


SECT. I.

I. I do not know, my Son, whether to congratulate or condole with
you on the information you give me, of his Majesty having honoured
you with a Judge’s robe. I contemplate you as placed in a state of
slavery, which, although it is an honourable one, must always remain
and continue a slavery. Already you are neither mine nor your own, but
belong to the public at large. The obligations of this charge should
not only emancipate you from your father, but detach you from yourself
also. There is an end of your considering your convenience, your
health, or your ease; and you have only now to attend to the duties
and discharge of your conscience; you should look upon your own good
as a foreign concern, and regard that of the public as your own. You
are already divested of neighbours, friends, or kindred; you have no
country, and must have no regard for the tyes of flesh and blood. Do
you think I mean to say, you should cease to be a man? No, certainly;
but I would have it understood, that the affections of the man should
live in such a state of separation from the duties of the Judge, that
there should not be the slightest commerce or correspondence between
them.

II. I repeat again, that I am at a loss whether to condole with or
congratulate you on the event. I view your soul as exposed to the
continual hazard of being lost; and I was on the point of saying, the
office of a Judge affords proximate occasions for sinning through the
course of a man’s life. You may say this is a hard proposition; and
I acknowledge it is; but what other inference can be drawn from the
terrible sentence of St. John Chrysostom, which is in the following
words: _It appears to me impossible that any of those who govern should
be saved._ And what other thing could the religious Pontiff, Pius the
Vth, mean, when he said, that while he was a private Religious, he had
great hopes of being saved, though when they made him a Cardinal he
began to fear, but when they made him a Pope he almost despaired of
salvation? If this is not a virtual asseveration, that the occupation
of a ruler furnishes a continual and proximate occasion for sinning, I
do not understand the expression. But it is true, that although this
should be the case, the crime would be obviated, because the necessity
of the public makes the exercise of such a function inevitable; but
then the crime would only be obviated in such subjects, who feel in
themselves, dispositions to perform the duties of such an office with
rectitude and propriety; as for the others, I will not exculpate them.
I do not understand that text of the Ecclesiastes as an advice or
caution, but as a precept and injunction, which says, Don’t solicit to
be made a judge, unless you find yourself possessed with that virtue
and fortitude, which is necessary to extirpate evil deeds.

III. He who doubts whether he is endued with a sufficient share of
knowledge, or a necessary portion of health and constitution, to
undertake so weighty a charge; he who does not find himself possessed
of a robust heart, which is invincible to, and proof against the
promises and threats of the great and powerful; he who feels himself
enamoured with the beauty of gold; he who knows his sensibility
liable to be wrought upon by the intreaties of domestics, friends, or
relations, cannot, in my opinion, enter upon the office of a magistrate
with a good conscience. I do not, although it is indispensably
necessary, comprehend in this catalogue of requisites the virtue of
prudence, because every one fancies he possesses it; but, if a man
mistakes in this particular, I judge his error to be incurable.

IV. He who is cloathed with a robe, ought to keep his soul well
fortified at all points, because in a variety of occurrences, there
is no passion that may not be inimical to justice; and the suitors
are very solicitous in examining where the defence is weak; even
lawful affections are sometimes hostile to her. What is more right or
proper than a man’s tenderness for his wife? But how often has a man’s
affection for his wife, been the cause of warping the wand of justice!

V. I don’t mean to inculcate, that a judge should be fierce,
unfeeling, and harsh; but that he should be firm, spirited, and a man
of integrity. It is rare, but not impossible, for a man to possess
a soul of wax for the duties of private life, and a mind of brass
for the administration of public ones; although the heart may be
susceptible of its tendernesses, the sacred castle of justice should
be inaccessible to such feelings. It is said, that friendships may be
permitted to approach even to the altar; but they should not be so much
as suffered to enter the doors of the temple of Astrea.

VI. I contemplate you, my Son, as having some advantageous dispositions
for exercising this office; you are disinterested, an important quality
in a judge; but that does not quiet my fears; for how can I be certain
you will continue so in future? Disinterestedness, like beauty, is
an endowment and ornament of youth, and rarely accompanies life in
old age. I have read but of two women who preserved their beauty
till seventy; the one was Diana of Poitiers, Dutchess of Valentine,
who lived in the reign of Henry the IId. King of France; the other
was Aspasia of Miletus, concubine of Cyrus King of Persia. I do not
know whether you can reckon many more men, who left totally to their
natural dispositions, without the invention or assistance of other
helps, preserved their contempt for gold till they arrived at that age.
The soul fades with the body, and the narrowness and contractions of
avarice are its wrinkles.

VII. The danger of people in exalted stations in the law, falling
into this vice, is greater, because they are exposed to more frequent
temptations. Elizabeth of England used to say, that the office of a
Judge at his first elevation, seemed to fit on him like new cloaths,
which appear tight and strait at the beginning, but after a little
time they stretch and become easy and familiar. The same may be said
of Judges in all other kingdoms. Many, who at first scruple to accept
an apple, in the course of a few years, are capable of swallowing
the whole orchard of the Hesperides; and you know the apples of that
orchard were golden ones. The same thing happens to them that happens
to rivulets, which rarely fall into, and are swallowed by the sea, with
the scanty stock they contained in their first passages.

VIII. Let no caution, my Son, appear too great, to guard you against
the treacherous attacks of avarice; this serpent, whose bulk in time
increases without limits, is at first no bigger than a hair; I mean to
say, they commonly begin with presents of such trifling value, that
the refusing to accept them would be blamed by the world as affected
nicety. But what follows? Why, that when they are once admitted, by
the exertion of their power in the first entrances of the door of the
will, they proceed to widen it by little and little, so that every
day it becomes capable of receiving more and more. God defend us from
a magistrate’s setting about to enrich himself! because in such a
case, he may be compared to the element of water, whose stock bears
proportion to the contribution it receives; while it is a brook, it
only receives fountains; afterwards becoming a river, it receives
brooks; and when it arrives at being a sea, it receives rivers.

IX. It is not sufficient that you keep your own hands clean; but it is
also necessary that you examine those of your domestics. The integrity
of a magistrate requires, that he should adopt the practice of an
active and vigilant matron, who not only takes care of the cleanliness
of her own person, but looks also to the cleanliness of the rest of her
household. This is not only an obligation you owe to your conscience,
but is likewise a matter that concerns your reputation, because it
is generally understood, that the inferior part of the family is a
subterraneous conduit-pipe, through which, supplies are conveyed to
the hand of the master; but in truth it happens in point of regale or
refreshment, as it happened to the fountain of Arethusa, which although
it was received by a cavern in Greece, the place it fertilized was the
land of Sicily. We read in Daniel, that the ministers of the temple
are the dainties which were presented to the idol; in the house of
a magistrate, the idol eats the dainties which are presented to his
ministers.

X. The apprehensions I am under, that you may one day be betrayed into
this corruption, move me at present to give you an excellent caution,
as a preservative against the temptation of gifts, which is, that you
should consider any one who attempts to gain your favour in this way,
as a person who offers a direct affront to your honour; for it is
clear, that by such an action, he gives it to be understood, that you
hold in your hands the scales of venal justice. There are two sorts of
people in the world, who fall into the dangerous error, of mistaking
injuries for courtesies; women who receive presents from gallants, and
ministers of justice who permit the reception of them from suitors: for
with respect to the givers, every present is meant as a subornation;
otherwise, why is not their liberality manifested to other people as
well as to those from whom they entertain expectations? It can only
be, because they consider what they give as an offering made to their
interest; and that, to which they affect giving the appearance of
a courtesy, is at bottom nothing better than a bribe. He who makes
presents to a lady, or a minister of justice, attempts their corruption
by the act, and in his imagination supposes he has effected it. You
ought, therefore, my Son, to consider every one who attempts to gain
your favour by such means, as an enemy to your conscience, and as a
person dangerous to, and one who would injure your honour; and you
should look upon him as a man, more deserving of your contempt and
indignation, than your courtesy.

XI. I have given the name of preservative to the foregoing reflection,
because it is rather calculated to prevent the infection from getting
footing in those, who are sound and in health, than to cure the
disease, after it has once taken root. He who has contracted a habit of
gorging himself with presents, is callous to the reproach of having put
his decisions to sale.

XII. I am inclined to think, Spain is more free from this pestilence
than other kingdoms; at least in ministers of your class, this meanness
has rarely been observed. It has ever been remarked, that with us,
the higher people have been raised on the seats of justice, they have
seemed the further removed from the baseness of avarice.

XIII. Would to God, our tribunals were as deaf to recommendations,
as they are untainted with bribes! It is on this side, their credit
is most tarnished in the public opinion. There is scarce a sentence
given in a civil controversy, which the malice of grumblers, and the
voice of neutral people, does not impute to have been the effect of
some powerful recommendation. The presumption of the influence, which
the protection of men of weight has with the Judges, is so prevalent,
that many who have been despoiled by an unfair decision, and who are
persuaded of the justness of their cause, are afraid to appeal, if they
know their opponent has great connections.

XIV. We should hope, the world is greatly mistaken in this matter. The
ministers of justice, as far as they are able, and they most commonly
can do this, must discharge and comply with the duties of their
function in judicial phrases, and according to the words of the law;
and although there may have been positive promises made, when they
come to the sentence, they must consult and conform to the books of
jurisprudence, and not the letters of recommendation. God defend us,
however, from the serious misfortune of the protector of either party,
having, or ever being able to have, influence in the seats of justice!
For then we may have reason to apprehend, that to the shame of the
law, the motive of the conduct of the partial Judge may be betrayed
by his countenance, and that the dread of such motive being known,
may be the torturer who presses out and exposes the secret, or else,
that the thing may be unravelled by conjectures, or proved by some
transactions in the business; and these are the sort of cases, which,
after many years study, make people understand the law in a sense they
never understood it before, and which, in the same instant, increases
and lessens their esteem for the same authors, and causes the breath
of favour to incline the balance, with which they weigh probabilities,
to the side where there is the least weight in the scale. I remember
that great lawyer, Alexander of the family of the Alexanders, in his
treatise called _Dias Geniales_, says of himself, that he abandoned the
profession of an advocate in disgust, from having observed in his own
practice, that neither the wisdom or abilities of a counsellor, nor the
goodness of a cause, were of any avail in courts, when the opposite
parties were espoused by people of power.

XV. But excepting these instances, which have weight with those only,
who had rather rise to the highest seats on the bench than ascend to
heaven, other modes of favour in courts are trifling and of little use
or consequence; but to speak the truth, we ourselves give occasion
to their being thought useful and of consequence. If when a person
of authority intercedes on behalf of a suitor, we give him hopes and
encouragement; or if our answers to such applications, are in terms
which exceed what is necessary in a judicial reply; and if afterwards,
when that person obtains a sentence in his favour, we seem desirous, or
behave so as to make it be thought, our suffrage was a compliment to
the great man who interested himself in the suitor’s behalf, in order
that he should think he was obliged to us; we are the authors of this
error in mankind, and the cause of the injury, which, in consequence of
it, our credit suffers with the world.

XVI. This notion of the utility of recommendations, is an impediment
to our business, as well as injurious to our reputation; for it is the
occasion of our being interrupted with visits, and puts us under the
necessity of answering letters of intercession, by which means we waste
a great part of that time, which we ought to employ in study. If they
knew they were taking all this pains to no purpose, they would not
embarrass us with their applications, nor rob us of our time.

XVII. How then are we to act? That is easily determined; speak plain,
and undeceive all the world. Let them know, that the sentence depends
upon, and is ruled by the law, and not by solicitations and private
friendships; that we can serve no man at the expence of justice and
our conscience; and that that which they call being favourable, the
pretence with which they cover all their petitions, upon a practical
examination of things, is a chimera; for a Judge can never shew favour,
or at most the cases in which he can do it are metaphysical; even
in doubtful and obscure cases, and in those where the probabilities
are equal, the laws prescribe rules of equity, which we are strictly
and rigorously bound to follow. Oh! but some cases are left to the
discretion of the judge! It is true, but they are not for this reason
to be determined by his absolute will. Prudential maxims, and rules of
equity, point out the road we should pursue; and it is not lawful for
us to follow any other course, either for the sake of obliging great
men or friends. When it is said, this or that is left to the will
and pleasure of the Judge, it should not be understood to mean his
absolute uncontrolable will, but to imply, that he is to be guided in
his decision by the dictates of reason, and the principles of law. This
definition, is conformable to the sense of the Latin verb _arbitror_,
which signifies an act of the understanding, and not of the will.

XVIII. I am well aware, that objections may be made to this frank mode
of acting: the first is, that we may be called blunt and ill-bred;
but, besides that the reflection would be unjust, it would last no
longer, than till it was generally known, we had resolved to adopt this
method of acting, and till it was become common and familiar among
us. While there shall be but one or two judicial ministers who act in
this open ingenuous manner, their candid behaviour may pass among the
ignorant for want of breeding and courtesy; but if all the rest were to
do the same, even the ignorant would become sensible, that what they
had called want of breeding, was integrity; and they would also be
convinced, that this is beneficial to them, and a great saving both of
money and trouble, which are both wasted in running after, and seeking
for friends and patrons, whose assistance and protection is useless to
them.

XIX. The second objection is, that judicial ministers would lose a
great part of the respect and homage which is now paid them, it being
certain, that civilities of this sort, are not so much the result of
the reverence due to the character of a Judge, as the effect of the
imagined dependance on his favour. It is established upon the credit
of good authors, that Epicurus did not, as it is vulgarly thought,
deny the existence of the deities, but only their influence or power
to do good or harm; but this was sufficient, to cause the tenet to be
held as atheistical in practice; for he who denies the power of the
Gods, denies them adoration also. Men do not sow obsequies, but with
the expectation of reaping a harvest of benefits, and dependance is the
only stimulus or first mover to worship; therefore, when men come to
consider the tribunal as the mere organ of the law, where every thing
depends upon the intention of the legislature, and nothing upon the
inclination of the Judge, the applications to the ministers of justice,
would be very few and very slight.

XX. This objection would have great weight with those Judges, who
desire to be regarded and addressed as deities: but do you, my Son,
contemplate yourself as placed on the bench, and not on the altar; and
remember, that you are not an idol destined to receive worship and
offerings, but an oracle ordained to articulate truths. This is the
manner in which you should explain yourself, and undeceive the world;
assure the great of your respect, and your friends of your esteem; but
intimate both to one and the other, that neither esteem nor respect can
gain admittance into the cabinet of justice, because the fear of God,
who is the door-keeper of the conscience, requires that they should
remain in the antichamber.

XXI. But there may still rest with Judges a discretionary power of
shewing courtesies, if not in points that concern the substantial parts
of the cause, in the mode of administering justice; I mean, if not in
the essence of the sentence, in the brevity of dispatch. This is an
error, which I have observed some of our Judges to have fallen into;
and I call it an error, because with regard to myself, I have no doubt
of its being one. It is an obligation upon us, to give the quickest
dispatch possible to causes: and we do not shew favour to him, whose
business is done with all possible speed; but to him we do not dispatch
with the same expedition, we do injustice. The preference given to
people in priority of dispatch, is partiality; and the minister who
is the author of it, ought to make good the damages occasioned by the
delay to him who was next in turn; in this matter, attention should be
had to the nature of the cause, to the time the suit was commenced, and
to the injury that would attend procrastination in the decision of it.

XXII. With regard to this last circumstance, when there are not other
reasons to forbid it, the poor should be dispatched in preference to
the rich; and those who come from distant provinces, before those who
live in the neighbourhood. St. Jerome, in his comment on a passage
of the Proverbs, says, that formerly courts of justice were placed
at the gates of cities; which the Saint imagines to have been done,
with a view of preventing the attention of strangers who come upon law
business, and especially that of the rustics, from being taken up and
confounded by the multitude of strange objects which present themselves
to their sight, and by the bustle and hurry of the city; from hence it
may be inferred, that the dispatch was very quick, and that it was not
necessary for them to take a lodging in town; but things are greatly
altered now-a-days, and strangers who come from a great distance to
prosecute their causes, are detained so long, that they in a manner
become neighbours and inhabitants of the city. Nothing is so pernicious
as the amazing delays of judicial proceedings; as formerly, they saw
the tribunals at the gates of great towns, at present, we see intire
towns built round the gates of the tribunals, because the slowness of
dispatch increases the bulk of the causes in the office, and the number
of suitors in and about the office-porch.

XXIII. I reflect with horror on the mischiefs which these delays
occasion; for in consequence of the expence they create, it frequently
happens that both the suitors are ruined, the vanquished is stripped
and laid prostrate, and the conqueror has spent his all. There are
litigations, which last as long as the four elements in man, that is
to say, for the whole course of his life; and the result of them is
the same, the ruin of the whole. O terminations of law! you appear
like the boundaries of the world in the opinion of Descartes, that is,
indefinite.

XXIV. Even where there is nothing to wait for, and there is no occasion
of delay, the cause is sometimes suspended for months together. My Son,
you are not ignorant of the rule of law laid down by Sextus Pomponius,
which says, in the discharge of all our obligations, where there is
no particular day prescribed or assigned for dispatching a business,
we should make use of the present day. The practice of all tribunals
should be conformable to this rule, and when things are prepared for
trial, the decision should not be delayed a day, and the Judges should
direct, that the preparations are made with all the expedition possible.

XXV. From what has been premised, it is evident that a Judge can never
properly receive from a suitor any compliment or acknowledgment, on
account of having dispatched his cause, because he cannot be supposed
capable of doing him any favour, and consequently is not entitled to
any recompence. The ministers of justice ought to resemble the heavenly
bodies, who bestow great benefits on the earth, although they receive
nothing from it; for it is their duty, and incumbent on them, to
confer those benefits. They receive their reward and support from the
great Sovereign of all, who has assigned them their stations and their
duties, and the assistance of their light and their influence is a debt
they owe to the inferior world; but the inferior world is not charged
with obligations to them.

XXVI. Even the visit to return thanks, which after the suitor has got
his cause, is made by him to the Judges, I look upon as superfluous.
For what does he thank them? For having given him what belonged to
him and was his own. They are entitled to no thanks for that; and if
they have given him what was the property of another man, they deserve
punishment.

XXVII. What has been said on the subject of brevity and dispatch, is
equally pertinent to criminal as well as civil causes. The person
accused has a right to be cleared if he is innocent, and his punishment
is a debt due to the public if he is guilty; and it is generally
expedient, for one or other of these parties to be pressing for
dispatch. It is very clear, that proceeding with caution in criminal
cases is necessary, lest you fall into the serious mischief, of
punishing as guilty people those who are innocent. But standing still
and doing nothing, is not proceeding with caution; neither is thinking
no more of those in the dungeon, than of those in the grave.

XXVIII. Besides the reasons for dispatch, which are common to, and
apply equally to both sorts of causes; there is one of special note,
and great weight, which points out why it is most necessary in criminal
ones; and that is, delay being frequently the cause of malefactors
escaping without punishment. This happens by two ways: the first is,
that by delaying the process, there is more time given to the culprits
to contrive and execute their escape from prison, which when these
fierce savages have effected, they are commonly seized with a rage, of
recovering in a few days, the time they have been deprived of by their
confinement, to commit outrages; and they fancy they have a right to
revenge themselves by new schemes of roguery, for the punishment they
have undergone by having been chained and fettered. There is scarce an
innocent person whom they do not regard as their enemy, and those only
who are their brethren in iniquity, are exempted from their fury and
indignation.

XXIX. This is the common way of their revenging themselves in general,
but their malice and resentment towards particular people is the most
pernicious to the public; those who are most threatened with their
vengeance, being such as have in any shape been instrumental in their
confinement, or in having them brought to justice.

XXX. The second way, by which delays in criminal prosecutions afford
occasions for delinquents to escape with impunity, is not so palpable,
nor so obvious as the first, but in general is more successful, and
oftener takes effect. I will explain what I mean. When a notorious
crime is newly committed, all minds are sharpened against the offender,
and filled with horror at the outrage. Even the most mild call out
for punishment, and the injured person, invokes heaven and earth for
it. The public in general seem filled with resentment, and breathe
nothing but severity. All this indignation, in the course of a short
space of time, begins to lessen, and by little and little, this fierce
fire proceeds to vanish in smoak; and the further we advance from the
æra of the fact, the less impression of the deed is left on the mind;
and in our conversation on the subject, we begin to mix apophthegms
of compassion with theorems of justice; and by so much the longer the
cause is delayed, by so much the more our zeal abates; we pass from hot
to lukewarm, and from lukewarm to actual cold. The suspension of half
a year, changes the burning heats of July, to the cool air and frosts
of January. People breathe nothing but pity, and every thing seems
in favour of the culprit, except his crime. The supplicants in his
behalf are numerous, many from compassion, and some from friendship or
interest. When the tempers of people are brought to this disposition,
the culprit, who but a little before, in the universal opinion,
was deemed deserving of a halter, is released from prison, without
undergoing a punishment that is equal to a pat with the open hand.

XXXI. I have often wondered at the favourable manner in which criminals
are sometimes treated, when there does not appear any reason, or
motive, for being favourable to them; but it should be remembered,
there is always a motive for bringing them to justice. God commands it,
and the public safety requires it; and the community has a right to
demand, that delinquents should be chastised; for the impunity of evil
deeds multiplies the number of evil doers. In consequence of saving one
malefactor from the gallows who is deserving of death, many innocent
people may afterwards lose their lives, or their fortunes. O mercy ill
understood! O impious compassion! O tyrannic pity! O cruel pity!

XXXII. I do not deny that criminals should sometimes be pardoned; but
then it should only be in those cases, where the public is as much, or
more, interested in their forgiveness, than it is in their punishment.
The public good is the true north, to which the wand of justice
should always point. The services the guilty person has done to the
commonwealth, or those which he may be expected to do to it, on account
of his singular talents for doing them, are special and material
considerations in such a case. The law furnishes precepts conducive to
this end, in formal terms. Therefore, the death which Manlius Torquatus
inflicted on his brave son, when he returned victorious, for having
fought without orders, was contrary to the rules of equity. What more
could have been done to one, who had returned vanquished, and who had
no antecedent merit to plead which might entitle him to a pardon?

XXXIII. Princes have a larger discretionary power in these matters,
than their ministers of justice; not because they can pardon
according to their will and pleasure; for they must be guided by their
obligations to God and the commonwealth; but because the general or
common interests, are more proper objects for their consideration, than
for that of particular Judges. With regard to a sovereign, not only
the personal services of the guilty individual, but those also of his
near relations, such as his father, his wife, his brothers, and his
sons, may furnish motives for conciliating a pardon, or for mitigating
the punishment; and this has always been the practice of the most
illustrious princes. It is masterly policy, to inform generous minds
by such instances of clemency, that they cannot only acquire merit
for themselves, but for their relations also. Great benefit may be
derived to the community from this incentive; and many other methods
of deriving advantages to the public, by a judicious dispensation of
lenity or pardon, may be hit upon by princes, although it is not easy
for me to point out or enumerate them.

XXXIV. In crimes committed through inattention or weakness, there
is a large scope allowed for the exercise of pity or forgiveness.
The laws themselves allot less punishments for such offences, which
punishments the prince, in some cases, may totally and consistently
dispense with. I will give an example. It having come to the knowledge
of Pyrrhus king of the Epirots, that some young fellows in their cups
had murmured against, and cast sharp reflections upon him; he caused
them to be brought into his presence, where he asked them, if it was
true that they had said such and such things; to which one of them,
who was a candid spirited lad, answered, Yes, sir, it is true, that
after having drank plentifully, we did say what you have mentioned; and
if we had drank more, we should have talked more in the same strain.
Pyrrhus pardoned them, and in my opinion he acted wisely. It was a
great mitigation of such a fault, that the offence was committed under
a kind of perverted state of the understanding; and as it was entirely
personal against the King, his pardoning it had an air of generosity,
which tended to augment the love and respect of his subjects, a
consideration of great importance in all kingdoms. By this mode of
proceeding, the public gained a great deal more, than it was possible
it could lose by such a crime going unpunished.

XXXV. But waiving the particular circumstance of their being in
liquor, which lessened the offence of those young fellows; the
shewing indulgence and lenity by Princes, to those who cast personal
reflections on them, will always have a good effect; because by acting
in this manner, they manifest their clemency, and cause the reflection
itself to be discredited. The evil-speaking of a few subjects, cannot
take from sovereigns any thing like the proportion of respect, which
the opinion of their being clement and magnanimous, would gain them
with all their other subjects. The delinquent himself would be put
to shame by the pardon, because, if he considers it as an act of
generosity and lenity, it proves to him that he murmured without
reason; and if he thinks the gentleness proceeded from contempt, no
other punishment could mortify him so much, or be better adapted;
and this is the proper way of chastising insolencies of the tongue,
because, by proceeding in any other manner, you would feed the vanity
of murmurers, and beget in them a presumption that they were feared;
you would also inflame their hatred, and stimulate their rashness.
It has been remarked, that princes, who have been very solicitous
in fishing out and punishing the murmurs of juntos of people, have
increased those evils in their own time, and have eternized them to
posterity. This is a Hydra, the number of whose heads is multiplied
by vengeance and the knife, and who is suffocated by the fumes of
contempt.

XXXVI. The behaviour of our gracious and magnanimous King Philip V. may
serve as a pattern, for the application of this mixture of severity and
clemency, which the virtue of justice requires of Princes. Inexorable
with regard to those serious crimes that were to the prejudice of a
third person, he always shewed a generous indulgence to those which
only respected himself. In the civil wars of some years back, when
the agitation of the winds was such, as to cause even the rocks and
mountains to shake; when the constancy of many wavered, and they sought
pretences for loyalty in desertion itself; he winked at many offences
of deeds, and pardoned all those of words, which did not relate to,
or were not connected with, the deeds themselves. This augmented the
love of all those hearts who were faithful to him, and in the end was
productive of fidelity in the hearts of all men.

XXXVII. But to return to the subject of severity in punishing crimes,
and the duties of a magistrate in that respect; I say that severity
is not only necessary for the good of the public, but that it is
also beneficial to the criminal himself. It is a received opinion,
that those who die by the hand of Justice, rarely go to a state of
condemnation. All appearances persuade such a belief, and there
are certain parts of written revelation, which seem to confirm the
sentiment. What benefit then do you confer on a malefactor, who if he
dies by the halter, takes his flight to a state of bliss; and who, if
he afterwards loses his life in some of those adventures which are
incident to his profession, is launched into perdition?

XXXVIII. With respect to certain sorts of crimes, in some instances
where I have wished to see Judges very solicitous to inflict
punishment, I have observed them very indulgent. I speak of those
faults in the practice of the law, which are committed by people of the
profession, and those who know the true state and secrets of causes,
and who intervene as instruments in the prosecution of them; such as
the advocate, the solicitor, or the attorney, to which we may add the
witnesses also. The tribunal is a whole of such delicate contexture,
that there is no integral part of it whatever, which is not essential.
It is a machine, in which, a failure, false construction, or weakness
of the most minute wheel, disorders all its movements. Of what avail is
it, that the Judges are upright, if the proceedings and informations
come adulterated to their hands and ears? The greater their integrity,
the more certain in the issue would be the pronunciation of a false
and unjust sentence; because the judgment would be founded, on the
vitiated proceedings and testimony which had been laid before them.
Among the Japanese, they punish with the utmost severity, all false
information which is given to Judges with respect to causes they are
trying, even when it is preferred by a party interested. This appears
to me excellent policy. The way to make the road to justice smooth and
secure, is to disincumber it of all impediments to the advancement of
truth; and to do this, there is no alternative, but that of punishing
lyes with the utmost severity.

XXXIX. If it is objected, that this would be excess of rigour, because
the punishment might exceed the proportion of the crime; I answer, that
Lawyers should weigh crimes in a different manner from Theologians.
The Theologian examines the intrinsic malice or evil of the act: the
lawyer attends to the consequences that may result to the public;
and these may be important, although the fault may at first sight
appear light and trifling. It is true, that the Theologian considers
the consequences also, when it appears that the delinquent foresaw
them, and in that case regards this circumstance as a proportionable
aggravation of the crime _in foro conscientiæ_. The Lawyer cannot, nor
does it belong to him, to enquire whether the culprit foresaw them;
for he is only to apply the remedy the law has prescribed to prevent
the mischief; and thus, for the sake of example to the world at large,
the offender is punished in the same manner as if he had actually
foreseen the mischief.

XL. Let us now consider, that the falsehoods and deceits, with which
tribunals are environed, make the investigation of truth so difficult,
that in some causes it is come at late, and in others never. This
is a most pernicious injury to the public, for the tediousness and
difficulty of the verification, gives breathing-time for the ill
intentioned, to devise and concert all sorts of wickedness. What remedy
then can you apply to this evil, but that of punishing rigorously every
kind of judicial deceit? The most pernicious loss or disadvantage to a
commonwealth, does not consist so much in there being a great number of
members in it who do not fear God, as it does in those members who do
not fear God, not fearing the magistrate neither.

XLI. I am not surprized that there are so many false witnesses, when I
observe the lenity that is shewn to them. Among the eastern nations,
according to Strabo, they used to cut off their feet and their hands.
And Heraclides says, that among the Lycians, they used to confiscate
all their effects, and sell them for slaves. Alexander of Alexandria
relates, that the Pysidians threw them headlong from a high precipice.
In the Helvetic history, we read, that the magistrates of Bern put to
death two witnesses by boiling them in oil, for having deposed falsely,
that one citizen owed another a large sum of money.

XLII. When I contemplate how necessary rigour is in such matters,
none of these punishments strike me with horror. The most just and
reasonable punishment for this mischief, and the best adapted for the
purpose, is the Lex Talionis, which was dictated by the Divine mouth,
and which God ordained to be established among the people of Israel,
and which is also recommended by various texts of the civil law. It
was in use in Spain, according to the practice of the antient law,
called the law of Toro. But ultimately, on account of its not being
adapted to all cases, Philip the IId. leaving it in its full vigour
with respect to capital cases, where the false witness was to suffer
the same punishment, which, if his evidence had taken effect, was to
have been inflicted on the person accused; I say, with this exception,
he ordained for all other cases of perjury, that the delinquent should
be exposed to public shame and disgrace, and condemned to perpetual
imprisonment in the gallies. But when will these laws be put in
execution? I don’t know whether in the long course of my life, I have
once seen the application of them. What most commonly happens is, that
just as they are on the point of determining on the sentence, Pity
violently and abruptly enters, and makes her appearance in the court;
and upon contemplation of this most serene lady, the Judges, instead of
public shame and perpetual confinement in the gallies, decree a fine or
pecuniary punishment.

XLIII. The words of God to Moses, when he spoke to him of false
witnesses, as related in the ninth chapter of Deuteronomy, are very
remarkable; he says, _non misereberis ejus_. No, Moses; have no
tenderness, no compassion, nor any bowels or pity for such. The decree
seems rigid, and so it does; but it is absolutely necessary also. With
a false witness, all should be rigour, without the least mixture of
clemency: _non misereberis ejus_. And so it is fit it should be; for if
it was otherwise, who would be safe in their property, their honour,
or their lives? This is not in reality abandoning or losing sight of
compassion, but fixing your attention to it on the proper objects; it
is turning the eyes of pity from a guilty individual, and placing them
on an innocent multitude.

XLIV. The same sort of punishment, which is inflicted on a false
witness, having regard to proportioning the quantum of it to the
nature or degree of the offence, should be applied to all those, who
deceive, or in any shape procure deceit to be practised on Judges,
in the business of trying a cause. It is necessary, in order to
insure justice, to smooth the way by which truth is to advance to the
tribunal, although it should be done with fire and sword. All that
would be expended in rigour on this side, would be saved with interest
on the other. By so much the more the proof of offences is facilitated,
by so much the less will the number of them be; and the less frequent
the sad spectacle of executions is, so much the less will the innocent
suffer. Dispatch in civil causes, is also a matter of great importance,
and should be added to the catalogue of these utilities.

XLV. On this account, I am of opinion, that no indulgence, or remission
whatever, should be allowed at the instance of an advocate, upon a
suggestion of false citations, or mistakes in terms of law (leaving
however such cases to discretion, which may be attributed to the
equivocal meaning of words, or accidental omissions); but abstracted
from this exception, such attempts, if you consider them, are contrary
to the virtue and essence of justice, and should not be permitted to
succeed.

XLVI. Neither should the advocate escape without severe punishment,
who espouses causes which are evidently unjust; and I think the most
proper penalty which could be inflicted in such cases, would be a long
suspension from the exercise of his function; and a Solicitor should
be treated in the same manner, who raises impertinent difficulties,
and makes frivolous objections, with a view of creating delay. But,
O pernicious lenity! already these serious offences, which are
contrary to good faith, and the true spirit of law, are judged to be
sufficiently punished by a verbal reprehension. This is a weak bridle,
to curb and restrain the impulses of avarice, ambition, love, fear
and hatred, five enemies of justice, who alternately, according to
the power or influence of the parties to the cause, incite judicial
ministers to violate the chastity of their office.

XLVII. We in all parts hear complaints against the proceedings of
Justices, their clerks, and other attendants on them. I believe, if all
the delinquents of this class were punished according to their deserts,
we should see an infinite number of the wands and pens of Spain
converted to oars. These people are accused of, and supposed to make
a trade of their profession. If all be true that is said of them, it
seems as if the Devil, who after his own manner is always endeavouring
to imitate the works of piety and benevolence, upon seeing the church
had founded some convents of religious Mendicants, for the benefit and
salvation of souls, had a mind to found in these gentry, a Mendicant
irreligion, for the perdition of them. Their duty is to apprehend,
or cause to be apprehended, thieves and robbers; their practice is,
instead of taking the thief, to take something of or from him; and
there are few delinquents who are not suffered to go at large, and with
impunity, provided they have something large to bestow for being winked
at. It is very difficult to detect collusions of this sort; but in
proportion to this difficulty, should be the rigour of punishing them.
If out of a great number who practise these iniquities, you should be
only able to prove the guilt of one, it would be necessary to proceed
with such severity against that one, as might terrify all the rest;
that if they are not alarmed by the frequency of the punishment, they
should be made to dread the weight of it.

XLVIII. Having before touched upon mulcts or pecuniary punishments, I
will here frankly make known to you a reflection, which many years
ago occurred to me on this mode of punishing, and which occasioned me
to look upon it in no very favourable light. I say, I have considered
that the burden of the mulct is not only loaded on the shoulders of
the guilty, but many times sits equally, if not more heavy, on those
of the innocent. A father of a family, with a scanty income, commits
a crime, and by way of chastising him, he is fined a hundred ducats.
The substraction of this sum, is not felt by him only who was guilty
of the offence, but by his wife and his children also; and they are
those who commonly suffer the most; for as every one loves himself
better than his nearest relations, and the delinquent being master of
the house, he keeps as large a share of the good things it contains
for his own use as he thinks proper, and seldom curtails himself of
the gratifications he enjoyed before, either with respect to food,
raiment, or diversions. The saving to make good the sum taken from him
is pinched out of the rest of his household. His own expences are the
same, and the inconvenience occasioned by the deduction is chiefly
borne by his wife and children. Don’t be surprized then, that I look
with an unfavourable eye on a punishment, the greatest portion of which
falls more on the innocent than the guilty. I confess, however, that
many times this is unavoidable, and the levying pecuniary penalties
established by law, for certain offences and neglects, is inevitable;
besides which, there is a necessity to distrain for money, to defray
the expences of law charges. What can be done then in this case? Why,
you can only determine, to reduce this mode of punishment, within as
narrow a compass as possible.

XLIX. The honour of the Judges also requires this should be done,
because the vulgar, when they see mulcts laid on with a heavy hand,
and do not perceive the money arising from them applied to purposes
of public benefit, such as the building of bridges, the repairing
of highways, the making of aqueducts, and in the aid of hospitals
for the poor, &c. they easily persuade themselves, that the Judges
are interested in the imposition of fines; and although Judges may
sometimes be indiscreet and rash, it is necessary to rescue them from
those gross imputations, when it can conveniently be done.

L. When delinquents have no families, and the consequences of depriving
them of their money are only felt by themselves, no punishments appear
to me more rational and proper than pecuniary ones, and especially when
the nature of the offence does not demand a more severe chastisement.
In the first place, it is not a sanguinary punishment, and is more
consonant to the feelings of compassion, than one that is tinged with
blood, both with respect to him who pronounces the sentence, and him
to whom it is applied. Secondly, despoiling an evil-disposed man of
his money, is disarming him of vice, as it deprives him of the weapons
with which he was enabled to do mischief. Thirdly, if the money is
expended for the good of the public, the community will derive a double
advantage from this mode of punishment, as somewhat of temporal benefit
will be added by it, to a well-adapted and exemplary application of
justice.

LI. I now, my Son, have told you my sentiments on all that has occurred
to me as most essential in judicial administration. If, upon seeing
me so scrupulously tenacious on the side of justice, it shall appear
to you that I mean to erase clemency out of the catalogue of virtues,
you are mistaken. I know the excellence of this virtue, and even
lament, that in our ministry there is but small scope for exercising
it. I venerate this divine quality, which, on account of its elevated
and sublime nature, I contemplate, as superior to the sphere of our
jurisdiction. I call it divine, by reason of its active power to remit
penalties decreed by the laws, which is an authority or prerogative
almost peculiarly belonging, and proper to God alone. He, as Supreme
Master, can pardon all sorts of crimes; Kings as next to him in
sovereignty, can pardon some; but the hands of their inferior ministers
are tied in all cases; for he who is subject to the laws, can never be
vested with a power to arbitrate and dispense forgivenesses.

LII. It is true, that where the law is obscure, we have authority to
interpret and construe it in a benign sense; but in this construction,
we should not lose sight of the exigence of the public safety, nor
the dictates of natural equity: and acting in this manner, is not
clemency but justice. We may also in virtue of the principle which is
called Epeikeyan, that allows of a wise and moderate interpretation of
the law, lessen, or even in many cases omit, the penalties which the
law decrees. This also is not lenity but justice, because upon such
occasions, we are rather obliged to conform to the intention of the
legislature, than the letter of the law; and such cases frequently
occur in small offences, because, upon an examination of the nature of
these things, it often appears to the eye of Prudence, that greater
inconveniences would attend the punishing, than the tolerating
them. Following the letter of the penal law, without admitting any
exceptions, even in those cases where the legislature could not intend,
nor prudence suppose it was meant to bind, is what is called justice
in extreme, or _summum jus_, which with great reason is termed extreme
injustice; therefore, acting contrary to the letter of the law in these
instances, is likewise not clemency, but justice. Aristotle, who very
well understood the nature of things appertaining to Ethics, judges the
Epiekeyan, to be a principle, or part of justice. From all that has
been said, it may be inferred, that requesting favour or compassion of
a Judge, or supposing him capable of shewing any in the discharge of
his duty, is an absurdity, and calling things by improper names; for
if he acts according to the law, reasonably and rightly understood, he
does justice; if contrary to it, he does injustice. In what are called
_casos omissos_, and when the law is obscure, there are general rules
for interpreting it and supplying the defects, which interpretations
have the force of laws; so that there is no middle path between justice
and injustice, for a Judge to walk in; because there are no means, by
which he can act conformable to law, and contrary to law. God keep you.




ON THE IMPUNITY OF LYING.


SECT. I.

I. Two common errors present themselves to me with respect to the
subject-matter of this discourse, the one theoretical, the other
practical. The theoretical is derived from lying among men being
reputed as infamous, or as a vice nearly bordering upon infamy. Let us
admit, for argument’s sake, the divisions the theologians make of a
lie, into officious, jocose, and pernicious. Let us admit also, that
a pernicious lie is reputed in the common opinion as it deserves to
be reputed, and that it is treated with all possible abhorrence, so
that those who are noted for telling lies to the prejudice of their
neighbours, are generally considered as the pests of society; but
notwithstanding all this, my remarks will be principally confined to
officious and jocose lies; that is, to such as are not intended to
injure a third person, but are only told to entertain, or because they
may be of some utility to a man’s self, or to some other person. I must
also premise, that I mean to treat this point more as a politician,
than as a moral theologian. The theologians estimate officious, and
jocose lies, as venal sins; nor should I or any one else in a moral
light, represent them blacker. But if viewed in a political light, my
sentiment is, that the common opinion is excessively favourable and
indulgent to this species of vice.

II. And what is the reason of this excessive indulgence? Why the reason
is, because this sort of lie is not considered as an affront offered to
any man. The being noted for an officious or jocose liar, does not take
from any man the honour, which in other respects is thought due to him.
A gentleman, let him tell as many of these sort of lies as he will, is
still looked upon as a gentleman; a nobleman also, notwithstanding his
being remarked for this vice, is considered as a nobleman, and a prince
as a prince. But this appears to me repugnant to all reason. Lying is
infamous, bad, and vile; and a liar is unworthy of human society; he is
an impostor, who traiterously avails himself of the good faith of other
men, in order to deceive them. The most precious intercourse among men,
is that of a frank and reciprocal communication of their souls; with
which, they in conversation lay open and disclose to each other, the
affections of their wills, the sentiments of their mind, and all that
is treasured up in their memories. Now what is a liar, but a solemn
circumventor of this inestimable commerce? what, but a deceiver, who
imposes on us delusions for realities? what but a circulator of false
money, who passes the iron of a lie for the gold of truth? and finally,
what can there be found in this man, that should excuse him from being
discarded and rejected by all others, as a nuisance to company, a vile
contaminator of conversation, and as a detestable falsifier of all
intelligence and information?


SECT. II.

III. I cannot help remarking a monstrous contradiction, that is
very frequent in this matter. If a man of any rank or figure in the
world, is told to his face that he lies, he considers himself as very
seriously injured, and according to the cruel laws of human honour, is
esteemed as having put up with a very gross affront, if he does not
demand of the man who told him so, a very sanguinary satisfaction; but
I would be glad to know, how telling a man he lies, can be a very
serious injury, if lying is not esteemed a very serious defect in him
who is addicted to it; or how a man can be considered as affronted,
because he is told he lies, if the action of lying is not scandalous
or unworthy. The degree of reproach annexed to a vice, is generally
estimated according to the light in which that vice is considered
by the world at large. If the vice is not held to be such a one, as
tarnishes a man’s honour, his honour will not be deemed wounded by
the commission of it; and it may be said of a man in such a case,
that his honour is not injured. This being a notorious fact, the
inference I would draw from the before-mentioned observation, is, that
the frequency of lying, lessens in the generality of mankind, the
abhorrence, which natural reason left to itself, has of this vice; but
notwithstanding this custom, it has not diminished so thoroughly, but
that there still remains in the soul of man, a clear conviction, that
lying is a baseness.

IV. I am confirmed in this opinion, by the observation, that a man’s
denying what he has said, is looked upon as an opprobrium to him.
And why is this? why because it amounts to a confession that he had
before told a lie. The opprobrium cannot lie in the truth of what he
now confesses; and therefore must consist in the lie which he told
before. Confessing that he has lied, is a mark of sincerity, and no one
need blush for having been sincere; therefore all the ignominy must be
annexed to the lie. This, I say, makes it manifest to me, that their
native sentiment of this matter is not so obscured in mankind, but that
it represents a lie to them as a most unworthy and a vile thing.


SECT. III.

V. The practical error in this matter, is derived from a lie’s going
unpunished, and from the laws not having prescribed any punishment
for liars. Why is there no bridle to curb the propensity men have to
deceive one another? and why should a man be allowed to lie to what
amount he pleases at free cost? Although men are not contented with
enjoying a total indemnity in this case, but frequently glory in what
they have done, and go on to insult those they have imposed on, and
to treat the sincerity of other men as imprudence; is not this an
abominable offence, and such a one as deserves to be punished?

VI. I may be told, that human laws do not attend to deterring by the
fear of punishment, people from committing any other crimes, except
such as are prejudicial to the public, or injurious to a third person;
and that officious or jocose lies, which are those we are discoursing
of at present, hurt no body, for if they had been found to be
injurious, they would before this, have been classed among, and deemed
as pernicious offences.

VII. Against this remark, solid as it may appear, I have two very
notable replies to make. The first is, that although every officious
or jocose lie considered by itself, is injurious to nobody; still, the
frequency and impunity with which they are told, have a pernicious
effect on the public; for they deprive the generality of mankind of a
very valuable benefit. To make my meaning more clearly understood, I
must beg every man to contemplate the inconveniencies that would arise
from a doubt or distrust, whether whatever is told us be true or false;
which distrust is unavoidable, and founded on prudence, if we advert
to the frequency with which people lie. Upon hearing any piece of
intelligence, in which our wishes, or our conveniencies are interested,
we remain in a state of perplexity, whether to believe or disbelieve
it; and this perplexity is generally attended with a very disagreeable
agitation of the mind, that sets a man at variance as it were with
himself, and causes him to halt between two opinions, and to remain
in a disagreeable state of suspence, whether to reject as false, or
assent to the intelligence he hears as true. Those to whom the rumour
that is propagated may be serviceable, either with regard to their
communicating it, or on account of the use it may be of to illustrate
any thing they have been writing, and are about to publish, are set
on the tenters by reason of this uncertainty. They would give any
thing to ascertain the reality of a curious event, that was applicable
to, and would tend to embellish the subject they had been writing
upon, but cannot take a step towards informing themselves, without
meeting with a stumbling block in their way. Some affirm the truth of
the thing, others deny it; here they tell the story in one way, and
there they relate it in another; and all this while, the pen of the
author is obliged to stand still, and to continue for a long time in a
disagreeable and violent state of suspence.

VIII. But although the perplexity that may attend our doubting whether
we shall give our assent to what we hear, may be productive of these
evils, the mischief that would result from our giving easy faith and
credit to all we are told, would be much greater; for if we reflect,
we shall find, that the altercations, disputes, and disturbances
which arise in conversation, are produced for the most part by easy
credulity. Different people, hear different accounts of the same thing,
and because each believed what he heard; they afterwards altercate
furiously, each persisting, that the account he had heard of the
matter was the true one. Reflect how many people have made themselves
ridiculous, by believing what they should have rejected as fabulous.
Reflect also, that human society, which is the sweetest boon of life,
or which would be so if mankind were to behave to each other with truth
and candour, is made ungrateful and disgusting at every turn, by the
distrust which is occasioned, in consequence of our experiencing how
much people are addicted to lie.

IX. In order to comprehend how great a good we are deprived of by this
distrust, let us figure to ourselves a republic, although I fear there
never was such a one in the world, where either from the generous
influence of their soil and climate, men were more noble-minded; or
from the fear of a lie being punished with great severity, all the
individuals who compose it, were strict observers of the truth; I say
admitting this, my imagination represents to me, that such a community
would be a sort of Heaven upon earth. What brotherly love would there
prevail in it! and how sweet and savoury would the confidence between
man and man be, and how grateful the satisfaction, with which they
talked and listened to each other, free from the suspicion of not
being believed, or the fear of being deceived! There we should survey
at every step, the most pleasing spectacle the world can afford, that
of a man’s opening the whole theatre of his soul to another. I do
not think that Heaven adorned with all its splendor, or the spring
embellished with all its flowers, could furnish a more delightful
picture to the eyes of man, than that which would be presented to human
curiosity, by the exposure of a variety of sentiments, affections, and
passions, of those with whom we converse. In such a society, all men
would enjoy a peaceable tranquillity of mind, without the dread, that
by means of political arts, a traitor should impose himself upon them
for a friend; that hypocrisy should usurp an unjust veneration; that
applause should be tainted with the venom of flattery; that advice
should be insincere, and calculated to promote the interest of him who
gave it; or that correction should be the child of anger, and not the
offspring of zeal. But unhappy for us, how distant are we from enjoying
the blessings of such happy citizens! for we scarce are allowed an
instant of relaxation, from the fears, inquietudes, and suspicions,
that continually afflict us, and which are produced, by the experience
we have, of the little sincerity there is to be met with in the
world. Consider now, whether the frequency of lying, does not rob us
of a great blessing, or to speak more properly, of many inestimable
blessings.


SECT. IV.

X. The second reply I have to make to the before-named observation,
is, that it very frequently happens, that those lies which are only
looked upon as officious and jocose, are attended with pernicious
consequences. What does it signify, that he who tells a lie did not
do it with an intention to injure any one, if in reality the mischief
follows? The emperor Theodosius the second, presented the empress
Eudoxia with an apple of uncommon magnitude; and she afterwards gave
it to Paulinus a learned and discreet man, whose conversation she was
very fond of, and with whom, her correspondence was perfectly innocent.
Paulinus, ignorant of the hand by which the apple was brought to the
Empress, shewed it to the Emperor, and begged him to accept of it;
the Emperor, recollecting that it was the same apple he had given the
Empress, took an occasion to ask Eudoxia by surprize, what she had
done with the apple? The question coming upon her unawares, and she,
apprehensive the Emperor might be displeased with her for parting
with the apple, answered she had eaten it. This, in the intention of
Eudoxia, was a lie purely officious; but was attended with a most
pernicious consequence, as it was the occasion of Paulinus being put
to death; for Theodosius, suspecting the commerce between him and the
Empress not to be very chaste, ordered him to be dispatched.

XI. Caligula having recalled from banishment, one who had been
sentenced to that punishment by his predecessor, asked him how he
employed his time while he was banished; and he, to recommend himself
to the good graces of the Emperor, answered, that he employed the
greatest part of it in praying to the gods for the death of Tiberius;
because that would make way for his ascending the throne. What lie
to all appearance could be more innocent than this? Yet in its
consequences, it was very pernicious, for Caligula, taking it into his
head, that those he had banished would occupy themselves in the same
way, ordered them all to be put to death.

XII. I could give more examples of the same sort; but am aware, that it
may be said in answer to them, that these are unforeseen accidents;
but they notwithstanding, are the evil accidental consequences of
lies, which although the person who tells them cannot foresee, are not
unworthy the attention of the legislature; and of their taking measures
to prevent the mischiefs arising from them, by assigning some species
of punishment to all kinds of lies whatever. At least, the motive of
preventing these accidental mischiefs, should operate jointly with the
reasons we have already given, to induce the legislature, to fall upon
some mode of punishment to curb the vice of lying.


SECT. V.

XIII. But the principal mischiefs that are produced by lies, which are
called jocose and officious, do not only happen by accident, but such
lies have in their own nature, a tendency to bring on those mischiefs.
Of this sort are all flattering lies. Of the many apophthegms we meet
with, that have been severe upon liars, there is no one seems to me
to be better pointed, than that of Bion one of the seven wise men
of Greece. He being one day asked, what animal he esteemed the most
pernicious? answered, that to the world at large it was a tyrant, and
in private life, a flatterer. For so it is, that flattery always, or
nearly always, is pernicious to the person to whom it is addressed.
The same man, who if the incense of unmerited applause was not offered
to him, would be gentle, prudent, and modest, would by the application
of it, be corrupted to such a degree, as to become proud, fierce,
intolerable, and ridiculous. It is not one man only, that a flattering
lie may be the undoing of, but it is also capable of ruining a whole
kingdom; and this is a fatality that has often happened. Many princes,
who have had a portion of the taint of ambition in their compositions,
if there had not been those about them, who fomented this evil tendency
of their minds, would have led happy and peaceable lives, but upon
being persuaded by a flatterer, that their greatest glory consisted in
adding new dominions to their crown, have become bloody scourges, both
to their own subjects, and those of their neighbours.

XIV. The great Louis the Fourteenth, was without doubt, endued with
excellent qualities; and was blessed with a sufficient understanding,
to distinguish in what the most solid glory of a king consisted, and
to be convinced, that it consisted in making his subjects happy.
Notwithstanding which, through the whole of his dominions, the bulk of
his people were oppressed, and groaned under the intolerable weight of
the taxes, he found it necessary to load on them, in order to support
the vast expences of the many wars he engaged in; to which grievance,
might be added the lamentation and grief that was produced, by the loss
of the infinite quantity of French blood that had deluged the fields in
his quarrels. From whence did all this mischief proceed? Why from the
venomous influence of poisonous flatterers, who persuaded him, that his
greatest glory consisted in extending his dominions by his arms, and in
making himself dreaded by all the neighbouring powers. They not only
persuaded him to this, but even intimated to him, that these were the
most effectual means, to render his own kingdom happy and flourishing.
A flattering poet carried his servile complaisance so far, as to sing
in his ear, that by pursuing this conduct, he would not only make his
own people happy, but would make those so likewise, whom he conquered;
and that they would hug the chains, with which he bound the little
liberty they ever possessed; and what was beyond all the rest, this
fulsome poet, went so far as to assert, that his desire of making them
happy, was his only motive for bringing them under his yoke.

    _Il regne par amour dans les Villes conquises,_
    _Et ne fait des sujets que pour les rendre heureux._

In the idea of this poet, desolating his own country by excessive
contributions, carrying fire and sword into the territories of his
neighbours, and sacrificing men by tens of thousands on the altars of
Mars, is the most effectual way to make people happy; and that it is
the great glory of a monarch, to be the pest of his own dominions, and
those of all his neighbours. To these extravagant lengths has flattery
been carried, and such are the unhappy effects it has produced.

XV. A flattering lie in private life, is not capable of doing so much
mischief, if we consider it as standing by itself; but the mischief
is infinitely extensive, that results from many of those lies put
together; as the use of them is so general, that their numbers are
nearly infinite. A learned modern French author, says, that the
practice of the world, is made up of people’s occupying themselves
continually in circulating false complaisance. Mankind depend
reciprocally upon each other; and the poor man not only flatters the
rich one, but the rich one flatters the poor one in his turn. The poor
man courts the rich one, because he has need of his contributions;
and the rich one endeavours to conciliate himself with the poor man,
because he cannot subsist without the aid of his labour. The money they
all go to market with, to gain and purchase the hearts of each other,
is coined from the bullion of flattery; which is the falsest money that
can be circulated, because in consequence of trafficking with it in
this vile commerce, all sides are cheated.


SECT. VI.

XVI. But besides flattering lies, there are many others which are
hurtful in various ways, notwithstanding we find them classed among
the jocose and officious ones. A coward brags of his prowess, and
martial deeds; a stander-by who hears him, and believes what he says,
endeavours to make a friend of him, in hopes that he will bear him out
in any fray or quarrel in which he should happen to be engaged; and in
consequence of the confidence he puts in this support, he precipitates
himself into some dispute, where his bravo deserts him, and he loses
his life. An ignorant fellow, palms himself upon simple people for a
learned man, and they, by believing all he says to be right and true,
get their heads filled with extravagances, which they afterwards by
venting in other companies, expose their folly, and so by a very easy
and short method, acquire the reputation of blockheads.

A neglected or disappointed man, brags of the interest he has with a
great person; and some who hear and believe what he says, fancy he
will be a good channel through which they may convey an application to
that great person, and induce him to assist them in a matter they have
much at heart, and in which they are deeply interested, and in hopes
of the great benefits they may derive from his friendship and aid, pay
great court to him, and waste the greatest part of their substance in
presents and bribes to him. A spiritual puffer, brags of the miracles
he has seen and experienced of such and such a saint; which one way
or other, is generally attended with prejudicial consequences to the
cause of religion. The physician brags of a skill or knowledge he does
not possess; a valetudinary person who hears him, believing him to
be an Esculapius, surrenders himself without further enquiry to his
management, and becomes a voluntary victim. A young mariner, brags of
his great abilities and skill in navigating and conducting a ship,
which afterwards being trusted to him, is shipwrecked and dashed to
pieces, on some rock or shoal. The same dangers, in a greater or a
less degree, and in proportion to the matters that are confided to
their management, are we exposed to, by trusting vaunters in all arts
and professions, who although they are unskilful, presume to boast of
their great knowledge. I should never have done, was I to set about
enumerating all the species of lies, which go under the name of jocose
and officious, and which are attended with pernicious consequences.


SECT. VII.

XVII. But I cannot avoid making particular mention, of a certain
species of lies, which find ample protection with, and pass current
through the world, as if they were perfectly innocent; when in reality,
they are extremely injurious to the public. I mean judicial lies;
such, as when in stating a fact which gave rise to, or is the subject
matter of a litigation, the parties interested, and those employed in
the suit, disguise and disfigure it, to make it appear more favourable
to their own side. This species of deceit, or as I may say lie, is so
frequent, that we scarce see a cause in which it is not practised,
and in which, both parties agree in the state of the facts, on which
the matter in issue rests; and from hence arise the length of the
pleadings, and the principal delay, and great expence of law-suits. Who
can entertain a doubt, but that this is very injurious to the public?
Yet there is nobody will attempt finding out a remedy for the evil.
It might perhaps be asked, what remedy can be applied to it; but to
this I should answer, the remedy that is made use of in Japan. Among
those islanders, whose political government there is no doubt excells
ours in many particulars, they punish a judicial lie, or one advanced
in a legal process, with great severity; and the Algerines do the
same. Whoever lies, or when he is brought before the Bey, or any of
his judicial magistrates, to answer to a civil process, shall deny,
if the prosecution is for a debt, that he owes the person suing for
it the money in question, or if the prosecutor shall be found guilty
of making a false or unjust demand, in either of these cases, he who
shall be found to falsify, is adjudged to a rigorous bastinadoing.
Thus these causes are speedily and safely determined, nor is there the
least necessity for any writing in them, for the fear of that severe
punishment, deters any man from demanding what is not due to him, and
terrifies any one from denying a just debt. If something like this
method was to be adopted among us, law-suits of this sort in Spain,
would be as short as they are in those places. What delays law-suits,
is not so much the difficulty of finding out what the law is with
respect to the matter in question; but such delays arise for the most
part, from fallacious suggestions, and evasive statings of facts. If
the suitors, and all the parties concerned or employed in a cause,
knew, that for every fallacy they advanced, they were to pay a large
fine, they would be careful not to suggest or advance any thing, that
was not simply and exactly true. By this means, the parties would
soon be agreed as to the fact, and a determination would quickly be
made in favour of the person who had the right of his side, and there
would be nothing left to do, but for process to issue agreeable to the
ordinary forms of law, in order to enforce and compleat the judgment.
The doing of this, is seldom attended with much expence or delay; and
by adopting the before-mentioned method of proceeding, there would soon
be a stop put to all law-suits, that are founded on false or sinister
suggestions; and people would not be near so exposed to have vexatious
and roguish prosecutions commenced against them, as they are at
present. The state or public at large, would be great gainers by such a
regulation taking place, as the loss occasioned by the attendance, that
many artificers, and people employed in useful branches of trade are
obliged to give on courts of law would be avoided. So that the whole
loss that would be incurred by adopting this method, would fall on the
advocates, solicitors, and other men of the law; but this would be
amply compensated for to the state, by the increase it would occasion
of professors in useful arts.

XVIII. It is true, that our laws in Spain have not been so deficient in
this respect, as not to have assigned certain punishments in various
cases to judicial lies. One of those which is to be found among
the laws which we term the laws _de Partida_ seems to me admirably
calculated to suppress this evil. It runs thus: _He of whom any thing
is demanded judicially by another person, as his property, who shall
deny the person making the demand was ever possessed of it, shall,
if it is afterwards proved that the person who makes the demand was
possessed of it, be obliged to surrender it to him who demands it,
although the demander should not be able to prove the thing ever was
his property._ But I could wish in the first place, that both this law,
and all others of the same sort, should be extended to more cases than
they take in, or to speak more properly, to all cases whatever; so that
every judicial lie should be liable to a punishment, proportioned to
the mischief it might be attended with. I would wish secondly, that
some lawyers in expounding those laws, had given a larger extent to
them, and not have limited the operation of them but to few cases;
for we have reason to apprehend, that it is in consequence of these
expositions, that we very rarely or never, have seen any one punished
for this offence, at least I do not remember to have ever known, or to
have ever heard of any one that was punished for it. The greatest part
of the Judges, although there may appear but little reason for their
acting with lenity, are apt to lean to the compassionate side; but it
seems to me, that it would be for the good of the public, if upon these
occasions, they would exercise a proper degree of severity.


SECT. VIII.

XIX. Finally, by contemplating a lie in all its extent, I find it so
inconvenient to the life of man, that I am disposed to think the whole
rigour of the laws should be levelled against it, and that it should
be treated as a most pestiferous enemy to human society. Zoroaster
the famous legislator of the Persians, or Zerduscht, which according
to the learned Thomas Hyde was his name, in which sentiment Thomas
Stanley differs but little from him, he writing it Zaraduissit; from
all which we may conclude, that the changing his name to Zoroaster,
was an alteration made by the Greeks to make it correspond the better
with their own language; but to have done with criticising upon his
name, he in the statutes he formed for the government of that nation,
estimated a lie, as one of the most serious crimes a man could commit.
I must confess; that he erred in this as a Theologian; but that he was
quite right, and acted wisely as a politician; because no better means
can be fallen upon, to make men live happy in society, than that of
introducing among them, an utter abhorrence of a lie; and on the other
hand, if the great propensity in man to lying is not curbed, although
the rest of the laws should be ever so pious and just, they will not be
able to prevent innumerable mischiefs and disorders.


SECT. IX.

XX. It is only in one particular instance, that I look upon lying
to be sufferable; and that is, when there is no fence to resist the
impertinent and officious enquiries of people into secrets, that are
trusted to a man in confidence. I state the case thus: a friend of
mine, for the sake of asking my advice, informs me in confidence of
a crime that he has committed. A person in power suspects him to be
the man who committed the crime, and by making an improper use of his
authority, demands of me, whether I do not know that such a person
committed such a crime. I will suppose for argument’s sake, that he is
a person of such penetration, that I could not deceive him by evasions,
and giving answers, that amounted to my neither owning nor denying that
I knew any thing of it; and that my not giving a positive answer, would
only tend to confirm him in the opinion that my friend had actually
committed the crime he suspected him of; so that I am drove to the
necessity of answering positively, yes, or no. It is certain in such a
case, that I am bound by the laws of friendship, fidelity, charity and
justice, not to reveal the secret confided to me. How then am I to act
in such a pressing exigency?

XXI. After stating a variety of different opinions of Theologians,
and other eminent men upon cases of this sort, which I shall omit to
insert, as I apprehend they would rather seem tedious, than afford
either entertainment or instruction to the reader; Father Feyjoo
proceeds thus: But I do not chuse to take any part in this question, as
it would require more time to discuss, than I at present have leisure
to bestow upon it; and therefore shall waive entering into it, and
returning to the subject of my discourse, shall say, that admitting
a man, upon being unfairly pressed, cannot avoid disclosing a secret
which has been confided to him, without telling a lie, those lies
ought to be tolerated by human society, and the punishment of them
should be left to God alone, for that a republic or state is exposed to
no inconvenience from them; and that on the contrary, daily mischiefs
might result to it, by not preventing the evil effects, of the
malicious, and vicious curiosity of men, who are impertinently fond of
prying into other people’s secrets. And he who makes these enquiries,
should blame himself for any imposition or deceit that happens in
consequence of them, and not the person who told the lie, for the
inquisitor is the aggressor in this case, as he may be termed an
invader of other people’s secrets, which he had improperly, and without
any right so to do, taken upon him officiously to pry into.




    ON
    THE LOVE OF OUR COUNTRY,
    AND
    National Prejudice or Prepossession.


SECT. I.

I. I Seek in men that love of their country, which I find so much
celebrated in books, but I do not meet with it; I mean that just, noble
and virtuous love, which they owe to their country. In some, I see no
kind of affection for their country at all; in others, I perceive only
a criminal affection, which is vulgarly called national prejudice.

II. I do not deny, that by turning over history, you will find
thousands of victims sacrificed to this idol. What war is undertaken
without this specious pretence? What field do we see drenched with
human blood, that posterity, over the carcases from whence it flowed,
has not fixed the honourable inscription, that those men lost their
lives for the good of their country? But if we examine things
critically, we shall find the world is much mistaken, in thinking
there have been so many, or so refined sacrifices made to this
imaginary deity. Let us figure to ourselves a republic, armed for a
war, undertaken on the principle of a just defence; and let us also
proceed to examine by the light of reason, the impulse which animates
men’s hearts to expose their lives in the quarrel. Among the private
men, some inlist for the pay and the plunder, others with the hopes of
bettering their fortunes, and acquiring military honour and preferment;
but the greatest part, from motives of obedience, and fear of the
Prince or the General. He who commands the army, is instigated by his
interest and his glory. The Prince, or Chief Magistrate, who is at a
distance from the danger, acts more for the sake of maintaining his
dominion, than for supporting the republic. Now admitting that all
these people should find it more for their interest to retire to their
houses, than to defend the walls, you would hardly see ten men left on
the ramparts.

III. Even those feats of prowess of the antients, which are so blazoned
and immortalized by fame, as the ultimate exertions of zeal for the
public good, were more probably generated by ambition, and the love of
glory, than by the love of their country; and I am inclined to think,
that if there had not been witnesses present, to have handed down to
posterity an account of their exploits, that from a principle of love
to his country, neither Curtius would have precipitated himself into
the pit, nor Marcus Attilius Regulus have submitted to die a lingering
death in an iron cage; nor would the twin brothers, for the sake of
extending the boundaries of Carthage, have consented to be buried
alive. The incitement of posthumous fame had great influence among
the Gentiles; and it might also happen, that some rushed on a violent
death, not so much with a view of acquiring posthumous fame, as from
the mad vanity of seeing themselves admired and applauded for a few
instants of their lives, of which Lucian gives us a striking example,
in the death that was submitted to by the philosopher Peregrinus.

IV. Among the Romans, the love of their country, was so much in
vogue and so prevalent, that it seemed as if this noble inclination
was the soul of their whole republic. But what appears to me is,
that the Romans themselves, on account of Cato’s constant and steady
attachment to the public, looked upon him as a very uncommon man,
and as one descended from Heaven. It may be said of all the rest
of them, almost without exception, that in serving their country,
they sought more their own exaltation than the public utility. They
gave Cicero the glorious surname of father of his country, for the
successful and vigorous opposition he made to Catiline’s conspiracy.
This in appearance was a great merit, although in reality it was but
an equivocal one; for not only the success of Cicero’s attaining the
consulate, depended upon that fury’s not carrying his point, but his
life also; for it is true, that when afterwards Cæsar tyrannized over
the republic, Cicero accommodated himself very well with him. The
subornations of Jugurtha, King of Numidia, shewed abundantly, what sort
of spirit influenced the Roman senate; which, contrary to the interest
of the republic, tolerated in that penetrating and violent Prince, many
grave and pernicious evils, because every new insolence he committed,
was accompanied with a new present to the senators. He was at last
brought to Rome, and detained there; and although he was so far from
correcting or reforming his old practices, that within the city itself,
he committed new and enormous offences; by the favour of gold, he was
permitted to go at large, which in the delinquent himself begot such a
contempt of that government, that when he left Rome, after getting at a
little distance from the city, he turned about, and looking at it with
disdain, called it _a venal city_, adding, that it would soon perish,
if any one could find money enough to pay the price of its ruin:
_Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem invenirit_ (Sallust
in Jugurtha). The same thing, and even more pointedly, was said by
Petronius:

    _Venalis populus, venalis curia patrem._

This is a picture of the love of their country so celebrated among the
Romans, and to which many at this day, judge they owed the enormous
extension of the Roman empire.


SECT. II.

V. Our opinion of this matter differs greatly from that of the bulk of
mankind, by whom it is generally believed, the love of their country
is natural to, and transcendent in all men; and as a proof of it, they
alledge the repugnance, which all, or nearly all men feel at abandoning
the country in which they were born, to go and reside in any other
whatever; but I find here a great equivocation, and that what men call
the love of their country, is in reality, nothing else but the love
of their own convenience. There is no man who does not leave his own
country cheerfully, when he has expectations by going to another of
mending his fortune; and examples of this sort are seen every day. Of
all the fables that have been fabricated by the poets, there is no one
appears to be more void of probability, than that of Ulysses’s having
preferred the dreary and unpleasant rocks and craigs of his own country
Ithaca, to the immortality full of delights, which was offered him by
the nymph Calipso, upon condition that he would come and live with her
in the island of Ogygia.

VI. I may be told, that the Scythians, as Ovid testifies, fled from
the delicacies of Rome, to the asperities of their own frozen soil;
that the Laplanders, maugre all the conveniences and accommodations
that were offered them at Vienna, sighed to return to their own poor
steril country; and that but a few years ago, a Canadian savage who
was brought to Paris, where he was furnished with every possible
convenience, lived there in a seeming state of affliction and
melancholy.

VII. I say in answer to all this, that it is true; but it is also true,
that these men live with more convenience to themselves in Scythia,
in Lapland, and in Canada, than in Vienna, at Paris, or in Rome.
Habituated to the food of their country, however hard and coarse it
may appear to us, they find it both grateful and salutary. They are
born among snow, and live pleasantly in the midst of it; and as we
cannot bear the cold of northern regions, they cannot endure the heat
of southern ones. Their mode of government, is suited to their tempers
and dispositions, and although the form is but indifferent, they being
reconciled to it by custom, believe that nature itself never dictated
any other. Our policy seems as barbarous to them, as theirs does to
us. Here, we think it impossible to live without a house or permanent
abode; they look upon this as a voluntary imprisonment, and regard it
as much more convenient, to be at liberty to change their habitation,
when, and unto wherever it is most agreeable to them, fabricating it in
the evening, for the use of the night and the next day, either in the
valley, on the side of the mountain, or in the plain. The accommodation
afforded by changing situations as the seasons of the year vary,
is enjoyed among us, by none but the great and the opulent; among
those barbarians, there is no one who does not enjoy it; and I must
confess for myself, that I look upon a man’s having power, whenever
he pleases, to remove from a disagreeable neighbourhood, and settle
himself in one he likes better, as a very enviable happiness.

VIII. Olaus Rudbec, a noble Swede, who had travelled a great deal
through the northern regions, in a book that he wrote, intitled
_Lapland Illustrated_, says, that the inhabitants of it, are so
convinced of the advantages of their situation, that they would not
exchange their own, for all the countries in the world. In fact, they
possess some benefits or conveniencies in it, which are not imaginary,
but real. That country, produces some regaling fruits, although they
are different from ours; and the abundance of game and fish in it, all
of them remarkably fine flavoured, is immense. The winters, which with
us are so disagreeably damp and rainy, are there clear and serene;
from whence it follows, that the natives are active, healthy, and
robust. Thunder storms are scarce ever known in that region, nor is
there a venomous snake to be found in all the country. They live also
exempt from those two great scourges of Heaven, war and pestilence,
their climate defending them from both these visitations, it being as
obnoxious to strangers and the plague, as it is healthy to the natives.
The snow does not incommode them, for by their natural agility, added
to art and contrivance they fly over the tops of the snowy heights like
crows. The multitude of white bears with which the country abounds,
serves them for amusement and diversion; for they are so dextrous in
combating these fierce animals, that there is scarce a Laplander, who
does not kill many of them in a year, although it is very rare, that a
Laplander is ever killed by one of them.

IX. We may add, that the long nights in those subpolar regions, of
which they give us so horrible a representation, are not so dismal as
they are imagined to be. They hardly experience total darkness there
above one whole month; the reason is, because the sun descends below
his horizon only twenty-three degrees and a half; and according to the
computation of astronomers, the twilight may be perceived at eighteen
degrees of depression. Neither does the apparent absence of the sun
continue for six months, as it is commonly thought, but for five only,
for on account of the great refraction of the rays in that atmosphere,
you see the sun, half a month before it mounts above the horizon, and
for the same space of time after it descends below it. Some Dutchmen
in a northern voyage they made in 1596, being in the latitude of 76,
were vastly astonished at seeing the sun fifteen or sixteen days before
they expected to see it. In our discourse on mathematical paradoxes,
we explained this phænomenon, and shewed, that by attending to, and
computing all things, those who inhabit near the Poles, enjoy the light
of the sun for a greater portion of the year, than those who live in
the temperate and torrid zones; therefore what is said of the equal
repartition of light all over the world, although it is generally
assented to, is not true.

X. We much admire, and live very happily on the aliments we commonly
use; but there is no nation, to which the same thing does not
happen. The people of the northern regions, find the flesh of bears,
wolves, and foxes, very savoury and regaling. The Tartars are fond
of horse-flesh; the Arabs of the flesh of camels; and the Africans
and Chinese, of that of dogs; for they both eat and sell them in the
markets as we do pig pork. In some regions of Africa, they eat monkies,
crocodiles, and serpents; and Scaliger says, that in various parts of
the east, bats are esteemed as regaling a dish, as chickens are with us.

XI. The same that happens in point of food, happens with respect to
everything else, for whether it proceeds from the force of habit or the
proportion of temperament or disposition of each nation respectively,
or that things of the same species, have different qualities in
different countries, which make them more or less commodious or
agreeable; every one finds himself better satisfied with the things of
his own country, than with those of a foreign one, and he is therefore
attached to it, because he feels his own convenience better gratified
there, and his partiality for it is not influenced by the supposed love
of his country.

XII. The inhabitants of the Marian islands, which are so called
from Dona Mariana of Austria, who sent missionaries among them for
their conversion, made no use of, nor had any knowledge of fire.
Who, however, would venture to assert, that this element was not
indispensably necessary to human life, or that there was any nation
whatever, which could subsist without it? But notwithstanding this,
those islanders, without fire, lived contented and happy. They were
not sensible of the want of it, because they did not know it. Roots,
fruit, and crude fish, were all their aliment; and still they were more
healthy and robust than we, for living to a hundred years of age, was
very frequent and common among them.

XIII. The force of custom is amazingly powerful, for it is capable of
not only making the greatest asperities sufferable, but by peoples
being familiarized to them, it also causes their being satisfied
under them. He who was not well apprized of this truth, would be led
to think what passed between Esteban King of Poland, and the Peasants
of Livonia, incredible. This glorious Prince having observed, that
these poor people were cruelly and very ill-treated by the nobles of
the province, convened them together, and after condoling with them
on their misery, told them, he proposed to make their subjection less
severe and easier to be tolerated, by restraining the exercise of power
in the nobility, within more mild and moderate bounds; but wonderful to
relate, instead of seeming sensible of his benevolence, and embracing
the offer he made them, they threw themselves at his feet, and begged
he would not alter their customs, with which, through long usage, they
were quite satisfied. What will not the force of habit conquer, if it
is capable of making tyranny agreeable! Join to this, the circumstance
of the Muscovite women, who are not happy or contented, unless their
husbands, without their giving them any occasion for it, beat or cudgel
them every day, regarding this unprovoked ill-treatment, as a token of
their great love for them.

XIV. We may add to the foregoing remarks, that an uniformity of
language, religion, and customs, makes the intercourse with our
countrymen grateful and pleasing, as a diversity in those matters,
makes the society of strangers aukward and unentertaining. Our
particular connections and personal friendships also, tend to produce
the same effect; and generally speaking, the love of convenience, and
of that private ease and happiness, which every man finds in his own
country, is what attracts him to, and retains him in it, and not the
love of the country itself. He who should experience better personal
accommodation in another region, would do as St. Peter did, who, as
soon as he found himself happily situated on Mount Tabor, resolved to
fix his lasting abode on that eminence, and to abandon for good and all
the valley in which he was born.


SECT. III.

XV. It is also true, that not only real, but imaginary conveniences,
have their influence, to promote an adherence to our country.
Entertaining a flattering opinion of the country in which we were
born, and preferring it to all others in the world, is one of the most
common of all common errors. There is scarce any man, and among the
lower class of people not a single one, who does not think his own
country the first production of nature, and abounding in a three-fold
proportion, with all the goods she distributes, either with respect to
the genius or ability of the natives, the fertility of the soil, or
the happiness of the climate. To understandings of inferior rank, near
objects are represented as by the corporeal eye, which although they
are really less, appear larger than things at a distance. In his nation
only, are to be found learned and wise men, those of other kingdoms are
hardly civilized; the customs of his country only are rational, and
the language of it is the only soft and sufferable one; the hearing a
stranger speak, as effectually excites them to laughter, as seeing Jack
Pudding on a stage; his nation only abounds in riches, and the Prince
of it is the only powerful one. At the end of the last century, when
the arms of France were so prevalent, a junto of people at Salamanca
being talking on this subject, a low Portugueze who was among them,
with an air of great sagacity and importance, made the following
political remark: _There is certainly now no Prince in Europe capable
of resisting the King of France, except the King of Portugal._ But what
Michael Montona, in his treatise intitled _Moral Reflections_, relates
of a rustic Savoyard, is more extravagant still, who said, _I don’t
believe the King of France has the ability he is said to have, for if
that was the case, he would have negotiated with our Duke long ago,
about making him his Major Domo._ Nearly after this manner, do all the
low vulgar discourse of the things of their own country.

XVI. Neither are many of those exempted from so gross an error,
although it is in a less degree, who by their birth or professions, are
much superior to the lower class of people. The number of vulgar who
do not associate with the common herd, but are intruded among people
of understanding, is infinite. How many men of school learning, whose
heads were stored with texts, have I seen filled with the caprice,
that our nation is the only seat of knowledge and learning, and that
in other countries, they print nothing but puerilities and bagatelles,
more especially if they write in their own native idiom; nor does it
appear to them, that any thing worth reading, can be published in
French or Italian, which is in a manner maintaining, that the most
important truths can’t be expressed or explained in other languages,
although it is certain, the Apostles expounded the most essential and
sublime ones in all tongues. But strangers are sufficiently revenged
on us for this conceitedness, for in return for our considering
them as people of little learning, they look upon us as illiberal
and barbarous. Thus in all countries, you will find this piece of
bad road to travel through, which is worn in holes and made rough,
by the hacknied passage of carriages, loaded with the high notions
and opinions the natives have of themselves, and the low ones they
entertain of strangers.


SECT. IV.

XVII. The worst is, that those who do not think with the vulgar, talk
like the vulgar. This proceeds, from what we call national passion
or prejudice, the legitimate child of vanity, and emulation. Vanity
teaches us, that we are interested in our nation being esteemed
superior to all others, because every individual looks upon himself
as a partaker in the pre-eminence; and emulation causes us to view
strangers, especially those who are nearest us, with a jealous eye, and
also inclines us to wish their abasement for our own security. From
both these motives, people attribute to their own country, a thousand
feigned excellencies, although at the time they mention them, they know
they are fictitious.

XVIII. This abuse, has filled the world with lyes, and has corrupted
the faith of almost all histories. When the glory of his own nation
influences him, you will hardly find an historian competently
sincere. Plutarch was one of the most impartial writers of antiquity;
notwithstanding which, the love of his country, in matters that
related to it, made him deviate not a little from his candour; for,
as the illustrious Cano remarks, he aggrandizes the events and things
appertaining to Greece, beyond their just proportion. And John Bodin
observes, that upon examining his lives, you will find, although his
comparisons between Greek heroes and Greek heroes, and between Roman
and Roman ones, were rightly and fairly made; that when he came to draw
the parallel between Greeks and Romans, he warped in favour of his own
countrymen.

XIX. I have always admired Titus Livius, not only for his eminent
discretion, method, and judgment, but also for his veracity. He
does not conceal or dissemble the failings of the Romans, when in
the course of his history they come in the way of his pen; but on
the contrary he lays them open and exposes them; and what is more,
at the hazard of offending Augustus, he highly extolled Pompey, and
blazoned his character as preferrable to Cæsar’s, which in those times
amounted to the same thing, as declaring himself a zealous republican.
Notwithstanding this, I observe a fault in this prince of historians,
which if it did not proceed from want of his adverting to, or being
aware of it, we must confess to be the effect of his passion for the
marvellous. In the two first ages of their republic, he gives an
account of as many battles gained, and as many cities taken by the
Romans, as would be sufficient to compleat the conquest of a vast
empire; but at the end of this time, we see that republic confined
within such narrow bounds, that few less states are at this day to be
found in all Italy, which is a proof that the antecedent victories,
were not so many nor so great in the original, as they are represented
to be in the copy.

XX. There is scarce one of the modern historians I have read, in whom I
have not observed the same inconsistency. If they relate the events of
a long war, they paint them so favourably to their own side, that the
reader from those premises, is induced to promise himself, that it will
end in an advantageous peace, in which his nation will give the law
to the enemy; but as the premises are false, the conclusion does not
follow, and in the end, he finds things turn out quite contrary to what
he expected.

XXI. I am not insensible, that during a war, such sort of lies may be
politically necessary; therefore in all countries, they print Gazettes
with privilege; I don’t say of lying, but of colouring events, so that
they should not dishearten, but seem encouraging to the people; and in
their description of things, they imitate the artifice of Apelles, who
painted Antigonus in profile, to conceal his being blind of one eye; I
mean, that they display the favourable side of events, and cover the
adverse one by a deception. I say, that policy requires this should be
done in Gazettes, to prevent the subjects being dismayed by the adverse
strokes of fortune; but in books that are written many years after the
transactions, what danger is there in speaking the truth?

XXII. The case is, that although none could happen to the public by
it, the writer himself who should make the attempt, would be exposed
to a great deal. The poor historians, scarce dare to do otherwise than
disguise such truths, as are not advantageous to their countrymen.
They must either flatter their own nation, or lay down the pen; for
if they fail to do this, they will be branded with the epithet of
being disaffected to their country. I lament most heartily the lot of
father Mariana; this very learned Jesuit, over and above possessing the
other talents necessary for an historian, was exceedingly sincere and
ingenuous; but this illustrious quality, which aggrandized his glory
with found critics, diminished it among the vulgar of Spain; they said
he had not a Spanish heart, and that his affections and his pen were
inimical to his country; and as heretofore, the extreme rigour of
Septimus Severus to the Romans, was attributed to his being of African
extraction by his father’s side, they imputed to father Mariana, a
certain kind of pique against the Spaniards, and assigned as the cause
of it, I don’t know whether with truth or not, his being of French
descent on the side of his mother. They would have had him relate
events, not as they happened, but in such a way as should seem most
pleasing to them; and by such as are fond of adulation, the man who
is not a flatterer is regarded as an enemy. But the same thing which
made this great man ill looked upon in Spain, gained him the highest
eulogiums from the most eminent personages in Europe: the following,
bestowed on him by the great Cardinal Baronius, is sufficient to
establish his honour and his fame: _Father John Mariana, a scrupulous
lover of the truth, an excellent pattern and sectary of virtue, a
worthy professor among the society of Jesus, and a Spaniard by birth,
but void of all national passion or prejudice, in a learned and elegant
stile, wrote a most perfect and faithful history of Spain._ (Baron. ad
ann. Christi 688.)

XXIII. It is not only in Spain, that they would have their historians
panegyrists, for the same thing happens in other countries. The King
of England, sent for the famous Gregory Leti, to write the history of
that kingdom; but he having protested he would not take pen in hand,
unless he was allowed to speak the truth; the King, to encourage him
to engage in the undertaking, assured him, that he should be permitted
to comply with this indispensable obligation, upon which, he set to
work, and compiled his history from the best authorities, and the most
faithful monuments and records he could discover; but the natives
having found reason to be dissatisfied with many of the facts laid
open in it, the King repented of the permission he had given him, the
copies were all called in by the procurement of administration, and the
historian obliged to leave England, but ill recompensed for his trouble.

XXIV. We Spaniards, complain much of the French authors, alledging,
that from their hatred to us, they disfigure transactions which are
glorious to our nation, and aggrandize in proportion, such as are
favourable to their own. This complaint is reciprocal, and I believe
well founded on both sides. When there have been frequent wars between
two nations, you will always observe, that from the jealousies and
animosities these have produced, the wars are constantly kept up in the
writings of the authors of both kingdoms; for united as in the arrow,
the feather follows the impetus of the steel.

XXV. But as a tribute due to truth and justice, I can’t avoid taking
notice in this place, of an unjust accusation, which has been
fulminated by our countrymen against the authors of that nation. They
say, that in relating the events of that kingdom in the reign of
Francis the first, they are either silent, or deny the imprisonment
of that King at the battle of Pavia. This complaint has not the least
foundation, for I have read accounts of this advantage of our arms in
various French authors, and even in one of them, I saw celebrated the
piquant answer of a French lady to King Francis, on the event of his
imprisonment. The King in a satyrical manner, that insinuated Time had
robbed her of her charms, said to her, _Madam, how long is it since
you came from the land of Beauty?_ To which the lady readily answered,
_Ever since you came from the country of Pavia_.

XXVI. Where I find the most reason for the Spaniards to be angry
with the French authors, is in their denying the coming of St. James
to Spain, and in their refusing to acknowledge that his sacred body
is deposited there; but these pretensions are more the offspring of
criticism than national jealousy, and never were material objects of
emulation between the two nations. It is on the subject of the justice
of wars, and the advantages gained in the prosecution of them, that
the pens engage with the most acrimony.


SECT. V.

XXVII. From this spirit of national prejudice, which prevails in
almost all histories, it happens, that with respect to an infinite
number of facts, the things which are past seem as uncertain to us, as
those which are to come. I acknowledge, that the historical Pyrrhonism
of Campanela was extravagant, who carried his want of confidence in
history to such a point, as to say, he doubted whether there ever was
an Emperor in the world named Charles the Great. But with respect to
those events, which the historians of one nation affirm, and those of
another deny; and as there are many such events, it will be prudent
for us to suspend our judgment, till some well-informed third person
shall decide upon them; for, excited either by vanity or inclination,
or led by condescension, every one goes on to flatter his own nation;
the light of truth at the same time, being concealed from the eyes of
the people, by the smoke of the incense of flattery, and the harmony of
adulation, preventing their listening to the voice of reason.

XXVIII. I shall not dwell upon those authors, who carried the passion
for their country, to lengths of extravagance, such as Goropius
Becanus, a native of Brabant, who very deliberately endeavoured to
prove, that the Flemish tongue was the first in the world; and Olaus
Rudbec, a Swede, who, in a book he wrote on purpose, tried to evince,
that all which the antients had said of the Fortunate Islands, the
garden of the Hesperides and Elysian fields, alluded to Sweden,
pronouncing at the same time, his own country to be the source and
perfection of European learning; and asserting, that letters and
the art of writing, did not descend from Phœnicia to Greece, but
from Phœnicia to Sweden; in the prosecution of which undertaking, he
rummaged out, and expended in waste, much hidden learning.

XXIX. It may also be proper to observe here, that another opposite
vicious extreme, if it is not derived from, arises in consequence of
this prejudice. It has been remarked by some, of a modern Spanish
author, that he has been guilty of unjustly denying to Spain, the
honour of some glorious antiquities, with a view of being applauded as
a sincere man among strangers. Perhaps this was not his motive, but
that his criticism was defective, for want of being tempered with a
due mixture of the indulgent and the severe; and that to avoid the
imputation of flattery, he ran into the opposite offensive extreme; for

    _Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt._


SECT. VI.

XXX. But the national prejudice of which we have spoken hitherto, is,
if we may so call it, an innocent vice compared to another, which by
being more common, is more pernicious. I speak of that preposterous
affection, which is not relative to a republic at large, but applies
to a particular district or territory which we call our own. I do not
deny, that by the term country, is understood not only the republic
or state of which we are members, and which may be called our common
country, but also the province, diocese, city or district, where every
one drew his first breath, and which on that account may be termed
his particular country; but it is certain, the phrase “love of our
country,” cannot be supposed to be confined or apply to our country
according to this second definition, but according to the first;
for that is the sense, in which it is recommended and enforced, by
examples, persuasions, and apophthegms, of historians, orators, and
philosophers. The country to which we should sacrifice our lives in
heroic arms, and which we ought to esteem superior to all our private
interests, and as the creditor of all our possible obsequies and
services, is that body of state, under which we are united in one
civil government, and protected by, and bound to the observance of the
same laws. Thus Spain is the proper object of the love of a Spaniard,
France of a Frenchman, and Poland of a Polander. But this should be
understood, not to relate to such people, who by migrating to, and
settling in other countries, make themselves members of other states,
in which case, the duty they owe to the country where they reside, and
are protected, ought to prevail over the affection they bear to the
country in which they were born; and on this distinction, we shall
in the sequel make an important remark. The dividing of a kingdom
into provinces or districts, which is done for the convenience of
administering justice, and conducting other business of government,
has a material influence over, and is in a great measure the cause of
dividing men’s hearts.

XXXI. The particular or limited love of one’s country, instead of
being useful to a state, is in many respects injurious and hurtful,
because it induces a division in the minds of those, who ought to
be reciprocally united for the sake of making more firm and stable,
the bond of common society; and because also this limited love of
our country, is an incentive to civil wars, and revolts against the
sovereign power; for always when a particular province or district
fancies itself aggrieved, all the individuals of it think the
redressing the grievances of their injured country, an obligation
superior to all others; and finally, this confined principle, is an
obstacle to the right administration of justice among all classes of
people, and in every judicial and ministerial department.

XXXII. This last inconvenience is so common and apparent, as to be
hidden from no man; and what is worse, no one endeavours to hide it.
This pestilence of partiality to countrymen is, to the perversion and
corruption of good regulation, introduced and cherished in the most
bare-faced manner, into those departments which are vested with the
power of distributing honourable and useful employments. What sanctuary
has been able to protect or preserve us, from the violencies of this
declared enemy of reason and equity? How many hearts, inaccessible to
the temptations of gold, insensible to the allurements of ambition,
intrepid, and proof against the threats of power, have suffered
themselves to be miserably deluded and perverted, by national passion?
Now-a-days, if a man is a candidate for an office or employment, he
always reckons upon as many protectors as he has countrymen, who have
any concern or interest in the disposal of it. His pretensions being
unreasonable, to a man swayed by national or provincial prejudice,
are no objection, because the only merit with such a one, is the
candidate’s being his countryman. We have seen men, in other respects
of unimpeachable integrity, who were much infected with this malady;
from hence I have been inclined to conclude, that this is an infernal
machine, artfully invented by the Devil, to subdue those souls, who
by all other ways are invincible; but alas, Achilles, although in one
little part only, you are vulnerable, what does it avail you, if Paris,
in shooting the arrow, has the skill and address to hit that little
part?


SECT. VII.

XXXIII. I do not condemn that affection for our native soil, which does
not operate to prejudice a third person. Aristotle’s employing his
favour with Alexander, to procure the rebuilding the town of Stagira
his native country, ruined by the soldiers of Philip, always appeared
to me right and proper; and I condemn the indifference of Crates, whose
city had suffered the same misfortune, for having, when Alexander asked
him if he was desirous it should be rebuilt, answered, _Of what use
would the rebuilding it be, if there should come another Alexander to
destroy it afresh?_ How exceedingly and ridiculously affected was the
behaviour of that philosopher, who lost to his countrymen so signal a
benefit, for the sake of a cold apophthegm? The misfortune was, that
no other opportune sentence of a contrary tendency occurred to the
philosopher just at that time; for if there had, he would have accepted
the favour offered by Alexander. I have observed, that there are no
people more unfit to be consulted upon serious and weighty points of
business, than those who pride themselves in speaking with grace and
elegance; for they are always apt to warp their opinion towards that
side, on which a striking expression occurs to them, and provided they
deliver themselves with air and brilliancy, they do not embarrass
themselves about a little false reasoning.

XXXIV. I say once more, that I do not condemn any innocent or moderate
affection for our native land. A love extremely soft and tender, is
better suited to women, and more proper for children just rising up
in the world, than for men; and therefore I am of opinion, the divine
Homer humanizes Ulysses to a degree of excess, when he paints him,
amidst all the regales of Pheacia, panting and pining, to see the smoke
arise on the mountains of Ithaca, his own country:

    _Exoptans oculis surgentem cernere fumum_
    _Natalis terræ._

This tenderness in one of the wisest of the Greeks was very puerile;
but with all, there is not much inconvenience in viewing with
tenderness the smoke of one’s country, provided the smoke does not
blind the eyes of him who looks at it. Let him view the smoke of his
own country; but alas, do not let him prefer it to the light and
splendour of foreign ones; but this is what we see every day. He who
by being placed at the head of an eminent department, has the disposal
of various employments at his pleasure, can scarce find any persons
properly qualified for those employments, but people of his own
country. In vain it is represented to him, that these men are unfit to
fill the post, and that there are others better qualified. He finds the
smoke of his country so grateful an aromatick, that he would abandon
for it the most brilliant lights of other places. O how strangely does
this smoke blind men’s eyes! How wonderfully does it disorder and
affect their heads!

XXXV. In truth, some sin in this particular with their eyes wide open;
I speak of those, who with the view of forming a party to support their
authority, promote as many of their countrymen as they possibly can,
without paying the least attention to merit. This is not manifesting
their love to their country, but to themselves, and is benefiting their
own soil, as the earth is benefited by the labour of the husbandman,
who does not bestow it with a view of improving the land, but of
advantaging himself. These are open and declared enemies of a republic,
because it being next to impossible, that one district can furnish
people sufficiently qualified for such a variety of employments,
the places are filled with unworthy objects; this, if it is not the
greatest evil that can befall a state, at least ultimately disposes
towards producing such an evil.

XXXVI. Of those, who exercise their passion for their countrymen, from
a belief that they are the most deserving, I am at a loss what to say,
although the motive of their partiality in this matter frequently
appears to me a voluntary blindness; and if that is the case, they do
not stand excused. When the excess of merit in the person set aside,
is so notoriously superior to that of the man promoted, that it is
manifest to all the world, except to him who dispensed the preferment,
what doubt can there be, that he shut his eyes to avoid seeing it?
or else, that the microscope of his passion magnified to his view,
the virtues of the man preferred, and the defects of him neglected?
There is scarce any man, who has not a portion of good and bad in his
composition; a man without fault would be a miracle, and one without
a single virtue would be a monster. This made St. Austin say, that
gigantic vice was as rare to be found among us, as eminent virtue:
_Sicut magna pietas paucorum est, ita et magna impietas nihilominus
paucorum est._ (Serm. 10. de verbis Domini.) What happens then is, that
passion, being to chuse between persons of unequal merit, magnifies
what is good in the bad man, and also what is bad in the good one.
There is not a more unfaithful balance to weigh merit in, than that
of passion and prejudice; but this is what men commonly use for the
purpose. This caused David to say, men are false in their balances:
_Mendaces filii hominum in stateris._ Job, to express the greatness and
power of God, says, that he is able to give weight to the wind: _qui
fecit ventis pondus_. But I am not clear in what sense to understand
this, because I also see, that the powerful of the world in the
balance of their passion, frequently give weight, and much weight to
the air. What do you see in that person they have just raised? Nothing
solid, nothing but air and vanity; but to this air, the great man who
exalted him gave more weight, than to the gold of the other person who
was his competitor for the office. But how was this done? Why, together
with the air, he put earth into the scale, I mean the earth of the
country in which he was born, and this earth weighs very heavy in that
balance.

XXXVII. It happens in the contentions about occupying places, as it
happened in the conflict between Hercules and Antæus. Hercules was much
more valiant and powerful than the other, and threw him repeatedly to
the ground; but the falls, enabled Antæus to renew the combat with
redoubled vigour, because by his contact with the earth, his strength
was doubled. The explanation of the matter is this: The antients under
the veil of fables, concealed physical and moral maxims, and according
to the heathen mythology, which was the term they used to signify the
exposition of those mysterious fictions, Antæus was the son of the
Earth. I believe, to make this fable apply to the present question, we
need say no more, than that as things go in the world, every country by
its recommendation, gives strength to its sons to overcome strangers,
although they are people of superior abilities and vigour. Hercules
lifted Antæus from the ground, and kept him suspended in the air, by
which means he found no difficulty in overcoming him. It were much to
be wished, that upon many occasions, in order to determine the worth of
people, they should be examined divested of all favour and advantage
they can derive from belonging to a particular country, for then it
would be much better known to whom the preference is due.


SECT. VIII.

XXXVIII. These men of national genius and prejudice, whose spirits are
all flesh and blood, and whose breasts are always in contact with the
earth, like that of a snake, do in a community, what the old serpent
did in paradise, or as Luzbel did in Heaven, that is, introduce into
it, seditions, revolts, schisms, and battles. No fire assails a civil
edifice so violently, as the flame of national passion, for it consumes
the very stones of the fabric, levels merit to the ground, and makes
reason tremble, excites tumults and insults, and makes way for the
triumphant entry of ambition. Those hearts which ought to be cordially
united by the bond of brotherly love, that bond being broken asunder,
are miserably divided, and breathe nothing but vengeance and rancour.
They form parties, inlist auxiliaries, and range their forces; but
alas! in the end both the victors and vanquished are unfortunate and
unhappy; the last lose the day and their patience, and the first by
their conquest lose themselves.

XXXIX. In no words of sacred writ, is a call to a generous and virtuous
life painted in more lively colours, than in those of the Psalmist,
Psalm xliv. _Mark me, my Son, incline your ear, and attend to my words,
you must forget your townsmen, and the house of your father._ But how
greatly does he deviate from the precept contained in this admonition,
who so far from forgetting his townsmen, and the house of his father,
treasures up in his heart and memory, not only a house or a town, but a
whole province or kingdom.

XL. Alexander, after he had conquered Persia, caused the Macedonian
soldiers to marry Persian women, to the end, says Plutarch, that
forgetting their native land, they should only esteem as their
countrymen, those who were good, and regard as strangers those who were
bad: _Ut mundum pro patria, castra pro arce, bonos pro cognatis, malos
pro peregrinis agnoscerent._

XLI. It is an apophthegm, of many learned and wise men among the
Gentiles, that to a man of a strong and liberal mind, all the world is
his country. He who attaches his heart to that corner of the earth in
which he was born, cannot look upon all the world as his country, nor
himself as a citizen of it, and therefore the world should despise him,
as a narrow-minded and mean-spirited person.

XLII. I believe notwithstanding, that there is something figurative
contained in the words of the sentences before quoted, for mankind
can never be understood to be exempted from the love and service they
owe to the republic of which they are members, in preference to all
other states and kingdoms; but I apprehend also, that this obligation
should not be confined to a republic, because we were born within
its limits, but because we are members of its society; therefore, he
who has legally transferred his residence from the kingdom in which
he was born, to another different one, where he has settled himself,
and taken up his abode, contracts with respect to that kingdom, the
same obligations he owed to that in which he was born and nursed,
and he ought to regard it as the country to which he belongs. This
is a distinction, that was not rightly understood by many great men
of antiquity; and for this reason, we see in various authors of
note, some actions celebrated as heroic, which ought to have been
condemned as infamous. Demaratus King of Sparta, when he was unjustly
dethroned and driven out of his kingdom by his own subjects, was
kindly received and protected by the Persians. He lived among them as
a member of the Persian empire, and owed to that country, besides the
obligation of gratitude, the duty of a subject; but mark the sequel:
the Persians meditate a military expedition against the Lacedemonians;
and Demaratus, who is let into the secret, communicates the design
to the Spartans, in order that they might be prepared to defeat the
enterprize. Herodotus, and many other authors, celebrate this action,
as a commendable mark of the glorious and heroic love which Demaratus
entertained for his country; but I say, it was a perfidious, base,
unworthy, and treacherous act; because in virtue of the antecedent
circumstances, the obligation of his loyalty, together with his person,
had been transferred from Lacedemonia to Persia.

XLIII. To conclude: I assert that if by reason of being born in it,
we contract any obligation to a particular district or place, that
obligation is inferior to, and ought to give place to every other
christian or political one whatever. Surely the difference of being
born in this or that country is not so material, that this should
out-weigh every other consideration; therefore we ought never to prefer
our countryman only because he is our countryman, except in those
cases, where there is a perfect equality of all the other circumstances.

XLIV. In superior rulers, I don’t even with this limitation, admit of
any partiality, with respect to countrymen, for the following reasons:
first, because without being perfectly divested of this passion, it
is hardly possible in one instance or another, to shun the danger of
passing from favour to injustice. Secondly, that in whatever manner,
favour to our countrymen is limited and restrained, we are apt to fall
into an acceptation or preferable choice of persons, which by all those
who govern ought to be studiously avoided. Thirdly, superior rulers
being truly the fathers of their people, their impartial affection for
them should be regarded as a consideration so incomparably superior
to all others, that it ought to stifle and suffocate every kind of
motive or inclination to preference, except that, which is derived from
superior merit. It would be ridiculous in a father to love one child
better than another, only because this was born in his own town or
city, and the mother was delivered of the other in a different place,
in consequence of her being from home on a journey. Therefore all
those who govern, ought ever to retain in their hearts and memories,
the maxim of the famous queen of Carthage, who being informed that
the Trojans, in consequence of her marrying Eneas, entertained hopes
of receiving superior indulgences to the Tyrians from her, declared
her perfect indifference of affection for them all as a queen in the
following words:

    _Tros, Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur._


SECT. IX.

XLV. Having spoken in this discourse, of the favour that may be shewed
to a countryman in preference to a stranger, in case he is a man of
equal merit, I thought it would not be improper here, to take notice
of a moral point, which frequently occurs in practice, and in which
I have often seen men mistake, who in other respects are far from
absurd. Those, who have annexed to their charges the distribution of
honourable and useful employments, if they have not a perfect knowledge
of the competitors for a vacant place, commonly avail themselves of
judicial or extrajudicial informations touching their merits. This is
a case that often occurs in the appointment to such professorships in
many universities, as are in the disposal of the king, or his supreme
council; and in these instances, all the doctors of this university
of Oveido give their information to the royal council promiscuously.
It is to be supposed, that the person, who by his own or delegated
authority appoints to the office, when two persons of equal merit are
proposed to him, may very consistently chuse which he pleases; but with
respect to the equality of merit, if he is a stranger to the parties,
he must be guided by the informations he receives; and I have seen it
very common, when they had no just reason for doing it, for people to
give their information in favour of the man they liked best, and I have
known them go so far, as not only to recommend him in preference to his
competitor, but to represent him as the only person qualified to fill
the vacant office.

XLVI. I call this an error, because that in my opinion, such an
information upon the face of it, is injurious and void of all
probability, which I shall endeavour to demonstrate, by exposing
the malice and indirect proceeding of him, who between two equal
subjects, Peter and John for example, gives his information in favour
of Peter, in preference to John; for I perceive in such behaviour,
not only one, but three serious and distinct offences. And first, he
offends materially in his information, against the virtue of legal and
impartial justice, which requires, that he should represent people
according to the true degree of their merits; but he swerves from this
principle, who represents Peter as superior to John, when he is not
so in reality. Secondly, he behaves unworthily and unjustly to his
Prince, by usurping and preoccupying the right, which he has to chuse
between the parties. Thirdly, he is guilty of injustice to the said
John, who has a right to be represented according to the true degree of
merit he possesses; and the proposing him as inferior to Peter, when
in truth he is equal to him, is doing him a manifest injury, which
besides prejudicing him with regard to other contingencies, renders it
impossible in this instance, for him to partake of the king’s grace of
chusing him in preference to his competitor Peter.

XLVII. From what has been premised, it may be inferred, that no
contingent can ever happen, in which an informant or voter can
consistently shew favour, or be partial to any man, either in such
an instance as we have just mentioned, or in any other whatever,
judicial or extrajudicial; because as we have shewn, competitions
between subjects of equal merit do not admit of it, and if the merits
of the competitors are unequal, the injustice of such a proceeding
is self-evident; consequently, to him who acts conscientiously, all
recommendations or solicitations are useless and improper; for he will
not be biassed by friendship, country, gratitude, school-alliances,
religion, college-connections, or any other motives whatever. But
the misfortune is, that in the practice of the world, we see but few
examples of such disinterested and upright conduct, even in cases where
the merits of candidates are unequal; but on the contrary, whenever
an opposition is set on foot, the favourers of each candidate, are
more occupied in canvassing suffrages, than in studying questions,
and more busied in examining the connections of voters, than books of
faculty. The abuse is carried to such a length, that sometimes a man’s
acting with integrity is imputed to him as a crime. If a voter, who
is solicited by a man of eminence, answers ingenuously, and excuses
himself from complying with what is requested of him; they say he
is a rough, ill-bred, unpolished man: if he does not yield to the
solicitations of a benefactor, they call him ungrateful; and if he
does not give way to the intreaties of a friend, they exclaim that he
is callous to the feelings of friendship. Finally, it appears to me,
that a more intolerable error than this cannot exist, for I have seen
men much esteemed by the generality of mankind for their worth, who
have always prostituted their votes to these or some other temporal
motives; but in the name of reason, can a man have any friend so great
or so good as God? Is there any benefactor, to whom we owe so much
as to him? How shall we reconcile this? Can he be called a grateful,
an honourable, or a good man, who can be wanting in his duty to his
best friend and greatest benefactor, by acting unjustly to oblige a
creature, to whom he owes this or that limited respect, and to whom
also it is impossible he should owe any thing whatever, but what he
owes principally, and in the first instance to God? In vain I have
urged these arguments in various private conversations; and I believe
it is in vain also, that I now use them with the public at large; but
if they shall not be effectual to amend the abuse, they will at least
serve to disburthen my mind, and give vent to my chagrin.




    ON
    TRUE AND FALSE
    URBANITY.


SECT. I.

I. The signification of the word Urbanity is equivocal, so that when
you read it in different authors who lived in distinct times, you
will find, the sense they understood it in varied exceedingly. It’s
immediate derivation is from the Latin word _Urbanus_, which springs
from _urbs_ a city; but notwithstanding this, it did not imply city in
general; for it’s meaning at first, was confined in an especial manner
to signify the city of Rome.

II. The reason of this was, that the word _urbanus_ began to be first
made use of, at the time that the Roman republic was in the zenith of
it’s prosperity, and this may be evidently inferred, from Quintilian’s
saying the word was new in the days of Cicero; _Cicero favorem, et
urbanum nova credit._ It was then that the generical word _urbs_ began
to be used by way of eminence, to signify the city of Rome, on account
of it’s portentous grandeur; and with the same pace that Rome proceeded
to domineer over the world, that sort of culture which the Romans
looked upon as an excellence peculiar to themselves, proceeded to gain
ground, and prevail in the city, and it was then that the Romans began
to make use of the word _Urbanus_, to express that compound sort of
cultivation that people received there, which seemed not to be confined
to letters and sciences only, but also to comprehend manner and
punctillo also; _homo urbanus_, _sermo urbanus_; and they used the word
_urbanitas_, to express those accomplishments in an abstracted sense.

III. But all authors did not give the same extension to the cultivation
implied by the word _urbanitas_. Cicero, as we know from his book _de
claris oratoribus_, restrained it to a graceful manner of speaking,
which was peculiar to the Romans.

IV. Quintilian thinks, the graceful manner of speaking, which was
peculiar to the Romans, and which consisted in their proper choice of
words, their just application of them, and the decent tone of their
voices, did not comprehend the whole, but was only a part of the
accomplishment that was meant to be expressed by the term Urbanity; and
he assigns as another part appertaining to it, a tincture of erudition
acquired by frequent conversation with learned men; _nam, et urbanitas
dicitur, qua quidem significari sermonem præ se ferentem in verbis, et
sono, et usu proprium quemdam gustum urbis, et sumptam ex conversatione
doctorum tacitam eruditionem, denique cui contraria sit rusticitas_.

V. Domitius Marsus, an author who lived about mid-way between the days
of Cicero and Quintilian, and who wrote a treatise upon Urbanity,
which we are indebted to Quintilian for the knowledge of, strikes
into a new track, and maintains Urbanity to consist in the keenness
and force of a short pithy expression, which delights and inclines
the hearer to be affected in the manner the speaker could wish; and
which is well adapted to excite either resistance or assent, according
to the circumstances of persons and things: _Urbanitas est virtus
quædam in breve dictum coacta, et apta ad delectandos, movendosque in
omnem affectum animos, maxime idonea ad resistendum, vel lacessendum,
prout quæque res ac persona desiderant. (Quintilian ubi supra.)_ This
definition is truly confused, and either explains nothing, or else,
only explains a particular idea of the author, distinct from every
thing that has hitherto been understood, respecting the meaning of the
word Urbanity.

VI. The moral philosophers, who have studied and laboured to explain
the admirable ethics of Aristotle, have considered this word as
equivalent to the Greek one _Eutrapelia_, which Aristotle made use of
to express that virtue, which influences people to observe moderation
in the tone of their voice, and their manner of expressing themselves;
as vicious extremes in these particulars, were apt to degenerate into
rusticity, or else, to be attended with scurrility and buffoonry; and
these are the sentiments of our cardinal Aguirre and count Manuel
Thesaurus.

VII. But neither the word urbanity, nor that of rusticity, which is
its opposite, are made use of to express at present, what they were
understood to imply formerly. They call him now-a-days, an agreeable
or well-bred man, and not a man of urbanity, who speaks in a moderate
and pleasing tone of voice, and who expresses himself in decent and
opportune phrases; and he who delivers himself in an opposite manner,
they do not call a rustic, but a coarse or an unpleasant man, or else
describe him by phrases that are equivalent to those.


SECT. II.

VIII. But to come to the acceptation that is given to the word Urbanity
in these present times, and to the sense in which it seems now to be
generally understood in Spain, it signifies the same as _Cortesania_;
but it is also true, that some give a more limited, and some a more
extensive signification to this phrase. There are those who understand
cortesane, or courteous, to mean the same as well-bred, and to express
a man who in his commerce with other men, conducts himself with that
decorum and ceremony which is prescribed by good education. But amongst
those who define things with propriety, I believe a courteous man
is understood to mean one, who, by his natural disposition, has a
propensity in all his words and actions, to conduct himself with that
temper and manner, that makes his conversation and company agreeable
and pleasing to the rest of mankind. Taken in this sense, the Spanish
word _Cortesania_, is equivalent to the French one _Politesse_, to the
Italian one _Civilitá_, and to the Latin one _Comitas_.

IX. The derivation of the word _Cortesania_, is analogous to that of
_Urbanitas_; for as this last was taken from the word _Urbs_, which
according to the custom then in use, was looked upon to be applicable
to the city of Rome, which was then the capital of a very great part
of the world, the term Urbanity was understood to imply, that sort of
cultivation which was then in vogue at Rome. Just so _Cortesania_,
which in Spain is derived from _Corte_, or court, where it is generally
supposed people behave with the greatest politeness is understood to
imply that sort of good breeding which is generally practised there,
and which we express by the term _Cortesania_.

X. Understanding then the word Urbanity in this sense, I shall define
it in the following manner; _that it is a virtue, or virtuous habit,
which directs and leads a man both in his words and actions in such
a way, as makes his company and behaviour savoury, grateful, and
engaging, to the rest of mankind_. I shall not embarrass myself, about
whether some people think this definition too redundant, and that it
seems to express more than the term Urbanity implies. I adjust the
definition to the interpretation I myself put upon the term, and to the
sense it is understood in, by those who have treated of the subject in
the most approved manner. Those who give less extension to the word,
may, if they please, define the thing in another manner. Disputes
about definitions are mere nominal questions, and may not improperly
be called playing upon words. Every one defines a thing, according to
the acceptation he gives to the word that expresses it. If all men
were to agree in the acceptation of a word, they would scarce ever
differ in the definition of the object that is expressed by it; but
the misfortune is, that the same word, excites in different people
different ideas with respect to the meaning of it, and hence it is,
that we see such a variety of definitions.

XI. There is no doubt, but that all the particulars which compose a
courteous carriage, should lead to the attainment of a certain end, and
should be calculated to induce a certain manner in all a man’s exterior
behaviour, that should be free from any mixture of the indecent, the
offensive, or the tiresome; but that on the contrary it should rather
be combined, with the grateful, the decent, and the opportune.

XII. Urbanity, like all other moral virtues, is placed between two
vicious extremes; one of which it is apt to run into by exceeding, and
the other by deficiency, or not doing enough. The first is occasioned
by that excessive complaisance which borders upon meanness; and the
second, by a rigid unsavoury reserve, which has the appearance of
rusticity.


SECT. III.

XIII. As there is no virtue, whose use is so general and common as than
of Urbanity, so there is no one which is so much counterfeited and
falsified by hypocrisy. There are men who by seldom finding themselves
in a situation to exercise some particular virtues, are not very
anxious about contriving means to imitate them by hypocrisy; but as
Urbanity is a virtue that all men have opportunities of exercising,
it is in the power of all men to counterfeit it by deceit. In truth,
the hypocrites in the line of Urbanity are innumerable. All the world
super-abound with expressions of submission and profound respect,
with obsequious offers, and with exaggerated professions of esteem,
with smiling countenances, whose essence consists in the command they
have of their features, and in expressions of their lips, in which
their hearts have not the least share; but on the contrary, are rather
impressed with sentiments, that are quite opposite to those false
appearances, and mock demonstrations.

XIV. What, then, should Urbanity be implanted in the heart? Without
doubt it should, or it is at least from thence that it ought to derive
its origin. If it was otherwise, how could it be a virtue? Reason tells
us, that there is an honest complaisance due from one man to another;
and whatever reason dictates should be esteemed a virtue. But how can a
lying, deceitful, and affected complaisance be a virtue? It is evident
it cannot. Urbanity then should arise from the bottom of the soul. What
does not do that, is not Urbanity, but hypocrisy that counterfeits
it. An honest soul, stands in no need of fiction to assist it in the
observance of all those attentions which compose good-breeding, because
it is naturally inclined to the observance of them, left alone to
itself. By an innate propensity, accompanied by the light of reason,
such a one will never, upon any occasion, be found wanting in the
respect that is due to his superiors, nor in the condescension he
should shew to his equals, nor in the affability he should practice
with his inferiors, nor in the good-will and gracious manner, with
which he should manifest to all men, both in words and deeds, these
laudable dispositions of his mind, and his love of human society.

XV. I am not ignorant, that Urbanity is commonly understood to consist
in our external testification of respect and benevolence to those
with whom we converse. But if this testification, is not accompanied
with the affections of the mind that are expressed by it, it becomes
deceitful, and cannot possibly constitute that sort of urbanity, which
consists in a virtuous habit; for in order to constitute such a one,
it would be necessary that the testification should be sincere, which
amounts to the same as saying, that there is essentially included in
urbanity, the existence of those sentiments, which are expressed by
courteous words and actions.


SECT. IV.

XVI. It is certain, that courts are the great public schools of true
Urbanity; but they have mixed so much false in those schools in the
practice of it, that some have been led to think, it has nearly
obscured the true, of which, there seems to be scarce any thing left
but the mere appearance. I believe, that without disparagement to
any other courts we ever heard of, those of antient Rome, and modern
Paris, may be esteemed the most cultivated and polite that have been
known in the world. After mentioning this, let us hear what two authors
say who were well versed in the practice of them both. The first is
Juvenal, who clearly gives us to understand, that he who could not lie
and flatter should withdraw from court, as there were no hopes of his
getting any thing by his attendance there--

    _Quid Romæ faciam? Mentiri nescio; librum_
    _Si malus est, nequeo laudare, &c._

XVII. The second is the abbot Boileau, a famous preacher at Paris in
the reign of Louis the Fourteenth. This eminent man, in a treatise
he published, entitled _Choice Thoughts or Reflexions_, drew such a
picture of the court of Versailles, as shews the Urbanity exercised
there, had degenerated not only into dissimulation, but even into
treachery, although he admits, this was not the practice of every one
who attended it. These are his words:

XVIII. “What are the manners and behaviour of a courtier? Why they
consist in flattering his enemies while he is afraid of their power;
and in endeavouring to destroy them whenever he finds an opportunity
for doing it; in being civil to, and making use of his friends when he
stands in need of their assistance, and in turning his back upon them
when they can be of no further service to him; in seeking out powerful
protectors, whom he fawns on, and idolizes exteriorly, and frequently
despises in secret.

XIX. “Courtly Urbanity, consists in converting dissimulation and
deceit, into the law or rule of a man’s actions; and representing all
sorts of people in such colours, as your interest dictates to you that
you should paint them; in bearing slights and disappointments with a
forced reserve, and in awaiting with a strained appearance of modesty
and composure, the favours of Fortune.

XX. “In a court, for the most part there is no sincerity, but almost
every thing you see there, is compounded of hypocrisy, deceit, and
malevolence; for example, in peoples doing underhand ill offices
to each other; in contriving and laying snares that nobody can be
aware of; in bearing painful and mortifying disgusts with a smiling
countenance; and in hiding under an apparent shew of modesty, the
pride of Lucifer. It is very common in a court, for a man not to be
permitted to love whom he likes, to do what he should, nor to speak
what he thinks. It is necessary to keep silence, in order to conceal
your sentiments, and it is also necessary, to acquire a facility at
changing them. You must applaud, abuse, love, abhor, speak, and live,
not according to your own liking or inclination, but in conformity to
the arbitrary will and caprice of other people.

XXI. “In what do the other manners and mode of a man’s conducting
himself consist in a courtier? Why in dissembling injuries, and in
revenging them; in flattering his enemies, and in destroying them; in
promising every thing for the sake of obtaining a dignity or promotion,
and in performing none of these promises after he has got it; in
repaying favours with words, services with plausible assurances, and
debts with threatenings. At court, they in the same breath implore and
execrate Fortune, applaud and despise merit; and they also disguise the
truth, under an ostentatious appearance of frankness.”

XXII. I believe there is a great deal of this sort of dissimulation
all over the world; but it is natural to suppose, there is more of
it practised in courts than in other places, for the incitements to
the exercise of the before-mentioned vices, are generally stronger
there, than they are found to be out of those circles. There is not a
passion nor an appetite, which there a man does not seem within reach
of indulging, and the objects which stimulate his desires, shine
forth there also in their greatest splendor. The ambitious man fancies
himself on the point of grasping honours, and the covetous one riches.
The pretenders are vying with each other, the emulous contending with
the emulous, and the envious with the envied. There the success of the
unworthy man, is staring the neglected deserving one in the face, and
there the hands of the unskilful artist fully employed, is exhibiting
a disgusting spectacle, to the able one who has nothing to do. And
although a modest man who only views this at a great distance, or who
only hears it from report, may reason upon it, and contain himself like
a philosopher, still, when the mortifying prospect is so near him, he
can scarce speak of the thing with temper, nor look upon it without
falling into a passion. Thus it is almost morally impossible, that
the hearts of the neglected men should not be in a continual state of
fermentation, and their feelings in a tumultuous agitation, which is
attended, not so much with the corruption of the men themselves, as
with that of their manners.

XXIII. But notwithstanding all that has been alledged, we ought to
conclude, that the two before-named authors exaggerated the evils they
meant to reprehend. There is a great deal of bad in courts, but there
is also some good to be found in them. The complaints that merit is
neglected, are frequently nothing more than sighs, which express the
grief and disappointments of the heart from whence they proceed. The
same man who laments political mismanagement, while he is not permitted
to go beyond the porch of the favourite’s house, when he has once
gained admittance into it, begins to applaud his conduct, as he ascends
the steps leading to his levee-room; which is a proof that what he
meant by mismanagement and a bad conducted government, was such a one
as he got nothing under, and that what he understands by a good one,
is such a one as is advantageous to him. I have at all times heard the
administration ill spoken of, but if we come to enquire by whom, we
shall find it is chiefly done, by importunate candidates for places
and employments, who are unable to attain what they never deserved,
and by litigious suitors, who were justly disappointed of success in
their vexatious attempts, and who have been condemned to pay costs, for
commencing unjust prosecutions; by delinquents who have been legally
mulcted for their misdeeds; by ignorant people who have passed for men
of understanding, and who without having studied in any other school,
than that of a coffee-house or a club-room, have presumed to give
positive opinions, upon the most important and difficult political and
military questions; and finally, by weak people, who fancy that a good
government can effect impossibilities, and that they are able to make
all the subjects of a state, happy and contented.

XXIV. Neither my genius, nor my destiny have allowed me to have much
intercourse with ministers in high stations; but I have heard sincere
judicious men, who have known many of them well, speak of them, in
terms very different from those they have been spoken of by the vulgar;
and who have expressed a different opinion, both of their abilities and
their intentions, from that which has been commonly propagated. Nor
indeed is it credible, that princes, who generally know men’s political
characters better than private people, should make choice of men for
their ministers, who are either incapable, or wickedly disposed.
If in case that they should have been mistaken in the opinion they
entertained of them, and they find upon trying them, that they are not
equal to conduct the business they have confided to their management,
they may easily remove them. Thus it is utterly improbable to me, that
a man destitute of all merit, should for any length of time, occupy a
post of great importance, or have the ear of his sovereign.

XXV. With respect to inferior ministers, such for example, as the
principal people and magistrates in the provinces, I have had a great
deal of experience, and protest, that for the most part, I have found
them to be the best sort of men to be met with in the country. I say
for the most part, for it cannot be denied, that among this class,
there are men to be found that are not very upright, and more than a
little addicted to avarice. And by what I find the principal directors,
lawyers, and magistrates in the country to be, I judge of those about
the court; and it seems natural to me, that the higher the sphere of
life is in which people move, they are the more stimulated by motives
of honour, and less likely to descend to, or be guilty of mean actions.


SECT. V.

XXVI. Neither do I believe above half that is said, of the neglect that
is shewn to merit, and the abandoned situation it finds itself in at
court; for the number of candidates for preferment that may be found
there, who have no merit at all, would upon enquiry appear to be very
considerable, and that among them, you will meet with mischief-makers,
together with crafty, deceitful, and treacherous people, whose bad
practices and characters, it is almost beyond the power of language to
describe; who are a sort of imps of Satan, that for the most part serve
the Devil without pay; and are a kind of galley slaves upon earth, who
join to that slavery, being the galley boatswains mates, or drivers
of each other, whose oar, and whose scourge, are never out of their
hands, for fear of their not being the first to arrive at the desired
port, and to accomplish what they had in view. They are a species of
idolaters of Fortune, who sacrifice as victims to that deity, their
companions, their relations, their friends, and their benefactors; and
in the end themselves also, or their own souls. What have we not to
expect, or what have we not to fear from men of this character?

XXVII. I have been three times at court, but either from my natural
incuriosity, or because my stay there each time was but short, I came
away as ignorant of the practices of a court, as I went; and only
took particular notice of one circumstance, which is relative to
the subject I am now treating of. I saw there, as in other places,
Urbanity degenerate into that fulsome kind of ceremony, which may be
termed cringing complaisance. Accident furnished me with numberless
opportunities of seeing such things; and I have frequently observed
two people who have usually met together in their walks, and who, as
I have been informed, had a tolerable indifference for each other,
and even looked upon one another with reciprocal contempt; I say I
have seen these people upon their meeting, strive which should excel
in expressions of the love, veneration and respect they bore to each
other. There was scarce a word came out of their mouths, which was not
accompanied with some affected gestures. Their eyes cast glances of
tender devotion on each other, and milk and honey flowed from their
lips; but at the same time their affectation was so palpable, that any
man of the least discernment, might have perceived the disagreement
there was, between their hearts and their appearances. I laughed
inwardly at them both, and I believe they also in their hearts, laughed
mutually at each other.

XXVIII. I saw once two lawyers accost each other, with such extreme
expressions of tenderness, that a Portuguese might have learned from
them, phrases and gestures for feats of gallantry. Both these people
had places at court, on which account they could not avoid seeing each
other pretty frequently; and there was no friendship between them;
notwithstanding which, their expressions were like those of the most
cordial friends, who had met together after a long absence.

XXXIX. Having expressed to some people who were used to the court, how
disgusting this appeared to me, they answered that this was behaving
in the court stile; but would not any one who hears this, conclude the
court was nothing but a comic theatre, where all the world act the part
of enamoratos; although to speak the truth, it was only in spirits of
inferior order, that I noted this amorous kind of farrago. In those of
more elevated hearts and minds, if they don’t owe the thing to their
own genius and disposition, the education of a court produces a better
effect, and exhibits people of a more noble behaviour, and such as is
proper to, and expressive of true urbanity. I say I have observed in
such, affability, sweetness, expressions of benevolence, and offers
of kind services; all which were tendered with propriety, and in a
decent generous manner, free from affected exaggerations, but animated
at the same time, and expressed with so natural an air, that the
articulations of the tongue, were indications of the emotions of the
mind, and the feelings of the heart.

XXX. Cato, as Tully tells us, said, he wondered how two augurs whenever
they met, could refrain from laughing at each other; as they both well
knew, that their whole art was a mere imposture. I think the saying may
be applied to two fulsomely complaisant courtiers; for I do not see how
those who have once saluted each other in this cringing and affected
way, can upon meeting again, forbear laughing in each others faces, as
they both know, that all the hyperbolical professions of their esteem,
affection, and readiness to oblige, mean nothing, and that this is all
a mere common-place farrago or rhapsody, quite destitute of truth or
reality.

XXXI. I have said, that in the lesser towns I have visited, I have
not observed so much by a great deal, of this ridiculous parade. It
is true, that you will find in them, some few people who walk about
the streets with incense in their hands, to offer up to, and idolize
all those, whom they fancy can be of any service to them; but they
are looked upon like what they are, not as men of worth, but as men
of craft, whose incense smells savoury in the nostrils of none but
fools. This sort of behaviour about the court, frequently passes for
good-breeding; but in these other places it is condemned as meanness.


SECT. VI.

XXXII. I am persuaded that solid and brilliant urbanity, has much more
of the natural than the acquired in its composition. A good, sound,
and unembarrassed mind, accompanied with discretion, which is gentle
without meanness, and is disposed by genius and inclination to conform
to every thing that is not contrary to reason, to which dispositions
there is annexed a clear understanding, or native prudence, which
dictates to a man how he should speak and act, according to the
different circumstances and situations in which he finds himself,
will, without studying in any school, acquit himself well, and appear
agreeable in his commerce with mankind. It is true, that he will be
deficient in his knowledge of those forms, modes, and ceremonies, which
people study in courts, and which are changed by caprice at every
turn; but in the first place, natural advantages, which always are
intrinsically valuable, and which will ever operate, will supply upon
ordinary occasions, the want of studied forms; and secondly, a modest
and candid confession, to those you happen to be in company with, of
your ignorance of political forms and ceremonies, on account of your
having been born and bred in the provinces where they are not generally
practised, will be a sufficient excuse for your transgression of
those forms, and even your doing this, will appear better in the eyes
of reasonable people, than your observing a strained and scrupulous
attention to them.

XXXIII. I have availed myself many times of this resource at court;
where I have made no scruple to declare, that I was born and bred in
a small country town; and that I early entered myself a member of a
religious order, whose principal care it was, to seclude its sons,
and especially in their youth, from all commerce with the world. That
my genius naturally disposed me to abhor bustle, and avoid great
concourses of people; and excepting three years that I was a student
at Salamanca, which may not improperly be termed three years of
solitude, on account of the heads of our college not permitting their
young members to have the least intercourse with secular people; I say
excepting these three years, I have lived all the rest of my life, in
Galicia and Asturias, which are provinces at a great distance from
court; and besides all this, I have a natural dislike to studying
ceremonies; but I am aware however, that not only the substance, but
the forms of them also, are necessary to political society; although I
do not consider that as an important form, which consists of rules that
are established to-day, and changed to-morrow, just as whim and caprice
dictate; some of which forms, or modes, prevail in one country, and
are different in another; but I mean to speak of those forms or modes
only, which reason dictates should be observed in all times, and in all
places. From the before-named declaration, it may be easily conceived
how little I understand of courtly ceremonies; notwithstanding which,
with the assistance of the above frank confession, I never found
myself the least embarrassed, and I perceived, nothing I said or did
appeared disagreeable to those I conversed with, but that rather on the
contrary, my natural behaviour seemed pleasing to them.

XXXIV. Men of sublime spirits and elevated understanding, possess a
natural privilege to dispense with formalities whenever they think
proper; just as musicians of great genius are allowed upon many
occasions, to depart from the common rules of their art; their doing
which, hardly ever renders the music ungrateful to the ear; so men
who are endowed with great talents, and display a manifest superiority
in conversation, may dispense with the ordinary and common methods of
speaking, without ever offending the ears of their auditors. Natural
advantages shine forth with a greater lustre, and are more solid, and
more pleasing than borrowed acquisitions. Thus the world are well
satisfied, to accept the first in the room of the last, and look upon
themselves as over-paid for the loss of the one, by the introduction of
the other in its stead.

XXXV. I was even about to say, that the establishment of ceremonies
of urbanity, was only calculated for people of middling or inferior
geniuses, and was meant as a succedaneum for a discretion so superior
to that which the others we have mentioned possess, as to be capable
of dictating of itself, the rule of deportment one man should observe
to another. I believe it happens in this, with very little difference,
the same that it happens in all material movements. There are men, who
naturally and without any teaching, have a grace and air in all their
actions, in the motions of their hands, and their feet, in the bending
their bodies, and inclining their heads, in the casting downwards and
lifting up their eyes, and in whom in every motion and gesture, all is
done with such a native grace, that it enamours those who behold them;
and is that sort of excellence, which is described by Tibullus to have
been possessed by Sulpicia:

    _Illam quid quid agit, quoquo vestigia flectit,_
        _Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor._

I should consider it as very useless and unnecessary, to prescribe
rules for the carriage and actions of such sort of people. Let precepts
be kept for the use of those who are naturally aukward, and let them be
tried to see whether by art, they can mend this defect of nature.

XXXVI. It is only with respect to two sorts of people, that no body is
allowed to be exempt from observing ceremony, and they are princes and
women. The first, from time immemorial, have instituted ceremonies as
essential appendages to majesty. The second, from education and habit,
have been taught, and accustomed to regard as the substance, what in
reality is an accidental or visionary entity, and even to prefer this
visionary or accidental entity, to the substance itself. Thus they are
apt to disesteem the most discreet and agreeable man in the world, and
to give the preference to one of much inferior talents, because he is
well instructed in fashionable formalities, and is a strict observer of
them. I except from this number, the women of superior abilities, who
know as well as any body, how to distinguish, and do justice to true
merit.


SECT. VII.

XXXVII. Whether this native grace is an integrant part of, or an
ornament to that urbanity, which seasons and adorns men’s words and
actions, it is certain, that study and art can never supply the defect
of it.

XXXVIII. This is that sort of perfection, which Plutarch extols in
Agesilaus, and by the help of which, he observes, that although he was
but a little man, and his figure rather contemptible, he in his old
age, appeared more amiable and engaging, than any of the handsome young
fellows. _Dicitur autem pusillus fuisse, et specie aspernanda; cæterum
hilaritas ejus omnibus horis, et urbanitas aliena ab omni, vel vocis,
vel vultus morositate, et acerbitate, amabiliorem eum ad senectutem
usque præbuit omnibus formosis._

XXXIX. This is that species of seasoning of which Quintilian speaks,
when he says, that it makes the same sentence seem to come better from
the mouth of one man than another: _Inest proprius quibusdam decor
in habitu, atque vultu, ut eadem illa minus, dicente alio, videantur
urbana esse._

XL. This is that kind of ornament, which Cicero called the colour,
or blazon of urbanity, and instances Brutus, as one who was tinged
with it in great perfection, but when he came to explain or describe
this blazon, he defined it to have consisted of a mysterious _je ne
scai quoi_. These are his words, taken from his dialogue _De claris
Oratoribus: et Brutus, quis est, inquit, tandem urbanitatis color?
Nescio, inquam, tantum esse quendam scio._ Which last expression, I am
obliged to decipher by the sentence _Je ne scai quoi_, as I can find
no other that is equivalent to it. This native grace, or if you please
to call it by the figurative name Cicero has expressed it by, this
colouring of urbanity, is composed of many particulars. For example,
the neatness of the articulation, the good tone, and the harmonious
flexibility of the voice, the graceful attitude of the body, the well
regulated movements of the action, the amiable modesty of the carriage
or manner, and the striking or lively expression of the eyes, are the
parts, which constitute the whole of this grace.

XLI. It is easy to perceive, that all the before-mentioned are gifts
of nature; which can never be acquired by study, or supplied by
instruction. Many people have hoped to succeed, by attempting to
imitate those, in whom these natural gifts are resplendent, or to
speak more properly, are a part of their nature; but the very means
they employ to give themselves a pleasing and agreeable air, cause
them to appear ridiculous. That which is a grace in the original, has
often an apish look in the copy. The imitation of natural endowments,
seldom amounts to more, than a contemptible mock semblance of them.
The affectation in these attempts is glaring and palpable, and all
affectation is surfeiting.

XLII. I shall only state two limitations, or exceptions, to the
possibility of acquiring those parts of gracefulness, which consist
in the position of the body, and the motion of its members; and shall
admit in the first place, that these may in some measure be acquired by
imitation; but when? why when people do not think of acquiring them,
and are not sensible that they do acquire them; that is in their infant
state. It is then that nature is so pliant and flexible, that like soft
wax, it may be easily molded to any shape, and made to receive any
impression; and hence it is, that we frequently see children in their
ordinary actions and motions, greatly resemble their parents.

XLIII. In Galicia where I was born, there are many people who
understand Spanish perfectly well, who speak it in a drawling sort of
a way, and by leaving out now and then a letter, are apt to lose the
exact and proper pronunciation. Many have attributed this defect, to
the imperfect organization of the tongues of the people of Galicia,
produced by the influence of the climate; but it is no such thing, for
this vicious pronunciation, is derived from the bad habit of speaking
they contract in their infancy; and it is evident that it proceeds
from thence, because many Galician children who have been carried
from home when they were very young, and have been afterwards brought
up and educated at Castile, some of whom I have seen, pronounce the
Castilian language with as much clearness and readiness, as the natives
of that province themselves. It is not many years ago, that there was
a celebrated actress, who was born in a small village in Galicia, and
who was carried to court by her uncle at four years old, and was there
trained up to the stage, and who was greatly admired for her neat and
ready pronunciation.

XLIV. The second limitation and exception I admit to the position
I have advanced, is, that both a vicious pronunciation, and an
aukwardness of motion and manner, may be greatly corrected and amended,
even after people are grown to a state of maturity, and especially
when these defects proceed from bad habits contracted in their youth.
But in order to accomplish this, there is need of great perseverance
and application. Even an inveterate bad habit, may be torn up by the
roots by applying vast force and exertion to eradicate it; but when the
fibres of the root, are inserted into the profundities of nature, all
endeavours are vain.


SECT. VIII.

XLV. Although Urbanity, with respect to the most brilliant and
beautiful parts of it, which we describe by the term gracefulness, as
we have before observed, depends very little upon study or instruction,
still in all its substantial and essential parts, it admits of precepts
and rules; so that any man who has been taught, or has made himself
acquainted with them, may perfectly understand in what this appearance
of Urbanity consists.

XLVI. People very frequently, and in many ways offend against the laws
of Urbanity; and I have seen those, who have had a reasonable good
education, who have notwithstanding that, been frequently guilty of
offending against the rules of good-breeding. All those imperfections,
are the very reverse of Urbanity, which tend to make people
disagreeable in their conversation, and when in company with other men
troublesome or disgusting in their behaviour; and this explanation,
suits well with the definition we at first gave of Urbanity. But which
are these imperfections? To this I shall answer, that they are many,
and that I will proceed to point some of the most striking ones out,
which I apprehend will be the most instructive part of this essay, as
enumerating the most glaring imperfections that tend to make people
disagreeable and troublesome in conversation, will have the same
effect, as prescribing rules that should be observed, to render their
company pleasing and desirable to society. As I proceed, the reader
may accompany me, and examine his political conscience as we go on, in
order to discover whether any of the faults or failings I point out,
are applicable to himself.


SECT. IX.

_Loquacity._

XLVII. I consider talkative people as a sort of tyrants of
conversation; for according to my opinion, who admit of a limited
species of reason in brutes, talking is a faculty more peculiar to man
than reasoning; and engrossing all the conversation to a man’s self is
a most arbitrary proceeding. He who is always desirous of being heard,
and is impatient of attending to any one else, usurps a privilege
to himself, which should be enjoyed in general by all mankind, as a
prerogative proper to their being. But what fruit can be gathered
from his torrent of words? None, except the tiring and disgusting his
hearers may be called a fruit, who after they are rid of him, make
amends for the silence he had imposed on them, by speaking of him with
derision and contempt. No time is worse employed, than that which is
consumed in hearing talkative people; who are generally men without
discretion or reflection, for if they had any, they would be more
reserved and keep within reasonable bounds, in order to avoid making
themselves contemptible; and if they want reflection, they must want
judgement also, and how can he who wants judgement talk with propriety?
Or what benefit can result to those who listen to an extravagant
prating man, except that of his affording them an opportunity for the
meritorious exercise of their patience? Thus what Theocritus said of
the verbose fluency of Anaximenes, may be applied to all talkative
people; that he considered them as a luxuriant river of words, in
the whole stock of whose waters, you could not find one drop of
understanding: _Verborum flumen, mentis gutta._

XLVIII. What flows from such tongues, may be compared to vomitings
of the soul; or to the sickly discharges from an unsound mind, which
throws up before it has digested them, all the mental species or
aliment it has received. They would have that pass for a faculty or
power of explaining themselves, which in reality is nothing more than
the want of a retentive faculty, or the power of keeping down what is
in them. I would describe this malady, by calling it a relaxation of
the rational faculty; whereas others might be apt to say, that is not
the case, for the species are thrown up, for want of space to contain
them in the part destined for their reception.

XLIX. Let no man plume himself too much, upon his being well attended
to or applauded when he first begins to speak in public; for this may
be a favourable tempting breeze, that may encourage him to loose the
sails of loquacity; but although it may be a favourable and a tempting
one, it may be a breeze of but short duration. Conversation is the food
of the soul, but the cravings of the soul, are as various, as delicate,
and as capricious as those of the body. The most noble diet persisted
in for too long a time, becomes satiating, and loathsome. Thus the
oratory of him, who for a certain space shall be listened to with
pleasure by his hearers, may become tiresome to them after a while,
and they would not attend to what he said, if he persisted in talking
too long. The planets a man should consult the aspect of, to know
when he should enter deep, or go but a little way into the gulph of
conversation, are the eyes of his auditors; their pleasing serenity, or
lowering appearances, should be the signs, that should either encourage
him to spread all the sails of rhetoric and make great way; or else
should warn him of the hazard and risque of proceeding any further, and
that for the present it would be most prudent for him to lay-by, and
wait a more safe and favourable opportunity to pursue his course.

L. But even these appearances may be fallacious and deceiving, and more
especially to persons of high rank and authority; for the dependants
of such, not only flatter them with their tongues, but with their
eyes also. Why should I confine their adulation to the expressions of
their tongues and their eyes, when they convert their whole bodies,
and every limb and member of them, to instruments of delusion and
flattery? for with certain fawning movements, and certain mysterious
gestures of complaisance and admiration, they attend to and applaud all
that is said or done by a man in power, on whom they are in any shape
depending. He at the same time, big with his own cleverness, and his
chops watering with approbation of himself, with the drivel running out
at both corners of his mouth, vents his oratory, and talks whatever
comes uppermost, be it good or bad, in a full persuasion, that the
words of Apollo of Delphos were never listened to with more attention,
or more respect. But, unhappy man, how do you deceive yourself! for you
tire every body, and you disgust every body; and, the worst is, that
those who had been just listening to you with such seeming applause, as
soon as your back is turned, to relieve themselves from the pain the
forced tribute of their adulation to you gave them, vent themselves in
repeated bursts of laughter and derision at your folly. Great people
may believe what I say, and be convinced that this is the way of the
world; and they may also believe me when I tell them, that power in the
hands of a weak man, only tends to make him appear more ridiculous;
and that in the hands of a discreet one, if he is not extremely so, it
tends in a great measure to cast a blemish on his understanding.


SECT. X.

_Lying._

LI. What can be more obnoxious to urbanity than lying? What man of
understanding is there whom it does not offend? Or to whom is it not
disgusting? and how can deceit cease to be injurious? All the utility,
all the delight that can be obtained by conversation, is destroyed by a
lie. If he, with whom I converse, tells me lies, of what service will
the information I receive from him be to me? for if I do not believe
him, all he says will only tend to irritate me; and if I do, to fill me
with errors. If I am not assured he tells me truth, what satisfaction
can I have in attending to him? For his conversation, so far from
affording me entertainment or instruction, will set my mind on the
rack, and cause me to waver, and continue in a painful state of doubt,
and also perplex me, to find out reasons for believing or disbelieving
what he has told me.

LII. Conversation is a species of traffic, in which mankind exchange
informations and ideas with each other; and what better name can we
give to him, than that of a cheat and a deceiver, who in this commerce,
passes false informations and ideas for true ones; and ought we not
also to treat him as a prevaricator, who is unworthy of being admitted
into human society?

LIII. I have always been amazed at, and have always condemned, the
indulgence and toleration that lying people find in the world. I have
already exclaimed against this practice in my Essay on the Impurity
of Lying, and must beg leave to refer the reader thither for a more
full discussion of the point; but it has occurred to me since I wrote
that Essay, that it is probable, this toleration may have arisen
from the great extension of the vice of lying; and that the number
of those who find themselves interested in this indulgence, is much
greater, than that of those who find themselves injured by it; and that
perhaps they tolerate lying in one another, because the toleration is
necessary and useful to both parties. If the sincere part of the world
consists of but few people, they cannot, without being guilty of great
rashness, attempt to wage war against the many; but they at least may
remonstrate, and with temper complain of the disgust they receive,
from the indulgence that is shewn to lying. I ingenuously confess for
myself, that I look upon him as a man of but little sincerity, who
hears a lie with much seeming composure, and without expressing any
signs of his dislike of it; although I must confess at the time I say
this, that a frank manifestation of our dislike of the practice, cannot
so easily be shewn, unless it is to our equals or our inferiors.

LIV. There is a species of lie, that passes in the world for humour
and pleasantry, which I would punish as a crime. Whenever there
happens to be a person in company who is noted for being an exceeding
credulous man, it frequently happens, that some one or other tells a
very incredible story, for the sake of exposing the easy faith of such
a person, and of shewing, how apt he is to swallow absurdities and
improbabilities for truth. This is received as a piece of wit, and all
the by-standers laugh and applaud the ingenuity and invention of him
who told the lie, and they all regale themselves at the expence of the
innocent credulous person. But I consider this as an abuse; for does
the simple and easy credulity of any person give others a right to
insult him? admitting that his excessive credulity proceeds from the
scantiness of his understanding; are we peradventure only obliged to
be civil to, and treat with urbanity, the discreet and the acute? If
God has blessed you with more talents than another man, would it not be
an insolent abuse of them, if you made that person an object of your
scorn, and played upon him, and treated him with the same derision and
contempt that you would treat a monkey? Would this be using him like
your neighbour? Or would it be applying your talents to the end and
purpose, for which God was pleased to endow you with them?

LV. But the truth is, that excessive credulity proceeds more from
goodness of heart, than from want of discretion. I have seen men who
were very simple, and at the same time very penetrating. The same
rectitude of heart, which excites a man of simplicity of manners to
conduct himself without deceit, inclines him to think, that other
people conduct themselves upon the same principle. It often happens,
that a lie is believed by one person because he is an ingenuous man;
and discredited by another, because he is a simpleton. The case is,
that the first, excited by the goodness of his disposition, sets
himself about finding out grounds of probability for what he has
heard, and by his penetration discovers such. The other, who is only
influenced by the dictates of his malice, never seeks after any such
thing; and although he should seek after it, his stupidity would not
permit him to discover it.

LVI. I don’t know whether the story that is commonly told of St. Thomas
Aquinas, which is, that he was made to believe there was an ox that
could fly, be true or not, as likewise what was said about his going
out very anxious to see the spectacle; but this I know, that the rebuke
which was couched in the answer he gave to those who attempted to put
that affront on his credulity, is well worthy of a St. Thomas; I say
worthy of that great repository of excellent virtues, both moral and
intellectual, and worthy also the generosity of heart, and exalted
prudence, of that sublime genius. The answer was as follows: _I could
more easily be made to believe that there was an ox which could fly,
than I could be made to believe, that mankind were capable of giving a
lying relation of such a thing._ What reproof could be more discreet
than this! and what energy and delicacy is there contained in it! I
esteem this sentence more, than I do any of those which the ancient
Grecians have recorded of their wise men. The sublimity of it persuades
me, that it was the legitimate child of St. Thomas’s brain, and of
course I can have no doubt, but the story we have related was true.
Thus we see, the greatest discretion is not incompatible with, but
may be easily reconciled to, and brought to unite with the greatest
simplicity.


SECT. XI.

_Speakers of bold Truths._

LVII. As there are many people who behave with ill-breeding, from being
addicted to relate falsehoods, so there are many others, who offend
against the laws of urbanity by speaking ill-timed and uncivil truths.
I mean to hint at those, who under pretence of undeceiving people, and
of being their friends, out of time, and contrary to all the rules of
decency, take the liberty of pointing out all their faults, and of
speaking their opinion, both of them and their conduct. This is an act
of barbarism, disguised under the veil of honest sincerity.

LVIII. We shall describe these people, by giving the character and
behaviour of Philotimus. Philotimus is a man, who at all times is
dinning in people’s ears the professions of his ingenuousness, and
declaiming till he is out of breath against adulation. He is ever
dwelling upon his immutable love of truth, which he uses as a sort of
coupling, to all the insinuations he throws out against this or that
person. He rudely tells a man his faults to his face, and then shelters
himself under the pretence, that when an occasion presents itself for
his doing it, he cannot refrain from speaking the truth, for all the
gratifications and indulgences the world can afford. If he hears any
person praised, be he absent or present, in whose conduct he conceives
there is something reprehensible, he immediately gives vent to his
spleen, and tells all he knows or has ever heard to that person’s
prejudice, and reproaches those who have spoke well of him, with having
flattered or been partial to him; and then immediately pleads his great
love of truth, as a justification for what he has done.

LIX. What shall we say of such a man? We may venture to pronounce,
that there is much more stuff about him, than is necessary to form
either a fool or a rustic; and that he is an extravagant babbler, who
in his conversation observes no order or bounds; that he is a rude,
yea a very rude unpolished man, who does not understand the difference
between servile adulation, and bare-faced effrontery. He being such a
sort of man, why should those who hear him regard any thing he says?
Or who can believe that he is capable of forming a just opinion of
matters or things, who is so far infatuated as to overlook, or not
attend to the maxims, which natural reason has so clearly dictated
and pointed out? But if we were to admit that he does not err in the
conception he forms of things, we must at least grant, that he errs in
his mode of advancing his opinions, if he prefers them out of time,
inopportunely, and without method. Has he peradventure a royal licence
or patent, for being the superintendent or corrector of other men’s
manners and conduct? But admitting for argument’s sake, that he is a
man of as great veracity as he pretends to be, which by the way is what
I very much doubt of; for my experience has convinced me, that if it
does not apply to every individual, that fine sentence is most true
and applicable to the bulk of mankind, which I have read somewhere,
although I can’t remember in what author, and is as follows: _Veritatem
nulli frequentius lædunt, quam qui frequentius jactant. There are no
people lie more frequently, than those who are always boasting of their
veracity._ I say, admitting that they are as sincere as they pretend
to be, does their being men of veracity give them a right to go about
cudgeling, and breaking the heads of all the world? Truth, according
to the doctrine of St. Paul, is the beloved companion of charity:
_Charitas congaudet veritati_; and should it then be used in a gross
manner, and so as to become offensive and disgusting? The truth of the
Christians, according to the description given of it by St. Austin,
is more beautiful than the Helen of the Greeks: _Incomparabiliter
pulchrior est veritas Christianorum, quam Helena Græcorum_; and should
it appear, or be characterised with so brasen a face, that it abashes
and stares every body out of countenance?

LX. I confess that there are occasions, on which every man is obliged
to speak the truth, although his doing it should offend, or be attended
with the resentment of those who hear him; but this licence should only
be taken in one of the three following instances, the vindication of
divine honour, the defence of accused innocence, and the reforming or
reclaiming your neighbour; and I suppose this last is the only motive,
from which the speakers of bold truths we have just been describing
pretend to act; but are they ignorant, that, although it will always
be sure to give offence, their manner of attempting this, can never
accomplish the reformation they affect to bring about? Nor can it be
otherwise, for how can their sour, overbearing, and arrogant behaviour,
produce so good an effect? Or how can they expect, according to the
scripture phrase, that by sowing thorns, they should hereafter gather a
harvest of grapes?


SECT. XII.

_Tenaciousness or Obstinacy._

LXI. Not less tiresome than those we have just been speaking of, nor
less interrupting to the pleasure of conversation, are tenacious or
obstinate people. The spirit of contradiction is an infernal spirit,
and at the same time so perverse a one, that I very much doubt, whether
there has hitherto been a remedy found out for the cure of those who
are possessed with it.

LXII. This brings to my mind the example of Aristius. He is a great
frequenter of, and a busy man in clubs and coffee-houses, to which
he is always running, in quest of disputations and argumentations.
His opinion is his idol, and nobody must dissent from it, on pain of
experiencing the effects of his indignation; neither must any body
prefer an opposite one, lest he should be treated by him as an enemy;
and nothing can satisfy him, but a total acquiescence in, or silent
approbation of all he says. His influence in conversation may be
compared to that of the southern constellation, called _Orion’s Belt_,
which excites nothing but tempests. Nimbrosus Orion, as Virgil calls
it. No sooner does he enter a company, than the serenity of a pleasing
tranquil conversation, begins to degenerate into a turbulent tumultuous
noise. He begins with contradicting, the person contradicted defends
himself, others take part in the dispute, the fire of altercation
lights up, and catches from one to the other like the contagion of a
pestilence, _Insequitur clamorque virùm, stridorque rudentum_, till
at last, the conversation sounds like the talking of gibberish, and
becomes a confused jargon and noise, so that the company can neither
hear or understand each other. All this mischief in political society,
may be, and frequently is introduced by a tenacious and obstinate man.
Nor is this malady ever to be cured; for you can more easily turn the
stream of a rapid river, and make it run back contrary to its course,
than force him to give up an opinion he has once advanced.


SECT. XIII.

_Excessive Gravity._

XLIII. Opportune cheerfulness, is the most savoury seasoner of
conversation, and has so great a share in true urbanity, that some,
as we observed before, have considered it as the most essential part
of it; for, when introduced with propriety, it produces the most
desirable effects, as it enlivens both the speakers and the auditors,
conciliates their good-will to each other, and affords a relaxation
to the mind, after it has been fatigued with study, or any serious
occupation. It was on this account, that the moral gentiles, and even
the christians also, placed cheerfulness among the number of moral
virtues. Hear what Saint Thomas says on this head, in l. 2. quæst. 168.
art. 2. after declaring cheerfulness to be a virtue, he describes the
delight that results from it, not only to be useful, but necessary also
for the purpose of giving ease and relaxation to the soul: _Hujusmodi
autem dicta, vel facta, in quibus non quæritur nisi delectatio
animalis, vocantur ludicra vel jocosa. Et ideo necesse est talibus
interdum uti, quasi ad quandam animæ quietem._

LXIV. Men who are always grave, may be termed a sort of entities
between men and statues. Risibility being a property or quality
inseparable from reason, he who denies himself the pleasure of
laughing, degrades himself below the degree of a rational animal.
Fools, are apt to esteem such people as men of sense, judgment, and
mature understanding. But is a man’s deporting himself with the dryness
and rigidity of a stock or a stone, a proof of his understanding? No
brute is capable of laughing; and ought a property that is common
to every brute, to be considered as a descriptive mark of, and the
characteristic of a man of understanding? I look upon such a carriage,
to bespeak an obstinate genius, and a man of a sullen temper. The
antients were used to say, that all those who had ever entered the
enchanted cavern of Trophonius, never laughed afterwards. If there is
any truth in this story, which many people doubt, it is probable, that
the infernal deity who was consulted in that cavern, instilled into
those who consulted him this black diabolical melancholy.


SECT. XIV.

_Disgusting or unseasonable Jocoseness._

LXV. But excessive gravity, is perhaps not more repugnant to true
Urbanity, than unseasonable jocoseness. Pleasantry in conversation, can
be disagreeable but in three ways; by exceeding in the quantity of it,
by indecency in the quality of it, and by its being deficient in point
of nature.

LXVI. He who is always laughing and upon the gog, may be more properly
termed a buffoon, than a man of good-breeding. No person makes himself
more ridiculous, than one who is always laughing, and he who is always
affecting to be gay, is ever disgusting; and a man likewise who acts
the jack-pudding all his life, is a mere jack-pudding and nothing more.

LXVII. Cheerfulness may be also reprehensible, by degenerating into
ribaldry, or by being over satyrical. The first, is properly the
language of stables and tippling houses, and as I don’t write for
lacqueys, grooms, and coachmen, we shall pass this over, and proceed
on to the second point. Those who have a high opinion of their own
talents, are very frequently guilty of this fault. I mean to speak of
those who set themselves up for dictators, but who ought more properly
to be termed babblers and praters, but I do not mean to enumerate in
this catalogue, such, as may be truly termed men of understanding,
but such only as Horace spoke of, when he said, that if opportunities
occurred for indulging their satyrical vein, they made no scruple of
lashing their most intimate friends.

                                _Dummodo risum_
    _Excutiat sibi, non hic cuiquam parcet amico._

Of those, who according to the description given of them by Ennius,
could more easily retain in their mouths a hot iron, than a keen
saying; these are a sort of people, who seem to claim a right of making
error pass for sterling gold, of converting comedy into tragedy,
injurious treatment into good behaviour, and of converting honey also
into poison. Their tongues may be compared to those of the lions, which
are so rough and sharp, that wherever they lick they take the skin off.
They are also called hummers; and so they are, for like wasps, hornets,
flies, and all other vile insects of the humming kind, they the instant
they have hummed, implant their sting.

LXVIII. But let them make what parade they will of their abilities,
they can never escape being noted for malignant or troublesome people;
and whether they are one or the other, all honest men should either
discard them from their company, or restrain them by threatenings. The
Count de Amayuelas, whom I became acquainted with in my youth, said
to a gentleman of this kind, who had taken frequent occasions to say
rude and ill-natured things to him, under the pretence of being jocose,
Friend Don N. I have bore with several indelicacies from you, and
you may vent as many more upon me as you think proper, but let it be
understood between us from henceforward, that for every indelicacy you
must expect a stab. By which intimation, he took the sting out of the
tail of the hummer.

LXIX. There is a serious fault in hummers, and one that they very
frequently commit, which is their exercising their banter upon
common-place things, and general topics, and pointing their sneers,
for example, against the rank, or nation of the person they attack.
I am obliged for this observation, to that great master of Urbanity
Quintilian; these are his words: _Male etiam dicitur quod in plures
convenit: si, aut nationes totæ incessantur, aut ordines, aut conditio,
aut studia multorum._ People of steril geniuses, are the most apt to
fall into this absurdity, who being at a loss what to say concerning
men’s actions or personal qualities, fall upon some common-place
observations, respecting their condition, country, &c.

LXX. The reason why this should be avoided is, because among the
multitude of those who are comprehended in common-place and general
observations, there may be more than a few of them, who may construe
the hum into an affront; and although they may not have been present at
the conversation in which this happened, upon hearing afterwards what
passed in it, may be excited to shew their resentment against what they
have been told was said, which is a thing I have often experienced. And
I have also seen this attended with not a little injury to common-place
hummers, who have drawn on themselves resentments they were not aware
of. But although there should be no danger attending this practice,
it should be avoided from motives of equity; for notwithstanding
pleasantry is in its own simple nature innocent, it is not right to
exercise it towards him, who may fancy himself injured by it. Those who
are so tender and delicate, that they would feel as a hard blow, what
to others would only seem a playful pat with the hand, should never be
so much as lightly touched with the finger, for if the lightest touch
goes to their hearts, whoever touches them can’t fail to wound them. It
not being possible then, for those who deal in general or common-place
humour and banter, to avoid giving offence to many people, every one
who would be thought a man of urbanity or good-breeding, should abstain
from that practice entirely.

LXXI. Finally, all pleasantry that is not natural is disgusting. Those
who without genius attempt to be witty, soon grow tiresome, and make
themselves appear ridiculous. There is nothing more insipid, than a
man who is desirous of making himself seem entertaining, by venting
studied conceits, and by aukward and forced endeavours to imitate
people of natural humour. It is true, that they succeed in part of
what they aim to accomplish, which is the making other men laugh, but
then they themselves, and not their wit, stand as the object of their
laughter. If there happens to be a man in a town, who is remarkable and
celebrated for his humour, and saying of good things, twenty or thirty
others, will attempt to imitate and set themselves in competition with
him; but all their endeavours, will never enable them to exhibit more
than a ridiculous mock copy of that person. Mankind don’t care to be
convinced, that in this and all other such endowments, nature not only
furnishes the means, but does the whole executive part of the business
herself. It is for the want of making this reflection, that those who
are the least qualified for it by nature, attempt to imitate others, on
whom she has with a bountiful hand bestowed the choicest qualities. The
exceeding likeness there is between a man and a monkey, seems to me to
be greater still, if in making the comparison between them, we begin
with the man first. It has been insisted, that both in Asia and Africa,
there have been apes or monkeys found, who have the exact appearance of
men; and I insist, that in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and in all other
places, there are men who have the exact appearance of monkeys, and in
effect, that they put on, or wear this appearance, by their attempting
to imitate each other. There never starts up an excellent original
in our species, of which you will not see innumerable affected
copies; but then these are a sort of copies, that never exceed a mock
scare-crow imitation.


SECT. XV.

_Ostentation of Knowledge._

LXXII. Science is a treasure that should be expended with œconomy, and
not squandered away profusely. It is of great value to the possessor
who lays it out sparingly, but if squandered and made ostentation of,
it becomes trifling and ridiculous; and indeed upon a strict enquiry,
it will be found that they very seldom possess it, who boast or make
parade of being masters of it. They who know but little, are the only
people, who in all places, are fond of exposing their whole stock of
knowledge to view. They never enter into a conversation, that without
waiting a fit opportunity for doing it, they don’t exhibit their whole
scanty budget of informations. Between those who are truly learned, and
men of but slender literary acquisitions, there is the same difference,
that there is between merchants who keep great stocks of goods, and
pedlars who go about with a pack. The first in their warehouses, lay
up large assortments of things, where all people may resort, and be
furnished with what they have occasion for; the others carry their
miserable scanty shop of wares at their backs, and there is neither
street, alley, or corner, where they don’t cry them about, and expose
and offer them to sale.

LXXIII. Some are so simple, as among all classes of people, to
introduce, or as we may say lug-in by the head and shoulders, a
conversation, on the subject of the profession they were bred to. The
abbé Bellegarde, tells a story of a military man, who in a visit he
made to some ladies, without being asked to do it by any body, set
himself about relating very circumstantially, all the particulars of
a siege he had been employed in, which he did in all the technical
terms of military art, taking care also, to mention the regiments
and officers that assisted at it, and to describe minutely, all the
manoeuvres both of the besiegers and the besieged, from the time
of investing the place to the day of its surrender; which tedious
relation, must without doubt have been very entertaining to the
ladies. But Moliere’s comic description of these sort of people, which
he gives us in the character of a young practitioner in surgery, is
more laughable still; who in one of his first visits to a lady he
paid his addresses to, after having exhausted all his compliments, in
anatomical phrases and chyrurgical terms of art, invited her to see
the dissection of a dead body, and expressed how greatly he should
be obliged to her for her company; for that he himself was to be the
operator. This undoubtedly could not fail of affording a pleasing
entertainment to a delicate and tender-hearted lady.

LXXIV. One of the most essential instructions that can be acquired by
true Urbanity, is that of learning upon all occurrences, to accommodate
yourself and your conversation, to the genius and capacities of your
company; and of leaving to the choice of others, the subject-matter of
discourse, and in following them in the pursuit of it, as far as they
shall find it pleasing and agreeable to carry it. He is not more absurd
and extravagant who talks to another on a subject or faculty he does
not understand, than he, who talks to him in a language he is an utter
stranger to.


SECT. VI.

_Affectation of Superiority._

LXXV. The different behaviour of some people at their first entrance
into a room, and after their coming to engage in conversation with
the company they find there, is very remarkable. At their first
coming in, if the people they meet happen not to be such as they are
pretty intimate with, they seem over and above complaisant, make most
respectful congées, are very hyperbolical in their professions of
attachment and esteem to every one they accost, and are very profuse
of their offers to oblige and serve them; but after a little while,
they begin to draw themselves up, to assume an air of gravity and
consequence, and in all their words and actions, to behave as if they
were vested with a senatorial, or legislative authority. Such a man
begins to array himself with a habit of importance, and to appear on
the theatre with an air of pomp and arrogance. He lays by the easy
sock, and assumes the buskin. His _sol fa_ which commenced in a low
tone in _e faut_, is raised in a very little time, to the highest note
in _g solre_. His political stature grows to a gigantic size, and he
begins to look down on all around him, and to treat all they say with
that scorn and disdain, which is generated by, and lineally descended
from rustic pride.

LXXVI. Treating on this subject, brings to my mind a story which Moreri
tells of Brunon, bishop of Langres, who in the beginning of one of
his pastoral letters stiles himself _humilis præsul_, and afterwards
in the body of it, assumes a majestic tone, and says, _nostram odiens
majestatem_. Those who behave in this manner, must certainly lie under
the delusion, that urbanity and modesty, were only calculated for
exordiums, prologues, and salutations at peoples first meeting.


SECT. XVII.

_Speaking in a magisterial tone._

LXXVII. Among the professors of literature, there are not a few, who
make themselves unpleasant companions, by assuming an overbearing and
dictatorial manner. With them every place is a school, every chair a
professional one, and all their auditors their pupils. Conceited, and
full of themselves and their science, and big also with the dignity
of their office and degrees, they look upon those who have not gone
through the schools, as people of an inferior species, whom they scarce
ever deign to speak to, but with a frowning brow, and a contemptuous
look. They always talk in a dictatorial tone of voice, and express
themselves with the majestic authority of an oracle, and in their
conversation with other men, seem to exercise the power of a chapel
master, who regulates the tone the whole band are to sing and play in.

LXXVIII. I have known many, indeed very many, who were prepossessed
with the error, that study augments the understanding. And is this an
error? without doubt it is, for whether we suppose, that inequality
of understanding or reason in mankind, proceeds from an entitive
inequality of souls, as some have imagined; or whether we suppose it
proceeds from a different temperament or formation of men’s organs,
which is the most generally received opinion; it will necessarily
follow from these premises, that with the assistance of study, or
without it’s aid, the intellectual faculty, must ever remain equally
and identically the same; it being certain, that study can never alter
the organization or native temperament of man; and much less can it
change the substantial entity of the soul. Thus after many years study,
the reasoning faculty can never be increased in natural strength, so
much as half a degree. The before-named argument demonstrates it; but
besides this, my own experience has shewn me the thing palpably and
clearly. I have seen people of great application to letters, who after
consuming a large portion of their lives in that pursuit, reasoned
miserably on whatever subject they attempted to talk upon; and I have
observed others, whom I have had frequent opportunities of seeing for
a great number of years, and who were scarce ever without a book in
their hands, who laboured under the same inability of reasoning, and
whose ideas were equally confused, and their comprehension just as
obscure at the end of that period, as at the beginning. Study assists
people with certain informations, and furnishes them with a variety
of species or matter, by the help of which, they are enabled to make
many deductions, which they could not have made without that aid; but
the power or activity of the understanding, cannot be increased or
enlarged by any such means. A workman, who should be furnished with
many instruments of his art, which he was not possessed of before,
would with this assistance, be enabled to do many things, which without
their help he could not have executed; but this would not prove that
the strength of his arm was increased.

LXXIX. Even with respect to the particular faculty or science men
study, they never can get over, or pass beyond the fence rail which
nature has placed before them; they read much, converse much, and
treasure up a great many species in their memories, but never collect
them with any order, or separate and apply them with any judgment or
discretion, and never clearly penetrate or comprehend their uses. Thus
one of these comes out from his studies, like a learned man that is
only skilled in perspective, and capable of fascinating the ignorant
vulgar with false lights and shadowings; or such a one as the common
people call wells of science, but they are only wells of muddy water,
that is of no use or benefit to mankind.

LXXX. This being the case, which it most undoubtedly is, it is very
clear and evident, that the faculties they have studied, give them no
right or pretensions to the magisterial air they assume on account of
the degrees they have taken, and that the insignia or outside marks of
those honours and dignities, give them no just reason for affecting,
or claiming any authority or superiority, over the rest of mankind.
The most provoking part of this matter, and that which heightens the
ridiculousness of it to an extreme degree, is, that those who for
the most part are under the dominion of this vain presumption, are
professors of inferior note; for those who are really ingenious, and
men of clear understandings, let themselves be influenced by reason.
I repeat again, that the professors of little note, are those who are
ostentatiously fond of enlarging the size of their little letters,
and of making them all appear like capitals. They are those, who from
study extract a great deal of smoke, but little clear or luminous
fire. Thus when they mix with the rest of the world, they assume an air
of superiority over other men, and say a thousand silly things, with
as solemn and grave a face, as if all they articulated were profound
apophthegms.

LXXXI. It may be thought that I exaggerate, but I do not; for the
reader may believe me when I assure him, that I have known many, nay
very many, who without any more merit, than that of having kept their
terms at a university for a certain number of years, and of having
taken a degree, and being authorized to wear the insignia of academic
dignity, treat with contempt every thing that is advanced by a lay man,
and behave to him, as if he was a rational animal of an inferior order
to himself. In whatever company such a man finds himself, whether the
conversation turns upon war, politics, or civil government, he with
a ridiculous self-sufficiency, takes upon him to give his opinion,
although it is in opposition to that of a man, who may be reasonably
supposed to understand these things much better than him. And what does
he get by all this? He causes himself to be despised and derided, and
to be pointed and laughed at for a blockhead.

LXXXII. I can’t omit mentioning another gross fault, which these men
of slender talents are apt to fall into; although it may with truth be
said, that it is frequently incurred by people of all classes; which
is, being much addicted to criticise and censure the productions or
abilities of others, who are better informed than themselves. It is
to be sure very laughable, to think of a silly fellow, who runs about
calling the rest of the world fools; and to reflect, that he who does
not know a word of science, should busy himself with measuring by
inches, the scientific talents of other men, which he hardly ever will
vouchsafe to estimate by feet or yards, because there are very few
instances, in which he will admit their talents to arrive at those
dimensions. Thus a bad preacher, will never acknowledge that he has
heard a good sermon; a bad taylor, that he has seen a suit of cloaths
which were well made; or a bad smith, that he has seen a piece of work
that was well executed, &c.


SECT. XVIII.

_Troublesome or ill-timed visits._

LXXXIII. There are some men, who by being over attentive and civil to
their friends, become intolerable. I speak of those, who make visiting
an employment or occupation, and who are always exercising themselves
in that way, as if it was their profession. These are a sort of people,
who not knowing what to do with themselves, or how to employ their own
time, run about tiring and breaking-in upon the avocations of other
people, who are engaged in most honourable and important occupations;
they are a sort of robbers of men’s time, who steal from them that,
which it is necessary for them to employ in their business; they are
a sort of knights errant, whose tongues instead of spears, are ever
prepared for attack, and who busy themselves in doing wrongs, instead
of redressing them; a kind of dealers in common-place phrases, who go
about like beggars from house to house; and who may be termed cheats
in good-breeding, and such, as would impose on the world vexation for
obsequiousness.

LXXXIV. Those who think to recommend themselves to the good graces of
men in power, by a repetition of visits, deceive themselves greatly;
for what merit can there be in keeping such a person confined an
hour to his room every third day, where he may possibly remain as
uneasily, as if he was sitting in the stocks, and be deprived of an
opportunity of taking some amusement or recreation he is fond of, or
else, of employing that time in some business he wanted to attend to?
What most commonly happens in these cases is, that the visitor has no
sooner taken leave and turned his back, than the person visited vents a
thousand curses on his impertinence; and if there should chance to be
any one by to whom he can unbosom himself in confidence, he declares to
him, that he never met with a greater savage in all his life.

LXXXV. I feel much for ministers who are exposed to this sort of
persecution; for to the heavy load of their office that lays on them,
may be added the surcharge of these tiresome visits, the weight of
which may possibly sit more burthensome on them, than that of the whole
duty they have to do besides.


SECT. XIX.

_Visits to sick people._

LXXXVI. On the head of visits to sick people, there is much to be
said, as in making them, we should attend not only to the rules of
good-breeding, but to those of charity also; and it is impossible,
if we are wanting in the last of these obligations, for us to comply
with those of the first. Sick people, both with respect to their souls
and bodies, should be treated and dealt by with as much delicacy and
caution, as you would handle an exquisitely thin vessel of glass. A
sick body is affected by, and sensible of the slightest touch; and
an afflicted soul, may be inquieted by such a sensation as cannot be
defined.

LXXXVII. Visiting sick people, is not only an act of urbanity, but
an act of tenderness and humanity also; but in order to constitute
it such an act, it is essentially and absolutely necessary, that the
visit should be so managed, and attended with such circumstances, as
will afford relief and comfort to the sick person. But how many of
these kind of visits are experienced by the poor sick? one may venture
to assert, scarce one in fifty. The prudent part of mankind are but
few in number, but the visitors consists of many. What effect must
his visits have on a sick man, who tires and disgusts one in health
with them? Nor is it sufficient, that he who visits a sick person is
discreet, if his discretion does not lead to instruct him, when, how
much, and in what manner a sick person should be talked to. To know
when he should be talked to, the physician, and those who attend him
should be consulted; how much, in what manner, and on what subject,
must be determined and regulated, by the prudence of the person who
visits him.

LXXXVIII. The how much, is the point which visitors most commonly
mistake. Sick people should be but little talked to, even although
the subject of the conversation is such as they are fond of; for
their attention to what is talked of, is apt to fatigue them, and to
wade those spirits, which would be better employed in resisting the
disease. Thus it in general is better to leave them in that sort of
half slumber, and languid quiet of mind, which by not being disturbed
or interrupted, permits all the ideas that occur to them to pass easily
through the brain.

LXXXIX. With regard to the manner they should be talked to in, it
ought to be such, as by no means should inquiet or disturb them; and
to prevent their being surprized or alarmed, it will be necessary to
talk to them in a low voice. If loud talking is capable of cracking a
head of brass, what effect must it have on a glass one? They should not
be asked many questions, nor should they as little as possible, be put
under a necessity of replying to what is said of them, for from thence
there would result two fatigues, that of reasoning, and that of talking.

XC. The subject of the conversation with a sick Person, should in
general turn upon such things, as he was observed to be most fond of
when in health; for with respect both to the aliments of the soul,
as well as those of the body, I am of opinion, that physicians and
those who attend on, or visit sick people, should have regard to their
appetites and desires, and I am inclined to think, that with respect
to these particulars, there are frequent mistakes made, and especially
with relation to the aliments of the soul, for by making them grateful
to people, there will seldom any inconvenience result, but having
regard to doing this, may be attended with much use and benefit.
Whenever an epidemical distemper prevails in a town or country, it may
not be improper now and then, to talk to sick people on the subject
of that disorder; but in doing this, care should always be taken
to mention to them only those who have been visited with, and have
recovered from the disease; and regard should likewise be had, never to
say a word of such as have died of it; but I have known visitors who
were such blunderers, as scarce to tell a sick person any other news,
than that such a one, or such a one is dead. This tends to make a sick
man very unhappy, for according to the logic of his melancholy, he is
apt to conclude, that his death must be an infallible consequence of
that of the other persons.

XCI. To these general rules, I shall add a remark on two mistakes that
are very commonly fallen into by those who visit sick people. The first
of these is, their beginning upon their entrance into the chamber of
a sick person, if there are three or four of them, to ask him one by
one, how he goes on, and how he finds himself. A man had need have the
patience of Job, to answer such a number of identical questions. Even
in slight illnesses, the pain and uneasiness it gives a man to answer
the same string of questions over and over again, is very evident and
palpable. Therefore the method people should pursue in their visits
to a man who is seriously ill, should be, to ask in a low voice, how
he is of those who attend him. Or the expedient may be had recourse
to, that was practised by a friend of mine, who was of the same
religious order as myself; who when he was once very ill, to avoid this
inconvenience, ordered that every morning, there should be written on a
piece of paper, all the questions that are generally asked by visitors,
together with the answers to them; such as what sort of a night he
had had, whether the pain in his head was abated, whether his thirst
continued, or whether he had taken any nourishment, &c. This paper he
ordered to be stuck with wafers on the side of his chamber door, that
those who came to visit him might read it, in order to prevent their
fatiguing him with a number of those questions.

XCII. The second mistake, is that of all the visitors taking upon them
to be physicians, and to prescribe for the sick person. This is an
affectation practised by many; but when we consider, how abstruse and
how arduous a study physic is, and how long practice and experience it
requires to obtain a competent knowledge of it, and that the greatest
ingenuity is found to be unequal to the acquisition; I say when we
consider all this, must it not appear very absurd and presumptuous,
for every one to pretend to take upon him the office. Thus, whatever a
visitor fancies would be serviceable to the diseased person, either as
food, or medicine, he is continually teasing the sick man, and vexing
the physician with his recommendation of. How often have I seen very
prudent and able physicians, much perplexed to determine what they
should prescribe; and at the same time, have observed a thousand vain
pretenders flourish away, and very self-sufficiently, and much to their
own satisfaction, determine off hand, the medicine the patient should
take! How many times also have I seen these conceited wrong-headed
people, with their importunities, drive an able learned physician out
of his course, who had determined, after well considering all the
circumstances of his patient, to stand still for a little while, and
leave the disease to nature, in order to see which way she would point;
but persecuted and overcome by the pressing instances of the people
we have been mentioning, he is brought to break this resolution, and
to set pen to paper, and prescribe something that he had better have
desisted from ordering! These ignorant folks, are ever exclaiming that
nature should always be assisted. This is a grand aphorism; and one
that all the world pretend to understand; but what such men as we have
just mentioned fancy to be assisting nature, is in reality, and most
commonly, cutting off her legs and arms.


SECT. XX.

_Visits of Condolence._

XCIII. All those who labour under any great misfortune, may properly be
classed among the sick or infirm. Those things which we commonly call
diseases, begin with the body, and from thence proceed to affect the
soul; but the disease of grief, or sadness, begins with the soul, and
from that is communicated to, and infects the body. To the afflicted
with grief, all the visitors should act the physician, nor indeed are
there any other physicians, who can afford them so much relief. The
cure of the passions of the soul, do not appertain to medicine, but to
ethics. Thus the discretion of a man who visits an afflicted person may
afford him relief, when all the precepts of old Hippocrates can furnish
him with none.

XCIV. But what most frequently happens in these cases? why, that the
visits of condolence, add a new affliction to him who is already borne
down by grief. It is necessary to leave a disconsolate widow, or a man
who was exceedingly fond of his deceased wife, for a few days after
their loss to themselves, both out of respect to the formalities of
the world, and to afford them an opportunity to vent their sorrow.
The natural alleviators of great grief, are abundant tears, impetuous
sighs, repeated exclamations, and extravagant gestures. None of these
can be indulged by any one, while he or she is receiving a visit; for
people at such times, are obliged to behave with as much composure,
as a person who is acting a serious part in a play; and must confine
themselves to expressions of their grief, that are purely theatrical.
Their words and their sighs, must issue from them, in form, in order,
and according to rule. Their bosoms are oppressed with an ocean of
bitterness, and they are only permitted to vent it drop by drop. The
doing of which if you consider it, does not afford them the slightest
relief; but on the contrary, the violence they put upon themselves
to conform to these regular demonstrations of sorrow, is rather an
addition to their torment.

XCV. The cruel consequences that result to afflicted people, by denying
them the natural breathings of their sorrow, and restraining them
from venting their grief by all ways and means, is well explained by
Picineli in his simile of a River, which swells the more, the more its
course is obstructed, _ab obice crescit_; for so it is, that grief
increases by being suppressed, and that the less vent is given to it,
the more apt it is to suffocate. _Strangulat inclusus dolor_, said
Ovid, who was well versed in these matters.

XCVI. For these reasons, I am of opinion, those who have met with such
misfortunes, should for a certain time, be only seen by their relations
and most intimate friends, their familiar intercourse with whom, would
rather facilitate, than interrupt those burstings of their souls, which
relieve the oppressions of their breasts. The visits of such people,
should always be accompanied with expressions of friendship, and hearty
tenders of kind and generous offers, and especially, when the grief
is increased by apprehensions, that the consequences of the loss they
have sustained, will be a partial, or total privation of their temporal
conveniences. And besides those intimate friends and relations, the
visits of some spiritual man, whose character for virtue and discretion
is generally acknowledged and confessed, might afford great comfort
in affliction, or to speak more properly, the interposition of Divine
Providence through him, might administer greater relief in such cases,
than could be furnished by the nearest relations, and the most sincere
friends. And the best office that could be done to those who are borne
down with grief by their friends and relations, might possibly be to
procure them frequent visits from men of this character.

XCVII. I would have it understood, that I mean all I have just said,
as applicable only to great and real griefs; for truly appearances in
these cases are very uncertain and equivocal. If a father, a mother, a
husband, or a wife dies, the nearest relation to the deceased party,
manifests great tokens of being deeply affected. But who will believe
that a husband can be greatly concerned for the death of his wife,
who was known to be much fonder of other women than of her? or who
can believe that a wife can be really grieved for the death of her
husband, who always played the tyrant with her, and treated her like a
galley-slave of matrimony? or who that a son can be feelingly affected
by the death of a father, whose estate he has long panted to be in
possession of? In such instances as these, multitudes of visits of
condolence may not be improper; for condolences of compliment, are well
suited to mournings of ceremony.


SECT. XXI.

_Letter-writing._

XCVIII. The writing letters with address and propriety, is a very
essential part of urbanity, and a matter upon which a great deal
may be said by way of instruction; but as the want of this may be
supplied, by reading approved books of letters on various subjects,
I would recommend to the reader the perusal of those of many eminent
men, which have been lately collected and published, by that diligent
and pains-taking person Don Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, librarian to
his majesty, and professor of civil law in the kingdom of Valentia;
and would advise him to read them over and over again with much
attention, as the best patterns of letters in our language. With
respect to the writing of Latin letters, those who desire to be well
instructed in that, should read attentively, those of Don Manuel Marti
Dean of Alicant, which have been lately published by the before-named
Don Gregorio Mayans in two volumes in octavo; and those of Mayans’s
own, which he published in one volume in quarto in 1732. I consider
the publication of these books, to have been of the greatest use and
importance, on account of the miserable state, to which the writing the
Latin language was reduced in Spain, and especially with respect to
the familiar or epistolary stile. How often have I experienced, that
whenever it became necessary for a religious society or community, to
write a Latin letter to Rome, or some other foreign kingdom, that there
were very few men to be found among them, who were capable of doing it,
unless it was in Latin stuffed full of Hispanisims? And whenever it
became necessary for them to converse in Latin with any stranger, they
seemed as much at a loss, and as much embarrassed, as if they had been
obliged to talk to him in Arabic.

XCIX. People are apt to run into the same error in writing multitudes
of letters, that they are in paying too many visits; as letters may
be termed a sort of visits in writing. Numbers of people are addicted
to this fault, and their reason for committing it is, that they are
in hopes by this means, to recommend themselves to the good graces of
those they write to; but nothing can be more absurd or ridiculous,
than thinking, that by being troublesome to people, you will gain
their esteem and affection; whereas the commission of this fault,
is most commonly attended with a quite opposite effect; and I have
seen many, who by the frequency of their letters, have lost the
good-will of those who had a regard for them, and whose friendship
they would have continued to possess, but for their teasing them with
a superfluous repetition of letters. There are not a few, who write
these sort of letters, for the sake afterwards of feeding their own
vanity by shewing the answers to them, in order to manifest that they
are esteemed by, and honoured with the correspondence of persons of
distinction. These are not only troublesome to those they write to,
but to those also to whom they shew the answers to their letters; and
what most commonly happens is, that instead of making themselves appear
respectable by doing this, they cause themselves to be despised, and
to look ridiculous; for there is scarce any one who does not regard
with contempt, a man that runs about from company to company reading
and shewing his letters, like a bad poet, who is always troubling his
friends with a repetition of his verses.

C. But what remedy is there for these impertinences? why no other, but
disregarding, and not giving answers to such letters. Oh! but this
would shew want of urbanity; no it would not, for I assert, that so far
from it, it would manifest much discretion; and I consider any man who
maintains a contrary opinion, to be under a great mistake. There is no
one who thinks it shews want of urbanity, to deny your being at home to
a man who persecutes you with troublesome visits. Why then should it
be thought that a man is wanting in this respect, who returns no answer
to these sort of letters? It is very likely, that the writer of them
will be much concerned and affected at not having answers to them; but
if I can cure an indisposition I labour under, by making the person
who brought it upon me, swallow the bitter draught that it may be
necessary should be taken to accomplish that end, instead of my taking
it myself, why should not I avail myself of such a remedy? In short,
in cases of this sort, it is impossible to adopt any other method than
that of giving no answer to these kind of letters; for attempting to
do otherwise, would be attempting more than a man who receives great
numbers of such letters could find leisure to execute; for I can safely
declare with respect to myself, that if I had not taken a resolution
not to answer all the letters I received, my whole time would not have
been sufficient to write those answers, nor my whole fortune, to pay
the postage of those that would have been addressed to me.




    A
    DEFENCE
    OR
    VINDICATION OF THE WOMEN.


SECT. I.

I. I Enter upon a serious and difficult undertaking; in the prosecution
of which, it is not one ignorant vulgar person only I shall have to
contend with, for setting about to defend all the women, amounts to
pretty near the same thing as resolving to offend all the men, there
being scarce one among them, who, in order to give precedence to his
own sex, does not endeavour to bring the other into disesteem; and to
such an extravagant length, has this custom of abusing and vilifying
the women by common consent been carried, that in a moral sense they
load them with defects, and in a physical one with imperfections,
and will scarce allow them to possess a single good quality: but
they lay the greatest stress on the scantiness or limitation of their
understandings; for which reason, after briefly vindicating them in
other respects, I shall discourse more at large on their aptitude, for
attaining all sorts of science and sublime knowledge.

II. The false prophet Mahomed, denied the women entrance into that
ill-laid-out and absurdly-disposed paradise, which he had devised and
appropriated to be possessed by his followers, limiting the felicity of
the females to beholding from without, the glory and happiness enjoyed
by the men within; and it certainly must give the women great pleasure,
to survey their husbands in that scene of delights, composed all of
turpitudes, clasped in the arms of other consorts, which were feigned
to be newly created for this particular purpose by that great artist in
fabricating chimeras. Such a delirium being admitted and received by a
great part of the world, sufficiently shews, to what a degree mankind
are capable of running into error.

III. But it seems as if these, who deny the women almost every kind
of merit in this life, do not differ much from those who deny them
happiness in the next. The most vile among the vulgar, very frequently
represent that sex as having a most horrible propensity to vice; and
would insinuate, that the men are the sole repositories of virtue.
It is certainly true, that you will find these species of sentiments
loudly trumpeted forth in an infinite number of books; in some of
which, the invective is carried to such a point, as scarcely to admit
there is one good woman, and asserting, that their blush, which has
been generally considered as an addition to their beauty, and a token
of modesty, is the effect of the lewdness of their souls.

    _Aspera si visa est, rigidasque imitata Sabinas_
      _Velle, sed ex alto dissimulare puta._

Instead of replying to such insolent malevolence, the best method is,
to treat it with contempt and detestation. Not a few of those, who are
most addicted to paint the sex in the blackest colouring, have been
observed to be the most solicitous about obtaining their favour and
good graces. Euripides, who was exceedingly satirical upon them in his
tragedies, as Athenæus and Stobæus inform us, was excessively fond of
them in private. He execrated them on the theatre, and idolized them
in the chamber. Boccace, who was excessively addicted to women, wrote
a satyr against them, entitled, The Labyrinth of Love. What was the
mystery of this? Why it most probably was, that, under the disguise of
having an aversion to them, he endeavoured to conceal his passion for
them; or it might be, that the brutal satiety of the turpid appetite
had brought on a loathing, which caused every thing appertaining to the
other sex to appear hateful and disgusting. This sort of abuse, may
also sometimes proceed from a refusal to lend a kind ear to entreaties
and solicitations; for there are men so malevolent, as to be capable
of saying a woman is not good, because she has refused to be bad.
This unjust motive for complaint and resentment, has sometimes vented
itself in the most cruel acts of revenge; an example of which, may
be instanced in the unhappy fate of that most beautiful Irish lady
madam Douglass, against whom, William Leout was blindly irritated, for
having refused to comply with his lewd solicitations. To be revenged,
he accused her of high treason; and procured the calumniating and
false charge to be proved by suborned witnesses. She suffered capital
punishment; and la Mothe de la Vayer, who (in his Opusc. Scept.) gives
the relation, says, that Leout himself afterwards confessed the falsity
of the accusation, and the wicked means used to prove her guilty.

To this instance, may be added that of a most virtuous and beautiful
French lady, the marchioness of Gange. Her two brothers-in-law made
dishonourable propositions to her, and successively tried many arts, to
prevail on her to gratify their base inclinations; but, notwithstanding
one of them, who was an extreme cunning man, and governed the marquis
her consort entirely, threatened to instil into the mind of her husband
suspicions of her fidelity, she vigorously rejected their entreaties.
Finding themselves in spite of the menace, repeatedly repulsed
with scorn and indignation, they resolved to carry the threat into
execution; and, having prevailed on the credulous husband to entertain
doubts of his wife’s honour and constancy, he consented that the two
brothers should take away the life of the innocent marchioness; which
they did in a barbarous and cruel manner, by first forcing her to
swallow a poisonous draught, but afterwards, doubting of the efficacy
of the potion, they gave her several desperate wounds. Although she
survived both the wounds and the operation of the poison for the space
of nineteen days, and, by means of her relation of the matter, which
was corroborated by other circumstances, the officers of justice and
the public were informed of the whole transaction, and measures were
taken for apprehending the delinquents; yet they, finding themselves
discovered, fled the kingdom, and escaped the punishment due to their
crime. This tragical event happened in the year 1667, and is related by
Gayot Piteval, in his fifth volume of Remarkable Cases.

IV. I don’t deny that many of them are vicious; but, alas! if we were
to trace their slips and irregularities to their source, I fear we
should find them originate in the obstinate and persevering impulse
or solicitations of our sex. He, who would wish or endeavour to make
all the women good, should begin with converting all the men. Nature
implanted modesty in the sex, as a fence-wall to resist the attacks of
appetite; and it very rarely happens, that a breach is made in this
wall by force applied on the inside.

V. The declamations against the women, which we read in some parts
of holy writ, should be understood, as pointed and levelled at the
perverse ones, as there is no doubt but there are such; and, although
they should be supposed to have an eye to the sex in general, nothing
could be inferred from thence; because the physicians of the soul
declaim against women, as the physicians of the body declaim against
fruit, which, although it is good, beautiful, and useful in itself, the
abuse or excess of it is pernicious: besides this, allowance should be
made for the latitude permitted to oratory of magnifying the risque,
when it is used to divert or turn people from dangerous courses.

VI. Let them, who suppose the female sex to be more vicious than ours,
tell me, how they can reconcile this, with the church having in an
especial manner, bestowed on them the epithet of devout? How with the
words of many of the most grave and eminent doctors, who have declared
it as their opinion, that there are more women saved than men, even
having regard to the proportion, in which it is generally thought the
number of females exceeds that of the males? Which opinion, they do
not, nor cannot found on any other thing, than their having observed in
them a greater inclination to piety.

VII. Methinks I already hear, in opposition to our undertaking, that
proposition of much noise, and little or no truth, that the women are
the cause of all evil; and, by way of proving it, the vulgar, down to
the meanest and most contemptible of them, endeavour to inculcate at
every turn, that La Caba occasioned the ruin of all Spain, and Eve that
of all mankind.

VIII. But the first instance is absolutely a false one. The count Don
Julian was the person who brought the Moors into Spain, but was not
persuaded to it by his daughter, who did no more than make known
to her father the affront and injury she had received. How unhappy
is the lot of women, if, in the case of being trampled on by an
insolent ravisher, they are to be deprived of the relief of unbosoming
themselves to their fathers, or their husbands! The aggressors, in
these cases, would gladly deprive them of this relief and benefit;
though if at any time an unjust vengeance should be the consequence
of the complaint, the fault would not lie at the door of the innocent
offended person, but would rest with him who did the execution with the
sword, and the man who committed the insult; and thus the whole blame
and crime would be imputable to the men only.

IX. If the second example proves, that the women in general are worse
than the men; by the same mode of reasoning it may be proved, that
the angels in general are worse than the women; because, as Adam was
induced to sin by a woman, the woman was seduced by an angel. It is not
yet decided whose sin was the greatest, that of Adam, or that of Eve,
because the fathers are divided in their opinions; and, in truth, the
excuse which Cayetane makes in favour of Eve, that she was deceived by
a creature of much superior intelligence and capacity to herself, is
a circumstance that cannot be urged on behalf of Adam, and greatly
abates her crime in comparison with his.


SECT. II.

X. But passing from the moral to the physical, which is more applicable
to our present purpose, we shall find the preference of the robust
over the delicate sex is a point settled, and any claim or pretensions
to equality on the part of the women is set aside, and treated with
contempt; and to such a length has depreciating the women been carried
by some, that they have not scrupled to call them imperfect, and even
monstrous animals, asserting, that Nature, in the work of generation,
never intended to produce any thing but males, and that it was only by
mistake, or in consequence of some defect in the matter or faculty,
that females were produced.

XI. O admirable adepts in physics! It would follow from hence, that
Nature conspired to work its own destruction, because, without the
concurrence of both sexes, the species cannot be preserved. It would
follow also, that Nature in this her principal work, is more frequently
mistaken than right; because it is allowed, that she produces more
women than men. Nor when we see females the offspring of parents who
are healthy, robust, and in the flower of their age, can we attribute
the formation of them to debility, want of vigour, or a defect in the
matter; nor is it probable, that if man had preserved his original
innocence, in which case there would have been none of these defects,
we should have had no women born, and that the human lineage would have
been kept up or continued without propagation.

XII. I know very well there was an author, who, for the sake of
indulging his malice, and supporting his envious insinuations against
the other sex, swallowed so palpable an absurdity. This was Almaricus,
a Parisian doctor of the twelfth century, who, among other errors,
asserts, that, if the state of innocence had continued, all the
individuals of our species would have been males, and that God would
have created them immediately himself as he did Adam.

XIII. Almaricus was a blind follower of Aristotle, insomuch that all,
or very near all his errors, were produced by conclusions, which
he had drawn from the doctrines of that philosopher; and, seeing
that Aristotle, in more than one part of his works, gives it to be
understood, that a female is a defective animal, its generation
accidental, and out of the design of nature, he concluded, that there
were no women in the state of innocence; and thus it comes to pass,
that an heretical theology is very frequently occasioned by a mistake
in physics.

XIV. But the great and avowed adherence of Almaricus to Aristotle, was
rather unfortunate to them both; because the errors of Almaricus were
condemned by a council held at Paris in 1209; and, in the same council,
the reading the books of Aristotle were prohibited, which prohibition
was afterwards confirmed by Pope Gregory IX. Almaricus had been dead a
year when his dogmas were proscribed; but his bones were afterwards dug
up, and thrown into a jake.

XV. This shews, that we should not lay any great stress upon the
opinion of a few doctors, who, though they were in other respects
discreet men, have asserted, that the female sex is defective, for no
other reason, than because Aristotle whose followers they were had
declared so; but they did not however proceed so far, as to precipitate
themselves into the error of Almaricus. It is certain, that Aristotle’s
treatment of the women proceeded from spite; for he not only proclaimed
with vehemence their physical defects, but was more vehement still in
blazoning their moral ones; some instances of which, I shall point
out in another place. Who would not suppose from all this, that his
disposition inclined him to shun the sex? But nothing was so opposite
to him, for he not only tenderly loved two wives which he married,
but his affection for the first, named Pythais, who, as some say,
was daughter, others niece of Hermias, tyrant of Atarneus, carried
him so far beside himself, that he franticly offered incense to her
as a deity. They also give us a relation of his loose amours with a
little servant girl, though Plutarch does not incline to credit the
tale; but in this business, the testimony of Theocritus Chio, who was
contemporary with Aristotle, ought to have more weight than the opinion
of Plutarch, who was much posterior to him; and Theocritus, in a lively
epigram, lashed Aristotle for his obscenity. From this instance we may
perceive, that men’s seeming malignity to, and inveterate abuse of
women, is, as we have observed before, frequently accompanied with an
inordinate inclination for them.

XVI. From the same physical error which condemned woman for an
imperfect animal, there sprung another theological one, which is
combated by St. Austin, in Lib. 22, de Civit. Dei cap. 17. The
authors of this system say, that, at the universal resurrection, this
imperfection is to be remedied, by converting all the women into men;
and that then, grace is to compleat and finish the work which nature
had only begun.

XVII. This error is very like that of the infatuated Alchymists, who,
relying on the maxim, that nature in the formation of metals, never
intended to produce any thing but gold, and that it was only from
some obstruction, or from some defect of vigour and virtue, that she
fabricated other imperfect metals; also pretend, that art is afterwards
capable of carrying the work to perfection, and making gold of that
which was originally produced iron. But, after all, this error is
the most sufferable of the two, because it does not interfere with
matters of faith; and because also, let the intention of nature in
the formation of metals, and the imaginary capacity of art, be what
they will, it is a fact, that gold is the most noble of metals, and
that the others are of a much inferior quality compared to it. But, in
our present question, the assertion, that Nature always intended the
production of males, and that her producing females was the effect of a
bastard operation, is all false and erroneous; and much more so is the
affirming, that this is to be amended at the resurrection.


SECT. III.

XVIII. I would not, however, be understood to approve of what is
thrown out by Zacuto Lusitano, in the introduction to his Treatise De
Morbis Mulierum, where, with frivolous reasons, he attempts to give
the preference to the women, and to persuade us, that their physical
perfections greatly exceed those of the men. Such an opinion, might be
supported by much more plausible arguments than are used by him; but my
view is not to persuade a superiority, but only an equality.

XIX. And to begin, setting aside the question of their understandings,
which I mean to discuss separately and more at large in this discourse,
let us consider the three endowments, in which the men seem manifestly
to have the advantage of the women, to wit, robustness, constancy,
and prudence; but, although this should be granted by the women, they
might pretend to a competition, by pointing out other three qualities,
in which they excel the male sex, to wit, beauty, gentleness, and
simplicity.

XX. Robustness, which is a bodily perfection, may be considered
as counterpoised by beauty, which is so likewise. Many people are
disposed to give the last the preference; and they would be right, if
that was to be esteemed the most valuable, which is the most flattering
or pleasing to the sight: but the consideration of which is most useful
to the public, should, in the eye of sound judgment, weigh most in
deciding the question; and, viewing the thing in this light, robustness
must be preferred to beauty. The robustness of men, furnishes the
world with three most essential benefits, which may not improperly
be termed the three columns which support every state, to wit, arms,
agriculture, and mechanics. From the beauty of women, I do not know
what important advantage can accrue, unless it comes by accident. Some
will argue, that beauty, so far from producing benefits, occasions
serious mischiefs, by causing unruly amours, which inflame and excite
competitions and strife, and which involve those who are charged with
the custody of women, in cares, uneasiness, and anxiety.

XXI. But this accusation, as it originates from a want of reflection,
is ill-founded; for supposing, for argument’s sake, that all the women
were ugly, in those who were blemished with the fewest deformities, we
should experience the same attraction, which we do at present in the
handsome ones, and they would consequently occasion the same mischief.
The least ugly placed in Greece would have caused the burning of Troy,
as Helen did; and placed in the palace of King Roderigo, would have
been the ruin of Spain, as La Caba was. In those countries where the
women are the least tempting, there are not fewer disorders than there
are in those where they are more genteelly, and more admirably formed:
even in Muscovy, which in number of handsome women exceeds all the
other kingdoms of Europe, incontinence is not so unbridled as in other
countries, and conjugal faith is observed there, with more exactness
than it is in other places.

XXII. Beauty therefore of itself, is not the cause of the mischiefs
which are attributed to it; notwithstanding which, in the present
question, I must give my vote in favour of robustness, as I esteem
it a much more important quality than beauty, and therefore, in this
particular, must give the preference to the men. There is, however,
saved and remaining to the women, if they chuse to avail themselves of
it, an objection to this decision, which may be founded on the judgment
of many learned men, and which was assented to and admitted by a whole
illustrious school: this judgment, recognizes the will for a more noble
faculty than the understanding, which is rather favourable to their
cause; for if robustness, as being of the most consequence, is, in the
general opinion, most prized and valued, beauty, as the more amiable
quality, has most control over the will.

XXIII. The virtue of constancy, which ennobles the men, may be
contrasted with docility, which is resplendent in the women. But it
will be proper here to remark, that we do not treat of these or other
qualities, as formally considering them in the state of virtues,
because in this sense, they are not of the lineage of nature, but only
as they are grafted into, and display themselves in the temperament or
habit; and, as the embryo of information is indifferent to receive good
or bad impressions, it would be better to call them flexibility, or
inflexibility of disposition, than constancy or docility.

XXIV. I may be told, that the docility of women degenerates many times
into levity; to which I answer that the constancy of men as frequently
terminates in tenaciousness. I confess, that firmness in a good cause
is productive of great benefits; but it can’t be denied, that obstinacy
in a bad one is also productive of great evils. If it is argued, that
an invincible adherence to good or evil is a quality appertaining to
angels only: I answer, that this is not so certain, for many great
theologians deny it; and many properties, which in superior beings
spring from their excellence, in inferior ones proceed from their
imperfection. The angels, according to the doctrine of St. Thomas,
are the more perfect, the fewer things they understand; in men, their
knowledge being confined to a few particulars, is considered as a
defect. In angels, study would be regarded as a diminution of, or
a reflection upon their understandings; although it is known to be
absolutely necessary, to illustrate and adorn those of men.

XXV. The prudence of the men, may be balanced by the simplicity
or gentleness of the women; and I was even about to say more than
balanced, for, in reality, simplicity or gentleness, is more beneficial
to the human race, than the prudence of all its individuals; for nobody
has ever described the golden age as composed of prudent, but of candid
men.

XXVI. If it is objected, that much of that which is called simplicity
in women, is thoughtlessness or inattention: I reply, that much of that
which is called prudence in men, is fallacy, duplicity and treachery,
which are much worse qualities. Even that very indiscreet frankness,
with which they sometimes incautiously unbosom themselves, is a good
token, considered as a symptom. No person is ignorant of his own vices;
and whoever finds himself loaded with them to a large amount, is very
careful to shut the crevices of his heart, to prevent the pryings of
curiosity: whoever commits criminal disorders within his house, does
not leave his doors open at all hours, and by that means expose himself
to be detected. Reserve is the inseparable companion of a bad heart;
and you may conclude, that those who familiarly, and with ease, unbosom
themselves, have little about them they are anxious of concealing.
Considered then in this light, the simplicity or candour of the women,
is always a valuable quality; but, when conducted with good sense,
it approaches to a perfection; and, when it is not, it may always be
looked upon as a favourable symptom.


SECT. IV.

XXVII. Over and above the good qualities we have specified, the women
have another, which is the most beautiful and transcendent of all, to
wit, their modesty; a grace so characteristic of the sex, that is does
not forsake even their dead bodies; for Pliny remarks, that when the
carcasses of drowned persons float on the water, those of the men swim
with the face upwards, and those of the women with the face downward.

    _Veluti pudori defunctarum parcente natura._

    Lib. 7. Cap. 17.

XXVIII. A certain philosopher, being asked what tint gave the most
graceful hue to a woman’s countenance, answered with much truth and
perspicuity, modesty; and I am really of opinion, that it is the
greatest advantage the women can claim over the men. Modesty is a
screen or fence, which nature seems to have placed between virtue and
vice, and is, as a discreet French author observes, the shield of fine
souls, and the visible character of virtue: and St. Bernard extends
the simile still farther, illustrating it with the epithets of the
precious gem of manners, the torch of the chaste soul, and the sister
of continence; the guardian of fame, honour and life, the foundation
of virtue, the pride of nature, and the symbol of all honesty (Serm.
86, in Cant.) and Diogenes ingeniously and properly calls it the symbol
of virtue. In fact, this is the great and formidable bulwark, which
nature has raised, and placed in front, to oppose vice, and to serve
as a shelter and covering to the whole fortress of the soul; and, as
Nazianzenus said, when this is once subdued, no farther resistance can
be made to every kind of vicious outrage. _Protinus extincto subeunt
mala cuncta pudore._

XXIX. It may be said, that modesty is a signal preservative against
exterior assaults, but not against interior acquiescence; and thus a
door always is left open, at which vice may make a triumphal entry,
which may be effected by the means of invisible attacks, in parts,
that are not sheltered or protected by the wall of modesty. But even
admitting that such a thing might happen, shame would ever remain a
most valuable preservative, and be the cause of preventing an infinite
deal of scandal, and the fatal consequences attending it. Upon serious
reflection it will be found, that, if it does not defend totally, it is
in a great measure a protection even against those silent and secret
assaults, which scarce ever peep out or shew themselves beyond the
occult recesses of the soul: for internal consentings are very rare,
when they are not excited by some sort of attempts, for these are the
things which radicate criminal affections in the soul, and also those
which augment and strengthen propensities to vice. It is true, that
without these stimulants, we now and then see turpitude introduce
itself into the spirit; but he does not seem to lodge there as if he
was at home, or like the master of the house, but only as a stranger or
a sojourner.

XXX. The passions, without the aliment that nourishes them, lay very
languid, and act very timidly, especially in persons who are much
addicted to blush; and those, in whom there is such a frank and easy
commerce between the bosom and the countenance, are always under
apprehensions, left the most secret operations of their breasts, should
be exposed to public view on the parade of their faces. In fact, if
upon every occasion, their most private or concealed affections are
blazoned on their cheeks, the glow of the blush, seems the only tint,
with which the images of invisible objects can be painted or described;
and thus, the fear of being liable to have what is impressed in their
minds read in their faces, becomes a rein, which confines and checks
the dangerous sallies of desire.

XXXI. To this may be added, that the colour is so apt to rise in the
countenances of some of them, that they will often blush at themselves.
This heroic excellence, or type of modesty, which the ingenious
father Viera celebrates in one of his sermons, is not, as some coarse
spirits have termed it, purely ideal, but in persons of the most noble
sentiments and dispositions, real, and natural. This was well known to
Demetrius Phalereus, who, when he was instructing the youth of Athens,
enjoined them, that at home they should behave with modesty to their
parents, that abroad they should observe the same deportment to every
one they saw, and that in private they should preserve a decency and a
modest carriage even to themselves.


SECT. V.

XXXII. I think I have pointed out as many advantages on the side of the
women, as will balance, if not out-weigh, the qualities in which the
men excel. Who now is to give sentence in this plea? If I had authority
to do it, I might perhaps pronounce a short one, declaring, that the
qualities in which the women excel, conduce to make them better in
themselves; and that those in which the men excel, make them better
for, or, to speak more properly, of greater use to the public; though
as I am not exercising the office of a judge, but only that of an
advocate, the cause must for the present remain undecided.

XXXIII. And even supposing I had the necessary authority to determine,
I should be obliged to suspend giving judgment, as it might be urged on
behalf of the men, that the good qualities which are attributed to the
women are common to both sexes: I confess they are, but the same thing
may be said with equal justice with respect to those of the men. In
order not to confound the question, it will be necessary to point out
the good qualities which are more frequently found in the individuals
of one sex, and seldomer in those of the other. I grant then, that you
meet with men who are docile, candid, and capable of blushing; and I
will add, that blushing, which is a good symptom in women, is a better
still in men, because it denotes a generous nature and much ingenuity;
which John Barclay has more than once declared in his Satyricon; and it
can’t be denied, that the opinion of a man of his subtile genius, is a
vote of great consequence in such a question; and although this may not
be an infallible sign, I myself have made so much observation in these
matters as to be convinced, that no great expectations can be formed of
a boy, who is audacious and forward.

XXXIV. I say then, that various individuals of our sex, may be observed
to possess the fine qualities which enoble the other, though not with
the same frequency; but this by no means inclines the balance in our
favour, because, on the other hand, the perfections the men boast of,
being communicated to many women, have equal weight in the opposite
scale.


SECT. VI.

XXXV. There have been a thousand examples of princesses, who were
expert and able politicians. No age will ever forget the first woman,
whose true character history developed and rescued from the obscurity
of fable: I mean Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians, who in her infancy
was nursed by doves, but afterwards soared superior to the eagles:
she not only knew how to make herself blindly obeyed by the subjects
her husband had left her, but she also made subjects of all the
neighbouring nations, and by extending her conquests, she likewise made
neighbours of the most distant ones. Her empire extended on one side to
Ethiopia, and on the other to India. Nor can Artemisia, queen of Caria,
be forgotten, who not only maintained, during her long widowhood,
the respect and adoration of that kingdom; but, being invaded by the
Rhodians, she, in her own territories, by two singular stratagems, with
two attacks only destroyed the troops of her enemies; and, passing
suddenly from the defensive to the offensive, she invaded them in her
turn, and conquered and triumphed over the island of Rhodes. The two
Aspasias also will be ever remembered, to whose admirable management,
Pericles the husband of one of them, and Cyrus the son of Darius
Notho, gallant of the other, happily and successfully, confided the
government of their states; as will likewise the most prudent Phile,
daughter of Antipater, whom, while she was a child, her father advised
with concerning the government of the kingdom of Macedonia, and who
afterwards, by her wise stratagems and great address, extricated her
husband, the precipitate and flighty Demetrius, from a thousand
difficulties. Livia, of fertile invention, whose subtile cunning
seems to have been too deep for the penetration of Augustus, is
another instance of female ability, for she could never have had such
dominion over his mind, if he had known her. The sagacious Agrippina
is likewise another, although her arts, as she unhappily employed
them in promoting her son Nero to the throne, were fatal to herself
and the world. Amalethunsa also, is well deserving of being reckoned
among the women of great talents, in whom, her understanding all the
languages of every nation subject to the Roman empire, was esteemed an
inferior accomplishment, compared to the great skill and address, which
she displayed in governing the state during the minority of her son
Athalaricus.

XXXVI. Nor, passing over many others, and approaching nearer to our
own times, should we ever forget Elizabeth of England, in whose
composition, the influx of the three Graces concurred equally with
that of the three Furies. Her conduct as a sovereign, would ever
remain the admiration of Europe, if her vices were not so interwoven
with her maxims of government, as to make it impossible to separate
them; and her political image, will ever present itself to posterity,
coloured, or, to speak more properly, stained and blemished with the
blood of the innocent Mary Stewart, queen of Scots. Neither should
we forget Catharine of Medicis, queen of France, whose sagacity in
negotiating and maintaining a balance between the opposite parties of
Calvinists and Catholics, in order to save the crown from a precipice,
resembled the dexterity of a rope-dancer, who, mounted on a cord, by
his ready art and address at poising himself with the weights at the
ends of his poles, secures himself from falling, and delights and
amuses the spectators, by displaying the risque, at the same time that
he dextrously avoids the danger. Our own queen Isabella, would not
have been inferior to any of them in the business of administration
and government, if, instead of a queen consort, she had been a
queen-regent. Under all this disadvantage, when proper occasions
presented themselves, she manifested by her actions, that she was a
woman of consummate prudence and ability; and Lawrance Beyerlink in
his eulogium of her, says, that no great thing was done in her time,
in which she did not assist, or was wholly the author of. _Quid magni
in regno, sine illa, imo nisi per illam ferè gestum est?_ At least the
discovery of the new world, which was an event the most glorious for
Spain that had fallen out in the course of many ages, would certainly
never have been effected or accomplished, but for the magnanimity
of Isabella, who dispelled the fears, and vanquished the sloth of
Ferdinand.

XXXVII. In fine, and what seems to have more weight than all the rest,
it appears to me, although I am not very certain of the computation,
that among the queens who have reigned for any length of time as
absolute sovereigns, the greatest part of them, have been celebrated
in history for excellent governors. But the poor women, are still so
unhappy, as always to have trumped up against this train of illustrious
examples, a Brunequilda, a Fredegunda, the two Joans of Naples, and a
few others; but, by the way, the two first, although they abounded in
mischief, did not want understanding.

XXXVIII. Nor is the world so universally persuaded as some may think,
that a crown does not sit well on the head of a woman, because in an
island or peninsula, which is formed by the Nile in Ethiopia, called
Meroe, women, according to the testimony of Pliny, reigned for many
successive ages. Father Cornelius Alapide, speaking of Saba, who
was one of their queens, supposes, that her empire extended much
beyond the limits of Meroe, and that it might possibly comprehend the
greatest part of Ethiopia, grounding his opinion, upon an expression
of our Saviour, who called her Queen of the South, which words seemed
to imply, that she possessed vast dominions in that quarter. Thomas
Cornelius also tells us, that authors were not wanting, who asserted,
that Meroe was bigger than the island of Great Britain, and, if so, the
territories of those queens were not very confined, though they did not
extend beyond the limits of Meroe. Aristotle (Lib. 2. Polit. Cap. 7.)
says, that among the Lacedemonians, the women had a great share in the
political government; and that their being allowed it, is agreeable to
the laws given them by Licurgus.

XXXIX. In Borneo also, according to the relation of Mandeslo, which
may be seen in the second volume of Olearius, the women reign, and
their husbands enjoy no other privilege, than that of being their most
dignified subjects. In the island of Formosa, situated in the southern
part of the Chinese sea, those idolaters who inhabit it, have such
confidence in the prudent conduct of the women, that the Sacerdotal
function, together with every thing which relates to religious matters,
is confided wholly to them; and that, with regard to politics, they
enjoy a power superior to that of the senators, they being considered
as the interpreters of the will of their deities.

XL. Notwithstanding all this, the ordinary practice of nations is most
conformable to reason, as it corresponds best with the divine decree
notified to our first mother in Paradise, and to all her daughters in
her name, which enjoins a subjection to the men; and we should only
correct the impatience, which many people shew at submitting to female
government, when according to the laws of the land they should obey;
and we should also bridle that extravagant estimation for our own sex,
which carries us such lengths, as to prefer the government of a weak
child, to that of an able and experienced woman. The antient Persians
were drawn by this prepossession to such a ridiculous extreme, that the
widow of one of their princes happening to be left with child at the
death of her husband, and being advised by their magi, that she had
conceived a male, they crowned the belly of the queen, and before it
was born, proclaimed the fœtus king by the name of Sapor.


SECT. VII.

XLI. We have hitherto treated of political prudence only, in the
discussion of which point, we have contented ourselves with a few
examples, and have omitted the many. It is needless to insist on the
ability of women in point of œconomical prudence, as every day’s
experience exhibits to us, houses and families extremely well governed
by women, and very badly governed by men.

XLII. We shall next proceed to consider resolution as a property, which
the men look upon as peculiarly annexed to, or inseparable from, their
own sex. I admit that heaven has endowed them in comparison to the
women, with a quadruple portion of this ingredient; but not that it was
given them as an exempt property, peculiarly annexed to, and belonging
to their sex only, and that the other was to be excluded from the least
participation of it.

XLIII. Not an age has passed, which has not been ennobled and graced by
women of eminence and worth; and without dwelling on the heroines of
Scripture, and the martyrs to the law of grace, because actions, which
are aided by the especial intervention of a supernatural hand, should
be attributed to the divine power, and not to any natural virtue, or
faculty of a sex: I say, without having recourse to these sort of
examples, women of heroic valour, present themselves to the memory in
crouds; and after the Semiramis’s, the Artamissas, the Thomyris, the
Zenobias, there appears an Aretaphila, the wife of Nicrotatus, the
sovereign of Cyrene in Libya, in whose incomparably generous nature,
the greatest fortitude of mind, the most tender love of her country,
and the most subtile and discerning understanding, contended for
the pre-eminence; because, to deliver her country from the violent
tyranny of her husband, and to revenge the murder, which, for the
sake of possessing her he had perpetrated on her first consort, she
made herself the leader of a conspiracy, and deprived Nicrotatus of
the kingdom and his life. Leander, who inherited all his brother’s
cruelty, having succeeded to the crown, she had the valour and address
to rid the world of this second tyrant also; crowning in the end, all
her heroic actions, by declining to accept the diadem, which from a
grateful sense of the many benefits she had conferred on them, was
offered to her by the Cyreneans. Denepetina, the daughter of the great
Mithridates, and the inseparable companion and partner of her father,
in all his dangerous undertakings and projects, in the execution of
which she manifested upon every occasion, that strength of mind and
body, which the singular circumstance of her coming into the world with
double rows of teeth, seems to have foretold at her birth; after her
father was defeated by the great Pompey, she was shut up and besieged
in a castle by Manlius Priscus, where, finding it impossible to defend
herself, she deprived herself of life, to avoid suffering the ignominy
of being made a slave. An Arria, the wife of Cecinus Peto, whose
husband having been concerned in the conspiracy of Camilus against
the emperor Claudius, was for this crime condemned to death; and she,
determined not to outlive her consort, having several times tried in
vain to beat her head to pieces against a wall, procured at last to
be introduced to her husband in prison, where she extorted from him a
promise, to anticipate with his own hands the work of the executioner,
and, by way of encouraging him to do it, immediately transfixed her
own breast with a dagger. An Epponina, upon her husband Julius Sabinus
having in Gaul arrogated to himself the title of Cæsar, endured, with
rare constancy and fortitude, unspeakable toils; and being at last
condemned to death by Vespasian, she frankly and openly told him, she
should die contented, as death would deprive her of the disgust of
seeing so bad an emperor as him on the throne.

XLIV. And, that it should not be thought the latter ages are inferior
to the antient ones in resolute and courageous women, see the maid
of Orleans present herself, and stand forth compleatly armed, as the
pillar, which, in its greatest distress, supported the tottering
monarchy of France; which she did so amazingly, that the English and
French, who were as opposite in sentiments as in arms, imputed her
extraordinary feats, the one to a diabolical compact, and the other
to divine assistance. The English perhaps feigned the first, for the
purpose of throwing an odium on their enemies; and those who had the
management of affairs in France, suggested the other politically;
for it was of vast importance, when the people and soldiers were so
greatly dismayed, to raise their dejected spirits, by persuading them,
that heaven had declared itself their ally, and introduced on the
theatre of the world, a damsel of perspicuity and magnanimity, as an
inspired instrument, which was equal to, and capable of effecting the
miraculous succour. A Margaret of Denmark, in the fourteenth century,
in her own person, headed an army, and conquered the kingdom of Sweden,
taking king Albertus prisoner. The authors of those times, call her the
second Semiramis. One Marulla, a native of Lemnos, an island in the
Archipelago, when the fortress of Cochin was besieged, upon seeing her
father slain, snatched up his sword and shield; and having prevailed on
the whole garrison to follow her, she put herself at their head, and,
encouraging them by her example, charged the enemy with such ardour,
that she drove them from their trenches, and obliged the Basha Soliman
to raise the siege: which action, the Venetian general Loredano, who
was proprietor of the place, rewarded, by permitting her to chuse for
a husband, whichever of the most illustrious captains of his army
she liked best, promising at the same time, to settle on her and her
consort, a fortune suitable to their rank, which he did in the name
of the republic. One Blanca de Rossi, the wife of Baptista Porta, a
Paduan captain, who, after defending valorously a post on the walls
of Bassano, a fortress in the march of Tresvina, finding the place
suddenly taken by treachery, and her husband made prisoner and put to
death by the tyrant Ezelinus, and perceiving she had no means left to
escape falling a victim to the brutal passion of that ravisher, who
was furiously enamoured with her beauty; she threw herself out of the
window of an upper room; but being afterwards, against her inclination,
cured of the bruises she received, and enduring with anguish and regret
under that oppressive barbarian, the shame of having been forced, she,
to relieve the bitterness of her grief, and to extricate herself from
continuing in a state of violation to her conjugal faith, deprived
herself of life in the sepulchre of her husband, which for the purpose
of doing it there she had caused to be opened. We could instance many
other women of heroic courage, and particularize the occasions on which
they exerted it; but, to avoid the recital appearing prolix or tedious,
we shall omit the relation of them.

XLV. The reason of my not having yet mentioned the Amazons, which is
a case so applicable to this matter, is, because I think it will be
better to treat of them separately. Some authors, in opposition to many
others who affirm it, deny their existence; but without engaging in
this dispute, we must allow, that much fable has been mixed with the
history of the Amazons; such as that they destroyed all their male
children; that they lived in a total state of separation from the other
sex, and only consorted with them once a year for the sake of becoming
pregnant. Of a piece with these, are the tales of their encounters
with Hercules and Theseus, and the succour given to afflicted Troy by
the fierce Penthesilea, and perhaps that also, of the visit of queen
Talestris to Alexander. But with all this, against the testimony and
credit of so many antient authors, it would be rash to deny, that there
was a formidable body of warlike women in Asia, who went by the name of
Amazons.

XLVI. But in case this should be denied, in lieu of the Asiatic
Amazonians they deprive us of, we should be supplied with another set,
drawn from the other three parts of the globe, ready to stand forth and
take their places. The Spaniards discovered American ones, navigating
armed, on the river Maranon, which is the largest in the world, and
to which, for this reason, they gave the name of the river of the
Amazons. There are some of them in Africa, in a province of the empire
of Monomotapa: and, it is said, they are the best soldiers in all that
territory; there are not wanting geographers, who made Monomotapa a
distinct state from the country these warlike women inhabit.

XLVII. In Europe, although in no part of it the women are military
people by profession, we may venture to give the name of Amazons to
those who upon different occasions, have fought in such battalions or
squadrons, as have defeated and triumphed over the enemies of their
country. Such were the French women of Beauvais, who, when that city,
in the year 1742, was besieged by the Burgundians, on the day of the
assault, united themselves together under the conduct or command of
Joan Hacheta, and vigorously repulsed the enemy; their captain Hacheta,
having with her own hands, tumbled the person headlong from the walls,
who attempted to erect the enemies’ standard there. To commemorate
this transaction, they keep an annual festival in that city, and the
women on the feast-day, have the singular privilege of walking in
procession before the men. Such also, were the inhabitants of the
islands Echinadas, called at present Bur-Solares, celebrated for the
victory of Lepanto, which was gained in the sea of these islands. The
year antecedent to this famous battle, the Turks having attacked the
principal island, the Venetian governor Antonio Balbo, and all the men,
were so terrified, that they betook themselves to flight in the night,
leaving the women behind them, who, at the instance of a priest named
Antonio Rosoneo, resolved to defend the place; and, much to the honour
of their own sex, and the disgrace of ours, they really did defend it.

N. B. With respect to the women who laid violent hands on themselves,
we do not mean to propose their resolution as examples of virtue, but
only to exhibit it, as a vicious excess of fierce courage, which is
sufficient to answer the purpose intended.


SECT. VIII.

XLVIII. After all this recital of magnanimous women, there still
remains something to be said on a particular, which the men point
out as their weak side, and with respect to which, they charge them
with the greatest want of constancy; that is, their not being firm in
keeping a secret. Cato the Censor in this instance, would not admit of
any exception whatever with regard to them, and condemned the trusting
a secret to any woman, be she who she would, as one of the greatest
errors a man could run into; but Cato’s own great niece Porcia,
daughter of Cato the younger, and wife of Marcus Brutus, gave the lie
to this assertion, she having obliged her husband, to confide to her
the grand secret of the conspiracy against Cæsar, by the extraordinary
proof she exhibited to him of her valour and constancy, in the great
wound she voluntarily gave herself with a knife in the thigh.

XLIX. Pliny, quoting the Magi as his authors, tells us, that the heart
of a certain bird, applied to the breast of a woman when she is asleep,
will make her reveal all her secrets. And in another place, he says,
the tongue of a certain snake will have the same effect. The magicians
being obliged to search among the hidden secrets of Nature, for keys
to unlock the doors of their hearts, is no proof, of the women’s being
so easily brought to reveal what has been confided to them. But let
us laugh with Pliny at these inventions; and let us grant, if you
please, that there are very few women strict observers of a secret;
but, in return to this, it is confessed on the other hand by the most
experienced politicians, that there are very few men also, to whom
you can confide secrets of importance; and truly, if such men were
not very scarce commodities, princes would not hold them in such high
estimation, as to think scarce any of their richest moveables equal to
them in value.

L. Nor are there examples wanting, of women of invincible constancy in
the article of keeping a secret. Pythagoras, when he found himself
near dying, delivered all his writings, in which were contained
the most hidden mysteries of his philosophy, into the custody of
his prudent and dutiful daughter Damo; directing her at the same
time, never to permit them to be published, which injunction she so
punctually obeyed, that, even when she found herself reduced to extreme
poverty, and could have sold those books for a large sum of money,
she chose rather to endure the anguish and pinchings of want, than be
deficient in point of the confidence reposed in her by her father.

LI. The magnanimous Aretaphila, whom we have already mentioned, having
attempted to take away the life of her husband by a poisonous draught
before she entered into a conspiracy against him, which was to be
carried into execution by force of arms, was surprized and detected
in the fact, and being put to the torture to discover who were her
comforters and abettors, the force of the torment was so far from
extorting the secret, or depriving her of the possession of herself,
or the use of her reason, that, after owning she intended to give
him the poison, she had the address to persuade the tyrant it was a
love-philter, and contrived for the purpose of increasing his passion
for her. In fact, this ingenious fiction had the effect of a philter,
for Nicotratus’s love of her was afterwards greatly increased from
this persuasion, that she, who was solicitous to excite in him an
arduous and excessive desire for her, could not do otherwise than
entertain a sincere tenderness and affection for him.

LII. In the conspiracy set on foot by Aristogiton, and which was begun
to be executed, by putting to death Hipparchus, the brother of Hippias,
a courtesan woman, who had been trusted with the secret, and knew all
the accomplices, was put to the torture; but she, to convince the
tyrant of the impossibility of extorting the secret from her, cut her
tongue asunder with her teeth, and let the end drop before his face.

LIII. When the first indications of the conspiracy of Pison against
Nero, began to shew themselves, many of the most illustrious men of
Rome shrunk under, and gave way to the rigour of the torture. Lucan,
for example, discovered his own mother as an accomplice, and many
others their most intimate friends; and there was only one Epicharis,
an ordinary and obscure woman, who was acquainted with the whole
transaction, on whom neither whips nor fire, nor all the martyrdoms
they could invent, had power to tear from her breast the least
information.

LIV. I knew a certain one myself, who, being examined by the torture,
touching an atrocious crime which had been committed by her master
and mistress, resisted the force of that rigorous test, not to save
herself, but only to skreen them; for so small a portion of the fault
could be imputed to her, either on account of her ignorance of the
magnitude of the crime, or from her having acted by the command of
others, and from various circumstances of mitigation, that the law
would not have condemned her to a punishment, any thing comparable to
the severity of that she underwent.

LV. But of women, from whom the power of torture could not tear the
secrets of their breasts, the examples are infinite. I heard a person
who had been used to assist upon such occasions declare, that, although
he had known many of them confess, rather than be stripped naked to
prepare them for the execution of the punishment of the rack, the
instances of their having confessed after undergoing this martyrdom of
their modesty, were very rare. A truly great and shining excellence
in the sex this, that the regard for their modesty, should have more
weight with them than all the terrors of an executioner.

LVI. I do not doubt, but this parallel I have drawn of the sexes, may
appear to many somewhat flattering to the women; but I shall reply
to these, that Seneca, whose rigid Stoicism removes all doubts of his
impartiality, and whose severity sets him at a great distance from all
suspicion of flattery, has made a comparison not a jot less favourable
to the side of the women, for he absolutely asserts them to be equal
to the men, in all the valuable natural faculties and dispositions.
These are his words: _Quis autem dicat, naturam malignè cum muliebribus
ingeniis egisse, & virtutes illarum in arctum retraxisse? Par illis
mihi crede, vigor, par ad honesta (libeat) facultas est. Laborem,
doloremque ex æquo si consuevere patiuntur._ (in Consol. ad Marciam.)


SECT. IX.

LVII. We are come now to defend the great article of all, which is the
question of the understanding; and, I must confess, if my reason does
not assist me in arguing this point, that I expect but little help or
resource from authorities; because all the authors who have touched
upon the matter, with the exception of one or two particular ones only,
have wrote so much on the side of the vulgar opinion, that they almost
uniformly speak of the understandings of the women with contempt.

LVIII. And truly, I might reply to the authority of the greatest part
of these books, with the fable of the lion and the man, inserted by
Carducius in one of his dialogues, which is to this effect. A man and a
lion travelling together, fell to dispute whether lions or men were the
bravest animals: and as they proceeded on their road, they came to a
fountain, at the top of which, there was exhibited carved in marble, a
man tearing a lion in pieces; upon seeing this, the man turned short on
the lion, and in the tone of a conqueror, asked, if he could make any
reply to so convincing an argument; to which the lion answered with a
smile, this is very pretty reasoning of yours, the carving was designed
and executed by a man; we lions are none of us sculptors; if we had,
and were capable of doing this sort of work, I will venture to assure
you, the representation would have been made quite the reverse to what
you there see it.

LIX. The case is, they were men who wrote those books, in which the
understandings of the women are held so cheap; had they been written by
women, the men would have been placed in the inferior class: and there
has not been wanting a woman, who has done something of this sort;
for Lucretia Marinella, a learned Venetian lady, among other works
composed a book with this title, _The Excellences of Women, compared
with the Defects and Vices of Men_; the sole object of which, was to
prove a preference of her own sex to ours. The learned jesuit John of
Carthagena says, that he saw and read this book with great pleasure at
Rome, and that he saw it also in the royal library at Madrid; but the
truth is, that neither she nor we can be judges in this plea, because
we are parties to the suit; and therefore the sentence and decision
must be confided to the angels, who being of no sex, are impartial.

LX. And in the first place, those who hold the understanding of
women in such contempt, as hardly to allow they are endued with more
than pure instinct, are unworthy to be admitted as parties in the
controversy; neither are those, who maintain, that the greatest reach
of a woman’s capacity, does not extend farther than to qualify her for
managing a hen-roost.

LXI. Some prelate, who is quoted by Don Francisco Manuel in his Guide
to Married People, said, that the understanding of the most knowing
woman did not exceed the bounds of ordering how a chest of clean
linen should be packed. Let those who adhere to such opinions, be as
respectable as they will in other points of view, they do themselves
no sort of credit by such declarations; for the most favourable
interpretation they admit of, is, that they were intended as hyperbolic
jokes. It is a fact of public notoriety, that there have been women,
who well understood the ordering and governing religious communities,
and also women, who are equal to the government and direction of whole
states.

LXII. These discourses against the women, are the works of superficial
men; who, seeing they in general understand nothing but household
business, which is commonly the only thing they are instructed in, or
employed about, are apt to infer from thence, without being aware that
they draw the inference from that circumstance, that they are unfit
for, or incapable of any other matter. The most shallow logician knows,
that it is not a valid conclusion, to suppose that because a person
forbears to do an act, that he is unable to do it, and therefore, from
the women in general knowing no more, it cannot be inferred, that they
have not talents to comprehend more.

LXIII. Nobody understands radically and well, more than the subject
he has studied; but you cannot deduce from hence, without incurring
the note of barbarism, that his ability extends no farther. Sir Thomas
More, in his Utopia, states the following question: suppose all men
were to dedicate themselves to agriculture, in so close and strict a
manner, as to occasion their understanding nothing else; would this
be a foundation whereon to argue and insist, that they were incapable
of understanding any other thing? With the Druses, a people of
Palastine, the women are the only repositories of the little learning
that subsists among them, for almost all of these can read and write;
in consequence of which, the little literature they can boast of, is
treasured up in the heads of the women, and totally hidden from the
men, who devote themselves solely to agriculture, war, and handy-craft
business. If the same custom prevailed all the world over, the women
would undoubtedly consider the men as unfit for, or incapable of
literature, in which light, the men at present consider the women; and
as such a judgment would certainly be erroneous, in the same manner is
that mistaken, which we at present make, because it proceeds upon the
same principle.


SECT. X.

LXIV. And perhaps father Malebranche adopts the same mode of reasoning;
for, although he was much more benign towards the women, and in his art
of investigating truth acknowledges, that in the faculty of discerning
sensible things, they are known to have the advantage of the men;
still he insists, they are much inferior to them in the comprehension
of abstract ideas; and assigns as the reason of it, the softness of
their brains. It is very well known, that people search for these
physical causes, and after some experience, when they are, or fancy
they are sure of their effects, apply them in their own manner, to suit
their own doctrines. This being the case, the consequence which results
from hence is, that the author himself falls into the same intellectual
disease, of which he had intended to cure all mankind. This error, is
produced by common pre-occupations, and principles ill considered and
digested. He without doubt made this judgment, either to avoid being
led away by the common opinion, or from having observed, that women of
ability, or those who are reputed such, reason with more facility, and
talk more pertinently than the men, on such subjects as appertain to
sensible things, and with no less precision than them (if in such cases
they do not observe a total silence) on abstracted matters; but this
proceeds, not from an inequality of talents, but from a difference of
application and practice. Women employ themselves, and think much more
than the men, about dainty eatables, setting out a table, ornaments of
dress, and other things of this kind; from whence it happens, that they
discourse and talk of them more pertinently, and with greater facility
than those of the other sex. On the contrary, it is very rare, that
any woman attends to questions of theory, or bestows the least thought
on the subject of abstract ideas, and therefore it is no wonder they
seem dull, when the conversation turns on such matters. If you observe
them, you will find, that women who are informed, and are of a gay
cast, and who sometimes take pleasure in discoursing on the delicacies
of platonic love, whenever it happens that they argue with the men on
this point, they greatly out-do even the most discreet ones, who have
not applied themselves to explore these bagatels of fancy: this in a
great measure confirms the remarks we have made above.

LXV. In general, any person whatever, be his capacity ever so great,
will appear more rude than a man of little penetration, if he talks
with him of such matters as the other has had experience in and he has
never applied himself to understand. A labourer in husbandry, whom God
has endowed with a most penetrating genius, which is no uncommon case,
if it happens that his attention has never been fixed on any other
thing but his work, would appear greatly inferior to the most heavy
politician, if he should ever chance to converse with him about reasons
of state; and the most wise politician, if he is merely a politician,
who should set himself to talk about the disposition of troops, and the
fighting of battles, would utter a thousand absurdities; insomuch,
that if a man skilled in military affairs was to hear him, he would
be apt to conclude he was mad, as Hannibal thought the great Asiatic
orator was, who, in the presence of king Antiochus and him, undertook
to argue about the art and conduct of war.

LXVI. It happens exactly the same in the business we are now treating
of. A woman of excellent understanding, whose thoughts are constantly
occupied on domestic management and the care of her house, without
scarce ever hearing matters of a superior nature talked of, or, if
it does happen that she hears any such thing, she rarely pays much
attention to it: her husband, though much inferior to her in talents,
converses frequently abroad with able men of various professions, by
communicating with whom, he acquires variety of knowledge, or he enters
into public business, and receives important information. Instructed
in this manner, if it happens at any time that in the company of his
wife, these matters are talked of, she, who by the means and in the way
we have just mentioned, can gain but little aid or assistance, if she
happens to speak just what occurs to her on the subject, from the want
of instruction, must appear a little defective in point of knowledge,
let her be ever so acute and penetrating. Her husband, and the others
who hear her, conclude from thence, that she is a fool; and he in
particular, plumes himself on his superior talents and abilities.

LXVII. As it fared with this woman, so it fares with an infinity of
others, who, though they may have much more sense than the men they
happen to be in company with, are condemned by them as unfit to reason
on any kind of subject: but the truth is, that their not being able to
reason at all, or their reasoning ill on such matters, does not proceed
from a want of talents, but from a want of being properly informed;
and without this assistance, a person, endued with even an angelic
understanding, could not discourse pertinently on any subject whatever.
The men at the same time, although inferior to them in understanding,
shine and triumph over them with an air of importance, because they
happen to be better provided with information.

LXVIII. Over and above this advantage of being better informed, the
men have another, which is of great moment, to wit, that they are much
accustomed to meditate, discourse, and reason upon such matters, it
being in a manner their daily practice; while the women hardly ever
bestow a thought on them: on which account, whenever these things are
started in conversation, the men are prepared to talk upon them, and
the women are taken by surprize.

LXIX. Finally, men, by their reciprocal communication with each other
upon such subjects, gain mutual instruction, each individual, receiving
lights and information from the observations and experience of those we
converse with; and therefore, when they argue upon these matters, they
not only make use of their own understandings and improvements, but
they likewise avail themselves of what they have acquired from their
neighbours; so that many times, what is expressed and explained by the
mouth of one man, is not the produce of one understanding only, but of
many. The women, who in their ordinary conversations, don’t discourse
on these sublime questions, but rather of their domestic amusements and
employments, furnish to each other no reciprocal lights or assistance,
with respect to these great points; in consequence of which, whenever
they happen to be present when such subjects are agitated, you should
add to their talking unprepared, the disadvantage, of each of them
being confined to the use of no more than their own proper lights and
ideas.

LXX. These advantages, by means of which, a man of very short
penetration, may say much more, and much more to the purpose, upon
noble subjects, than a woman of great perspicuity, are of such moment,
that one who has not attended to the above reflections, if he should
happen to be present at a conversation of this sort, between a very
keen woman and a very heavy man, might be apt to conclude, that he was
a discreet person, and she a fool.

LXXI. In fact, the want of these reflections, has engendered in many
men, and some of them in other respects wise and prudent ones, this
great contempt for the understanding of women; but what is most
laughable and ridiculous, they have exclaimed so much and so loudly
against them, and have asserted with such confidence the poverty and
scantiness of their understandings, that many, if not the bulk of the
world, have been idle enough to believe them.


SECT. XI.

LXXII. And it seems to me, that not even those, who approaching nearer
to reason, admit, that though the men in general excel the women in
understanding, still own there are women of solid and perspicuous
parts; I say, not even these have, to my satisfaction, established
the inequality in point of understanding between the two sexes. If
they had attended to the circumstances I have before-mentioned, and
which frequently occur, they would have perceived, that, in the cases
specified, women, of much better understandings than the men they
conversed with, would appear greatly inferior to them.

LXXIII. Nor do I conceive, what other foundation this pretended
inequality can be built on, than that I have mentioned, the
equivocation and fallibility of which, I have just pointed out. For if
I am told, the thing has been demonstrated by experience, I am prepared
with a reply, and shall answer, that the experience they alledge is
deceitful, and that I have exposed its fallacy in many instances;
besides this, with regard to the matter of experience, I shall cite two
witnesses of great credit in favour of the women. The first is, the
sagacious and discreet Portugueze Don Francisco Manuel, who wrote a
little treatise, called, A Guide to Married People.

LXXIV. In this Cavalier, all the circumstances that can be desired
concur, to make his vote of singular weight in the question we are
treating of; because, in addition to his being a man of remarkable
knowledge and information, he had travelled through many countries,
where he was generally charged with and negotiated important concerns;
in consequence of which, and by means of his elevated genius and
courteous deportment, he had opportunities of being introduced to, and
conversing with, ladies of rank and fashion in all places, as may be
seen by his writings.

LXXV. It appears by this author, that, not satisfied with considering
the women as equal to the men in their intellectual capacities, he
inclines to allow them some advantage over the other sex in this
particular. In the book before quoted, fol. 73, after reciting, that
the general opinion with respect to the women is otherwise; he says,
_I am of a different sentiment, and am certain, that many women are
exceedingly judicious and sensible, I having seen and conversed with
abundance of such, both in Spain and other countries; and it appears to
me, that, on account of their having the advantage of us in quickness
of perception, and readiness of repartee, it is necessary to use great
caution in talking with them_: and a little lower he speaks thus;
although it would be unjust to dispute the purity of the metal with
which Nature formed their understandings, we may nevertheless take
precaution to save and guard them, in situations where they may be
led into danger, and ourselves may be injured. The testimony of this
author, as I have before said, is of great weight, because to his great
experience and discretion, we may add, that in the treatise we have
quoted, he is not very favourable to the women; and even at the end of
it, he does not scruple, nor is he ashamed to accuse himself of being
too severe upon them.

LXXVI. The second evidence, is that most learned Frenchman, the
Abbé Bellegarde, a man who was also used to courts, and learned his
knowledge of the world in the great theatre of Paris. This author, in
a book he published, intitled, _Curious Observations on Literature
and Morality_, affirms, that the minds of women, for the purpose of
obtaining a knowledge of all sorts of sciences and arts, and also every
kind of business, are in no manner inferior to those of men. I have
not seen this author, but the editors of the Memoirs of Trevoux, in
the month of April, 1702, quote him on the subject. The author of the
Journies in the Coaches of Madrid and Alcala, who, let him be who he
would, was a man of note, maintains the same sentiment (pag. 45); and
father Buffier, a celebrated French writer, in a book intitled, _An
Examination of vulgar Prejudices_, which he wrote expressly for the
purpose of doing it, proves the same thing.


SECT. XII.

LXXVII. Having then answered the arguments alledged to be built upon
experience, there only remains, that they prove to us the pretended
inequality by some physical reason. But I affirm no such can be
assigned, because recourse can only be had in this matter, either to
an entative inequality of souls, to a distinct organization, or to a
different temperament of the bodies of both sexes.

LXXVIII. From the entative inequality of souls, nothing can be deduced,
for it is a generally received opinion among philosophers, that all
rational souls, in point of physical perfection, are equal. I well
know, that some quote St. Austin as entertaining an opposite sentiment,
in his 15th book, chap. 13, on the Trinity; but I can’t find, that St.
Austin in that chapter, does even so much as touch upon the matter. I
know likewise, that the faculty of Paris condemned a proposition, which
affirmed the soul of our Lord Christ was not more perfect than the soul
of the treacherous Judas. To this the great Scottish master answered,
that, as the condemnation was not confirmed by the holy see, we are not
bound to observe it. In strictness this is so; but I think it would be
right that such a proposition should be blotted out of every book in
which it is found, as dissonant, harsh, and offensive to weak people,
who in souls, can’t distinguish the physical from the moral; but this
does not in any manner affect the truth of the general opinion, which
assents to a total physical equality of souls.

LXXIX. But if we were to admit of an entative inequality of souls, how
would they prove to us, or make us believe, that God chose the best for
the men, and left the least-perfect for the women? We ought rather to
believe in this matter, that the soul of holy Mary was the best which
could be possessed by a pure creature; and, in fact, the famous Saurez
affirms, that, physically speaking, it was most perfect; so that the
women may be firm in asserting, that the soul is neither masculine nor
feminine, because such an assertion is well founded.

LXXX. With regard to organization, I am inclined to think, that the
variation of it, may greatly vary the operations of the soul; though
we don’t to this day know, which organization is best suited to,
or conduces most to, distinguishing and reasoning well. Aristotle
pretends, that those with small heads are the best reasoners, a
conjecture, which before he committed it to writing, he took care
should correspond with the measure of his own head. Others give their
vote in favour of large heads; these we may conclude, are not of the
little-headed race, if they had, we might suppose they would have
been on the side of Aristotle. Cardinal S’frondati, in his Curso
Philosophico, says, that the reasoning organs of Cardinal Richelieu
were double, to which he attributes the signal perspicuity, and
intellectual agility of that minister. I apprehend, that he must mean
double in magnitude, and not in number, for that would be monstrous;
and this corresponds with what many others say, that the larger the
brain is in quantity, the better people reason, which they collect
from having observed, that the human brain is bigger in proportion
than that of any other animal. Martinez and others, in their books of
anatomy, excluding the great heads and the little ones, maintain, that
those of the middle size are the best adapted for the operations of
the understanding. Those who go about taking measure of the members
of the body, in order to compute the value of the soul, may say what
they please; but experience shews, that among men with large heads, you
will find some stupid, and others ingenious, and that the same thing
is to be observed among those with small ones. If a difference in the
magnitude of the head or the brain, was to induce an inequality in the
operations of the understanding, we should find a great difference
in point of comprehension, among men of unequal stature, because in
proportion as they were larger or smaller, so would their sculls and
brains be; but this is contrary to observation.

LXXXI. But with all this, and even admitting what Pliny says to be
true, that the material substance of the brain, is larger in men than
it is in women, touching which matter, I beg leave to suspend my
judgment, till the assertion is affirmed by some able anatomists; but
I say, admitting the thing to be true, it proves nothing; for if the
comprehending better, was to be governed by this material exceeding in
the substance of the brain, it would follow, that an ingenious man,
should have forty or fifty times more brain than an ideot, and that men
of large bulk should be people of much more perspicuity than those of
small stature, as we must suppose their brains to be in proportion to
their size; but those, he who writes this can persuade to believe it,
should return him thanks, for broaching a doctrine so well suited to
their capacities.

LXXXII. I agree however, that the greater or less degree of clearness,
or facility of understanding, depends in a great measure upon the
difference of organization; though not upon a sensible different
organization of the larger parts, but upon the insensible different one
of the most minute parts, such as the different texture or firmness of
the most subtile fibres, or the freeness from obstruction, or clearness
of the delicate passages through which the animal spirits circulate,
and also upon the tension and elasticity of the membranes which form
those passages; although, we can know nothing about whether these are
different in men and women, nor can even the anatomical spectacles, pry
into the secret, or assist us with such a discernment or discovery;
neither can the Cartesians, with all the microscopes they are capable
of inventing, explore, whether the pineal gland, which they assign as
the seat of the soul, is of a different texture in women, from what it
is in men.

LXXXIII. That a different sensible organization, does not produce a
variety in the rational operations, is manifest, at least, if this
difference is not very enormous; there being men differently organized,
who are of equal abilities; and men organized as nearly alike as
possible, who, with respect to the faculties of the soul, are very
dissimilar. The frigid Æsop, was in every part of his body, so deformed
and ill-shaped, that he scarce appeared a human creature; on which
account, his name in succeeding ages, was used to express an extreme
degree of deformity; with all this, it is well known, that he was of
a delicate and penetrating mind. Socrates, did not differ much from
Æsop in the irregularity of his make; notwithstanding which, antiquity
knew no man of a clearer or better understanding. But supposing we were
to admit, that a distinct sensible organization produced a distinct
intellectual ability, what could you in this case infer from it? Why
nothing, because women are not formed differently from men in the
organs which administer to, or assist the faculty of reasoning, but are
distinctly formed in those only, which Nature has appropriated for the
propagation of the species.


SECT. XIII.

LXXXIV. Neither in the difference of temperament, can be founded the
imagined inferiority of feminine understanding; but I don’t deny, that
the temperament has much influence, and conduces greatly to the just or
disorderly exercise of the faculties of the soul; so far from it, I am
rather persuaded, that a distinct temperature, occasions more variety
in the operations of those faculties, than a different organization:
for there is no man, who must not have experienced in himself, that,
according as his mind is variously disposed, or he is in good or bad
spirits, without finding the least bodily alteration, he is more or
less fit for all sorts of operations; with all this, there is scarce an
intemperance that offends the body, which does not at the same time,
more or less disturb the functions of the soul; but what species of
temperament or disposition, conduces most to understanding or reasoning
well, it is not easy to ascertain.

LXXXV. If this point is to be settled by the doctrine of Aristotle,
we might conclude, the feminine temperament is best adapted for the
purpose. This philosopher, who subjects all the effects which appear
in the extensive field of Nature, to the dominion of his four first
qualities, says, in the 24th Sect. of his Problems, quæst. 15, that
men of a cold temperament have better intellects, and reason better,
than men of a hot temperament; notwithstanding which, he enters upon
the same question, with supposing, that in hot climates the men are
more ingenious than in cold ones, which I can hardly believe, because
it would follow from thence, that the Africans are more ingenious than
the English or the Dutch: but pursuing the thread of his discourse,
and explaining the efficacy of the qualities by the power of the
antiperastis, he affirms, that in the coldest countries the men
are most ardent, and in the hot ones most cold. _Etenim, qui sedes
frigidas habent, frigore loci obsistente, longe calidiores, quam sua
sint natura, redduntur._ He thinks people of warm constitutions, so
much inferior to those of cool ones with respect to their reasoning
powers, that he makes no scruple to declare, the last compared to the
first, are like men whose heads are turned by drinking too much wine.
He proceeds immediately after the words before-cited, thus: _Itaque
vinolentis admodum similes esse videntur, nec ingenio valent quo
prospiciant, rerumque rationes inquirant._ This philosopher, when he
classed the hot and stupid together, had quite forgot his disciple
Alexander, though he not only forgot, but bore him in mind at the same
time: for it is very certain, that he wrote the greatest part of his
works, after Alexander, on account of the doubts he entertained of his
fidelity, had discarded him; and after he had retired to Athens, where
he experienced a fresh disgust, to wit, being witness to Alexander’s
sending without taking the least notice of him, thirty talents of gold
to his school-fellow Xenocrates as a gratuity; but it is doubtful,
whether his resentment carried him so far, as to conspire with
Antipater against Alexander’s life, and to consult with him about the
best method of carrying their purpose into execution by poison. But let
us return to our subject.

LXXXVI. The same Aristotle teaches, and in this, all the naturalists
and medical people agree with him, that the dissimilarity of
temperament in the two sexes, consists, in the men being hot and
dry, and in the women being cold and moist: _Est autem vir calidus,
& siccus, mulier frigida, humidaque._ Sect. 5. Quest. 26. The cold
temperament, in the opinion of Aristotle, being then the best adapted
for reasoning, and the hot the opposite, the women being cold, and the
men hot, it follows, that the feminine temperament is better suited to
comprehend and reason well, than the masculine.

LXXXVII. This proof is conclusive, to those who believe every thing
Aristotle has said; but I protest for myself, that it has not the least
weight with me; for I neither believe that the geniuses are better in
hot countries than in cold ones, nor that men of cold temperaments are
more ingenious than those of hot ones; and much less do I believe, that
those of fiery dispositions are in a manner insensible; and as to the
pretended power of the antiperastis, let it for the present remain in
the state of doubt, which is annexed to, and inseparable from it.

LXXXVIII. Moisture and dryness, are the other two distinct qualities
of the two compositions or temperaments; and by attending to them, it
may also be inferred from the doctrine of Aristotle, that the women are
more perspicuous than the men. Those who maintain, that the larger the
quantity of the brain, the better the faculty of the understanding,
found their opinion, upon having been taught, that a man has a larger
brain in proportion than any other animal: and they argue thus,
Aristotle says, that man is of a more humid temperament than any other
animal. _Homo omnium animantium maxime humidus natura est._ Sect.
5, Quæst. 7. From hence, if it may be inferred, that from a man’s
having a larger brain than brutes, is to be imputed his having more
understanding; in the same manner it may be inferred, from his being
more moist than them, as humidity is productive of knowledge, that he
knows more. A woman then is of a more humid composition than a man, and
consequently must be more intelligent than him.

LXXXIX. Although this argument proves nothing, and ought only to be
used by way of retortion on those who maintain opposite opinions;
for the principles on which such conclusions are founded, to speak
liberally, are uncertain and doubtful. Who told Pliny, that the brain
of a man was larger than that of any other animal? Has any one, think
you, undertaken the prolix labour of breaking the skulls of the whole
sensitive species, in order afterwards to weigh their brains? Or who
told Aristotle, that man is more humid than any of the brute creation?
Can it be supposed, that this philosopher had squeezed them all in a
press, in order to ascertain the quantity of moisture contained in
each? There seems more probability in supposing, that certain domestic
brutes, the greatest part of insects, and almost every species of fish,
are more humid than men. Nor even admitting it to be true, that the
human brain is larger in proportion than that of any other animal,
could it be inferred from thence, that a great share of understanding
in the human species is the effect of a larger portion of brain. A man
in many other parts of the body, differs greatly in the proportion of
his make from brutes, but an excess of those parts in some individuals,
does not argue a greater degree of excellence. It would be necessary,
in order to make this inference, to have observed, that, among the
brutes themselves, those which had the largest brains, had the
strongest or best instinct; but I believe this is not the case, for if
it was, a total want of perception would be the consequence of a total
lack of brain, which is not so; for, according to Pliny, there are many
sensitive beings, without blood and without brains, notwithstanding
which, they preserve their instinct.


SECT. XIV.

XC. But waiving these proofs, which proceed upon Aristotelic doctrines,
which are either false or uncertain, and which on this account, can
only be serviceable to the cause of the women, by way of retorting upon
those rigid partizans of Aristotle, who approve of all their master
has said: I say, waiving these proofs, let us proceed to enquire, if,
from the cause of the humidity in which a woman exceeds a man, there
can be deduced any objection to her intellectual aptitude. On this
ground, those commonly take their stand, who are desirous of proving
by physical arguments, the inferiority of feminine understanding; and
their reasoning seems to have an air of probability, because an excess
of humour, either of itself, or by means of the vapour it attracts, is
apt to retard the course of the animal spirits, by occupying in part,
the narrow passages through which these exceeding fine substances flow.

XCI. But with all this, the argument is evidently fallacious; for if
it was not, it would prove, not that the minds of women were less
discerning than those of men, but that they were more slow and dull of
comprehension than them, which is false; for most men allow, that in
point of quickness they have the advantage.

XCII. Further; many men, who are keen, ready, and profound, abound
with habitual defluxions and catarrhs, which are caused by a quantity
of excrementitious moisture collected in the most remote recesses
of the head, and within the very substance of the brain, as may be
seen in Riberius, where he treats of catarrhs. The excessive humidity
of the brain then, does not obstruct the ready or right use of the
understanding; and if an excrementitious moisture does not obstruct
it, much less can a natural one have that effect.

XCIII. And as a reason why a natural one does not hinder it, we may
add, that, according to the doctrine of Pliny, the brain of a man
is more humid than that of every other living creature: _Sed homo
portione maximum & humidissimum._ Lib. 11, Cap. 37. Nor is it credible,
that Nature should place in an organ destined for our most perfect
knowledge, a temperament, capable of obstructing, or making the
operations of our reason slow and defective. If I should be told, that,
notwithstanding this native humidity, in which the brain of man exceeds
that of a brute, it remains tempered in the exact proportion which is
best suited to the operations of reason, and that the humidity of the
brain of a woman exceeds that proportion; I answer, even supposing that
humidity, by means of its natural quality, does not obstruct, nobody
knows in what proportion, or to what degree, the brain, for the best
exercising its functions should be moist; and therefore it is vague to
say, there is a greater proportion of it in women than in men, or in
men than in women.

XCIV. There may be opposed however, to this doctrine of humidity, the
opinion of many, who affirm, that the humid and cloudy countries
produce heavy dull spirits; and, on the contrary, that in the bright
and clear countries, are born ingenious and sprightly ones. But be
those few or many who say this, they say it without more foundation,
than having imagined, the clouds of the horizon are translated to the
sphere of the brain; as if in rainy countries, the opacity of the
atmosphere was a dark shade, which obscured the soul, and that in
countries which are blessed with a serene sky, the greater splendor
of the day, would communicate greater clearness to the understanding.
They might, with more aptness and propriety, say, that in the regions
which are most bright and clear, the objects being more visible, they,
through the windows of the eyes, enter in such numbers, that they
distract the soul, and render it less fit for reflection and reasoning;
and hence it is, that, in the obscurity of the night, we find the
thread of our reason the least interrupted, and that we deduce our
conclusions with more firmness than in clear day-light.

XCV. Let those, who maintain humid regions to be ill-suited to the
production of subtile men, cast their eyes on the Venetians and the
Hollanders, who are some of the most able men in Europe: the first of
these, stole part of their territories from the fish; and the last
may be said to live in lakes and bogs. Even here in Spain, we have
an example of this sort in the Asturians, who, notwithstanding they
inhabit a province, the most beset with clouds, and the most subject
to rain, of any in the whole peninsula, are generally reputed for
subtile, ready, and expert people. But our wonder at this will lessen,
if we consider the beavers, who live almost continually in the water,
notwithstanding which, Nature has produced no brutes of so noble an
instinct, nor who approach so near to men, both in their love for them,
and in the imitation of their customs: for you may read in Conradus
Gesnero, that they take particular care of their aged parents, and they
have been seen to direct men in their navigation, and to assist them
in fishing; and there has such an attention been observed in them to
the dead, that they withdraw and conceal the carcasses of their defunct
species, at the hazard of their being devoured by other aquatic beasts.

XCVI. On the contrary, those birds, who the greatest part of their
time, breathe the most subtile pure air, and the most divested of
vapours, one while fleeting on the winds, and at other times placing
themselves on the tops of mountains, ought to be more sagacious than
terrestrial brutes; which is not the case.

XCVII. By the same mode of reasoning, the Egyptians should be the
keenest people in the world, because they dwell under the brightest and
most serene sky that is to be found in all the globe. There is scarce
a cloud passes over Egypt in the course of a year, and the land would
be totally barren, if it was not refreshed and fertilized by the waters
of the Nile; and although for some ages, antiquity venerated that
region as the seat of the sciences, which is manifest from Pythagoras,
Homer, Plato, and other Greek philosophers, having traveled thither to
improve themselves in philosophy and the mathematics; this does not
prove, that they were more subtile and ingenious than other mortals,
but rather, that the sciences had gone wandering about the earth, and
that sometimes they took their stations in one country, and at others
in another. The same thing may be said of the valley of Lima, the
inhabitants of which country do not know what rain is, the land being
fertilized by a light dew, assisted by a happy temperament of air,
which is neither hot nor cold; notwithstanding which, the natives are
not people of a delicate ingenuity, but rather the contrary, for the
Pizarras found them more easy to be subdued by a few stratagems, than
Cortez found the Mexicans, with all the arts he could employ, assisted
by the whole power of his arms.

XCVIII. I am not ignorant, that the inhabitants of Bœotia were
antiently looked upon, as a most rude, dull people, and that _Bœoticum
Ingenium_ and _Bœtica Sus_, were proverbial terms of contempt, and
used to express or denote, a heavy stupid person; and also, that this
stupidity was attributed to the gross atmosphere, loaded with vapour,
which prevails in that country; hence the expression of Horace in
one of his epistles: _Bœoticum in crasso jurares aëre natum._ But I
believe, and with some foundation, that the antients quoted did not
do that country justice; imputing the ignorance which proceeded from
want of application, to the want of capacity; and Bœotia’s lying on
the confines of Attica, where learning flourished, seems to strengthen
this opinion; for it is hardly probable, that within sight of a
province, which is the theatre of wisdom, you should view another,
which is a colony of ignorance and stupidity. On the other hand, it
is certain, that Bœotia has produced some geniuses of the first rate;
such as Pindar, the prince of Lyric Poets, and the great Plutarch,
who, in the opinion of lord Bacon, was full equal to the first men of
antiquity; and I suspect, that by looking back to the more early times
of antiquity, we shall find a period, in which the Bœotians, in their
culture of the arts and sciences, excelled, not only their neighbours,
but all the other nations of Europe; because Cadmus, when he came from
Phœnicia, was the first who introduced the letters of the alphabet into
Greece, and was the first person in Europe, who invented the art of
writing; and we learn from history, that he settled in Bœotia, where
he founded the city of Thebes. To this may be added, that in Bœotia
is found Mount Helicon, dedicated to the Muses, and from which they
derive their name of Heliconides; and that from this mountain, descends
the famous Aganippe fountain, consecrated to the same fictitious
deities, the water of which, they feign to have been the wine of the
poets, which enraptured and inspired them, and lighted up the fire of
enthusiasm in their brains. It seems as if all these fictions could
have no other origin, than poetry having in some former time flourished
in that region.

XCIX. But admitting the Bœotians by nature to be rude and stupid,
how can it be proved, that this is derived from the humidity of the
country, and not from some other hidden cause; especially, when we
see moist or damp countries, on which this stigma is not fixed? Let
humidity then, be acquitted of the false accusation which has been
raised against it, to wit, of being at war with, and an enemy to
ingenuity; and let it be settled, that from this principle, no proof
can be deduced to ascertain, that the women in point of understanding,
are inferior to the men.


SECT. XV.

C. Father Malebranche, reasons in another way, and denies the women
have equal understanding with the men, on account of their brains being
more soft and tender than those of the other sex. I really don’t know
whether what he supposes about this greater degree of softness be true
or not, but I have read two treatises on anatomy, and did not find the
least mention of it in either of them. Perhaps, from having taken it
for granted, that the brains of women were more humid, he concluded
they were more soft; but this is not always a certain consequence, for
ice is humid and not soft, and melted metal is soft, but not humid; or
perhaps, from having observed the women were of a more soft and docile
disposition than men, he inferred, that in their material composition
they were the same; for there have been people so superficial, as to
form ideas upon these sort of analogies, which afterwards, for want of
due reflection, have been adopted by persons of great perspicuity.

CI. But taking all this for granted, I would be glad to know, how a
greater degree of softness in the brain, produces or occasions, an
imperfection in the understanding? I should rather think, that on
account of its being more pliable to the impression of the spirits, it
would be an instrument or organ, better suited or adapted to mental
operations. This argument, is strengthened by the doctrine of the
author, because he says in another place, the vestiges or traces,
which the impression of the animal spirits leaves on the brain, are
the lines, with which the faculty of the imagination, forms on it the
effigies of objects; and the larger or more distinct these vestiges
or impressions are, the greater will be the force and clearness,
with which the understanding must perceive the objects. _Cur igitur
imaginatio consistat in sola virtute, qua mens sibi imagines objectorum
efformare potest, eas imprimendo, ut ita loquar, fibris cerebri, certe
quo vestigia, spirituum animalium, quæ sunt veluti imaginum illarum
lineamenta erunt distinctiora, & grandiora, eo fortius, & distinctius
mens objecta illa imaginabitur._ (Lib. 2. de Inquirenda Veritate, part
1, cap. 1.)

CII. Now then, it being admitted, the softer the brain is, with greater
ease will the animal spirits make impressions on it, and that, for the
same reason, the vestiges or traces will be larger and more distinct;
they will make them with greater ease, and bigger, because the matter
resists less; more distinct because the fibres being somewhat rigid,
they would, by means of their elasticity, make efforts to restore
themselves to their former shape and position; and thus, the path on
traces made by the course of the animal spirits, would be very faint,
if not quite effaced. The fibres of the brain of a woman, being then
more flexible than those of the brain of a man, they are capable of
having larger and more distinct images impressed on them, and they must
consequently, according to this doctrine, perceive objects better than
men.

CIII. But I would not be understood to admit, that the women have
more understanding than the men; I only mean to retort on father
Malebranche, the doctrine, from which he pretends to infer the
advantage to be on the side of the men, in contradiction to what in
another place, he himself has asserted. My own opinion of the matter
is, that, by such sort of philosophical reasoning, you may prove every
thing, when in reality you prove nothing. Every one philosophizes in
his own mode, and if I was to write with a view of flattering, or
from caprice or ostentation, or with a design of making parade of my
ingenuity, I could easily, by deducing consequences from admitted
principles, elevate the understandings of the women, superior to
those of the men, by many degrees; but this is not my nature, or
disposition; on the contrary, I had much rather propound my sentiments
with sincerity; and therefore I say, that neither father Malebranche,
nor any other person, even to this day, has known the punctual actings,
or specific manœuvres, by which the organs of the head, administer to
the faculties of the soul. We don’t know as yet, how fire burns, or how
snow occasions cold, although they are things which are manifest to
our sight and our touch; and would father Malebranche, and the other
Cartesians, persuade us, that they have registered and examined all
that passes in the most hidden and remote corners of the cabinet of
the rational soul? Neither do these maxims appear to me well founded,
which, by reducing every thing to mechanical principles, figure to us
the spirit, stamping materially the images of objects on the brain, in
the same manner, that impressions are made on copper with a chissel.
I am also aware of the serious difficulties, that are attendant on,
and annexed to, the intentional species of Aristotle. But what is the
result of all this? Why, that none of us have done more, than just
touch the outside covering of Nature. We all walk blindfold, and he
is the most blind, who fancies he perceives things with the greatest
clearness, and may be compared to a servant of Seneca, named Harpacta,
who was so infatuated, after having lost all his visual faculties, and
having become stone-blind, as to fancy he could see. It is certain,
that those who live in a confidence, that they can penetrate and look
into Nature, are the most exposed to dangerous errors; because he who
walks on with much boldness, having but a dim light to guide him, runs
the most hazard of falling; on the contrary, he is the furthest from
this danger, who knowing the way is dark, proceeds with caution.

CIV. But granting to father Malebranche, and the rest of the
Cartesians, that the representation of objects to the mind, is made by
means of these material traces, which, in their course, the spirits
impress on the brain; what follows from it is, that the brains of
women being softer than those of men, the marks, on account of the
pliability of the matter, will be larger and more distinct in the
first, than in the last; and what can be inferred from this? Why, by
the doctrine of father Malebranche, you may make whichever of the two
following inferences you like best, either that the women comprehend
better than the men, or that they do not comprehend so well. The
first, may be inferred from the place we a little before cited; and
the second, because where he explains himself with regard to what he
has said against the women, he maintains, that the excessive lively
imaginations, which result from these large images or impressions,
are unfavourable to the right comprehension of objects. _Cum enim
tenuiora objecta ingentes in delicatis cerebri fibris excitent motus,
in mente protinus etiam excitant sensationes ita vividas, ut ijs tota
occupetur._ Lib. 2. part ii. cap. 1.

CV. But this second is contrary to all reason, for it does not follow
from this doctrine of large images, that small ones do not represent
objects well, for in some cases they rather conduce to represent them
best; atoms, for example, being better seen through a microscope than
larger bodies; and liveliness of imagination, if it does not extend to
madness, contributes much to a perspicuous understanding of things.

CVI. But, in reality, from this greater softness of the brain, it
cannot be deduced, that the understandings of women are either larger
or smaller, because you cannot infer from it, that the impressions
made by the spirits on the organ, are bigger or less; which is the
principle, from whence you must conclude both the one and the other;
the reason is, because it seems most probable, that the impulse of the
spirits is proportioned to the docility of the matter, and thus, that
spirits feebly impelled, do not make a larger impression on a soft
brain, than that which is made on a more firm and tense one, by spirits
which move with greater force and impetuosity; in the same manner,
that by regulating the force of your hand, you may make as superficial
a mark with a tool on wax, as you may on lead. My opinion of the matter
is, that from this system of the brains of women, all you can infer is,
that the corporeal movements in them, are less vigorous than they are
in men; on which account, the nerves which have their origin in the
fibres of the brain, and the spinal marrow, have less power in women,
or move with more feeble impulses in them than they do in men; but not
that their mental operations are more or less perfect.


SECT. XVI.

CVII. I think it is now time to depart from the labyrinths of physics,
and to enter on the open and pleasing plains of history, and to
persuade by examples, that the understandings of the women, are not
inferior to those of the men, even for the attainment of the most
difficult sciences. This is the best method, which can be fallen upon
to convince the vulgar, who are generally more influenced by examples,
than arguments. To recite all that occur, would be tiresome, and
therefore, I shall only mention some of those women, who, in these
latter ages, have been the most eminently distinguished for their
learning, and who have flourished in our own country Spain, and in the
neighbouring kingdoms.

CVIII. Spain, which strangers hold cheap in this particular, has, to
the honour of literature, produced many women, remarkably eminent for
all sorts of learning. The principal ones are the following.

CIX. _Donna Anna de Cervaton_, lady of honour to the Germanic Queen
de Fox, second wife of Don Ferdinand the Catholic; she was a most
celebrated woman, but more so on account of her learning and rare
talents, than for her uncommon beauty, which was so striking, that she
was generally allowed to be the finest woman about the court. In Lucio
Marino Siculo, may be seen the Latin letters which that author wrote
her, and the lady’s answers in the same idiom.

CX. _Donna Isabel de Joya_, in the sixteenth century, was esteemed a
woman of great learning. It is told of her, that she preached in the
church of Barcelona, to the amazement of a great concourse of auditors.
I suppose the prelates who permitted it, judged that the injunction of
the Apostle, which in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, prohibits
women to speak in the church, admitted of some exceptions, in the
same manner the injunction did, which prohibits them to teach in
the Epistle to Timothy; for it is a fact, that Priscilla, who was
the companion of this same apostle, taught and instructed Apollo
Pontonicusin the evangelic doctrine, as appears from the Acts of the
Apostles; and that afterwards passing to Rome in the pontificate
of Paul III. she, in the presence of the cardinals, much to their
satisfaction, explained many of the difficult passages in the books of
the subtile Scotus; but what redounded most of all to her honour, was
her having converted in that capital of the world, a great number of
Jews to the catholic faith.

CXI. _Luisa Sigea_, a native of Toledo, but of French extraction,
besides being skilled in philosophy, and sound literature, was
ornamented in a singular manner, with a knowledge of languages, for she
understood Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac; and it is said,
she wrote a letter to pope Paul III. in each of these languages. Her
father, Diego Sigea, being afterwards called to the court of Lisbon,
as preceptor to Theodosius of Portugal duke of Braganza; the infanta
Donna Maria of Portugal, daughter of the king Don Manuel, and of his
third wife, Donna Leonora of Austria, who was a great lover of letters,
took much pleasure in the company of the learned Sigea; who afterwards
married with Francisco de Cuevas, the Lord of Villanasur, and a
cavalier of Burgos, from which marriage, as Don Luis Salazar informs us
in his history of the house of Farnese, there descended a fine progeny,
which are now living in Castile.

CXII. _Donna Oliva Sabuco de Nantes_, a native of Alcaraz, was a
woman of sublime penetration, and of an elevated genius, eminent for
her knowledge of physical, medicinal, moral, and political matters,
as may be seen by her writings; but the thing which most illustrated
and distinguished her, was her new phisiological system, where, in
opposition to all the antients, she maintained, that it is not the
blood which invigorates the body, but a white fluid issuing from the
brain, which pervades the whole nervous system; and she attributes
almost all disorders to this vital dew being vitiated. This system,
which the incuriosity of Spain neglected, the curiosity of England
embraced with eagerness, and now we receive from the hands of strangers
as their invention, that, which in reality was originally our own.
Fatal genius of Spaniards, who, in order that what is produced in
their own country should seem pleasing to them, must have it first
monopolized by strangers, and afterwards by those strangers sold to
them again. It seems also, that this great woman was beforehand with
Renard Descartes, in broaching the opinion, that the brain was the
seat of the rational soul, though she did not, like Descartes, confine
its habitation to the pineal gland only, but supposed it to occupy
the whole substance. The confidence which Donna Oliva had in her
own abilities to defend her singular opinions, was such; that in an
epistle-dedicatory addressed to count Barajas, president of Castile,
she intreats him to use his authority, to convene together the most
learned natural philosophers, and doctors of medicine in Spain, and
that she would undertake to convince them, that the physics, and
medicinal doctrines, which were taught in the schools, went all on
erroneous principles. She flourished in the reign of Philip II.

CXIII. _Donna Bernarda Ferreyra_, a Portuguese lady, the daughter
of Don Ignatio Ferreyra, a knight of the order of St. Jago, besides
knowing and speaking with ease various languages, understood poetry,
rhetoric, philosophy, and the mathematics. She left many poetical
writings; and our famous Lopez de Vega, had such a veneration for the
extraordinary merit of this lady, that he dedicated to her his elegy,
intituled La Philis.

CXIV. _Donna Juana Morella_, a native of Barcelona, was a woman of
wonderful learning. Her father having killed a man, was obliged to
fly, and carried her with him into Lyons in France, where this
extraordinary child, betaking herself to study, made so rapid a
progress, that at twelve years of age (which was in the year 1607)
she defended conclusions in philosophy publicly, which she afterwards
committed to writing, and dedicated to Margaret of Austria, queen of
Spain. At the age of seventeen, according to the relation of Guidon
Patin, who lived at that time, she entered upon public disputations in
the jesuits college at Lyons. She understood philosophy, music, and
jurisprudence, and it is said, that she spoke fourteen languages. She
took the veil, in the Dominican convent of saint Præxedis at Avignon.

CXV. The celebrated nun of Mexico, _Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz_, is so
well known to every body by her learned and ingenious poetical works,
that it is needless to say any thing in her eulogium. I shall only
mention, that the least of her accomplishments was her talent for
poetry, although that was the thing, for which she was most celebrated.
Many Spanish poets have been superior to her in point of poetical
genius, but perhaps no one has equalled her, with regard to her
universal knowledge, in all kinds of faculties. Her poetry was natural,
but she wanted energy. In the critical part of the sermon of father
Viera, he gives her credit for her ingenuity; but to speak the truth,
she was not equal in that respect, to that learned jesuit himself, of
whom she was the opponent: nor is there any thing extraordinary, in a
woman’s being found inferior to a man, who, for elevation of thought,
reasoning with perspicuity, and explaining himself with clearness, has
not yet been equalled by any preacher whatever.

CXVI. The panegyric of the late _duchess of Aveiro_, is also needless,
as her memory is still recent at court, and all over Spain.


SECT. XVII.

CXVII. The learned ladies of France, are very numerous, because there,
they in general have more opportunities of studying, and more time
allowed them for doing it, than they have in most other countries; I
shall therefore, only recite such of them as were most famous.

CXVIII. _Susana de Hubert_, wife of Charles Jardin, an attendant of
Henry III. understood philosophy and theology, and was well versed in
the writings of the fathers. She had learned the Spanish, Italian,
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages; but her christian piety, which was
exceedingly exemplary, contributed more to the advancement of her true
glory, than her vast erudition.

CXIX. _Maria de Guernay_, a Parisian of illustrious family, to whom the
learned Dominic Baudio gave the name of the Syren of France, arrived to
such a pitch of glory and fame, for genius and literature, that there
was scarce a learned man of her time, who did not esteem it a great
honour to keep-up a literary correspondence with her; and hence it
was, that there were found in her cabinet when she died, letters, from
the cardinals Richelieu, Bentivolio, and Perron; from San Francisco de
Sales, and other enlightened prelates; from Charles the First, duke of
Mantua, from the Count de Ales, from Erycio Puteano, Justus Lipsius,
Messrs. Balzac, Maynard, Heinsius, Cæsar Capacio, Carlos Pinto, and
many other men, of the most shining parts and learning in that age.

CXX. _Madalena Scuderi_, who was called with great reason the Sappho
of her age, as she equaled that most celebrated Greek lady, in the
elegance of her compositions, and excelled her much, in the purity of
her manners. She was eminent for her learning, but incomparable for
her judgment and discretion, as her many and excellent works testify.
Her Artamenes, or Cyrus the Great, and her Clelia, in which tracts,
in imitation of Barclay’s Argenis, under the figure of novels, much
true history is contained, are pieces of consummate value, and in
my judgment, are preferable to any thing of the kind that has been
written in France, or any other country, the Argenis only excepted.
The nobleness of the thoughts, the harmonious combination of the
narrative, the pathetic efficacy of the persuasion, the liveliness
of the descriptions, and the native purity, majesty, and force of
the style, make a composition, which all together, is admirable and
enchanting; to this we may add, by way of enhancing the value of the
performance, that the amorous passages, are described with all the
delicacy and decency possible, the moral virtues, represented in the
most engaging and attractive light, and the heroic ones, with the most
brilliant splendor. As a proof of the prodigious talents of this woman,
the honour of having her entered as a member of their societies, was
industriously sought after, by all those academies, whose institutions,
allowed of admitting among them persons of her sex. She in the year
1671, gained the prize of eloquence in the French academy, which
amounted to the same thing, as that truly-noble body, having pronounced
her the most eloquent person in all France. The most Christian king,
Lewis XIV. whose attention, no elevated merit escaped, settled on her a
pension of twelve hundred livres a year, and cardinal Mazarine had long
before, by his will, bequeathed her a legacy of the same value, and she
received another donation to about the same amount, from the learned
chancellor of France, Louis de Boucherat; by the help of which, she
was enabled to pass through a regular, glorious, and long life, which
terminated in the year 1701.

CXXI. _Antonieta de la Guardia_, beautiful both in shape and features,
with which bodily perfections, the sweetness of her disposition, and
the charms of her soul corresponded; so that it seemed as if nature
had taken pride, with respect to her, of uniting in one woman, all
the graces of person, and attractions of mind. She was so eminent for
poetry, that, at a time in which this art was much cultivated, and
in high estimation in France, there was not any man whatever in that
extensive kingdom, who excelled her in it. Her works were collected
in two volumes, which I have not seen. She died in 1694, leaving a
daughter, the heir of her genius and accomplishments, who won the prize
for poetry in the French academy.

CXXII. Lady _Maria Madalena Gabriela de Montemar_, daughter of the duke
de Montemar, and a Benedictine nun, who was born with all the natural
qualifications or dispositions, necessary for attaining the most
abstracted, and difficult sciences, for she was endowed with a happy
memory, a subtile ingenuity, and a right judgment. In her early time of
life, she learned the Spanish, Italian, Latin, and Greek languages;
and at fifteen years old, being presented to Maria Teresa of Austria,
queen of France, just at her first arrival in that kingdom, she amazed
all the court, to hear her speak the Spanish language with elegance
and propriety. She acquired a knowledge of all that is now understood,
both of the antient, and new philosophy, and was consummately versed
in scholastic, dogmatic, expositive, and mystic theology. She made
some translations, the most admired of which, were the first books
of the Iliad. She wrote upon various subjects, and discussed points
of morality, criticism, and such as related to academic matters. Her
letters were held in the highest esteem, and Louis XIV. received and
read them with great pleasure. She composed admirable verses, though
they were but few in number, and those, after once reading them, she
used to throw into the fire; which was a sacrifice, her humility
induced her to make of many other of her works; and she would have
made it of all of them, if by friendly interposition, she had not
been prevented from following the dictates of her own inclination.
Her piety, and talent for governing, shone forth in equal proportion
to her learning; and in consideration of these eminent qualities, she
was elected abbess of the congregation of Fontevrauld, of the order
of St. Benedict, which has this peculiarity belonging to it, that
although it is composed of a great number of monasteries of both
sexes, which are scattered about in four provinces, that they all
acknowledge as their universal prelate, the abbess of Fontevrauld, a
distinguished monastery, which is no less famous for being the theatre
of nobility, than of virtue; for they reckon among their prelates,
fourteen princesses, five of whom were of the royal house of Bourbon.
Lady Montemar filled this high employment, much to the satisfaction,
and edification of the world, and also to the benefit and increase of
her congregation, exhibiting a woman, commanding the men with dignity,
and who in the opinion of those who were under her direction, if she
was not superior, was at least equal in point of understanding to the
wisest man living. She died in 1704, full of merit and much esteemed.

CXXIII. _Maria Jacquelina de Blemur_, a Benedictine nun, who the most
learned Mabillon, in Estud. Monostic. Bibliot. Ecclesiast. Sect. 12,
tells us, composed a work, called the Benedictine Year, of seven
volumes in quarto; and another, intitled Eulogiums on many illustrious
Persons of the Order of Saint Benedict, of two volumes in quarto.

CXXIV. _Anna la Fevre_, commonly known by the name _Madam Dacier_,
daughter of the most learned Tanaquildo le Fevre, proved equal to her
father in erudition, and superior to him in eloquence; and also in
the faculty of writing with elegance and delicacy, her own language.
She was a critic of the first rate, so that in this particular, at
least with respect to profane authors, there was not a man of her
time, neither in France nor out of it, who excelled her. She made
many translations from Greek authors, which she illustrated with a
variety of comments. Her passion for Homer, excited her to write many
dissertations, the object of which was maintaining the superiority
of the Greek poet Homer, over the Latin one Virgil, in which, the
vivacity of her genius, and the rectitude of her judgment, shone
forth with equal splendor; she was chiefly stimulated to do this,
from a desire of replying to, and confronting Mons. La Mote, who was
a member of the French Academy, and of a contrary opinion; this she
did so well, that some partizans of the Latin poet, who had sided
with Mons. la Mote, could not deny, that his judgment in comparison
of her’s, had but little weight, for want of his having a competent
knowledge of Greek, the language Homer wrote in, which his opponent
understood to perfection. With regard to the merits of the case,
it should be observed, that there are only some Latin authors who
give the preference to Virgil, but that there is not a single Greek
one, who will allow him to be superior, or even equal to Homer. The
circumstance of this last, having in his favour all the Greeks, and
many Latins, among whom, one of the most conspicuous is the celebrated
historian Velleius Paterculus, who bestows on him the high eulogium,
that there never yet was any one who could imitate him; and declares
further, that, in his opinion, there never will be any one capable of
doing it in time to come: I say, when all this is considered, it should
have great weight in determining the question in Homer’s favour. Anna
le Fevre, I think, has been dead but a few years.


SECT. XVIII.

CXXV. Italy is little inferior to France, in numbers of learned women;
but, for the same reason for which we curtailed the recital of the
French ladies, we shall do so by the Italian ones.

CXXVI. _Dorothea Bucca_, a native of Bologna, having from her infancy
been destined to the study of letters, advanced in the profession with
such giant strides, that the famous university of that city, made
in her favour, the singular, and till then unheard-of precedent, of
conferring on her the degree of a doctor; and she continued in the
university as a professor of divinity, for a long time. She flourished
in the fifteenth century.

CXXVII. _Isota Nogarola_, born at Verona, was the oracle of her age;
for, over and above being very learned in philosophy, and theology, she
added to it, the accomplishment of understanding various languages,
and being deeply read in the Fathers; and in point of eloquence, it
is asserted, that she was not inferior to the greatest orators of
that age. The proofs of her ability in this science, are not vulgar,
for she spoke many times before the popes Nicholas V. and Pius II. in
the council of Mantua, which was convened, for the purpose of uniting
the Christian princes against the Turk. That illustrious protector of
letters, cardinal Bessarion, having seen some of the works of Isota,
was so charmed with the spirit of them, that he took a journey from
Rome to Verona on purpose to see her. This lady, died at the age of
thirty-eight, in the year 1466.

CXXVIII. _Laura Ceretti_, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, at
the age of eighteen, taught philosophy publickly, with great applause.

CXXIX. _Cassandra Fidele_, a Venetian lady, was so celebrated for
her knowledge of the Greek language, and likewise for understanding
philosophy, theology, and being deeply read in history, that there
was scarce an illustrious prince of that time, who did not give her
testimonies of his esteem; and they reckon among the admirers of
Cassandra, the popes Julian II., Leo X., Louis XI., king of France, and
our Catholic king Ferdinand, and his queen Isabel. She wrote several
works, and died at the age of a hundred and two, in the year 1567.

CXX. _Cathalina de Cibo_, dutchess of Camerine, in the March of
Ancona, understood Latin, Greek, Hebrew, philosophy, and theology. Her
virtue gave splendor to her learning; she built the first convent the
Capuchins possessed, and died in the year 1557.

CXXXI. _Martha Marchina_, a Neapolitan of low birth, but elevated
genius, who, surmounting the impediments annexed to her humble fortune,
managed so as to get herself instructed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew
languages, which she attained a competent knowledge of, with wonderful
velocity, and was no vulgar poetess; but her excellent talents were not
capable of raising her above the sphere of life in which she was born,
the influence of her adverse stars, obstructing the advancement of her
fortune. She removed to Rome, where she supported herself and family
by making wash-balls: but it is probable, if she had had the same
opportunities of studying which have fallen to the lot of other women,
that she would have been a prodigy among the females; and even among
the men also. She died at the age of forty-six, in the year 1646.

CXXXII. _Lucretia Helena Cornaro_, of the illustrious family of the
Cornaro’s of Venice, who, though in the series of this memorial, is the
last of the learned Italian women, on account of her being the most
modern, we may truly say, without doing injustice to any one, that she
in dignity is the first. This woman, who was an honour to her sex,
was born in 1646. From her tender infancy, she manifested a violent
inclination for letters, with which inclination, the wonderful rapidity
of her progress corresponded; for she not only instructed herself
with uncommon facility, in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages,
but she learned also, almost all the living languages of Europe. She
distinguished herself so conspicuously in mathematics, philosophy,
and sacred theology, that the university of Padua, had resolved to
confer on her the degree of a doctor of divinity, which would have been
done, if cardinal Barbarigo, the bishop of that city, had not opposed
carrying the resolve into execution, on account of some scruples
he entertained of the propriety of the thing, it being contrary to
the maxim of St. Paul, which prohibits women from administering, or
teaching in the church; and thus, to prevent violating this canonical
rule, and at the same time, not to be wanting in the proper regard
due to the deserving merit of Helena, they fell upon the expedient of
making her a doctor of philosophy; the ceremony of conferring which
degree on her, was graced and honoured, with the attendance of many
princes and princesses, from various parts of Italy. Her eminence in
scientific knowledge, could only be exceeded, which in reality it was,
by her exemplary piety. At twelve years of age, she took the vow of
virginity. And although afterwards, a German prince, solicited with
ardour, the hand of Helena, and offered to obtain from the pope a
dispensation of her vow, and was likewise assisted in his suit with
the intreaties of all her relations, it was impossible to subdue her
constancy. In order to cut off at a stroke, the hopes of many other
importunate admirers, she was desirous of immediately entering herself
a Benedictine nun; but being prevented by her father, she did all she
could, which was, to renew by a written instrument, her promise of
virginity, together with the addition of the other religious vows,
usually taken by nuns; which, after having executed, she delivered
into the hands of the abbot of the monastery of St. George, as an
oblation to the Benedictine religion. This sacrifice of her liberty,
was followed by her leading so exemplary a life within the walls of her
father’s house, as might excite the envy of the most austere nun. Her
love of retirement was so great, and such was her shame of appearing
in public, that, although in obedience to her father’s commands, she
suffered herself sometimes to be seen; her conforming to do it gave her
such pain, that she was used to say, that obedience would cost her her
life. In effect, this was but short, for she passed from it to another,
at the age of thirty-eight years, with equal rejoicings of the angels,
and lamentations of mankind, leaving many works, which are sufficient
to eternize her fame. A number of authors were the panegyrists of
this extraordinary woman, among whom, was Gregory Leti, who, in his
select extracts from history, gives her the epithets of the heroine of
letters, and a monster of science; calling her at the same time, an
angel of beauty and candour.


SECT. XIX.

CXXXIII. Germany, in whose frozen region, Apollo has more power to
inspire the mind, than to thaw the limbs, presents us with a spark from
the sun, in the person of a woman of that country.

CXXXIV. This was the famous _Anna Maria Surman_, the glory of both
Upper and Lower Germany; for although she was born at Cologne, her
parents and ancestors were from the Low Countries. There never had
appeared, till her time, a person of either sex, of more universal
capacity. All the arts, and all the sciences, recognized, and submitted
with equal obedience to the empire of her genius, and none of them
ever made the least resistance, when this heroine undertook their
conquest. At six years of age, she, without any instruction, cut,
with scissars in paper, estimable and delicate figures. At eight,
she learned in a few days to paint flowers, and did actually, at the
end of that time, paint some, which were much prized. At ten, it did
not cost her more than three hours labour, to acquire the art of
embroidering with elegance, but her talents for more exalted exercises
continued hid, till at twelve years of age, they were discovered in
the following manner. She had two brothers, who studied at home, and
it was remarked, that at various times, upon their repeating their
lessons, when the memory of the boys failed them, the girl would set
them right, which she was able to do without any studying, having
retained the lessons, from only casually hearing her brothers repeat
the words of them, while they were getting them by heart. This mark,
joined to the others she had shewn, of being endowed with a capacity
that was quite extraordinary, determined her father to permit his
daughter to pursue her career in study, which was so correspondent
with the bent of her inclination; but the swift motion, with which
she passed over the extensive plains of sacred and profane erudition,
ought more properly to be called a flight, than a career; and the
short time in which she possessed herself of almost all the human
sciences, together with sacred theology, and a great knowledge of the
scripture, is as astonishing. She understood perfectly, the German,
Dutch, English, French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldee,
and Arabic languages. She was also endued with the gift of poetry, and
composed many very sensible works in verse. In the liberal arts, she
acquired applause equal to that which she had obtained in sciences
and languages. She understood music scientifically, and played many
instruments with dexterity. As a painter, and a statuary, she was
excellent; as likewise in the art of engraving. It is related of her,
that, having made her own effigy in wax, some artificial pearls, which
she had introduced as ornaments to the figure, appeared so natural,
that nobody would believe they were wax, till after having made the
experiment of pricking them with a pin. Her letters were esteemed,
and sought after, not only for the beauty of the stile, but for the
elegance of the hand-writing also, insomuch, that all who saw them
thought they were inimitable; hence, almost every trace of her pen, was
industriously collected, as furniture worthy to adorn a cabinet. There
was scarce a great man of her time, who did not give her testimonies
of his esteem, and who did not solicit a literary correspondence with
her. The illustrious queen of Poland, Louisa Maria Gonzaga, after being
married at Paris by proxy to king Stanislaus, in her passage to that
kingdom through Germany, condescended to visit Surman at her own house.
She would never marry, although a matrimonial connection with her, was
arduously solicited by many men of rank and fortune; particularly by
Mons. Catec, pensionary of Holland, and a famous poet, who had made
some verses in her eulogium, when Anna Maria was but fourteen years
old. At length, this woman, who was worthy of being immortal, died in
1678, at seventy-one years of age.


SECT. XX.

CXXXV. I shall omit mentioning many more learned women, which ennobled
Germany and other countries, to conclude with a recent example from
Asia, as a proof, that female literature is not confined and shut up
within the limits of Europe.

CXXXVI. This shall be the charming, discreet, and generous _Sitti
Maani_, wife of the famous traveller, Pedro de la Valle, a Roman
knight. Maani was born in Mesopotamia, in order that that country,
within whose bounds, some expositors believe the garden of Paradise
was planted, might be the happy spot which had produced two eminent
Rachaels; for it is certain, that Haran, where the beloved wife of
Jacob was born, was a place of Mesopotamia. The fame of the nobleness
of her genius, the vivacity of her understanding, and the beauty of
her person, had been blazoned abroad when she was very young; this
excited the curiosity of Pedro de la Valle, and he was desirous of
seeing a lady, of whom he had heard so many encomiums. His experience,
upon the interview which was permitted him, confirmed the truth of all
he had heard, inflamed in his bosom the passion of love, and caused
him anxiously to solicit obtaining her for a wife, which purpose he
effected; and Maani, after marrying him, not only forsook the Chaldean
rites in which she had been bred up, and turned catholic herself, but
persuaded her parents to do the same. It is almost incredible, what
this amiable Asian acquired in a few years, and indeed the years of
her life were but few; for she not only attained a knowledge of all
the learning, which those countries, still strangers to the sciences,
could afford, but she arrived at understanding twelve different idioms.
But the bulk, as well as perfection, of her moral virtues, exceeded
that of her acquisitions; among which, though not common to her sex,
her courage shone the most brilliant, for she fought armed in three
encounters, and with great bravery, in defence of her husband. This
woman, in many ways extraordinary, eminent for her talents, and famous
for her travels and voyages, in one of them, near Ormuz, became the
victim of a fever, which was truly malignant, having deprived her of
life at the age of twenty-one. Thus died, to the great grief of all
who had known her, this new Rachael, who was so like the antient one,
that it seems, as if Nature and Fortune had studiously formed the
parallel; both natives of Mesopotamia; both beautiful in extreme; both
married to very deserving men, who were strangers to them, and came
from other countries; both alike, with respect to their determination,
of forsaking the rites of their country, and following the religion
of their husbands; both equally conforming, to lead a wandering life,
and follow the steps of their consorts; and, in the end, both dying
in the flower of their age, and on the road. But the behaviour of the
two husbands, at the time of the fatal crisis, seems to have been
very different; Pedro de la Valle at that period, appearing to have
conducted himself with much more delicacy, than the patriarch Jacob.
The last, buried his Rachael on the road, at the place where she died;
though it would have corresponded better with the merit of his wife,
if he had paid the same care and attention, and had taken the same
precaution about her dead carcase, that he did with regard to his own,
when he strictly enjoined his son Joseph, to convey it to the sepulchre
of his ancestors, which was in Hebron. The tender care and regard for
his wife in this last office, which seems to have been little attended
to by that fond patriarch, though we should suppose it happened from
some powerful reason, either mysterious or natural, which he had for
omitting it, shone forth with respect to Pedro de la Valle, in acts of
the most punctual and precise reality; and which, in the most refined
and nice manner, expressed the affection he bore his departed consort:
for after having embalmed the dead body of his adored Maani, he carried
it about with him inclosed in a costly urn, four whole years, all
which time, he continued to travel through, and explore various parts
of Asia; with his eyes ever attentive to her ashes, and his heart and
memory to her virtues: till upon returning to Rome, he deposited the
remains of his beloved object, in the sepulchre of the noble family of
the Valles his ancestors, which they have belonging to them, in the
chapel of St. Paul, appertaining to the church of Santa Maria de _Ara
Cœli_: this was done with such funeral pomp, that a more magnificent
shew of this sort had scarce ever been seen, Pedro de la Valle himself,
pronouncing the funeral oration; in doing which, his eyes expressed
much more than his lips, as in a short time his lips ceased to move,
and left the eyes to speak the rest; for it so happened, that his
throat through excessive grief, was obstructed, and he was near being
choaked; so that he was unavoidably obliged to leave the oration
unfinished; but such of the eloquent clauses as were congealed and
obstructed in the passage, melted down, and flowed in tender tears,
mixed with sighs, the true and proper accents of grief, which were
resounded and echoed back, by a numerous concourse of sympathetic
auditors.

N.B. Sitti is a title of honour among the Persians, and equivalent to
lady with us.


SECT. XXI.

CXXXVII. That the relation should not appear tedious, we have omitted
many modern learned women in this catalogue, and have designedly
forbore to mention the antient ones, as an account of them, may be
found in an infinite number of books; but we have said enough to
evince, what seems of most importance in this argument, which is, that
almost all the women, who have dedicated themselves to study, have
become eminent, and made considerable figures in the literary world;
whereas, there are scarce three in a hundred, among the men devoted to
literature, who have been remarkable for their advances in the science,
or who could truly and properly, be stiled people of learning and
ability.

CXXXVIII. But because this reflection may occasion the women to fancy
themselves persons of much superior capacity to the men, it is but just
and necessary, by way of checking such presumption, to observe, that
this inequality of improvement by study, proceeds, from none of their
sex being devoted to it, except those, in whom the people who have had
the care of their education have remarked peculiar talents for such
pursuits, or those, who have found in themselves a great propensity for
literature, and a particular disposition for attaining a knowledge of
the sciences; on the other hand, the men are not left to their choice
in these matters; the parents, with a view of advancing their fortune,
without attending to their capacities, or considering whether they are
dull boys, or lads of genius, destine them to the career of letters;
and the bulk of mankind being people of scanty abilities, it must
unavoidably follow, that a few only can make a figure in the learned
world.

CXXXIX. My opinion of the matter however is, that there is no
inequality, in the capacities of the one and the other sex. But if
the women, to repress the vain contemners of their aptitude for the
arts and sciences, should be disposed to pass from the defensive to
the offensive, and by way of playing at disputation, to contend for a
superiority over the men, they may make use of the arguments I have
mentioned above, by which, from the same physical maxims, wherewith the
men pretend to bear down, and depreciate the capacities of the women,
we have shewn, that it may with more probability be inferred, the
talents and aptitude of the tender sex, excel those of the robust.

CXL. To this, we shall add the authority of Aristotle, who in various
places teaches, that in all the animal species, expressly including the
human, the females are more penetrating and ingenious than the males;
particularly in his ninth book, _de Histor. Animal. cap. 1_, where he
expresses himself in these words: _In omnibus verò, quorum procreatio
est, fæminam, & marem simili ferè modo Natura distinxit moribus, quibus
mas differt à fœmina: quod præcipuè tum in homine, tum etiam in iis,
quæ magnitudine præstent, & quadrupedes viviparæ sint, percipitur: sunt
enim fœminæ moribus mollioribus, mitescunt celerius, & malum facilius
patiuntur; discunt etiam, imitanturque ingeniosius._

CXLI. This authority of Aristotle, which gives the advantage to the
women, not only in docility, and softness of disposition, but allows
also, that they exceed the men in ingenuity; ought to have great
weight with those, who are such admirers of Aristotle, as to call
him the penetrating genius of Nature, and the sum and perfection of
human intelligence. But I must caution the women, not to put too much
confidence in Aristotle: because, although in the place we have just
cited, he ennobles them with a superiority in point of perspicuity;
a little lower down, he is very liberal in his abuse of them, and
says, they are greatly addicted to mischief: _Verum malitiosiores,
astutiores, insidiores fœminæ sunt_; and although just afterwards, he
concedes them the preference to the men, in the noble attribute of
tenderness or compassion, he instantly stigmatizes and marks them,
with the blemishes of envy, evil-speaking, inveteracy, and other such
bad qualities: _Ita quod mulier, misericors magis, & ad lacrymas
propensior, quam vir est: invida item magis, & querela & maledicentior,
& mordacior._ Upon the whole, I am not clear, whether the ladies will
accept the advantage of ingenuity which this philosopher has thought
fit to confer on them, loaded with the charges he has been pleased to
annex to it; we may however conclude from the premises, that when such
a man, who was so ill disposed towards them, admits as a fundamental,
that they are more ingenious than men, the evidence of their abilities
does not rest on slight ground.


SECT. XXII.

CXLII. It occurs to me here, that it is necessary to say something
of the aptitude of women for those arts, which are more elevated
than those they commonly exercise themselves in; such as painting,
and sculpture. Very few women have dedicated themselves to these
applications, but of those few, some have turned out excellent artists.
We have already said of the admirable Maria Surman, that she was
eminent in painting, sculpture, and engraving.

CXLIII. In Italy, the three sisters, _Sophonisba_, _Lucia_, and _Europa
Angosciola_, were celebrated painters; the first of which, Isabella,
queen of Spain, the wife of Philip the Second, took into her service,
and she was in such high repute, that pope Pius IV. solicited a
portrait of that queen, done by the hand of Sophonisba.

CXLIV. _Irene de Spilimberg_ was so excellent in the same art, that
her paintings were often taken for those of Titian, who was her
contemporary. Fate snatched her away at the age of twenty-six, which
event caused universal grief, and drew tears from the eyes of her
competitor.

CXLV. _Teresa de Po_ was held in great estimation at Naples as a
painter; and precious traits of her pencil, may be seen in the cabinet
of the most excellent marquis of Villena, who employed her when she was
vice-queen of Naples.

CXLVI. And even in statuary, Italy has produced famous women.
_Propercia de Rossi_ was generally applauded for her beautiful designs,
and well-wrought statues in marble; but the distinguished _Labinia
Fontana_, acquired greater applause than her, or indeed than any one
else. I have had information of but one female painter in France,
though she was of the first rate. This was _Isabela Sophia de Cheron_,
known by the name of _Madame le Hai_; who, over and above possessing
talents beyond the degree of mediocrity, for music and poetry, was a
most finished painter; and became so celebrated for her skill in this
art, that the dauphin, who was son to Louis XIV. employed her to paint
him and all his children: and Casimir, king of Poland, who, after his
voluntary abdication of that crown, resided in Paris, caused her to
do the same for him, and many people of the first rank and quality
in France followed their example; and even deigned to go and sit at
the house of Isabela, which the prince of Condé did several times.
The emperor Joseph, endeavoured to draw her to Vienna, by the offer
of a large pension; but not being able to prevail on her, he sent
her the drawings of his own likeness, and those of all the imperial
family, that from them she might paint their portraits. Her designs and
colouring, were exquisite, and her facility of execution, wonderful,
for she would continue to bear a part in whatever conversation
occurred, without giving the least relaxation to the operations of the
pencil; but her christian and generous actions, added to the piety of
her spirit, made her more esteemed, than the traits of her hand; and
she died as she lived, in the year 1711.

CXLVII. But where the equal degree of aptitude in the women for the
noble arts, compared to that of the men, is most conspicuous, is in the
instance of music, which is a faculty suited indifferently to either
sex; as the females who apply themselves to it, in proportion to the
time they study, generally make as great progress as the men do; nor
does a master of this art, find more difficulty in teaching girls than
boys. I knew one girl of this profession, who, before she arrived at
the age of fifteen, was a composer. I have purposely, in the mention of
so many illustrious women, avoided touching on the exquisite endowments
of our most enlightened queen, Donna Isabel of Farnese, because it
would have been presumption in so gross a pen as mine, to undertake
the discussion of so sublime a subject; and because another, much
better cut, and superiorly qualified for the task, has, between the
escutcheons of her royal house, drawn some traces of the excellencies
and splendor of her person.


SECT. XXIII.

CXLVIII. I am aware now, that against all I have said, it may be
replied to me to this effect: If women are equal to men, in their
aptitude for arts, sciences, political œconomy, and government, why
has God established the mastery, and superiority in the men, by the
sentence in the third chapter of Genesis, which says, _Sub viri
potestate eris?_ Because it is probable, he gave the government to that
sex, which he knew to be most capable of executing it.

CXLIX. I answer first, that the specific meaning of the text is
not certainly known, on account of the variation in the versions.
The reading in the Septuagint is: _Ad virum conversio tua._ In the
Aquilean: _Ad virum societas tua._ In the Samaritan: _Ad virum
appetitus, vel impetus tuus._ And the learned Benedict Perceyra says,
that by translating the Hebrew literally, the sentence will run thus:
_Ad virum desiderium, vel concupiscentia tua._

CL. I answer secondly, that it might be insisted, the political
subjection of the woman was absolutely a punishment for her sin, and
therefore, that in the state of innocence there was no such thing. The
text at least does not contradict such an opinion; for it rather seems,
that if it had been intended the woman should obey the man in the state
of innocence, God would have intimated this subjection, at the time he
formed her; and from these premises, it cannot so properly be inferred,
that God gave the man the preference, on account of his possessing an
understanding superior to the woman’s, as that it was done, because she
gave the first occasion to sin.

CLI. I say thirdly, that admitting, God from the beginning gave the
rule over the woman to the man, it does not follow from thence, that
he endued him with an understanding superior to her’s; but it rather
seems likely, this was done for the sake of maintaining family order
and decorum, for allowing them to be equal in point of talents,
unless the government and direction was vested in one, all would be
anarchy and confusion. Among the probable species of governments, the
moral philosophers, copying after Aristotle, have held or considered,
that which is called the Timocracian, to be the worst and most
exceptionable: for by this, all the individuals of the republic have
equal authority, and an equal voice; but in the case of a man and his
wife, this mode of directing, with respect to œconomical government,
would not only be imperfect, but impossible; for among a multitude
of people, where there is a variety of opinions, the dispute may be
decided by a plurality of votes; which cannot be done between a man
and his wife, for they are one, to one; and thus if they should happen
to be of different sentiments, unless one of them had the superiority,
the point could never be settled; but it may be said, why, if their
capacities were equal, should God think fit to give the superiority
to the men? Various reasons and motives may be assigned for this,
such as his excelling the women in many other useful qualities, for
example, constancy and courage; which virtues, are necessary for making
proper determinations, and for supporting them after they are made, by
subduing and bearing down all the obstacles, produced by vain and light
fears; but we should do better, instead of reasoning in this way, to
confess, we for the most part are ignorant of the motives of divine
resolutions.


SECT. XXIV.

CLII. I shall conclude this discourse, by endeavouring to set aside
an exception that may be made to the undertaking; which is, that
persuading mankind of the intellectual equality of both sexes, does
not seem to be productive of any utility to the public, but is rather
likely to occasion mischief, as it tends to foment in the women,
presumption and pride.

CLIII. I might reply to this scruple, by only saying, that, in whatever
matter that may present itself to our reflection, knowing the truth,
and setting aside error, is an utility which is apparent, and of itself
sufficient to justify our enquiry. The right understanding of things,
is of itself estimable, without regard to any other end or object in
the creation. Truths have their intrinsic value: and the stock, or
riches of the understanding, does not consist of any other money. Some
pieces are more valuable than others, but none are useless. Nor can
the truth we have proved, of itself, induce in the women vanity or
presumption. If they, in the perfections of the soul, are truly equal
to us, there can be no harm in their knowing, or being sensible of it.
St. Thomas, speaking of vain-glory, says, this sin is not incurred by a
man’s knowing, or being convinced of the perfection he possesses, and
which is contained in him: _Quod autem aliquis bonum suum cognoscat,
& approbet, non est peccatum (2 Quæst. 132. Art. 1.)_ and in another
place, speaking of presumption, he says, this vice is always founded
in some error or mistake of the understanding: _Præsumptio autem est
motus appetitivus, quia importat quondam spem inordinatam, habet
autem se conformiter intellectui falso (Quæst. 22. Art. 2.)_ The
women then, by knowing what they are, if they don’t estimate their
qualifications above their real value, can never become vain-glorious,
or presumptuous; but by attending to the thing, it will be found, the
deception this chapter is calculated to remove, will rather have a
different effect; and instead of adding presumption to the women, will
take it away from the men.

CLIV. Though I go further, and maintain, the maxim we have established,
is not only incapable of occasioning any moral evil, but that it
may be productive of much good. Consider, how many men the imagined
superiority of talents, has emboldened to attempt criminal conquests
over the other sex. In every encounter, the confidence, or diffidence
of a person’s own strength or power, goes a great way towards
determining the event of the conflict. The man, presuming on the
advantage of his superior understanding, proposes boldly; the woman,
judging herself inferior, listens with respect. Who can deny, that
such circumstances promote a great tendency and disposition, to his
becoming a conqueror, and her falling a victim?

CLV. Let the women then know, that, in point of understanding, they
are not inferior to the men. They will then determine with confidence,
on repelling and refuting those sophisms, by which, under the colour
and pretence of reason and arguments, the men attempt injustice and
injuries. If a woman can be persuaded, that a man compared to her,
is an oracle, she will lend an attentive ear to the most indignant
proposition, and will reverence as an infallible truth, the most
notorious falsehood. It is very well known, into what acts of turpitude
many women have been drawn, by the sect called Molinists, who, before
their practices upon them, were esteemed very virtuous persons. This
perversion, proceeded from no other cause, than their having considered
these Molinists, as men of superior lights and talents, and their
having entertained an extreme distrust of their own understandings,
when they represented to them clearly, the falsity of those venomous
dogmas.

CLVI. There is another consideration to be attended to, which is of
great importance in this matter. It is certain, that every one submits
easily, and without reluctance, to a person, who he is sensible has
some notable advantage over him. A man serves another man without
regret, who is more noble than himself, but he does it with great
repugnance, if they happen to be equal in birth. The same thing is
observable, or may be applied to the case we are treating of. If a
woman is under the mistake, that a man is of a much more noble sex than
herself, and that she, from a defect in her’s, in comparison to him,
is a poor contemptible animal of little value, she will think it no
shame to submit to him; and by these pre-disposing circumstances, being
aided with the flattery of obsequiousness, she may be betrayed into
esteeming that as an honour, which in reality is ignominious. To use
the words of St. Leon’s exclamation to the men, let the women then know
their dignity, and let them be sensible, that, in point of intellectual
capacity, our sex has no advantage over them, and that it will ever
be opprobrious and vile in them, to allow a man the dominion of their
bodies, save when he is empowered to claim it, by the authority, and
under the sanction, of holy matrimony.

CLVII. I have not yet told all the utility, which, in a moral sense,
will result to both the men and the women, by extricating them from the
error they lay under, with respect to the inequality of the sexes. I
firmly believe, this error is the cause, of many marriage-beds having
been dishonoured and contaminated with adulteries. It may seem that I
am entangling myself in a strange paradox, but this is not the case; I
having done no more, than assert an established truth. Attend.

CLVIII. A few months after the souls of two consorts, are united
together by the matrimonial bond, a woman begins to lose that
estimation, which she at first obtained, as a delectable object newly
acquired, and recently possessed. The man, passes from tenderness to
lukewarmness, which lukewarmness many times, comes to end in contempt,
and positive disestimation. When the husband arrives at this vicious
extreme, he, presuming on the advantages which he supposes to be
annexed to the superiority of his sex, begins to triumph over, and
insult his wife; instructed by, and versed in those sentences, which
pronounce, that the most which a woman can attain, may be attained
by a boy of fourteen years old, and that it is in vain, to seek for
either sense or prudence in them, together with other ridiculous,
and injurious reflections of the same kind; treating every thing he
observes in his wife, with the utmost contempt. In this situation, if
the poor woman attempts to remonstrate, she is accused of raving; all
she says, is impertinent, and foreign to the purpose; all she does
is wrong. If she is handsome, the attraction of her beauty stands
her in little stead, for its charm is dissolved, and the security of
possessing it, has made it of no value. The husband only recollects,
that his wife is an imperfect animal; and if he neglects her, will
upbraid the most spotless woman with being a vase of impurities.

CLIX. When the unhappy woman is in this humiliating and dejected state,
a gallant casts fond, or, as we commonly say in Spain, good eyes
on her. To her, who at all times is condemned to see nothing but a
frowning brow, it is natural to suppose, a pleasant countenance appears
very delightsome: and such a leading circumstance conduces much to
bring on, and facilitates a conversation between the parties; in which,
the woman hears nothing but what is flattering and pleasing to her.
Before this, she used to be accosted in nought but terms of reproach
and contempt, and now, she is addressed in expressions of tenderness
and adoration. She lately was treated as something beneath a woman; and
now, she is elevated to the sphere of a divinity. She was accustomed
lately to be called nothing but fool; and now, she is told that she
possesses a sublime understanding. In the language of her husband,
she was all imperfections; in that of her gallant, she is all charms
and graces. The partner of her bed, lorded it over her like a tyrant
master; the other, throws himself at her feet as an humble slave; and
although the lover, if he had been her husband, would have acted just
as the husband did: this reflection escapes the miserable wife, and she
only sees that sort of difference between them, which there is between
an angel and a brute. She views in her husband, a heart full of thorns;
and in her gallant, one crowned with flowers. There a chain of iron
presents itself to her sight; here a golden one. There slavery; here
dominion. There a dungeon; here a throne.

CLX. In this situation, what can the most resolute woman do? How can
she resist two impulses, directed to the same point, one that impels,
and the other which attracts her? If heaven does not stretch forth a
powerful and a friendly hand to support her, her fall is inevitable.
And if she does fall, who can deny that her own husband forced her over
the precipice? If he had not treated her with indignity and abusive
railing, the flattery of the lover would have been of no avail. It was
his ill-treatment which occasioned her downfall. All this mischief,
most frequently proceeds from the mean opinion, which married men are
apt to entertain of the other sex. Let them renounce these erroneous
maxims, and the consequence will be, that their wives will become more
faithful and constant. Let them cherish and esteem them, for God has
commanded they should love them; and I can’t understand, how love and
contempt, with respect to the same object, can be entertained, and
accommodate themselves together in one and the same heart.




    ON
    CHURCH MUSIC.


SECT. I.

I. In ancient times, if we believe Plutarch, music was used only in
temples, and that afterwards it passed to theatres. Formerly, it
served as an ornament to divine worship; afterwards, it was used to
stimulate vice. Heretofore, the melody of sacred hymns only were heard;
afterwards, we began to listen to profane songs. Music originally,
was used as an obsequies to the Deities, it was afterwards applied to
inflame the passions. In old times, it was dedicated to Apollo, but it
seems as if afterwards, Apollo had divided the protection of this art
with Venus; and as if to poison the soul, and paint on the theatres
the charms of vice, the finest colourings of rhetoric, joined to the
harmony of poetic numbers, were not sufficient, they, to render these
charms more attracting, and make the venom more active, confectioned
and compounded rhetoric, poetry, and music together.

II. This diversity of uses to which music was appropriated, induced
a difference in the composition of it: and as it was necessary in
the temple, and in the theatre, to excite distinct affections, they
contrived distinct modes of melody, to correspond, as their echoes,
with the different affections of the soul. The Dorian mode, as grave,
majestic, and devout, was reserved for the temple; and in the theatres,
they adopted different modes, suited to the diversity of the matters.
In the amorous representations, they used the Lydian mode, which was
soft and tender; and when they had a mind to give the movement a
stronger effect and expression, they applied the mixed Lydian, which
was more pathetic and striking than the Lydian by itself. In warlike
representations, they used the Phrygian mode, which is terrible and
furious; and in affairs of mirth and jollity, or favouring of the
Bacchanalian, they adopted the Æolian, which was sprightly and comic.
The Subphrygian mode, was appropriated to calm the transports, raised
by the Phrygian; and thus, to produce other effects, they had other
modes of melody.

III. Whether these modes of the antients, corresponded with the
different tones used by the moderns, is not clearly ascertained. Some
authors affirm they do, others doubt it. I myself, am inclined to
think they do not, because the diversity of our tones, have not that
influence to vary the passions, which was experienced in the different
modes of the antients.


SECT. II.

IV. Thus music, in those remote ages, was divided between the temple
and the theatre, and was applied promiscuously, to worship at the
altar, and to the corruption of manners. But although this was a
lamentable falling-off, it was not the greatest abuse which has been
practised on this noble art, the accomplishment of its perversion
being reserved for our times. When the alteration in the application
of music, which was employed heretofore only in divine worship, took
place, the Greeks made a very judicious division and distribution of
it; reserving to the temple, that which was proper for the temple; and
giving to the theatre, that which was suitable to the theatre; but
what has been done in these latter times? Not content with keeping
theatrical music for the use of the theatre, they have translated it to
the church.

V. The church chants of these times, with respect to their form and
manner, sound like the songs of a jovial company sitting round a
table. They are all composed of minuets, recitatives, light airs, and
allegros; at the end of which, they substitute something which is
called grave; but this is done very sparingly, lest it should seem
tiresome and disgusting. What can this mean? Should not all the music
in a church be grave? Ought not the whole composition to be calculated
to impress gravity, devotion, and decency? The instrumental music is
the same; but what effect can these Canary-birds airs, so predominant
in the taste of the moderns, produce in the soul? This music, so
replete with jigs, that you can scarce find a piece without one, can
raise no other emotions in the imagination, than those of frolic and
levity. He who hears on the organ, the same minuet which he heard at
the ball, what effect will it have on him? No other, than reminding him
of the lady with whom he danced the preceding night. Thus the music,
which ought to translate the spirit of him who listens to it, from the
terrestrial to the celestial temple, conveys it from the church to the
banquet; and the ideas raised in the imagination of the person who
hears this, if either from constitution, or vicious habits, he is ill
disposed, will not forsake him at the church door.

VI. O good God! is this the sort of music, which expressed from the
breast of the great Austin, while he was still wavering between God and
the world, sighs of compunction, and tears of piety? _Oh how I wept_,
said the saint, addressing himself to God in his confessions, _moved
and excited, by the salutary hymns and canticles of thy church! Those
words and sounds, made a lively impression on my ears, and through
them, thy truths penetrated my mind. My heart burned with affection,
and my eyes melted in tears._ This was the effect of the church music
of those times; which, like the lyre of David, expelled the evil
spirit, that had not quite forsaken the possession of St. Austin, and
invoked the good one; the music of these times expels the good one,
if such resides, and invites the evil one. The ecclesiastical chant
of those days, was like the sound of the trumpets of Joshua, which
threw down the walls of Jericho, that is, the passions which fortify
the strong town of Vice. The chant of the present times, resembles the
songs of the Syrens, which lead navigators on rocks and shoals.


SECT. III.

VII. How much better was the church with the plain chant, the only one
known in it for many ages, and which, for the most part, was composed
by the monks of St. Benedict, who were the greatest masters in the
world at that time, among whom, should be first reckoned Gregory the
Great, and the celebrated Guido Aretinus; after them came John Murs,
a doctor of the Sorbonne, who invented the notes, which mark the
various duration of the points; and truly, the simplicity of that
chant, was not deficient in melodies, capable of moving the passions,
and sweetly suspending the hearers. The compositions of Guido Aretinus
were reckoned so pathetic, that cardinal Baronius tells us, that, in
the year 1022, pope Gregory VIII. sent for him from his convent of
Arezzo, and would not let him depart his presence, till he had taught
him to sing a short verse of his Antiphonario. This was the person who
invented the modern system of music, or artificial progression, which
is now used, and called the scale of Guido Aretinus. He also contrived
the harmonious combination of voices, in different tones; which art,
was in all probability known to the antients, but all traces of it were
then lost.

VIII. The plain chant, executed with proper pauses, has a peculiar
excellence for the use of churches, which is, that being incapable
of exciting such affections as are raised by theatrical music, it
necessarily follows, that it must be the best adapted to induce such
as are proper for the church. Who, by the sonorous majesty of the
hymn _Vexilla Regis_, by the festive gravity of the _Pange Lingua_,
by the mournful tenderness of the _Invitatorio de Difuntos_, would
not feel himself excited to veneration, devotion, and contrition? We
hear these chants every day, notwithstanding which, they always seem
pleasing; when at the same time, after half a dozen repetitions, modern
compositions grow tiresome and unsavoury to us.

IX. I would not however, on this account, quarrel with the figured,
or, as it is commonly called, the organ chant; as I am sensible, it
has great advantages over the plain; because it preserves and marks
the accents on the words, which in the plain chant is impossible; and
because the different duration of the points, produce to the ear that
agreeable effect, which is caused to the sight, by a well-proportioned
inequality of colours. It is only the abuse that has been introduced in
the organ chant, which makes me prefer the plain one; and am in this
respect, like a man who anxiously covets plain food, and avoids the
more delicate, when he knows it is corrupted.


SECT. IV.

X. What good-disposed ears can, in sacred chants, endure those enormous
breaks, and lascivious inflections, which offend against the rules of
decency, and are contrary to those of music? I speak of those flights
and wanderings, which seem as if they had been studied, and which
the voice takes by straying from the subject of the melody; of those
languishing falls from one point to another, that run not only through
the semi-tone, but also through all the intermediate comas, and are
transitions, which are not contained in art, nor does Nature allow them.

XI. Experience shews, that the changes which the voice makes in the
chant, by running through small intervals (such passages containing
in themselves a degree of effeminate softness, if not a lascivious
tendency), are apt to produce in the minds of hearers, an effect,
correspondent to such sort of ideas, and impress on the fancy certain
confused images, which represent nothing good. On this account, many
of the antients, and particularly the Lacedæmonians, reprobated as
pernicious to youth, the sort of music called Chromatic, which by the
introduction of B-flatts, and sostenutos, divides the octave into
smaller intervals than the natural ones. Hear what Cicero says of this:
_Chromaticum creditur repudiatum pridem fuisse genus, quod adolescentum
remolesccrent eo genere animi; Lacedæmones improbasse ferentur. (Lib.
1. Tuscul. Quæst.)_ It may be supposed, they would have found more
reason for prohibiting the Enharmonic also; which, by the addition of
more flats and sostenutos, and by being joined to the two other sorts,
the Diatonic and Chromatic, which must necessarily precede it, and
by making the interval less still, divides the octave into a greater
number of points: in consequence of which combination (the voice, by
sometimes deviating from the natural point, through spaces which are
yet shorter, that is to say, the minor semi-tones) there results a
music, more soft and effeminate than the Chromatic.

XII. Is it not much to be lamented, that the Christians don’t use the
same precaution the antients did, to prevent music from perverting the
manners of youth? But we are so far from doing this, that already no
music is allowed to be good, in which there is not introduced at every
turn, both in the human voice, and in the instruments, points, which
they call foreign, and which pass through all parts of the diapason,
from the natural point to the accidental one; and this is the mode.
There is no doubt but these transitions, managed with moderation,
art and genius, produce an admirable effect; because they mark the
expression of the words with more vivacity and spirit, than the pure
diatonic progressions; and there results from so contriving things,
a more delicate and expressive music. But the composers who are
capable of doing this, are very few, and those few are the occasion
of an infinite number of others losing and exposing themselves; who,
by endeavouring to imitate them, for want of talents and address to
manage the business, fail in the attempt, and form with their foreign
introductions, a ridiculous music, which sometimes is insipid, and at
others harsh; and when they mistake the least, there results from their
labours, an unmeaning softness, and lascivious delicacy, which has no
good effect on the mind, because there is no expression in it, capable
of exciting any noble emotion. If, notwithstanding all that is objected
to it, composers are desirous such music should go down, because it is
the fashion, let them apply it to the use of the theatres and concert
rooms; but don’t let them introduce it into the churches, as fashions
were never contrived or calculated for them; and if the divine offices
do not admit of change of modes, either in vestments or rites, why
should they be admitted in musical compositions?

XIII. The case is, that this change of modes, contains at the bottom
a certain venom, which Cicero gives an admirable description of;
for he remarks, that in Greece, with the same pace manners declined
towards corruption, music declined from its antient majesty, towards
an affected softness; either because an effeminate music corrupted
the integrity of men’s minds, or because a vitiated and depraved music
debauches their taste, and inclines them to relish those bastard
melodies, which, as symbols of, are best suited to their perverted
manners: _Civitatumque hoc multarum in Græcia interfuit, antiquum
vocum servare modum: quarum mores lapsi, ad mollitiem pariter sunt
immutati in cantibus; aut hac dulcedine, corruptelaque depraviti, ut
quidam putant: aut cum severitas morum ob olia vitia cecidisset, tum
fuit in auribus, animisque mutatis etiam huic mutationi locus._ (Lib.
2. de Legibus.) So that the taste for this effeminate music, is the
effect or cause of some relaxation in the mind. I would not however be
understood to say, that all those who have a taste for such music, are
tainted with this defect. Many of strict and incorruptible virtue, whom
no vitiated music can warp, seem to approve it; but they in general do
this, because they hear it is the fashion: and even many, though in
reality they do not relish it, are led to say they do, only because
they would not be looked upon as people wedded to, and prejudiced in
favour of antiquated customs, and as persons, who are not possessed of
faculties, capable of relishing the fine taste of the moderns.


SECT. V.

XIV. I am ready however to confess, that there have lately been
published some excellent compositions, both with respect to the
pleasing elegance of their taste, and the subtilty of the art displayed
in them; but by way of contrast to these, which are very rare, an
innumerable quantity of others have been produced, that to the ears are
insufferable. This arises, partly from people undertaking to compose,
who are not capable of doing it; and partly from ordinary composers
pretending to take licences, which should only be attempted by great
masters.

XV. It fares with music at this time, as it fares with surgery. In the
same manner, that every blood letter of middling ability, takes upon
him the name and occupation of a surgeon, every organist and violin
player, of reasonable dexterity, sets himself up for a composer. This
they can do, with little difficulty or labour, for they have only to
get by heart, the general rules of consonance and dissonance; and then,
from the numberless manuscripts, or printed violin sonatas with which
the world abounds, take the first light air which occurs, or seems
pleasing to them, and apply the tone of that air to the words; and
as the voice proceeds, they, by those general rules, go on covering
it with a dry accompanyment, which contains neither imitation nor
excellence; and between the pauses of the voice, they may introduce
a burst of violins for ten or a dozen bars, more or less, provided
that is the stile of the sonata from whence they made the theft. If
they would content themselves with doing no more than this, we might
be brought to endure their productions: but the worst of the evil
is, that from an affectation of being thought superior to trivial
composition, they introduce false concords, without preparing, or being
able to resolve them, and by that means, make terrible blemishes,
and commit faults, that are inexcusable; and because also, they see
some illustrious composers, dispense with the common rules, and take
liberties, such as writing two-fifths, or two octaves immediately
following each other, which they do only for the sake of introducing
a good passage, or to attain some excellence of harmony, and which,
without taking such a liberty, they could not have effected: and
although these never take such a latitude, but under particular
circumstances, and subject to certain limitations; the others have the
audacity to attempt it, out of time, and when it can answer no purpose
whatever; by which means, they are thrown to the ground with such
violence, that the stroke of their fall is shocking to the ear.

XVI. Middling composers, although, by endeavouring to tread in the
steps of the excellent ones, they do not fall into such gross errors,
generally form a music, which at some times is lifeless, and at others
turgid. This is occasioned by their introducing accidentals, and
changing the keys in the same piece; which method, if practised by
great masters, who used it seasonably and opportunely, not only gives a
greater sweetness to the music, but communicates to the words, a more
striking impression, than they of themselves, without this assistance,
could convey or produce. Some strangers had a happy talent at doing
this; but no one understood it better, than our Don Antonio de Literes,
a composer of the first rate, and who is perhaps the only one, who
knows how to unite all the majesty and sweetness of the antient music,
with the bustle and hurry of the modern; but in the management of
the accidental points, he has a singular address, for almost every
time he introduces them, they give an energy to the music, which is
correspondent to, and strengthens the signification of the words they
fall on. To do this, requires both genius and science, but much more
genius than science. From this deficiency in point of genius, we find
masters in Spain, of great knowledge and comprehension, who were
not so happy as to succeed in this way; so that, although in their
compositions we admire the subtilty of their art, their works do not
obtain the approbation of our ears.

XVII. Those who are unassisted by genius, and who, on the other hand,
do not possess more than a moderate knowledge of music, make false
concordances, introduce accidentals, and change the keys, because doing
so is the fashion; and because they are fond of having it thought, they
know how to manufacture these sort of airs; although, in reality, they
seldom produce any air at all; and notwithstanding their compositions
are conformable to the common rules, still they are unsavoury, and
disagreeable; and when they are performed in the church, instead of
producing that sweet calm, and inward composure which are requisite to
devotion, they excite perturbations in the hearts of the hearers.

XVIII. Between the first and second of these, there comes in another
sort of composers, who, though in point of abilities, are above
mediocrity, they for sacred compositions are the worst of all. These
are they, who sport with, and run the changes, upon all the delicacies
music is capable of; but dispose them in such a manner, that the melody
produced, has the sound of pantomime airs. All the irregularities
they practise, either in false concordances, or accidentals, are
introduced as graces, but graces very different from those recommended
by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Colossians: _Ingratia cantantes in
cordibus vestris Deo_: instead of such; they are graces of banter, and
harmonies of indecency; and are a sort of passages, the best of which,
the musicians themselves call childish and apish. Are such proper for
the church? Let them, in God’s name, be sent to the courts of the
comedies, and the halls of the dance. But is it not an impious abuse,
to introduce into the house of God, things which are trifling, apish
and indecent? And is not the blending them with divine worship, an
abominable error?

XIX. Is not this attempting to banish from music, all enlivening
chearfulness, except that which savours of the puerile and buffoon?
Music may be exceedingly chearful, and at the same time, impregnated
with a majestic gravity, capable of exciting in the hearers, affections
of respect and devotion: or, to speak more properly, the most chearful
and delectable music of all, is that which induces a sweet tranquillity
in the soul; collecting it within itself, and let us say, elevating it
with a kind of extatic rapture, superior to the body it is attached to;
that the mind may take a flight, towards the mansions of bliss, and
contemplate divine things in a nearer point of view. This is the sort
of chearful music, which St. Austin approved as useful in churches,
and which he treated St. Athanasius with excessive severity for having
objected to; because its proper effect, is elevating those hearts to
noble affections, which are oppressed and weighed down with earthly
inclinations: _Ut per hæc oblectamenta aurium infirmior animus in
affectum pietatis assurgat._ (Lib. 10. Confess. cap. 32.)

XX. It is true, that the masters capable of forming this noble kind
of melody, are very few; but those who can’t attain this degree of
perfection, should content themselves with doing something less; taking
care however, that their compositions should tend to excite such
dispositions, as are suitable to divine offices; or at least being
careful, that they should not conduce to promote inclinations of an
opposite nature; and at all events, although it should be at the hazard
of disobliging the multitude, to shun those skittish sort of airs,
which have a certain occult relation to forbidden affections; but of
the two evils into which church music is in danger of falling, that of
its being offensive to the ears, is a less mischief, than that of its
being an incentive to vice.

XXI. The power of music to stir the passions, and raise in the minds
of men, dispositions to virtue or vice, is very well known. It is
related of Pythagoras, that, having by music adapted to produce such an
effect, inflamed the heart of a certain youth to a dishonourable amour,
he afterwards, by changing the tone, reduced him to the dominion of
continence. It is also related of Timotheus, a musician of Alexander
the Great, that he could irritate the martial fury of that prince to
such a degree, that he would seize on his arms, and put himself in
an attitude, as if his enemies were in front, and he on the point of
charging them. This effect, however, was the less surprising, because
the natural disposition of the prince, conspired to assist the skill
of the artist. Some add, that after having enraged, he calmed him; and
caused Alexander, who never turned his back on any danger, to become a
fugitive from his own rage. But what is told of the power of another
musician, which was exercised on Henry II. King of Denmark, called the
Good, is more extraordinary than all this; for it is said, that by a
movement and touch, calculated to excite choler, he inflamed the rage
of that prince to such a degree, that he fell upon, and put to death,
three or four of his domestics, and would have carried the havoc and
devastation still further, if he had not been restrained by violence.
This was the more wonderful, because the king’s natural disposition,
was gentle and peaceable.

XXII. I don’t imagine the musicians of these times can perform such
miracles, neither perhaps did the antient ones; for these histories
are not extracted from Holy Writ. It is however certain, that music,
according as the melody is varied, induces in the mind a variety of
dispositions, some good, others bad. With one we find ourselves moved
to sorrow, with another to mirth; with one to clemency, with another to
blood; with one to fortitude, with another to pusillanimity; and so on
with respect to other inclinations.

XXIII. There is no doubt of the justness of this remark; neither is
there any, that a master, who composes for the church, should dispose
the music in such a way, and write it in such a stile, as is best
calculated to promote the spiritual welfare of souls; and to sustain
the majesty, decorum, and solemnity of divine worship. St. Thomas,
touching upon this point, says, the chant was a salutary institution
in the church, because it excited sickly souls, that is, such as were
weak in spirit, to devotion. But, alas! what would the saint say, if
he was to hear in the church some of the airs of these times, which,
so far from fortifying the sick, enfeeble the healthy; which, instead
of promoting devotion in the breast, banish it from the soul; and
instead of elevating the mind to pious reflections, bring to the memory
forbidden things? I repeat it again, that it is an obligation on
musicians, and a very serious one, to correct this abuse.

XXIV. Truly, when I reflect on the serious turn of mind for which
Spaniards heretofore were remarkable, I can’t help being struck
with amazement, to find at present, that we can relish no other but
puppet-shew music. This looks as if the celebrated Spanish gravity, was
reduced to nothing more, than stalking stiff and erect up and down the
street. The Italians, by means of the false flattering insinuation,
that music has been improved of late days, have made us the slaves of
their taste. I, for my own part, believe what they call improvement, to
be ruin and destruction, or something very near it. All intellectual
arts, of whose excellencies, the understanding and the taste, cloathed
with an equal degree of authority are judges, have their points, or
zenith of perfection, which when they are once arrived at, he who
attempts to advance them, commonly occasions their decline, and puts
them in a train, which leads to their destruction.

XXV. It will perhaps, with respect to the science of music, happen
to Italy very soon, if it has not happened there already, just as
it happened to it with regard to the Latin language, oratory, and
poetry. These faculties, in the age of Augustus, arrived to that state
of propriety, beauty, elegance, and natural energy, in which their
true perfection consisted. Those who succeeded to that age, pretended,
by the violent introduction of improper ornaments, to refine them;
by doing which, they precipitated them from Nature to affectation,
and from thence they afterwards fell into barbarism. The poets who
succeeded Virgil, and the orators who succeeded Cicero, were thoroughly
persuaded in themselves, that they had given new graces, and new
excellencies to the two arts; but the keen Petronius Arbiter, after
upbraiding them with their ridiculous and pompous affectation, told
them very plainly, what in reality they had done: _Vos primi omnium
eloquentiam perdidistis._


SECT. VII.

XXVI. To see whether the music of these times suffers the same
shipwreck, which the before-named sciences underwent; let us examine,
in what the music, which is now practised, differs from that of the
antecedent age. The first and most remarkable distinction which occurs,
is the diminution of the figures. The shortest points which were
formerly known, were demi-semi quavers; and with them, it was imagined,
they had given to the execution of the chant, and the instruments, as
great a degree of velocity, as without doing violence to both, they
were capable of attaining. This did not seem sufficient, and a little
while afterwards, they invented dividing the demi-semi quavers into
thirds, by which means, the movement became one part in three quicker
than it was before. The extravagance of composers did not stop here,
for they doubled the demi-semi quavers, and made a movement, that, for
its rapidity, seems to have gone beyond the reach of imagination, which
can scarce conceive, how it is possible, in the compass of a bar, to
articulate or express sixty-four points. I don’t know whether before
this age, any double demi-semi quavers ever appeared figured in any
composition; except it was in the song of the Risuenor, which father
Kircher, in the middle of the last century, caused to be printed, in
the first book of his _Musurgia Universalis_; and I am even inclined
to think, that solfa savours of the hyperbolic; for it is not easy to
persuade me, that that bird, with all his agility and flexibility of
throat, could articulate sixty-four points, in the space of raising and
falling the hand, within the compass of regular time.

XXVII. I now say, this diminution of figures, instead of perfectioning
music, entirely spoils and ruins it; for two reasons: the first is,
that it will be very difficult to find a person, who either with
the voice, or an instrument, is capable of executing points of such
velocity. The before-cited father Kircher, says, that having made some
compositions which were out of the common track, and of difficult
execution, (though I believe they were not so difficult as those which
are now the fashion) he could not find in all Rome, a singer capable
of performing them. How then can you expect to find in every province,
and in every cathedral, instrumental performers and singers, who, in
exact time, and with the due intonation, are capable of executing these
exceeding minute figures; and to this difficulty, we may likewise add,
that of the many extravagant flights and jumps, which at present are
the fashion also. To articulate such a solfa, requires a throat of
prodigious volubility; and to express such music on an instrument,
demands admirable agility, and dexterity of hand; and, therefore, such
compositions are only fit for one or two very singular executionists,
which may be found in this or that particular court; but they should
not be printed for the use of the world at large; for the same singer,
who, with a natural and easy solfa, would give pleasure to the hearers,
would, by attempting these difficult passages, distract them; and from
the same hand, by which a sonata, of easy execution, would sound
delightsome and sweet, one of arduous difficulty would sound like the
talking of gibberish.

XXIV. The second reason why this diminution of figures destroys music,
is because it does not give space for the ear to perceive melody. As
the delight the eye receives by a well-disposed variety of colours,
could not be attained, if each was to pass the sight with so quick a
motion, that it could scarce make a distinct impression on the organ,
and it is the same with all sorts of visible objects; just so, if the
points into which music is divided are of so short a duration, as to
be incapable of acting distinctly on the ear, this organ, would not
perceive harmony but confusion. Further, this second inconvenience,
like the rest, is increased by the abuse, which, in their practice
is committed by instrumental performers; who, although they are but
slow or indifferent hands, generally make ostentation of playing with
great velocity; and commonly strive to execute the sonata, with more
rapidity than the composer intended, or than the character of the
music requires. From whence it follows, that by a defect in the most
essential part of the execution, which is precision and exactness,
the music loses its true and proper genius; and the by-standers hear
nothing but a confused clatter. Let every one then pursue the mode,
which is suitable to his talents and abilities; for if he, who is
heavy and slow of foot, endeavours to run as fast as him who is light
and nimble, his whole career will be nothing but stumbles: and if he,
who can only run, attempts to fly, he will soon fall, and dash himself
to pieces.

XXIX. The second distinction between antient and modern music, consists
in the frequency and excess of transitions in this last, from the
diatonic to the chromatic and enharmonic stile; and in often changing
the tones, by the introduction of sostenutos and B flats. This, as I
observed before, has a good effect, if it is done with moderation and
opportunely. But the Italians of this day, run to such an extravagant
excess with these transitions, that they force harmony off its hinges.
Whoever has any difficulty of believing this, let him, free from
prejudice or partiality, consult his own ears, whenever he hears any of
those sonatas or chants performed which abound much in accidentals.

XXX. The third distinction consists in the liberty which composers at
present take, of mixing in their music, all sorts of modulations that
occur to them; without confining themselves, either to imitation or
theme. The pleasure perceived by this music, which I will take the
liberty of calling loose and dishevelled, is vastly inferior to the
enjoyment afforded by that beautiful regularity and contrivance, with
which the masters of the last age, introduced a pleasing variety into
a passage; and especially, when the music was calculated for four
voices. Strangers are sensible of the high value of such compositions;
nor are excellent ones of this species wanting in other countries; but
composers in general, avoid writing in this stile, because the doing it
well, demands more labour and study, than they are commonly disposed
to take; so that if now and then they introduce, and begin pursuing
a passage, they quickly leave it, and give a loose to their fancy,
letting it run where it lifts. Strangers, who come to Spain, are for
the most part mere executionists, and therefore not capable of forming
this kind of music; because it requires more scientific knowledge, than
they are generally masters of; and therefore, to conceal that they are
deficient in point of ability, they endeavour to persuade people, the
method of pursuing passages is out of fashion.


SECT. VIII.

XXXI. This is the species of music, with which the Italians, by the
hand of their beloved master Duron, have regaled us; for he was the
man, who first introduced foreign modes into the music of Spain. It is
true, that since his time, these modes have been so refined, that if
Duron could now rise from his grave, he would not know them; but still,
the blame of all these novelties is imputable to him, for he was the
first who opened the door for their introduction. Virgil’s description
of the winds, may be applied to the airs of the Italian music.

    _Qua data porta ruunt, & terras turbine perflant._

With regard to the science of music, we see verified in the Spaniards,
with respect to the Italians, that easy condescension in admitting
novelties, which Pliny lamented in the Italians themselves, with
respect to the Greeks: _Mutatur quotidie ars interpolis, & ingeniorum
Græciæ flatu impellimur._

XXXII. With all this, we are not without able composers in Spain, who
have not totally fallen in with the fashion, or who jointly, with
conforming to it, and judiciously combining the antient and modern
together, have wrote some valuable and delectable pieces of grammatical
music; in which, the sweetness and majesty of the old compositions
has been preserved. Speaking of this, brings afresh to my memory, the
savoury and luxuriant Literes; and I can’t help mentioning him a second
time, for he is a composer truly original. A character of elevated
sweetness, which is proper and natural to him, is resplendent in all
his works, and which never forsakes him, even when he sets words to
music, on amorous or profane subjects: so that even in songs of love,
or comic gallantry, he preserves a kind of sublimity, which can only
touch, or be felt by the superior part of the soul; this he manages
with such address, that he awakes tenderness, and at the same time
lulls lust to sleep. I would have this composer always employed in
writing for sacred subjects: because the genius of his compositions,
is better calculated to inspire celestial affections, than to foment
earthly amours. If some of his music, is less impregnated with that
tumultuous air and clatter, for which the works of many other authors
are admired: it, for that very reason, is, in my opinion, better
calculated for the use of churches; because music in them, demands a
serious gravity, which should sweetly calm the mind; and not a puerile
flightiness, which would excite to dance with castanets. Compositions
of the last kind are very easy, and are therefore made by many; those
of the first sort are difficult, and therefore but few attempt them.


SECT. IX.

XXXIII. What we have hitherto said of the irregularity and disorders
of church music, does not extend to chants in the vulgar tongue
only, but to psalms, masses, lamentations, and other parts of divine
service, because the modes in fashion, have been introduced into them
all. I have, in printed lamentations, seen the changes of the airs
characterised in the same terms, which are used to describe them in
comic music. Here you read _grave_, there _ayroso_, and in another
place _andante_. What, can’t we admit of all the music being grave,
even in a lamentation? And is it necessary to introduce light comedy
airs into the representation of the most afflicting mysteries? If grief
could find a place in heaven, Jeremiah would lament afresh, at seeing
such music applied to his songs of mourning. Is it impossible, that in
those complainings, where every letter is a sigh, corresponding with,
and expressive of the various sensations, arising from the subjects
of his lamentation; either the ruin of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans,
the destruction of the world for sin, the affliction of the church
militant for the persecution of its martyrs; and, to sum up the whole,
the anguish and sufferings of our Redeemer, for the salvation of
mankind. I say, can the feelings produced by such sad and distressing
calamities, be expressed with airy tunes and recitatives? In the
mournful songs of Jeremiah, which some expositors call the Alphabet of
the Penitents, should we hear the sound of festive airs and serenades?
With how much more reason than him, ought we to exclaim here in the
language of Seneca, when he censured Ovid, for having introduced
into the description of so tragical an event as that of Deucalion’s
flood, a verse which savoured of gallantry: _Non est res satis sobria
lascivire devorato orbe terrarum._ The Cythara of Nero, while Rome was
burning, had not so harsh a sound, as the harmony of dances in the
representation of such affecting mysteries.

XXXIV. And besides offending in this particular against the rules of
reason, they sin also against the laws of music, which prescribe, that
the tone of the chant, should be suited to the meaning of the words;
and therefore, when the language is solemn and expressive of sorrow,
the tone of the music should be grave and affecting.

XXXV. It is true, that against this rule, which is one of the most
cardinal, musicians very frequently sin in all sorts of compositions,
some from being deficient, and others by exceeding. Those fall into
the error of deficiency, who form music without any attention to the
spirit or meaning of the words to which they apply it; but hardly any
fall into those gross mistakes, except such as scarce deserve the name
of composers, and who are capable of doing nothing more, than racking
or weaving together, shreds and strips, of the compositions of other
musicians.

XXXVI. Those err by exceeding or doing too much, who regulate their
music with a puerile nicety, to correspond with the distinct or
separate signification of each word, taken or standing by itself,
without having regard to the meaning of the whole context. An example
produced by father Kircher to illustrate this abuse, will explain what
I mean. He instanced the manner, in which a composer had set to music
the following verse: _Mors festinat luctuosa_; to the words _mors_ and
_luctuosa_, he applied a mournful solfa; but to the word _festinat_,
which stood in the middle between them, as it seemed to him, to signify
vivacity or quickness, he appropriated a career of allegros, that would
have caused the most sluggish nag who heard them, to bound about and
give cabriols.

XXXVII. I saw something as bad, or indeed even worse than this, in
one of the lamentations I cited before; where to the music adapted
to express the following sentence: _Deposita est vehementer non
habens consolatorem_, was marked ayroso. How ill-suited is an airy
movement, to express the lamentable fall of Jerusalem, and also that
of all mankind bowed down and crippled with the weight of their sins;
which misfortune, was aggravated with the additional and distressing
circumstance, of their being destitute of comfort under the calamity?
But the blame of all this, was imputable to the adverb _vehementer_,
because to express vehemence, appeared to the composer to require a
lively movement; and thus, when he came to that word in the sentence,
he quickened his pace, and upon the adverb _vehementer_, expended in
rapid notes, music to the amount of forty crotchets; but the word,
in the sense it was there used, was intended to signify the same as
_gravissime_, and to express with energy, the degree of grief and
sadness, occasioned by the fall of Jerusalem, which, crippled and bore
down with the crushing weight of its sins, came to the ground, temple,
walls, and houses, all together.

XXXVIII. Nobody was more guilty of this fault, than the celebrated
Duron, and he committed it to such a degree, that sometimes in the same
couplet, just as the signification of the words of the verse varied,
taken separately or by themselves, he would vary the affectations of
the chant, six or eight times; and although it required great address
and ability to do this, which he in reality was possessed of; such an
exertion of his talents was ill applied.


SECT. X.

XXXIX. Some (for we would not omit to mention this) judge, that the
composing music adapted to different subjects, consists much, in a
right choice of the keys; and they assign one for grave subjects,
another for chearful ones, and another for mournful ones, and so on;
but I believe, this contributes little or nothing to the business;
for there is no key whatever, in which there have not been written,
very expressive and pathetic compositions, suited to excite all kinds
of affections. The different place which the two semi-tones occupy in
the diapason, and which is what the distinction of keys consists in,
is insufficient to induce this diversity; because in whatever place
an accidental is introduced, and they introduce them at every turn,
this order is changed; and because various, or the most parts of the
composition, by varying their terminations, fall upon, or catch the
semi-tones, in a different position, from that in which they stand or
are placed, with respect to the diapason. For example; although the
first key-tone, which begins D solre, proceeds in this order, first a
tone, then a semi-tone, after that three tones, to which there follows
another semi-tone, and at last there comes a whole tone. The different
traces, or minute passages of the composition, taken each by itself,
do not follow this order; because one begins in the first, another in
the tone which is next after it, and so on with respect to all the
other parts of the diapason, and they terminate wherever the composer
likes best; by which means, in every trace or minute passage of the
composition, the position of the semi-tones is varied, as much, as in
the different diapasons, which constitute the diversity of the keys.

XL. What confirms me in this sentiment, that the suiting music to
produce a grave or a sprightly effect, does not depend upon the choice
of the key it is wrote in, is, that the greatest musicians, are much
divided in their opinions upon this point. What one considers as a
lively key, another thinks a mournful one; what one esteems a devout
key, another calls a flighty one. The two great jesuits, father
Kircher, and father Dechales, are so opposite in their sentiments
upon this head, that the same key, which father Kircher characterizes
in this manner, _Harmoniosus, magnificus, & regia majestate plenus_,
father Dechales speaks thus of: _Ac tripudia, & choreas est comparatus,
diciturque propterea lascivus_; and they differ little less, in their
assignation of the characters of many other keys, if not of all.

XLI. The foregoing, should be understood to relate and apply to the
essential difference of keys, which consists, in the diversity of
position of the semi-tones in the diapason; but not to their accidental
difference; which, consists, in their being taken higher or lower. This
may conduce something to create effect; because the same music, set
in low notes, which is religious and grave, transposed to high ones,
loses of its majesty, and acquires a degree of vivacity, that is ill
suited to a solemn subject: and for this reason, I am of opinion, that
the movements of church music should not be very quick: because, by
hurrying the voices in the chant, they occasion them to sound harsh;
and besides this, prevent that easy play and flexibility of throat,
which is necessary to produce the effect the music requires; and which
many times consists, or is contained in the intonations; I say further,
that over and above these inconveniences, music composed of quick
movements, and set in high notes, is not so well calculated to move the
affections of respect, devotion, and piety, as that which is written in
lower tones, and marked to be performed in slower time.


SECT. XI.

XLII. For the same reason, I am against the introduction of violins
into churches. St. Thomas, in the place I before cited, objects to
the admitting any kind of instruments in the church; and the reason
he gives for the objection is, that the sensible delight which the
instrumental music occasions, hinders devotion. But it is not easy
to reconcile this reasoning, with what the saint says in another
place, to wit, that the delight perceived by the air, excites weak
spirits to devotion; and he, in the same place, approves of the use
of musical instruments in synagogues, because the Jews being a hard
and carnal people, there is a necessity for having recourse to such
means, to provoke and stir them to piety. At least then for people of
this stamp, musical instruments in churches would be very serviceable;
and there being a great many of that disposition who frequent
churches; consequently, the instruments would be found exceedingly
useful. Besides, I can’t comprehend, how the sensible delight which
instrumental music occasions, should induce to devotion those who on
account of their hardness are little disposed to it, and obstruct it in
those whose hearts are more inclined to divine worship.

XLIII. I acknowledge and confess, that it is much more easy for me to
misunderstand St. Thomas, than for St. Thomas to advance any thing
that is wrong: but after all, the universal practice of the whole
church authorizes the use of instruments; and the only difficulty or
disagreement, seems to rest in the choice of them. I for my own part
think, that violins are improper in that sacred theatre; their shrill
notes, although harmonious, are still shrill, and excite a puerile
vivacity in our spirits, very different from that decent attention,
which is due to the majesty of mysteries; and especially in these
times, when those who compose for violins, studiously write their music
so high, that he who is to execute it, can scarce forbear striking the
bridge of the instrument with his fingers.

XLIV. There are many other instruments much fitter to be used in
churches than violins, their tones being much more respectful and
grave; such as the harp, the violincello, and the harpsichord; neither
would the inconvenience of the want of trebles in the instruments be
felt, by leaving out the violins, but rather, the music by the omission
would appear more majestic, which is what is most required in churches.
The organ is an admirable instrument; or, to speak more properly, many
instruments comprized in one. It is true, that the organists, when
they are so disposed, can make a sort of pipe and tabor of it; and it
is also true, that this disposition seems to come upon them pretty
frequently.


SECT. XII.

XLV. It would not be foreign, but rather very consonant to the object
of our present criticism, to say something in this place of the poetry,
to which they give the epithet of divine, and which is composed to be
sung in churches, I may without temerity, venture to pronounce, that
poetry in Spain, is in a worse state of perdition than music. The
number of those who write couplets is infinite, but none of them are
poets. If I was to be asked, which are the most difficult of all arts,
I should answer, medicine, poetry, and oratory: and if I was also to
be asked, which are the most easy; I should answer, oratory, poetry,
and medicine. There is no student, who, if he takes a fancy to it, does
not write verses. All the religious who mount the pulpit, and all the
doctors who have studied and practised physic, find their partizans:
but where will you meet with the truly able physician, the compleat
poet, or the perfect orator?

XLVI. Our most learned monk _Don John de Mabillon_, in his Treatise on
Monastic Studies, says, that an excellent poet is a very rare treasure,
and I agree with him in sentiment; for upon strict examination, where,
among the numbers of poetical essays that are published, will you
meet with any one, which (omitting many other requisite qualities) is
natural, sublime, sweet and pointed; and at the same time, ingenious,
and clear; brilliant without affectation, sonorous without turgidity,
and harmonious without impropriety; that runs without hobbling, is
delicate without affectation, forcible without harshness, beautiful
without paint or strained colouring, noble without presumption, and
copious and comprehensive without obscurity? I will almost venture to
pronounce, that he who would find a poet capable of writing verses in
this stile, should seek for him in the regions inhabited by the Phœnix.

XLVII. In Spain however, poetry is in so deplorable a state, that
according to all appearances, it would be needless to search for such
a one there. He who errs the least, with the exception of here and
there a particular one, seems as if he studied how he should commit
faults. All his care appears to be placed, in swelling the verse with
irrational hyperboles, and pompous words; by which means, he produces
a bloated, and confirmed dropsical poem, the sight of which turns your
stomach, and the perusal fills you with melancholy. Those essential
qualities, propriety and nature, without which, neither poetry or
prose can ever be good, seem to have abandoned, and become fugitives
from our compositions. Our authors don’t in their productions, appear
to have hit upon that native splendor, which gives a brilliancy to
their ideas, but rather, to have disfigured their best thoughts, with
affected and bombast expressions; so that their original conceptions,
may be compared to a fine woman that falls into indiscreet hands to be
dressed and ornamented.

XLVIII. Thus much in general for modern Spanish poetry; but the worst
is, that you hear these sort of compositions in the sacred canticles;
which are often so bad, that it would be better, instead of them, to
sing the couplets of blind men; because these seem to have a tendency
to promote devout affections, and their rustic simplicity is in some
degree the symptom of a good intention. All the gracefulness, or rather
the attempt at displaying it, in the church canticles of these times,
consists in low equivocations, trivial metaphors, and puerile changes
and rechanges. The worst is, that they are entirely void of spirit,
and not at all calculated to excite religious emotions, which are the
principal, if not the only qualities required, and which ought to be
sought after in such compositions. Don Antonio de Solis was without
doubt a person of sublime genius, and one who well understood the
excellencies of poetry. He exceeded all others, and even sometimes
himself also, in painting the passions with such apt, close, and
subtile expressions, that the descriptions of his pen seem to give
you a clearer idea of, and make you better acquainted with them, than
the knowledge which is gained by experience. But with all this, we in
his small sacred tracts, perceive a strange falling-off; because in
them, we don’t meet with that nobleness of thought, that delicacy of
expression, and that stirring of the passions, which is frequent and
common in his other Lyric Poems. This did not happen because he wanted
genius or talents to write sacred compositions; for his dirges upon the
conversion of St. Francisco de Borja, are some of the best things he
ever exhibited, and perhaps the most sublime, which to this day have
been composed in the Spanish language.

XLIX. I believe the badness of the composition of these couplets,
called Letrillas, which are generally written for festivals, has
proceeded from Solis, and other poets of ability, having looked upon
them as trifles; though in reality, no other compositions require so
much study or serious attention. What subjects can be more noble than
those, where the eulogium of the saints and martyrs is sung, and the
excellency of the divine attributes and mysteries, is represented and
celebrated? These are the things, on which men of abilities, should
exert the whole power of their genius and talents. What employment
can be more worthy a man of shining parts, than that of painting the
beauty of virtue in such amiable colours, as to make mankind in love
with it; and representing the deformity of vice, in so striking a point
of view, as to make the world abhor and detest it; and to contrive to
praise God and his angels in such a way, as would stimulate people
to a desire of imitation, and light up in their minds, the flame of
adoration and worship? The grandeur of poetry, consists in that active
persuasion, which the poet instills into the soul, and with which he
moves the heart, to follow the course he would wish it should pursue.
To write in this stile, says our Mabillon, speaking of poetry, is not
children’s play; much less then, should sacred poetry be only fit to
amuse infants; but after all, that which is sung in our churches is
nothing better.

L. Even those, whose compositions are held in estimation, do no more,
than provide and prepare the first light conceits that occur to them on
the subject they are about to write upon; and although they have not
in themselves, union with respect to time, or tendency to any design
whatever, they distribute them in couplets, and notwithstanding one
leads to Flanders, and another to Morocco, they introduce them into the
context; and provided each couplet says something, for this is their
explanation, although it is without life, spirit, or force; nay more,
although it is without order, or direction to any determinate point or
purpose, they say it is good composition; when, in truth, it no more
deserves the name of a composition, than a heap of stones that of an
edifice, or the throwing or huddling together a number of colours, that
of a picture.

LI. Keen sentences, wit, airy pleasantry, and lively conceits, are the
precise ornaments of poetry; but they should not be introduced into a
poem, as if they had been studiously sought after; on the contrary,
they should seem as if they were always in waiting, and ready either
for the poet to lay his hand on them, or to obey his command; who
should pursue the rout he has chalked out for himself, and as he
proceeds on, gather such flowers as he meets on his way, and which grow
naturally in the road through which he travels. This was the practice
of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and all the illustrious poets of antiquity.
To make couplets, which are no more than an unformed mass of little
conceits, is a thing very easy, and at the same time very useless;
because there is not in them, nor are they capable of containing, any
of the sublime excellences of poetry. Why do I say sublime excellences?
Not even the lowest requisites which are of its essence.

LII. But I have not even yet mentioned the worst part belonging to
the divine canticles; which is, that if not all, a great many of them
are composed in a burlesque stile. This is certainly done with great
discretion; because by this practice, the things appertaining to
God, are converted to things of interlude. What idea can a thousand
extravagances, put in the mouths of Gill and Pasquil, give of the
ineffable mystery of the incarnation? I shall leave it here, for the
thoughts of such an absurdity put me out of all patience; and he to
whom such an indignant abuse, does not of itself appear disgusting, I
shall never be able to persuade or convince, by any arguments whatever.




    The following, which is extracted from the learned Letters of
    FEYJOO, is an Answer of the Author’s to a Letter from a Friend on
    the Subject of Music. The Title he gives to the Letter, is,

                                  THE

                      WONDERFUL EFFECTS OF MUSIC,

                        AND A COMPARISON OF THE

                       ANTIENT WITH THE MODERN.


    DEAR SIR,

I. Before I ceased to be a young man, or indeed before I became one,
the difficulty you now propound occurred to me, and is, in my humble
opinion, a very grave one. It seems beyond a doubt, that the music
of these times, does not produce the admirable effects which are
related of the music of antiquity, and it seems also as if this argued
a greater degree of perfection in the antient than the modern. On the
other hand, it appears difficult to explain, in what this superior
degree of perfection in the antient consisted; not so much for the
reason you mention, as for another, which I shall point out in the
sequel.

II. We at present know of no musician whatever, who, by the use of his
art, can excite, or appease a violent passion; but if various authors
do not deceive us, the music of antiquity, produced both the one
and the other of these effects. It is related of the two musicians,
Timotheus and Antigenides, that they could, whenever they pleased,
enrage Alexander to such a pitch, as to make him seize on his arms,
and fall into such excesses of fury, as terrified the by-standers, and
filled them with apprehensions that their lives were in danger. They
tell us also of a trumpeter of Megara, named Herodotus, who perceiving
the strength and endeavours of the soldiers of Demetrius, insufficient
to move a warlike machine of enormous weight towards the walls of
Argos, which they were then besieging, he, by blowing two trumpets at
a time, so inspired them, that they found their vigour in a manner
doubled, and themselves enabled to conduct the machine to the place
they wished. They tell us likewise, of a remarkable flute-player, who
was a Milesian, that by touching in the Phrygian mode enraged certain
men, and by changing to the Doric from the Phrygian, immediately calmed
them again. Of the famous musician Terpandro, they relate, that with
his lyre, he stifled the flame of a sedition among the Lacedæmonians;
and of Empedocles, that he also with his lyre, disarmed a youth of his
choler, who was on the point of committing a parricide. I shall omit
many other cases of this kind.

III. If it appears wonderful, that the antient music should have
inflamed, and calmed violent passions, it seems more so, that it should
have been made use of to cure various diseases; and sometimes, not
only in here and there an individual, but even in a whole kingdom; for
Plutarch says, that Thaletas, a native of Crete, with the energetic
sweetness of the lyre, freed the Lacedæmonians from a plague; and it
may be gathered from various authors, that antiently, they used music
for the cure of fevers, the falling-sickness, the epilepsy, deafness,
the sciatica, and the bite of a viper.

IV. But to tell you the truth, I think these facts should not pass
current without some critical examination. And first of all, none of
the authors who testify these extraordinary instances of the power
of music over the passions, speak of them, as transactions they had
been eye-witnesses of, or as things that they knew from their own
experience. All the facts cited, are much anterior to the author by
whom they are handed down to us; so that it seems very probable,
the information came to them by tradition, or proceeded from some
popular rumour unworthy of all credit. In matters that favour of the
marvellous, both with respect to natural, and præter-natural things,
nobody is ignorant how many fables have been delivered down to us in
the writings of the ancients.

V. Secondly, in some of the cases, there seems no occasion to have
recourse to miracles for their explanation; I mean there is no occasion
for attributing the events they tell of, to the wonderful powers of
music. It required but little impulse, to rouze the warlike ardour of
Alexander; a spark only will cause a vast conflagration, if it falls
on a large quantity of gun-powder. Athenæus, who relates the story
of Herodotus, says, he was a man of gigantic size, and extraordinary
robustness. He gives him near eight feet of stature, and says further,
that he ate twenty pounds of meat a day, and drank wine in proportion.
A man of such robustness, could make use of much larger trumpets than
those of the common size, and might blow his breath through them with
such an impetus, as might strikingly agitate the mind, and might also
add some temporary degrees of vigour to the body; and for accomplishing
this, it is not necessary to suppose any special dexterity in the
management of the instruments, for strength was more requisite to
produce such an effect than address; and whoever at this time, should
be equally robust with Herodotus, might be capable of doing the
same thing. Neither perhaps in the other instances, I mean those of
irritating and mitigating rage, is there so much to be admired; for
the influence of the music, might be applied to subjects, who are
very easily moved; some such as we frequently see, that like light
weather-cocks, are wafted and turned round with the slightest breeze;
and perhaps some modern musician, might be able to work equal changes
in the passions, on subjects who are equally susceptible.

VI. Thirdly, the tales of cures which are pretended to have been
performed by the means, or power of music, I consider as fabulous
relations; at least, I have no doubt of the major part of them being
such. Who, I won’t say can believe, but if he has any understanding,
can endure to hear the chimera, that the sound of a lyre banished the
plague from a whole kingdom? Such tales as these, were written by the
authors of last year, in order that the fools of this might believe
them.

VII. With respect to the curing some particular diseases, it may be
proper to allow to music, an equal degree of credit, to that given
to many other remedies, so much puffed, and blazoned in books, which
although in reality they seldom do any good, still preserve their
reputation; not so much on account of the few times they have proved
serviceable, as from the sick person’s having owed his recovery to
the assistance of Nature; when at the same time, people vainly and
mistakingly have attributed it to the application of the chosen remedy.
In this manner, and with these explanations and restrictions, we should
understand music as a specific, for this or that disease; for if we
consider it, as having influence to cheer the mind, there is no doubt,
that it may contribute somewhat to the relief of such sick people, as
are very fond of it; in the same manner, as any other thing would do,
which gave them special pleasure or delight. I don’t however, find
any reason to prefer the antient music to the modern, as best suited
to produce either the one or the other of these effects; for we have
seen cases, in which we have experienced this last, to have been very
beneficial to sick people; and probably the antients never knew one,
in which the curative excellence of music shone forth with more lustre,
than it did in an instance, which happened in the present century, and
which is related in the history of the Royal Academy of Sciences at
Paris, in the year 1707, which I shall here transcribe, in nearly the
words of its illustrious author.

VIII. A famous musician and great composer, was attacked with a
fever, which continued augmenting, till on the seventh day, it threw
him into a violent delirium, which remained on him with little or
no intermission, accompanied with shrieks, lamentations, terrors,
and perpetual watching. On the third day, one of those natural
instincts, which are said to cause sick brutes to seek such herbs
as are beneficial for them, induced him to request some music for
his entertainment. They sung to him, properly accompanied with
instruments, some of the compositions of Mons. Bernier, a celebrated
French musician: as soon as the harmony began, his countenance appeared
serene, his eyes looked more tranquil, the convulsions ceased intirely,
and he shed tears of pleasure; the fever left him while the music
continued, but when that ceased, the fever and the symptoms returned
again. Upon this happy and unexpected success, they repeated the music
again and again, and always obtained a suspension of the fever and
the symptoms, while the music lasted. A relation of his, used some
nights to sit up with him, whom he intreated to sing and dance to him,
and always found great relief from it; and it sometimes happened,
that for want of other music, they entertained him with common nurses
songs, and such as are used to divert children, and from which he found
great benefit. In fine, ten days music, without any other medicinal
assistance than one bleeding in the ankle, which was the second that
had been prescribed for him, perfectly cured him.

IX. There may be some doubt, whether the total cure of this man was
owing to music; and I must confess, there is no certainty that it
was. He might owe his recovery to the second bleeding; or he might be
indebted to Nature for it. The transitory relief which he received from
the melody, had no more fixed connection with the substantial part
of the cure, than those intervals of amendment have, which in many
diseases, Nature affords of herself. The suspension of the symptoms,
frequently proceeds from principles, which have not sufficient
influence to entirely extirpate the malady. The knowing, that in
general, it can’t be inferred, that the thing is able to perform the
whole, which only executes a part, makes such a connection as we have
mentioned before doubtful. But even if this was admitted, there still
exists in the case related, an undubitable and marvellous effect of
music; and perhaps, the quick suspension of the fever and the symptoms,
every time they repeated the music, is a more striking instance of its
immediate and wonderful power, than the perfecting a total cure would
have been. I say, this appears more amazing to me, than if the remedy
had worked an intire cure, by contributing to the recovery of the sick
person, by slow degrees, and by little and little, and which could not
have been compleated, but in the course of a considerable number of
days.

X. It seems to me also, that those who are of opinion the modern music
is brought to greater perfection than ever the antient was, may avail
themselves of this instance very advantageously; first of all, because
there can’t be produced in favour of antient music, another of the
same character; and secondly, because it has appeared in the case
of our sick person, that he not only received relief from concertos
of excellence, but even from the most trifling and imperfect songs;
whereas the cures attributed to antient music, are alledged to have
been effected by that of the first class.

XI. However, let this proof, whose force or debility I shall not
dwell upon at present, amount to what it will; that which you urge
in favour of modern music, does not appear to me of any weight or
efficacy. You say, that at present this art is much more cultivated,
and by men of more industry, and better informed, than the unlearned
and barbarous antients of yore, who flourished in the times when these
extraordinary effects of music are related to have been experienced.
From this supposition it should follow, that the modern music is much
more perfect than ever the antient was. But I look both upon the
opinion, that it is more cultivated at present than it was formerly;
and likewise, that it is more perfect now than it was then, not only as
uncertain, but even entirely false and ill-grounded.

XII. Two facts of public notoriety, which are related by Polybius,
are sufficient to induce a belief, that music was as much, or more
cultivated among the antients, than it is in our times. The first
is, that both the Cretans, and Lacedæmonians, did not make use of
the horrible clang of trumpets, even in battles, but of the melody
of flutes. The second is, that the Arcadians, from the foundation of
their republic, caused it to be observed as an inviolable law, that all
their sons, from their infancy till they attained the age of thirty-one
years, should apply themselves to music. In what kingdom in the world,
is these at this time, so great and so general an application to this
art?

XIII. The vast inferiority of the antients, compared to the moderns,
with respect to industry and ability, is also a voluntary supposition.
If this was so, it ought not only to be inferred, that they were
deficient in the science of music, but in all the other arts also; but
this is so far from being the case, that it is known to a certainty,
there were many men among them, who arrived to the highest pitch of
excellence, both as painters, statuaries, and poets, and who were
such, as can hardly be equalled for eminence by any modern whatever.
Of the two last of these arts, there are still monuments subsisting,
which are invincible proofs, of their great talents for, and masterly
performances in both of them; and their skill in the first, may be
reasonably inferred, from their ability in the other two; for as
Vincentio Carducho, in his _Dialogues on Painting_, justly reasons, if
the works of the painters had been defective in any of the material
requisites, as some have conjectured, the skill of the statuaries,
and the perfection of the statues, would glaringly have displayed the
faults of the painters; and would consequently, have discredited them
as artists; but this was not the case, for it is established by the
authority of history, that their works were exceedingly prized.

XIV. This proof then, falls to the ground as ill-founded; but the
partizans of modern music, urge another that is tolerably specious;
which is, that the antient was very limited, both in the modulation
and harmonies of it. As to what regards the modulation, we should
observe, that before the time of the famous musician Timotheus, who
flourished in the reign of Philip of Macedon, the lyre had no more than
seven strings, which expressed or marked seven tones or points only;
because to the antient lyre, there were no frets, nor any substitute
for them, wherewith they could make on the same string any progression
of distinct sounds. Timotheus added two strings to it, which made it
an instrument of nine; others maintain it had nine before, and that he
added two to them, and made it one of eleven. But admitting this last
to be the fact, it then remained an instrument of very small compass,
compared to modern instruments. The chant could not exceed the bounds
of the instrument, and by all this we may perceive the little variety
and extension of antient modulation.

XV. With respect to harmony and concordances, authors, who have
examined the thing with much attention, assure us, the antients knew
no other than the third, the octave, and the double octave; adding,
that they were entirely ignorant of the concerto, or music of different
tones; and therefore all their accompanyments, either of an instrument
with the voice, or of one voice, or one instrument with another, were
constantly in unison. It may be asked now, what excellencies could
be contained in a music, which was so limited and so simple? Or what
comparison can you imagine there is between that and ours, either to
delight the ear, or give satisfaction to the understanding?

XVI. I have acknowledged, that this objection is specious, but deny
that it is conclusive. In the first place, the parts of Plutarch’s
works, as well as those of other authors, from whence they pretend to
have collected this system of antient music, are so complicated and
obscure, that nothing can with certainty be determined on the credit
of them; hence it comes to pass, that writers, in their reasonings and
disquisitions on this subject, are much divided in their opinions.

XVII. In the second place, I do not assent, that music, on account of
its being somewhat the more simple, is the less delicious or pathetic.
I acknowledge, that the variety in that, as in all other things,
contributes to the delight of it; but then the variety ought to be
confined within certain limits, for that, like every other thing,
has two vicious extremes, the one of which is incurred by excess,
the other by deficiency. If the variety is very small, you soon grow
tired of it, and it seems rather surfeiting. If it is excessive, the
soul is disturbed and bewildered by the many parts of the object, and
by being tossed and hurried from one to the other, is not allowed,
nor has it leisure, for that extatic suspension, in which the most
intense part of the pleasure consists. I have seen an infinite number
of people, much more regaled by hearing a good voice, accompanied by
a guittar just scraped, than by hearing a concert of many voices and
instruments; and I have sometimes seen a person of very good talents
shed tears of delight and tenderness, on hearing a guittar played
pointedly, and with expression; which never would have happened to
him, by hearing a symphony of various instruments, although he should
have attended such performances ever so often. The musicians of these
times boast exceedingly of the improvements they have made in their
profession, and of having, from an insipid, heavy, coarse harmony,
advanced to a sweet, airy, and delicate music; and many of them have
been brought to conjecture, that the practice of this faculty in the
present age has been carried to as high a degree of perfection, as
it is capable of attaining. In my Discourse on Music in the first
volume of the Theatrico Critico, I made a comparison between antient
and modern music; but what seems of the most importance to examine
here is, whether the music of the last and present century is so much
improved, as to intitle it to be considered as greatly superior to that
which was practised by the Greeks twenty centuries ago. The author
of the Dialogues of Theagenes and Callimachus, printed at Paris in
1725, treats this point most learnedly; and affirms, that the antient
musicians excelled the modern in expression, delicacy, and variety; and
also in the fineness of their execution; and our great expositor of the
scripture, father Don Augustin in Calmet, is of the same opinion; as
he is likewise, with regard to the antient music being more excellent
than the modern taken in general. In the first volume of his work,
intitled _Dissertationes Biblicas_, page 403, where he approves and
confirms my sentiment and taste with respect to music, as expressed
in my before-mentioned discourse, he speaks thus: Many look upon the
simplicity of the antient music as rudeness and imperfection; but I
consider it as an argument of its excellence, for an art is reputed
by so much the more perfect, by so much the nearer it approaches to
Nature; and who can deny, but simple music is the most natural, and
best suited, to imitate the voice and passions of man? It rises, or
glides easier from the interior part of the breast, and has a more
certain effect to cheer the heart, and stir the affections; besides,
the opinion which is generally entertained of the simplicity of antient
music, is erroneous. It is true, that it was exceedingly simple, but
notwithstanding that, it was very copious also; for the antients had
many instruments, which we are strangers to; and on the other hand,
their music was not wanting in concord and harmony. To this we may
add, that it had the advantage of ours in another respect, for it was
a part of the excellence of the antient music, that the sound of the
instruments did not confound or interrupt the words of the song, but
rather enforced or gave energy to them; so that at the same time the
ear was delighted with the sweetness of the voice, the mind tasted the
elegance and nervous expression of the verse. We ought not therefore
to wonder at the prodigious effects which we are told were produced
by the music of the antients; because it possessed, joined together
and united, all those excellencies, which are contained in ours, only
single or divided. Calmet also, in his Dictionario Biblico, gives us
a sheet of engraving, containing twenty different instruments which
were in use among the Hebrews; and it is very probable, that among
the Greeks, who were a more polished people, and greater lovers of
music than the others, they had many more; neither have we any great
reason to value ourselves upon our invention in contriving musical
instruments being greater or better than that of the antients; for
there has never yet appeared among us an hydraulic organ, which was
in use among the antients, and of which Ctesibius, a mathematician of
Alexandria, was supposed to be the author, a hundred years prior to the
christian æra; and Vossius says, they have often tried and laboured
since, but without effect, to restore it. It is also proper to observe,
that some instruments, which we reckon the invention of latter ages,
were in use among the antients; such as the violincello, and violin;
whose antiquity the author of the Dialogue of Theagenes and Callimachus
proves, by a medal which is described by Vignete, and a statue of
Orpheus, which is at Rome.

XVIII. In the third place, I do not assent, that the antient music was
so simple as it is pretended to have been; but am rather inclined to
think, that in the essential it was more complicated than the modern.
My reason for this opinion is, that over and above the Diatonic and
Chromatic species which is contained in our music, and which is
common to both, they, in the division of the octave, made use of the
Enharmonic also, which our music does not possess or partake of.
The Enharmonic consists in the introduction of the tenths, which are
intervals of no more than the quarter part of a tone, or of two comas,
and the quarter part of another. It is true, that the moderns give the
name of tenth to the minor semi-tone; but in the music of antiquity,
tenths had the signification which I have here assigned to them.

XIX. This, as I said before, creates a very essential variety in a
music, and different from that which consists purely in running the
composition through two, three, or more octaves; and which may be
called accidentals, because the points of one octave are little more
than a mere repetition of the correspondent ones of another; and I not
only judge this variety of the antient music essential in itself, but
think it is likewise so with respect to the effects of it; for it must
necessarily produce a greater, and very probably a much more lively
variation of the affections. So that by mixing the Harmonic species
with the other two, the same advantages will accrue as arose by mixing
the Diatonic with the Chromatic; and the music, in consequence of doing
it, will be as much benefited, as it was by joining those two together,
which made it infinitely preferable to what it was when they used each
singly, and by itself.

I have now stated to you the arguments and reasonings on both sides
of the question, with respect to the competition between antient and
modern music; and methinks I already hear you say, to which shall we
give the preference? To this I shall only answer, that I have sent
you all the pleadings and documents in the cause, and must beg you to
pronounce the sentence, for I must confess, for my own part, that I am
undecided.


THE END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.




ERRATA.


    Pag. line.

    123    9 _read_ favourite’s house,
    140    1 _strike out_ and
    283   23 _read_ her knowledge




Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

The errata on page 377 have been corrected in place.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.

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