Imatges de pàgina
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produce? And how do the seminists, ovists, or animalculists explain, upon their respective theories, the formation of these mongrel productions?

I will tell you plainly, that they do not explain it at all. The seminists never discovered how it is that the ass communicates to his mule offspring a resemblance only in the ears and crupper; the ovists neither inform us, nor understand, how a mare should contain in her egg anything but an animal of her own species. And the animalculists cannot perceive, how a minute embryo of an ass could introduce its ears into the matrix of a mare.

The theorist who, in a work intitled the Philosophy of Venus, maintained, that all animals and all monsters are formed by attraction, was still less successful than those just mentioned, in accounting for phenomena so common and yet so surprising.

Alas! my good friends; you none of you know how you originate your own offspring; you are ignorant of the secrets of nature in your own species, and yet vainly attempt to develop them in the mule!

It may however be confidently presumed, in reference to a monster by defect, that the whole seminal matter did not reach its destined appropriation; or perhaps that the small spermatic worm had lost a portion of its substance; or perhaps that the egg was crazed and injured. With respect to a monster by excess, you may imagine that some portions of the seminal matter superabounded; that of two spermatic worms united, one could only animate a single member of the animal, and that that member remains in supererogation; that two eggs have blended together, and that one of them has produced but a single member, which was joined to the body of the other.

But what would you say of so many monstrosities arising from the addition of parts of animals of a totally different species? How would you explain a crab on the neck of a girl? or the tail of a rat upon the thigh? or, above all, the four dugs and tail of a cow, which which exhibited at the fair at St. Germain? You would be reduced to the supposition, that the unfor

tunate woman's mother belonged to the very extraordinary family of Pasiphaë.

Let each of us boldly and honestly say, How little is it that I really know.

MORALITY.

BABBLERS, preachers, extravagant controversialists! endeavour to remember that your master never announced that the sacrament was the visible sign of an invisible thing: he has nowhere admitted four cardinal virtues, and three divine ones. He has never decided whether. his mother came into the world maculate or immaculate. Cease, therefore, to repeat things which never entered into his mind. He has said, in conformity with a truth as ancient as the world: Love God and your neighbour. Abide by that precept, miserable cavillers! Preach morality and nothing more. Observe it, and let the tribunals no longer echo with your prosecutions: snatch no longer, by the claw of an attorney, their morsel of bread from the widow and the orphan. Dispute not concerning some petty benefice with the same fury as the papacy was disputed in the great schism of the west. Monks! place not to the utmost of your power, the universe under contribution; and we may then be able to believe you. I have just read these words in a piece of declamation in fourteen volumes, intitled The History of the Lower Empire-"The christians had a morality, but the pagans had none.

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Oh, M. Le Beau! author of these fourteen volumes, where did you pick up this absurdity? What becomes of the morality of Socrates, of Zaleucus, of Charondas, of Cicero, of Epictetus, and of Marcus Aurelius?

There is but one morality, M. Le Beau, as there is but one geometry. But you will tell me, that the greater part of mankind are ignorant of geometry. True; but if they apply a little to the study of it, all men draw the same conclusions. Agriculturists, manufacturers, artisans do not go through a regular course of morality: they read neither the 'De Finibus'

of Cicero, or the Ethics' of Aristotle; but as soon as they reflect, they are, without knowing it, disciples of Cicero. The Indian dyer, the Tartarian shepherd, and the English seaman, are acquainted with justice and injustice. Confucius did not invent a system of morals, as men construct physical systems. He found

his in the hearts of all mankind.

This morality existed in the bosom of the prætor Festus, when the Jews pressed him to put Paul to death for having taken strangers into their temple. "Learn," said he, "that the Romans never condemn any one unheard.'

If the Jews were deficient in a moral sense, the Romans were not, and paid it homage.

There is no morality in superstition; it exists not in ceremonies, and has nothing to do with dogmas. We cannot repeat too frequently that dogmas differ, but that morality is the same among all men who make use of their reason. Morality proceeds from God, like light; our superstitions are only darkness. Reflect, reader; pursue the truth, and draw the consequences.

MOSES.

SECTION I.

PHILOSOPHY, of which we sometimes pass the boundaries, researches of antiquity, and the spirit of discussion and criticism, have been carried so far, that several learned men have finally doubted if there ever was a Moses, and whether this man was not an imaginary being, such as were Perseus, Bacchus, Atlas, Penthesilea, Vesta, Rhea Silvia, Isis, Sammonocodom, Fo, Mercury Trismegistus, Odin, Merlin, Francus, Robert the Devil, and so many other heroes of romance whose lives and prowess have been recorded. It is not very likely, say the incredulous, that a man ever existed whose life is a continual prodigy.

It is not very likely that he worked so many stupendous miracles in Egypt, Arabia, and Syria, without their being known throughout the world.

It is not likely, that no Egyptian or Greek writer should have transmitted these miracles to posterity. They are mentioned by the Jews alone, and in the time that this history was written by them they were not known to any nation, not indeed until towards the second century. The first author who expressly quotes the book of Moses is Longinus, minister of queen Zenobia, in the time of the emperor Aurelian.*

It is to be remarked, that the author of the Mercury Trismegistus, who certainly was an Egyptian, says not a single word of this Moses.

If a single ancient author had related a single one of these miracles, Eusebius would no doubt have tri umphed in this evidence, either in his History or in his Evangelical Preparation.

It is true, he mentions authors who have quoted his name, but none who have cited his prodigies. Before him, the Jews, Josephus and Philo, who have so much celebrated their own nation, sought all the writers ir which the name of Moses is found, but there was not a single one who made the least mention of the mar vellous actions attributed to him.

In this silence of the whole world, the incredulous reason with a temerity which refutes itself.

The Jews are the only people who possessed the Pentateuch, which they attribute to Moses. It is said even in their books, that this Pentateuch was not knowi until the reign of their king Josiah, thirty-six year before the destruction and captivity of Jerusalem; an they then only possessed a single copy, which th priest Hilkiah+ found at the bottom of a strong box while counting money. The priest sent it to the kin by his scribe Shaphan.

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All this, say they, necessarily obscures the authent city of the Pentateuch.

In short, if the Pentateuch was known to all the Jews, would Solomon-the wise Solomon, inspired by God himself to build a temple-have ornamented this

*Longinus-Treatise on the Sublime.
+ 2 Kings xxii.

temple with so many statues, contrary to the express order of Moses?

All the Jewish prophets, who prophecied in the name of the Lord from the time of Moses to that of king Josiah, would they not have been supported in all their prophecies, by the laws of Moses? Would they not a thousand times have quoted his own words? Would they not have commented upon them? None of them however quote two lines-no one follows the text of Moses-they even oppose them in several places. According to these unbelievers, the books attributed to Moses were only written among the Babylonians during the captivity, or immediately afterwards by Esdras. Indeed, we see only Persian and Chaldean terminations, in the Jewish writings- Babel,'. gate of God; Phegor-beel,' or 'Beel-phegor,' god of the precipices; Zebuth beel,' or 'Beel-zebuth,' god of insects; Bethel,' house of God; Daniel,' judgment of God; Gabriel,' man of God; Jahel,' afflicted of God; Jael,' the life of God; Israel,' seeing God; 'Oviel,' strength of God; Raphael,' help of God; Uriel,' fire of God.

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Thus, all is foreign in the Jewish nation, a stranger itself in Palestine; circumcision, ceremonies, sacrifi ces, the ark, the cherubim, the goat Hazazel, baptism of justice, simple baptism, proofs, divination, interpretation of dreams, enchantment of serpents,-nothing originated among these people, nothing was invented by them.

The celebrated lord Bolingbroke believed not that Moses ever existed: he thought he saw in the Pentateuch a crowd of contradictions and puzzling chronological and geographical faults; names of towns not then built, precepts given to kings at a time when not only the Jews had no kings, but in which it is probable there were none, since they lived in deserts, in tents, in the manner of the Bedouin Arabs.

What appears to him above all the most palpable contradiction, is the gift of forty-eight cities with their suburbs, made to the Levites in a country in which there was not a single village; and it is principally on

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