A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01

There is hardly any nation which does not boast of having produced such heroines; the number of these, however, is not great; nature seems to have designed women for other purposes. Women have been known but rarely to exhibit themselves as soldiers. In short, every people have had their female warriors; but the kingdom of the Amazons, on the banks of the Thermodon, is, like most other ancient stories, nothing more than a poetic fiction.

AMBIGUITY – EQUIVOCATION

For want of defining terms, and especially for want of a clear understanding, almost all laws, that should be as plain as arithmetic and geometry, are as obscure as logogriphs. The melancholy proof of this is that nearly all processes are founded on the sense of the laws, always differently understood by the pleaders, the advocates, and the judges.

The whole public law of Europe had its origin in equivocal expressions, beginning with the Salique law. She shall not inherit Salique land. But what is Salique land? And shall not a girl inherit money, or a necklace, left to her, which may be worth more than the land?

The citizens of Rome saluted Karl, son of the Austrasian Pepin le Bref, by the name of imperator. Did they understand thereby: We confer on you all the prerogatives of Octavius, Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius? We give you all the country which they possessed? However, they could not give it; for so far were they from being masters of it that they were scarcely masters of their own city. There never was a more equivocal expression; and such as it was then it still is.

Did Leo III., the bishop of Rome who is said to have saluted Charlemagne emperor, comprehend the meaning of the words which he pronounced? The Germans assert that he understood by them that Charles should be his master. The Datary has asserted that he meant he should be master over Charlemagne.

Have not things the most venerable, the most sacred, the most divine, been obscured by the ambiguities of language? Ask two Christians of what religion they are. Each will answer, I am a Catholic. You think they are both of the same communion; yet one is of the Greek, the other of the Latin church; and they are irreconcilable. If you seek to be further informed, you will find that by the word Catholic each of them understands universal, in which case universal signifies a part.

The soul of St. Francis is in heaven– is in paradise. One of these words signifies the air; the other means a garden. The word spirit is used alike to express extract, thought, distilled liquor, apparition. Ambiguity has been so necessary a vice in all languages, formed by what is called chance and by custom, that the author of all clearness and truth Himself condescended to speak after the manner of His people; whence is it that Elohim signifies in some places judges, at other times gods, and at others angels. "Tu es Petrus, et super hunc petrum ædificabo ecclesiam meam," would be equivocal in a profane tongue, and on profane subject; but these words receive a divine sense from the mouth which utters them, and the subject to which they are applied.

"I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob; now God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." In the ordinary sense these words might signify: "I am the same God that was worshipped by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; as the earth, which bore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, likewise bears their descendants; the sun which shines to-day is the sun that shone on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the law of their children was their law." This does not, however, signify that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still living. But when the Messiah speaks, there is no longer any ambiguity; the sense is as clear as it is divine. It is evident that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not among the dead, but live in glory, since this oracle is pronounced by the Messiah; but it was necessary that He and no one else should utter it.

The discourses of the Jewish prophets might seem equivocal to men of gross intellects, who could not perceive their meaning; but they were not so to minds illumined by the light of faith.

All the oracles of antiquity were equivocal. It was foretold to Crœsus that a powerful empire was to fall; but was it to be his own? or that of Cyrus? It was also foretold to Pyrrhus that the Romans might conquer him, and that he might conquer the Romans. It was impossible that this oracle should lie.

When Septimius Severus, Pescennius Niger, and Clodius Albinus were contending for the empire, the oracle of Delphos, being consulted (notwithstanding the assertion of the Jesuit Baltus that oracles had ceased), answered that the brown was very good, the white good for nothing, and the African tolerable. It is plain that there are more ways than one of explaining such an oracle.

When Aurelian consulted the god of Palmyra (still in spite of Baltus), the god said that the doves fear the falcon. Whatever might happen, the god would not be embarrassed; the falcon would be the conqueror, and the doves the conquered.

Sovereigns, as well as gods, have sometimes made use of equivocation. Some tyrant, whose name I forget, having sworn to one of his captives that he would not kill him, ordered that he should have nothing to eat, saying that he had promised not to put him to death, but he had not promised to keep him alive.

AMERICA

Since framers of systems are continually conjecturing on the manner in which America can have been peopled, we will be equally consistent in saying that He who caused flies to exist in those regions caused men to exist there also. However pleasant it may be to dispute, it cannot be denied that the Supreme Being, who lives in all nature, has created, about the forty-eighth degree, two-legged animals without feathers, the color of whose skin is a mixture of white and carnation, with long beards approaching to red; about the line, in Africa and its islands, negroes without beards; and in the same latitude, other negroes with beards, some of them having wool, and some hair, on their heads; and among them other animals quite white, having neither hair nor wool, but a kind of white silk. It does not very clearly appear what should have prevented God from placing on another continent animals of the same species, of a copper color, in the same latitude in which, in Africa and Asia, they are found black; or even from making them without beards in the very same latitude in which others possess them.

To what lengths are we carried by the rage for systems joined with the tyranny of prejudice! We see these animals; it is agreed that God has had the power to place them where they are; yet it is not agreed that he has so placed them. The same persons who readily admit that the beavers of Canada are of Canadian origin, assert that the men must have come there in boats, and that Mexico must have been peopled by some of the descendants of Magog. As well might be said that if there be men in the moon they must have been taken thither by Astolpho on his hippogriff, when he went to fetch Roland's senses, which were corked up in a bottle. If America had been discovered in his time, and there had then been men in Europe systematic enough to have advanced, with the Jesuit Lafitau, that the Caribbees descended from the inhabitants of Caria, and the Hurons from the Jews, he would have done well to have brought back the bottle containing the wits of these reasoners, which he would doubtless have found in the moon, along with those of Angelica's lover.

The first thing done when an inhabited island is discovered in the Indian Ocean, or in the South Seas, is to inquire whence came these people? But as for the trees and the tortoises, they are, without any hesitation, pronounced to be indigenous; as if it was more difficult for Nature to make men than to make tortoises. One thing, however, which tends to countenance this system is that there is scarcely an island in the Eastern or in the Western Ocean which does not contain jugglers, quacks, knaves and fools. This, it is probable, gave rise to the opinion that these animals are of the same race with ourselves.

AMPLIFICATION

It is pretended that amplification is a fine figure of rhetoric; perhaps, however, it would be more reasonable to call it a defect. In saying all that we should say, we do not amplify; and if after saying this we amplify, we say too much. To place a good or bad action in every light is not to amplify; but to go farther than this is to exaggerate and become wearisome.

Prizes were formerly given in colleges for amplification. This was indeed teaching the art of being diffuse. It would, perhaps, have been better to have given the fewest words, and thus teach the art of speaking with greater force and energy. But while we avoid amplification, let us beware of dryness.

I have heard professors teach that certain passages in "Virgil" are amplifications, as, for instance, the following:

Nox erat, et placidum carpebant fessa soporemCorpora per terras, silvæque et saeva quieruntÆquora; quum medio volvuntur sidera lapsu;Quum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pietaeque volucres;Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumisRura tenant, somno positae sub node silentiLenibant curas, et corda oblita laborum:At non infelix animi Phœnissa.'Twas dead of night, when weary bodies closeTheir eyes in balmy sleep and soft repose:The winds no longer whisper through the woods,Nor murmuring tides disturb the gentle floods;The stars in silent order moved around,And peace, with downy wings, was brooding on the ground.The flocks and herds, and parti-colored fowl,Which haunt the woods and swim the weedy pool.Stretched on the quiet earth securely lay,Forgetting the past labors of the day.All else of Nature's common gift partake;Unhappy Dido was alone awake. – DRYDEN.

If the long description of the reign of sleep throughout all nature did not form an admirable contrast with the cruel inquietude of Dido, these lines would be no other than a puerile amplification; it is the words At non infelix animi Phœnissa– "Unhappy Dido," etc., which give them their charm.

That beautiful ode of Sappho's which paints all the symptoms of love, and which has been happily translated into every cultivated language, would doubtless have been less touching had Sappho been speaking of any other than herself; it might then have been considered as an amplification.

The description of the tempest in the first book of the "Æneid" is not an amplification; it is a true picture of all that happens in a tempest; there is no idea repeated, and repetition is the vice of all which is merely amplification.

The finest part on the stage in any language is that of Phèdre (Phædra). Nearly all that she says would be tiresome amplification if any other was speaking of Phædra's passion.

Athenes me montra mon superbe ennemie;Je le vis, je rougis, je plaîs, à sa vue;Un trouble s'éleva dans mon âme éperdue;Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler,Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;Je reconnus Venus et ses traits redoubtables,D'un sang qu'elle poursuit tormens inévitables.Yes; – Athens showed me my proud enemy;I saw him – blushed – turned pale; —A sudden trouble came upon my soul, —My eyes grew dim – my tongue refused its office, —I burned – and shivered; – through my trembling frameVenus in all her dreadful power I felt,Shooting through every vein a separate pang.

It is quite clear that since Athens showed her her proud enemy Hippolytus, she saw Hippolytus; if she blushed and turned pale, she was doubtless troubled. It would have been a pleonasm, a redundancy, if a stranger had been made to relate the loves of Phædra; but it is Phædra, enamored and ashamed of her passion – her heart is full – everything escapes her:

Ut vidi, lit perii, ut me malus abstulit error.Je le vis, je rougis, je pâlis, à sa vue.I saw him – blushed – turned pale. —

What can be a better imitation of Virgil?

Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler;Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;My eyes grew dim – my tongue refused its office;I burned – and shivered;

What can be a finer imitation of Sappho?

These lines, though imitated, flow as from their first source; each word moves and penetrates the feeling heart; this is not amplification; it is the perfection of nature and of art.

The following is, in my opinion, an instance of amplification, in a modern tragedy, which nevertheless has great beauties. Tydeus is at the court of Argos; he is in love with a sister of Electra; he laments the fall of his friend Orestes and of his father; he is divided betwixt his passion for Electra and his desire of vengeance; while in this state of care and perplexity he gives one of his followers a long description of a tempest, in which he had been shipwrecked some time before.

Tu sais ce qu'en ces lieux nous venions entreprendre;Tu sais que Palamède, avant que de s'y rendre,Ne voulut point tenter son retour dans Argos,Qu'il n'eût interroge l'oracle de Délos.A de si justes soins on souscrivit sans peine;Nous partîmes, comblés des bienfaits de Thyrrène;Tout nous favorisait; nous voyageâmes longtemsAu gré de nos désirs, bien plus qu'au gré des vents;Mais, signalant bientôt toute son inconstance,Le mer en un moment se mutine et s'élance;L'air mugit, le jour fuit, une épaisse vapeurCouvre d'un voile affreux les vagues en fureur;La foudre, éclairante seule une nuit si profonde,À sillons redoublés ouvre le ciel et l'onde,Et comme un tourbillon, embrassant nos vaisseaux,Semble en sources de feu bouillonner sur les eaux;Les vagues quelquefois, nous portant sur leurs cimes,Nous font router après sous de vastes abîmes,Où les éclairs pressés, pénétrans avec nous,Dans des gouffres de feu semblaient nous plonger tous;Le pilote effrayé, que la flamme environne,Aux rochers qu'il fuyait lui-même s'abandonne;À travers les écueils notre vaisseau pousse,Se brise, et nage enfin sur les eaux dispersées.Thou knowest what purpose brought us to these shores;Thou knowest that Palamed would not attemptAgain to set his foot within these wallsUntil he'd questioned Delos' oracle.To his just care we readily subscribed;We sailed, and favoring gales at first appearedTo announce a prosperous voyage;Long time we held our course, and held it ratherAs our desires than as the winds impelled;But the inconstant ocean heaved at lastIts treacherous bosom; howling blasts arose;The heavens were darkened; vapors black and denseSpread o'er the furious waves a frightful veil,Pierced only by the thunderbolts, which cloveThe waters and the firmament at once,And whirling round our ship, in horrid sportChased one another o'er the boiling surge;Now rose we on some watery mountain's summit.Now with the lightning plunged into a gulfThat seemed to swallow all. Our pilot, struckPowerless by terror, ceased to steer, and left usAbandoned to those rocks we dreaded most;Soon did our vessel dash upon their points,And swim in scattered fragments on the billows.

In this description we see the poet wishing to surprise his readers with the relation of a shipwreck, rather than the man who seeks to avenge his father and his friend – to kill the tyrant of Argos, but who is at the same time divided between love and vengeance.

Several men of taste, and among others the author of "Telemachus," have considered the relation of the death of Hippolytus, in Racine, as an amplification; long recitals were the fashion at that time. The vanity of actors make them wish to be listened to, and it was then the custom to indulge them in this way. The archbishop of Cambray says that Theramenes should not, after Hippolytus' catastrophe, have strength to speak so long; that he gives too ample a description of the monster's threatening horns, his saffron scales, etc.; that he should say in broken accents, Hippolytus is dead – a monster has destroyed him – I beheld it.

I shall not enter on a defence of the threatening horns, etc.; yet this piece of criticism, which has been so often repeated, appears to me to be unjust. You would have Theramenes say nothing more than Hippolytus is killed – I saw him die – all is over. This is precisely what he does say; Hippolyte n'est plus! (Hippolytus is no more!) His father exclaims aloud; and Theramenes, on recovering his senses, says;

J'ai vu des mortels périr le plus amiable,I have seen the most amiable of mortals perish,

and adds this line, so necessary and so affecting yet so agonizing for Theseus:

Et j'ose dire encore. Seigneur, le moins coupable.And, Sire, I may truly add, the most innocent.

The gradations are fully observed; each shade is accurately distinguished. The wretched father asks what God – what sudden thunder-stroke has deprived him of his son. He has not courage to proceed; he is mute with grief; he awaits the dreadful recital, and the audience awaits it also. Theramenes must answer; he is asked for particulars; he must give them.

Was it for him who had made Mentor and all the rest of his personages discourse at such length, sometimes even tediously; was it for him to shut the mouth of Theramenes? Who among the spectators would not listen to him? Who would not enjoy the melancholy pleasure of hearing the circumstance of Hippolytus' death? Who would have so much as three lines struck out? This is no vain description of a storm unconnected with the piece; no ill-written amplification; it is the purest diction, the most affecting language; in short, it is Racine. Amplification, declamation, and exaggeration were at all times the faults of the Greeks, excepting Demosthenes and Aristotle.

There have been absurd pieces of poetry on which time has set the stamp of almost universal approbation, because they were mixed with brilliant flashes which threw a glare over their imperfections, or because the poets who came afterward did nothing better. The rude beginnings of every art acquire a greater celebrity than the art in perfection; he who first played the fiddle was looked upon as a demi-god, while Rameau had only enemies. In fine, men, generally going with the stream, seldom judge for themselves, and purity of taste is almost as rare as talent.

At the present day, most of our sermons, funeral orations, set discourses, and harangues in certain ceremonies, are tedious amplifications – strings of commonplace expressions repeated again and again a thousand times. These discourses are only supportable when rarely heard. Why speak when you have nothing new to say? It is high time to put a stop to this excessive waste of words, and therefore we conclude our article.

ANCIENTS AND MODERNS

The great cause of the ancients versus the moderns is not yet disposed of; it has been at issue ever since the silver age, which succeeded the golden one. Men have always pretended that the good old times were much better than the present. Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to insinuate himself, like a wise mediator, into the good opinion of Achilles and Agamemnon, begins with saying: "I have lived with better men than you; never have I seen, nor shall I ever see again, such great personages as Dryas, Cæneus, Exadius, Polyphemus equal to the gods," etc. Posterity has made ample amends to Achilles for Nestor's bad compliment, so vainly admired by those who admire nothing but what is ancient. Who knows anything about Dryas? We have scarcely heard of Exadius or of Cæneus; and as for Polyphemus equal to the gods, he has no very high reputation, unless, indeed, there was something divine in his having a great eye in the middle of his forehead, and eating the raw carcasses of mankind.

Lucretius does not hesitate to say that nature has degenerated:

Ipsa dedit dulces fœtus et pabula lœta,Quæ nunc vix nostro grandescunt aucta labore;Conterimusque boves, et vires agricolarum, etc.

Antiquity is full of the praises of another antiquity still more remote:

Les hommes, en tout tems, ont pensé qu'autrefois,De longs ruisseaux de lait serpentaient dans nos bois;La lune était plus grande, et la nuit moins obscure;L'hiver se couronnait de fleurs et de verdure;Se contemplait à l'aise, admirait son néant,Et, formé pour agir, se plaisait à rien faire, etc.Men have, in every age, believed that onceLong streams of milk ran winding through the woods;The moon was larger and the night less dark;Winter was crowned with flowers and trod on verdure;Man, the world's king, had nothing else to doThan contemplate his utter worthlessness,And, formed for action, took delight in sloth, etc.

Horace combats this prejudice with equal force and address in his fine epistle to Augustus. "Must our poems, then," says he, "be like our wines, of which the oldest are always preferred?" He afterward says:

Indignor quidquam reprehendi, non quia crasseCompositum illepideve putetur, sed quia nuper;Nec veniam antiquis, sed honorem et præmia posci.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Ingeniis non ille favet plauditque sepultis,Nostra sed impugnat, nos nostraque lividus odit.I feel my honest indignation rise,When, with affected air, a coxcomb cries:"The work, I own, has elegance and ease,But sure no modern should presume to please";Thus for his favorite ancients dares to claim,Not pardon only, but rewards and fame.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Not to the illustrious dead his homage pays,But envious robs the living of their praise. – FRANCIS.

On this subject the learned and ingenious Fontenelle expresses himself thus:

"The whole of the question of pre-eminence between the ancients and moderns, being once well understood, reduces itself to this: Were the trees which formerly grew in the country larger than those of the present day? If they were, Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes cannot be equalled in these latter ages; but if our trees are as large as those of former times, then can we equal Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes.

"But to clear up the paradox: If the ancients had stronger minds than ourselves, it must have been that the brains of those times were better disposed, were formed of firmer or more delicate fibres, or contained a larger portion of animal spirits. But how should the brains of those times have been better disposed? Had such been the case, the leaves would likewise have been larger and more beautiful; for if nature was then more youthful and vigorous, the trees, as well as the brains of men, would have borne testimony to that youth and vigor."

With our illustrious academician's leave, this is by no means the state of the question. It is not asked whether nature can at the present day produce as great geniuses, and as good works, as those of Greek and Latin antiquity, but whether we really have such. It is doubtless possible that there are oaks in the forest of Chantilly as large as those of Dodona; but supposing that the oaks of Dodona could talk, it is quite clear that they had a great advantage over ours, which, it is probable, will never talk.

La Motte, a man of wit and talent, who has merited applause in more than one kind of writing, has, in an ode full of happy lines, taken the part of the moderns. We give one of his stanzas:

Et pourquoi veut-on que j'encenseCes prétendus Dieux dont je sors?En moi la même intelligenceFait mouvoir les mêmes ressorts.Croit-on la nature bizarre,Pour nous aujourd'hui plus avareQue pour les Grecs et les Romains?De nos aînés mere idolâtre,N'est-elle plus que la marâtreDure et grossière des humains?And pray, why must I bend the kneeTo these pretended Gods of ours?The same intelligence in meGives vigor to the self-same powers.Think ye that nature is capricious,Or towards us more avariciousThan to our Greek and Roman sires —To them an idolizing mother,While in their children she would smotherThe sparks of intellectual fires?

He might be answered thus: Esteem your ancestors, without adoring them. You have intelligence and powers of invention, as Virgil and Horace had; but perhaps it is not absolutely the same intelligence. Perhaps their talents were superior to – yours; they exercised them, too, in a language richer and more harmonious than our modern tongues, which are a mixture of corrupted Latin, with the horrible jargon of the Celts.