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A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 06
INALIENATION – INALIENABLE
The domains of the Roman emperors were anciently inalienable – it was the sacred domain. The barbarians came and rendered it altogether inalienable. The same thing happened to the imperial Greek domain.
After the re-establishment of the Roman Empire in Germany, the sacred domain was declared inalienable by the priests, although there remains not at present a crown's worth of territory to alienate.
All the kings of Europe, who affect to imitate the emperors, have had their inalienable domain. Francis I., having effected his liberty by the cession of Burgundy, could find no other expedient to preserve it, than a state declaration, that Burgundy was inalienable; and was so fortunate as to violate both his honor and the treaty with impunity. According to this jurisprudence, every king may acquire the dominions of another, while incapable of losing any of his own. So that, in the end, each would be possessed of the property of somebody else. The kings of France and England possess very little special domain: their genuine and more effective domain is the purses of their subjects.
INCEST
"The Tartars," says the "Spirit of Laws," "who may legally wed their daughters, never espouse their mothers."
It is not known of what Tartars our author speaks, who cites too much at random: we know not at present of any people, from the Crimea to the frontiers of China, who are in the habit of espousing their daughters. Moreover, if it be allowed for the father to marry his daughter, why may not a son wed his mother?
Montesquieu cites an author named Priscus Panetes, a sophist who lived in the time of Attila. This author says that Attila married with his daughter Esca, according to the manner of the Scythians. This Priscus has never been printed, but remains in manuscript in the library of the Vatican; and Jornandes alone makes mention of it. It is not allowable to quote the legislation of a people on such authority. No one knows this Esca, or ever heard of her marriage with her father Attila.
I confess I have never believed that the Persians espoused their daughters, although in the time of the Cæsars the Romans accused them of it, to render them odious. It might be that some Persian prince committed incest, and the turpitude of an individual was imputed to the whole nation.
Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.
– HORACE, i, epistle ii, 14.
…When doting monarchs urge
Unsound resolves, their subjects feel the scourge.
– FRANCIS.
I believe that the ancient Persians were permitted to marry with their sisters, just as much as I believe it of the Athenians, the Egyptians, and even of the Jews. From the above it might be concluded, that it was common for children to marry with their fathers or mothers; whereas even the marriage of cousins is forbidden among the Guebers at this day, who are held to maintain the doctrines of their forefathers as scrupulously as the Jews.
You will tell me that everything is contradictory in this world; that it was forbidden by the Jewish law to marry two sisters, which was deemed a very indecent act, and yet Jacob married Rachel during the life of her elder sister Leah; and that this Rachel is evidently a type of the Roman Catholic and apostolic church. You are doubtless right, but that prevents not an individual who sleeps with two sisters in Europe from being grievously censured. As to powerful and dignified princes, they may take the sisters of their wives for the good of their states, and even their own sisters by the same father and mother, if they think proper.
It is a far worse affair to have a commerce with a gossip or godmother, which was deemed an unpardonable offence by the capitularies of Charlemagne, being called a spiritual incest.
One Andovere, who is called queen of France, because she was the wife of a certain Chilperic, who reigned over Soissons, was stigmatized by ecclesiastical justice, censured, degraded, and divorced, for having borne her own child to the baptismal font. It was a mortal sin, a sacrilege, a spiritual incest; and she thereby forfeited her marriage-bed and crown. This apparently contradicts what I have just observed, that everything in the way of love is permitted to the great, but then I spoke of present times, and not of those of Andovere.
As to carnal incest, read the advocate Voglan, who would absolutely have any two cousins burned who fall into a weakness of this kind. The advocate Voglan is rigorous – the unmerciful Celt.
INCUBUS
Have there ever been incubi and succubi? Our learned juriconsults and demonologists admit both the one and the other.
It is pretended that Satan, always on the alert, inspires young ladies and gentlemen with heated dreams, and by a sort of double process produces extraordinary consequences, which in point of fact led to the birth of so many heroes and demigods in ancient times.
The devil took a great deal of superfluous trouble: he had only to leave the young people alone, and the world will be sufficiently supplied with heroes without any assistance from him.
An idea may be formed of incubi by the explanation of the great Delrio, of Boguets, and other writers learned in sorcery; but they fail in their account of succubi. A female might pretend to believe that she had communicated with and was pregnant by a god, the explication of Delrio being very favorable to the assumption. The devil in this case acts the part of an incubus, but his performances as a succubus are more inconceivable. The gods and goddesses of antiquity acted much more nobly and decorously; Jupiter in person, was the incubus of Alcmena and Semele; Thetis in person, the succubus of Peleus, and Venus of Anchises, without having recourse to the various contrivances of our extraordinary demonism.
Let us simply observe, that the gods frequently disguised themselves, in their pursuit of our girls, sometimes as an eagle, sometimes as a pigeon, a swan, a horse, a shower of gold; but the goddesses assumed no disguise: they had only to show themselves, to please. It must however be presumed, that whatever shapes the gods assumed to steal a march, they consummated their loves in the form of men.
As to the new manner of rendering girls pregnant by the ministry of the devil, it is not to be doubted, for the Sorbonne decided the point in the year 1318.
"Per tales artes et ritus impios et invocationes et demonum, nullus unquam sequatur effectus ministerio demonum, error." – "It is an error to believe, that these magic arts and invocations of the devils are without effect."
This decision has never been revoked. Thus we are bound to believe in succubi and incubi, because our teachers have always believed in them.
There have been many other sages in this science, as well as the Sorbonne. Bodin, in his book concerning sorcerers, dedicated to Christopher de Thou, first president of the Parliament of Paris, relates that John Hervilier, a native of Verberie, was condemned by that parliament to be burned alive for having prostituted his daughter to the devil, a great black man, whose caresses were attended with a sensation of cold which appears to be very uncongenial to his nature; but our jurisprudence has always admitted the fact, and the prodigious number of sorcerers which it has burned in consequence will always remain a proof of its accuracy.
The celebrated Picus of Mirandola – a prince never lies – says he knew an old man of the age of eighty years who had slept half his life with a female devil, and another of seventy who enjoyed a similar felicity. Both were buried at Rome, but nothing is said of the fate of their children. Thus is the existence of incubi and succubi demonstrated.
It is impossible, at least, to prove to the contrary; for if we are called on to believe that devils can enter our bodies, who can prevent them from taking kindred liberties with our wives and our daughters? And if there be demons, there are probably demonesses; for to be consistent, if the demons beget children on our females, it must follow that we effect the same thing on the demonesses. Never has there been a more universal empire than that of the devil. What has dethroned him? Reason.
INFINITY
Who will give me a clear idea of infinity? I have never had an idea of it which was not excessively confused – possibly because I am a finite being.
What is that which is eternally going on without advancing – always reckoning without a sum total – dividing eternally without arriving at an indivisible particle?
It might seem as if the notion of infinity formed the bottom of the bucket of the Danaïdes. Nevertheless, it is impossible that infinity should not exist. An infinite duration is demonstrable.
The commencement of existence is absurd; for nothing cannot originate something. When an atom exists we must necessarily conclude that it has existed from all eternity; and hence an infinite duration rigorously demonstrated. But what is an infinite past? – an infinitude which I arrest in imagination whenever I please. Behold! I exclaim, an infinity passed away; let us proceed to another. I distinguish between two eternities, the one before, the other behind me.
When, however, I reflect upon my words, I perceive that I have absurdly pronounced the words: "one eternity has passed away, and I am entering into another." For at the moment that I thus talk, eternity endures, and the tide of time flows. Duration is not separable; and as something has ever been, something must ever be.
The infinite in duration, then, is linked to an uninterrupted chain. This infinite perpetuates itself, even at the instant that I say it has passed. Time begins and ends with me, but duration is infinite. The infinite is here quickly formed without, however, our possession of the ability to form a clear notion of it.
We are told of infinite space – what is space? Is it a being, or nothing at all? If it is a being, what is its nature? You cannot tell me. If it is nothing, nothing can have no quality; yet you tell me that it is penetrable and immense. I am so embarrassed, I cannot correctly call it either something or nothing.
In the meantime, I know not of anything which possesses more properties than a void. For if passing the confines of this globe, we are able to walk amidst this void, and thatch and build there when we possess materials for the purpose, this void or nothing is not opposed to whatever we might choose to do; for having no property it cannot hinder any; moreover, since it cannot hinder, neither can it serve us.
It is pretended that God created the world amidst nothing, and from nothing. That is abstruse; it is preferable to think that there is an infinite space; but we are curious – and if there be infinite space, our faculties cannot fathom the nature of it. We call it immense, because we cannot measure it; but what then? We have only pronounced words.
Of the Infinite in Number.
We have adroitly defined the infinite in arithmetic by a love-knot, in this manner ∞; but we possess not therefore a clearer notion of it. This infinity is not like the others, a powerlessness of reaching a termination. We call the infinite in quantity any number soever, which surpasses the utmost number we are able to imagine.
When we seek the infinitely small, we divide, and call that infinitely small which is less than the least assignable quantity. It is only another name for incapacity.
Is Matter Infinitely Divisible?
This question brings us back again precisely to our inability of finding the remotest number. In thought we are able to divide a grain of sand, but in imagination only; and the incapacity of eternally dividing this grain is called infinity.
It is true, that matter is not always practically divisible, and if the last atom could be divided into two, it would no longer be the least; or if the least, it would not be divisible; or if divisible, what is the germ or origin of things? These are all abstruse queries.
Of the Universe.
Is the universe bounded – is its extent immense – are the suns and planets without number? What advantage has the space which contains suns and planets, over the space which is void of them? Whether space be an existence or not, what is the space which we occupy, preferable to other space?
If our material heaven be not infinite, it is but a point in general extent. If it is infinite, it is an infinity to which something can always be added by the imagination.
Of the Infinite in Geometry.
We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads. It means, however, nothing more than that a square larger than any assignable square, surpasses a line larger than any assignable line, and bears no proportion to it.
It is a mode of operating, a mode of working geometrically, and the word infinite is a mere symbol.
Of Infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness.
In the same manner, as we cannot form any positive idea of the infinite in duration, number, and extension, are we unable to form one in respect to physical and moral power.
We can easily conceive, that a powerful being has modified matter, caused worlds to circulate in space, and formed animals, vegetables, and metals. We are led to this idea by the perception of the want of power on the part of these beings to form themselves. We are also forced to allow, that the Great Being exists eternally by His own power, since He cannot have sprung from nothing; but we discover not so easily His infinity in magnitude, power, and moral attributes.
How are we to conceive infinite extent in a being called simple? and if he be uncompounded, what notions can we form of a simple being? We know God by His works, but we cannot understand Him by His Nature. If it is evident that we cannot understand His nature, is it not equally so, that we must remain ignorant of His attributes?
When we say that His power is infinite, do we mean anything more than that it is very great? Aware of the existence of pyramids of the height of six hundred feet, we can conceive them of the altitude of 600,000 feet.
Nothing can limit the power of the Eternal Being existing necessarily of Himself. Agreed: no antagonists circumscribe Him; but how convince me that He is not circumscribed by His own nature? Has all that has been said on this great subject been demonstrated?
We speak of His moral attributes, but we only judge of them by our own; and it is impossible to do otherwise. We attribute to Him justice, goodness, etc., only from the ideas we collect from the small degree of justice and goodness existing among ourselves. But, in fact, what connection is there between our qualities so uncertain and variable, and those of the Supreme Being?
Our idea of justice is only that of not allowing our own interest to usurp over the interest of another. The bread which a wife has kneaded out of the flour produced from the wheat which her husband has sown, belongs to her. A hungry savage snatches away her bread, and the woman exclaims against such enormous injustice. The savage quietly answers that nothing is more just, and that it was not for him and his family to expire of famine for the sake of an old woman.
At all events, the infinite justice we attribute to God can but little resemble the contradictory notions of justice of this woman and this savage; and yet, when we say that God is just, we only pronounce these words agreeably to our own ideas of justice.
We know of nothing belonging to virtue more agreeable than frankness and cordiality, but to attribute infinite frankness and cordiality to God would amount to an absurdity.
We have such confused notions of the attributes of the Supreme Being, that some schools endow Him with prescience, an infinite foresight which excludes all contingent event, while other schools contend for prescience without contingency.
Lastly, since the Sorbonne has declared that God can make a stick divested of two ends, and that the same thing can at once be and not be, we know not what to say, being in eternal fear of advancing a heresy. One thing may, however, be asserted without danger – that God is infinite, and man exceedingly bounded.
The mind of man is so extremely narrow, that Pascal has said: "Do you believe it impossible for God to be infinite and without parts? I wish to convince you of an existence infinite and indivisible – it is a mathematical point – moving everywhere with infinite swiftness, for it is in all places, and entire in every place."
Nothing more absurd was ever asserted, and yet it has been said by the author of the "Provincial Letters." It is sufficient to give men of sense the ague.
INFLUENCE
Everything around exercises some influence upon us, either physically or morally. With this truth we are well acquainted. Influence may be exerted upon a being without touching, without moving that being.
In short, matter has been demonstrated to possess the astonishing power of gravitating without contact, of acting at immense distances. One idea influences another; a fact not less incomprehensible.
I have not with me at Mount Krapak the book entitled, "On the Influence of the Sun and Moon," composed by the celebrated physician Mead; but I well know that those two bodies are the cause of the tides; and it is not in consequence of touching the waters of the ocean that they produce that flux and reflux: it is demonstrated that they produce them by the laws of gravitation.
But when we are in a fever, have the sun and moon any influence upon the accesses of it, in its days of crisis? Is your wife constitutionally disordered only during the first quarter of the moon? Will the trees, cut at the time of full moon, rot sooner than if cut down in its wane? Not that I know. But timber cut down while the sap is circulating in it, undergoes putrefaction sooner than other timber; and if by chance it is cut down at the full moon, men will certainly say it was the full moon that caused all the evil. Your wife may have been disordered during the moon's growing; but your neighbor's was so in its decline.
The fitful periods of the fever which you brought upon yourself by indulging too much in the pleasures of the table occur about the first quarter of the moon; your neighbor experiences his in its decline. Everything that can possibly influence animals and vegetables must of course necessarily exercise that influence while the moon is making her circuit.
Were a woman of Lyons to remark that the periodical affections of her constitution had occurred in three or four successive instances on the day of the arrival of the diligence from Paris, would her medical attendant, however devoted he might be to system, think himself authorized in concluding that the Paris diligence had some peculiar and marvellous influence on the lady's constitution?
There was a time when the inhabitants of every seaport were persuaded, that no one would die while the tide was rising, and that death always waited for its ebb.
Many physicians possessed a store of strong reasons to explain this constant phenomenon. The sea when rising communicates to human bodies the force or strength by which itself is raised. It brings with it vivifying particles which reanimate all patients. It is salt, and salt preserves from the putrefaction attendant on death. But when the sea sinks and retires, everything sinks or retires with it; nature languishes; the patient is no longer vivified; he departs with the tide. The whole, it must be admitted, is most beautifully explained, but the presumed fact, unfortunately, is after all untrue.
The various elements, food, watching, sleep, and the passions, are constantly exerting on our frame their respective influences. While these influences are thus severally operating on us, the planets traverse their appropriate orbits, and the stars shine with their usual brillancy. But shall we really be so weak as to say that the progress and light of those heavenly bodies are the cause of our rheums and indigestion, and sleeplessness; of the ridiculous wrath we are in with some silly reasoner; or of the passion with which we are enamored of some interesting woman?
But the gravitation of the sun and moon has made the earth in some degree flat at the pole, and raises the sea twice between the tropics in four-and-twenty hours. It may, therefore, regulate our fits of fever, and govern our whole machine. Before, however, we assert this to be the case, we should wait until we can prove it.
The sun acts strongly upon us by its rays, which touch us, and enter through our pores. Here is unquestionably a very decided and a very benignant influence. We ought not, I conceive, in physics, to admit of any action taking place without contact, until we have discovered some well-recognized and ascertained power which acts at a distance, like that of gravitation, for example, or like that of your thoughts over mine, when you furnish me with ideas. Beyond these cases, I at present perceive no influences but from matter in contact with matter.
The fish of my pond and myself exist each of us in our natural element. The water which touches them from head to tail is continually acting upon them. The atmosphere which surrounds and closes upon me acts upon me. I ought not to attribute to the moon, which is ninety thousand miles distant, what I might naturally ascribe to something incessantly in contact with my skin. This would be more unphilosophical than my considering the court of China responsible for a lawsuit that I was carrying on in France. We should never seek at a distance for what is absolutely within our immediate reach.
I perceive that the learned and ingenious M. Menuret is of a different opinion in the "Encyclopædia" under the article on "Influence." This certainly excites in my mind considerable diffidence with respect to what I have just advanced. The Abbé de St. Pierre used to say, we should never maintain that we are absolutely in the right, but should rather say, "such is my opinion for the present."
Influence of the Passions of Mothers upon their Fœtus.
I think, for the present, that violent affections of pregnant women produce often a prodigious effect upon the embryo within them; and I think that I shall always think so: my reason is that I have actually seen this effect. If I had no voucher of my opinion but the testimony of historians who relate the instance of Mary Stuart and her son James I., I should suspend my judgment; because between that event and myself, a series of two hundred years has intervened, a circumstance naturally tending to weaken belief; and because I can ascribe the impression made upon the brain of James to other causes than the imagination of Mary. The royal assassins, headed by her husband, rush with drawn swords into the cabinet where she is supping in company with her favorite, and kill him before her eyes; the sudden convulsion experienced by her in the interior of her frame extends to her offspring; and James I., although not deficient in courage, felt during his whole life an involuntary shuddering at the sight of a sword drawn from a scabbard. It is, however, possible that this striking and peculiar agitation might be owing to a different cause.
There was once introduced, in my presence, into the court of a woman with child, a showman who exhibited a little dancing dog with a kind of red bonnet on its head: the woman called out to have the figure removed; she declared that her child would be marked like it; she wept; and nothing could restore her confidence and peace. "This is the second time," she said, "that such a misfortune has befallen me. My first child bears the impression of a similar terror that I was exposed to; I feel extremely weak. I know that some misfortune will reach me." She was but too correct in her prediction. She was delivered of a child similar to the figure which had so terrified her. The bonnet was particularly distinguishable. The little creature lived two days.
In the time of Malebranche no one entertained the slightest doubt of the adventure which he relates, of the woman who, after seeing a criminal racked, was delivered of a son, all whose limbs were broken in the same places in which the malefactor had received the blows of the executioner. All the physicians at the time were agreed, that the imagination had produced this fatal effect upon her offspring.
Since that period, mankind is believed to have refined and improved; and the influence under consideration has been denied. It has been asked, in what way do you suppose that the affections of a mother should operate to derange the members of the fœtus? Of that I know nothing; but I have witnessed the fact. You new-fangled philosophers inquire and study in vain how an infant is formed, and yet require me to know how it becomes deformed.
