A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 06

The eternal intelligence has made all the actions of an animal depend upon a certain principle; the eternal intelligence, therefore, has made the sensations which cause those actions depend on the same principle.

Would the author of nature have disposed and adjusted those admirable instruments, the senses, with so divine a skill; would he have exhibited such astonishing adaptation between the eyes and light; between the atmosphere and the ears, had it, after all, been necessary to call in the assistance of other agency to complete his work? Nature always acts by the shortest ways. Protracted processes indicate want of skill; multiplicity of springs, and complexity of co-operation are the result of weakness. We cannot but believe, therefore, that one main spring regulates the whole system.

The Great Being Does Everything.

Not merely are we unable to give ourselves sensations, we cannot even imagine any beyond those which we have actually experienced. Let all the academies of Europe propose a premium for him who shall imagine a new sense; no one will ever gain that premium. We can do nothing, then, of our mere selves, whether there be an invisible and intangible being enclosed in our brain or diffused throughout our body, or whether there be not; and it must be admitted, upon every system, that the author of nature has given us all that we possess – organs, sensations, and the ideas which proceed from them.

As we are thus secured under His forming hand, Malebranche, notwithstanding all his errors, had reason to say philosophically, that we are in God and that we see all in God; as St. Paul used the same language in a theological sense, and Aratus and Cato in a moral one.

What then are we to understand by the words seeing all in God? They are either words destitute of meaning, or they mean that God gives us all our ideas.

What is the meaning of receiving an idea? We do not create it when we receive it; it is not, therefore, so unphilosophical as has been thought, to say it is God who produces the ideas in my head, as it is He who produces motion in my whole body. Everything is an operation of God upon His creatures.

How is Everything an Action of God?

There is in nature only one universal, eternal, and active principle. There cannot be two such principles; for they would either be alike or different. If they are different, they destroy one another; if they are alike, it is the same as if they were only one. The unity of design, visible through the grand whole in all its infinite variety, announces one single principle, and that principle must act upon all being, or it ceases to be a universal opinion.

If it acts upon all being, it acts upon all the modes of all being. There is not, therefore, a single remnant, a single mode, a single idea, which is not the immediate effect of a universal cause perpetually present.

The matter of the universe, therefore, belongs to God, as much as the ideas and the ideas as much as the matter. To say that anything is out of Him would be saying that there is something out of the vast whole. God being the universal principle of all things, all, therefore, exists in Him, and by Him.

The system includes that of "physical premotion," but in the same manner as an immense wheel includes a small one that endeavors to fly off from it. The principle which we have just been unfolding is too vast to admit of any particular and detailed view.

Physical premotion occupies the great supreme with all the changing vagaries which take place in the head of an individual Jansenist or Molinist; we, on the contrary, occupy the Being of Beings only with the grand and general laws of the universe. Physical premotion makes five propositions a matter of attention and occupation to God, which interest only some lay-sister, the sweeper of a convent; while we attribute to Him employment of the most simple and important description – the arrangement of the whole system of the universe.

Physical premotion is founded upon that subtle and truly Grecian principle, that if a thinking being can give himself an idea, he would augment his existence; but we do not, for our parts, know what is meant by augmenting our being. We comprehend nothing about the matter. We say that a thinking being might give himself new modes without adding to his existence; just in the same manner as when we dance, our sliding steps and crossings and attitudes give us no new existence; and to suppose they do so would appear completely absurd. We agree only so far in the system of physical premotion, that we are convinced we give ourselves nothing.

Both the system of premotion and our own are abused, as depriving men of their liberty. God forbid we should advocate such deprivation. To do away with this imputation, it is only necessary to understand the meaning of the word liberty. We shall speak of it in its proper place; and in the meantime the world will go on as it has gone on hitherto, without the Thomists or their opponents, or all the disputants in the world, having any power to change it. In the same manner we shall always have ideas, without precisely knowing what an idea is.

IDENTITY

This scientific term signifies no more than "the same thing." It might be correctly translated by "sameness." This subject is of considerably more interest than may be imagined. All agree that the guilty person only ought to be punished – the individual perpetrator, and no other. But a man fifty years of age is not in reality the same individual as the man of twenty; he retains no longer any of the parts which then formed his body; and if he has lost the memory of past events, it is certain that there is nothing left to unite his actual existence to an existence which to him is lost.

I am the same person only by the consciousness of what I have been combined with that of what I am; I have no consciousness of my past being but through memory; memory alone, therefore, establishes the identity, the sameness of my person.

We may, in truth, be naturally and aptly resembled to a river, all whose waters pass away in perpetual change and flow. It is the same river as to its bed, its banks, its source, its mouth, everything, in short, that is not itself; but changing every moment its waters, which constitute its very being, it has no identity; there is no sameness belonging to the river.

Were there another Xerxes like him who lashed the Hellespont for disobedience, and ordered for it a pair of handcuffs; and were the son of this Xerxes to be drowned in the Euphrates, and the father desirous of punishing that river for the death of his son, the Euphrates might very reasonably say in its vindication: "Blame the waves that were rolling on at the time your son was bathing; those waves belong not to me, and form no part of me; they have passed on to the Persian Gulf; a part is mixed with the salt water of that sea, and another part, exhaled in vapor, has been impelled by a south-east wind to Gaul, and been incorporated with endives and lettuces, which the Gauls have since used in their salads; seize the culprit where you can find him."

It is the same with a tree, a branch of which broken by the wind might have fractured the skull of your great grandfather. It is no longer the same tree; all its parts have given way to others. The branch which killed your great grandfather is no part of this tree; it exists no longer.

It has been asked, then, how a man, who has totally lost his memory before his death, and whose members have been changed into other substances, can be punished for his faults or rewarded for his virtues when he is no longer himself? I have read in a well known book the following question and answer:

"Question. How can I be either rewarded or punished when I shall no longer exist; when there will be nothing remaining of that which constituted my person? It is only by means of memory that I am always myself; after my death, a miracle will be necessary to restore it to me – to enable me to reenter upon my lost existence.

"Answer. That is just as much as to say that if a prince had put to death his whole family, in order to reign himself, and if he had tyrannized over his subjects with the most wanton cruelty, he would be exempted from punishment on pleading before God, 'I am not the offender; I have lost my memory; you are under a mistake; I am no longer the same person.' Do you think this sophism would pass with God?"

This answer is a highly commendable one; but it does not completely solve the difficulty.

It would be necessary for this purpose, in the first place, to know whether understanding and sensation are a faculty given by God to man, or a created substance; a question which philosophy is too weak and uncertain to decide.

It is necessary in the next place to know whether, if the soul be a substance and has lost all knowledge of the evil it has committed, and be, moreover, as perfect a stranger to what it has done with its own body, as to all the other bodies of our universe – whether, in these circumstances, it can or should, according to our manner of reasoning, answer in another universe for actions of which it has not the slightest knowledge; whether, in fact, a miracle would not be necessary to impart to this soul the recollection it no longer possesses, to render it consciously present to the crimes which have become obliterated and annihilated in its mind, and make it the same person that it was on earth; or whether God will judge it nearly in the same way in which the presidents of human tribunals proceed, condemning a criminal, although he may have completely forgotten the crimes he has actually committed. He remembers them no longer; but they are remembered for him; he is punished for the sake of the example. But God cannot punish a man after his death with a view to his being an example to the living. No living man knows whether the deceased is condemned or absolved. God, therefore, can punish him only because he cherished and accomplished evil desires; but if, when after death he presents himself before the tribunal of God, he no longer entertains any such desire; if for a period of twenty years he has totally forgotten that he did entertain such; if he is no longer in any respect the same person; what is it that God will punish in him?

These are questions which appear beyond the compass of the human understanding, and there seems to exist a necessity, in these intricacies and labyrinths, of recurring to faith alone, which is always our last asylum.

Lucretius had partly felt these difficulties, when in his third book (verses 890-91) he describes a man trembling at the idea of what will happen to him when he will no longer be the same man:

Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et evit;Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse.

But Lucretius is not the oracle to be addressed, in order to obtain any discoveries of the future.

The celebrated Toland, who wrote his own epitaph, concluded it with these words: "Idem futurus Tolandus nunquam" – "He will never again be the same Toland."

However, it may be presumed that God would have well known how to find and restore him, had such been his good pleasure; and it is to be presumed, also, that the being who necessarily exists, is necessarily good.

IDOL – IDOLATER – IDOLATRY

SECTION I

Idol is derived from the Greek word "eidos," figure; "eidolos," the representation of a figure, and "latreuein," to serve, revere, or adore.

It does not appear that there was ever any people on earth who took the name of idolaters. This word is an offence, an insulting term, like that of "gavache," which the Spaniards formerly gave to the French; and that of "maranes," which the French gave to the Spaniards in return. If we had demanded of the senate of the Areopagus of Athens, or at the court of the kings of Persia: "Are you idolaters?" they would scarcely have understood the question. None would have answered: "We adore images and idols." This word, idolater, idolatry, is found neither in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, nor any other author of the religion of the Gentiles. There was never any edict, any law, which commanded that idols should be adored; that they should be treated as gods and regarded as gods.

When the Roman and Carthaginian captains made a treaty, they called all their gods to witness. "It is in their presence," said they, "that we swear peace." Yet the statues of these gods, whose number was very great, were not in the tents of the generals. They regarded, or pretended to regard, the gods as present at the actions of men as witnesses and judges. And assuredly it was not the image which constituted the divinity.

In what view, therefore, did they see the statues of their false gods in the temples? With the same view, if we may so express ourselves, that the Catholics see the images, the object of their veneration. The error was not in adoring a piece of wood or marble, but in adoring a false divinity, represented by this wood and marble. The difference between them and the Catholics is, not that they had images, and the Catholics had none; the difference is, that their images represented the fantastic beings of a false religion, and that the Christian images represent real beings in a true religion. The Greeks had the statue of Hercules, and we have that of St. Christopher; they had Æsculapius and his goat, we have St. Roch and his dog; they had Mars and his lance, and we have St. Anthony of Padua and St. James of Compostella.

When the consul Pliny addresses prayers to the immortal gods in the exordium of the panegyric of Trajan, it is not to images that he addresses them. These images were not immortal.

Neither the latest nor the most remote times of paganism offer a single fact which can lead to the conclusion that they adored idols. Homer speaks only of the gods who inhabited the high Olympus. The palladium, although fallen from heaven, was only a sacred token of the protection of Pallas; it was herself that was venerated in the palladium. It was our ampoule, or holy oil.

But the Romans and Greeks knelt before their statues, gave them crowns, incense, and flowers, and carried them in triumph in the public places. The Catholics have sanctified these customs, and yet are not called idolaters.

The women in times of drouth carried the statues of the Gods after having fasted. They walked barefooted with dishevelled hair, and it quickly rained bucketfuls, says Pretonius: "Et statim urceatim pluebat." Has not this custom been consecrated; illegitimate indeed among the Gentiles, but legitimate among the Catholics? In how many towns are not images carried to obtain the blessings of heaven through their intercession? If a Turk, or a learned Chinese, were a witness of these ceremonies, he would, through ignorance, accuse the Italians of putting their trust in the figures which they thus promenade in possession.

SECTION II

Examination of the Ancient Idolatry

From the time of Charles I., the Catholic religion was declared idolatrous in England. All the Presbyterians are persuaded that the Catholics adore bread, which they eat, and figures, which are the work of their sculptors and painters. With that which one part of Europe reproaches the Catholics, they themselves reproach the Gentiles.

We are surprised at the prodigious number of declamations uttered in all times against the idolatry of the Romans and Greeks; and we are afterwards still more surprised when we see that they were not idolaters.

They had some temples more privileged than others. The great Diana of Ephesus had more reputation than a village Diana. There were more miracles performed in the temple of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, than in any other of his temples. The statue of the Olympian Jupiter attracted more offerings than that of the Paphlagonian Jupiter. But to oppose the customs of a true religion to those of a false one, have we not for several ages had more devotion to certain altars than to others?

Has not Our Lady of Loretto been preferred to Our Lady of Neiges, to that of Ardens, of Hall, etc.? That is not saying there is more virtue in a statue at Loretto than in a statue of the village of Hall, but we have felt more devotion to the one than to the other; we have believed that she whom we invoked, at the feet of her statues, would condescend, from the height of heaven, to diffuse more favors and to work more miracles in Loretto than in Hall. This multiplicity of images of the same person also proves that it is the images that we revere, and that the worship relates to the person who is represented; for it is not possible that every image can be the same thing. There are a thousand images of St. Francis, which have no resemblance to him, and which do not resemble one another; and all indicate a single Saint Francis, invoked, on the day of his feast, by those who are devoted to this saint.

It was precisely the same with the pagans, who supposed the existence only of a single divinity, a single Apollo, and not as many Apollos and Dianas as they had temples and statues. It is therefore proved, as much as history can prove anything, that the ancients believed not the statue to be a divinity; that worship was not paid to this statue or image, and consequently that they were not idolaters. It is for us to ascertain how far the imputation has been a mere pretext to accuse them of idolatry.

A gross and superstitious populace who reason not, and who know neither how to doubt, deny, or believe; who visit the temples out of idleness, and because the lowly are there equal to the great; who make their contributions because it is the custom; who speak continually of miracles without examining any of them; and who are very little in point of intellect beyond the brutes whom they sacrifice – such a people, I repeat, in the sight of the great Diana, or of Jupiter the Thunderer, may well be seized with a religious horror, and adore, without consciousness, the statue itself. This is what happens now and then, in our own churches, to our ignorant peasantry, who, however, are informed that it is the blessed mortals received into heaven whose intercession they solicit, and not that of images of wood and stone.

The Greeks and Romans augment the number of their gods by their apotheoses. The Greeks deified conquerors like Bacchus, Hercules, and Perseus. Rome devoted altars to her emperors. Our apotheoses are of a different kind; we have infinitely more saints than they have secondary gods, but we pay respect neither to rank nor to conquest. We consecrate temples to the simply virtuous, who would have been unknown on earth if they had not been placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients were the effect of flattery, ours are produced by a respect for virtue.

Cicero, in his philosophical works, only allows of a suspicion that the people may mistake the statues of the gods and confound them with the gods themselves. His interlocutors attack the established religion, but none of them think of accusing the Romans of taking marble and brass for divinities. Lucretius accuses no person of this stupidity, although he reproaches the superstitious of every class. This opinion, therefore, has never existed; there never have been idolaters.

Horace causes an image of Priapus to speak, and makes him say: "I was once the trunk of a fig tree, and a carpenter being doubtful whether he should make of me a god or a bench, at length determined to make me a divinity." What are we to gather from this pleasantry? Priapus was one of the subaltern divinities, and a subject of raillery for the wits, and this pleasantry is a tolerable proof that a figure placed in the garden to frighten away the birds could not be very profoundly worshipped.

Dacier, giving way to the spirit of a commentator, observes that Baruch predicted this adventure. "They became what the workmen chose to make them: " but might not this be observed of all statues? Had Baruch a visionary anticipation of the "Satires of Horace"?

A block of marble may as well be hewn into a cistern, as into a figure of Alexander, Jupiter, or any being still more respectable. The matter which composed the cherubim of the Holy of Holies might have been equally appropriated to the vilest functions. Is a throne or altar the less revered because it might have been formed into a kitchen table?

Dacier, instead of concluding that the Romans adored the statue of Priapus, and that Baruch predicted it, should have perceived that the Romans laughed at it. Consult all the authors who speak of the statues of the gods, you will not find one of them allude to idolatry; their testimony amounts to the express contrary. "It is not the workman," says Martial, "who makes the gods, but he who prays to them."

Qui finxit sacros auro vel marmore vultusNon facit ille deos, qui rogat ille facit.

"It is Jove whom we adore in the image of Jove," writes Ovid: "Colitur pro Jove, forma Jovis."

"The gods inhabit our minds and bosoms," observes Statius, "and not images in the form of them:"

Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo.Forma Dei, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet.

Lucan, too, calls the universe the abode and empire of God: "Estne Dei, sedes, nisi terra, et pontus, et aer?" A volume might be filled with passages asserting idols to be images alone.

There remains but the case in which statues became oracles; notions that might have led to an opinion that there was something divine about them. The predominant sentiment, however, was that the gods had chosen to visit certain altars and images, in order to give audience to mortals, and to reply to them. We read in Homer and in the chorus of the Greek tragedies, of prayers to Apollo, who delivered his responses on the mountains in such a temple, or such a town. There is not, in all antiquity, the least trace of a prayer addressed to a statue; and if it was believed that the divine spirit preferred certain temples and images, as he preferred certain men, it was simply an error in application. How many miraculous images have we? The ancients only boasted of possessing what we possess, and if we are not idolaters for using images, by what correct principle can we term them so?

Those who profess magic, and who either believe, or affect to believe it, a science, pretend to possess the secret of making the gods descend into their statues, not indeed, the superior gods, but the secondary gods or genii. This is what Hermes Trismegistus calls "making" gods – a doctrine which is controverted by St. Augustine in his "City of God." But even this clearly shows that the images were not thought to possess anything divine, since it required a magician to animate them, and it happened very rarely that a magician was successful in these sublime endeavors.

In a word, the images of the gods were not gods. Jupiter, and not his statue, launched his thunderbolts; it was not the statue of Neptune which stirred up tempests, nor that of Apollo which bestowed light. The Greeks and the Romans were Gentiles and Polytheists, but not idolaters.

We lavished this reproach upon them when we had neither statues nor temples, and have continued the injustice even after having employed painting and sculpture to honor and represent our truths, precisely in the same manner in which those we reproach employed them to honor and personify their fiction.

SECTION III

Whether the Persians, the Sabæans, the Egyptians, the Tartars, or the Turks, have been Idolaters, and the Extent of the Antiquity of the Images Called Idols – History of Their Worship.

It is a great error to denominate those idolaters who worship the sun and the stars. These nations for a long time had neither images nor temples. If they were wrong, it was in rendering to the stars that which belonged only to the creator of the stars. Moreover, the dogma of Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, teaches a Supreme Being, an avenger and rewarder, which opinion is very distant from idolatry. The government of China possesses no idol, but has always preserved the simple worship of the master of heaven, Kien-tien.

Genghis Khan, among the Tartars, was not an idolater, and used no images. The Mahometans, who inhabit Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and Africa, call the Christians idolaters and giaours, because they imagine that Christians worship images. They break the statues which they find in Sancta Sophia, the church of the Holy Apostles; and others they convert into mosques. Appearances have deceived them, as they are eternally deceiving man, and have led them to believe that churches dedicated to saints who were formerly men, images of saints worshipped kneeling, and miracles worked in these churches, are invincible proofs of absolute idolatry; although all amount to nothing. Christians, in fact, adore one God only, and even in the blessed, only revere the virtues of God manifested in them. The image-breakers (iconoclasts), and the Protestants, who reproach the Catholic Church with idolatry, claim the same answer.