with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses. Vossius is, I think, the first who has extended this parallel. The Bishop of Avranches, Huet, has pushed it quite as far; but he adds, in his Evangelical Demonstrations, that not only Moses is Bacchus, but that he is also Osiris and Typhon. Ile does not halt in this fine path. Moses, according to him, is Esculapius, Amphion, Apollo, Adonis, and even Priapus. It is pleasant enough that pher, and will explain the thing to you. I do not know why it is said, in Genesis, that Babel signifies confusion; for, as I have already observed, ba answers to father in the eastern languages, and bel sig nifies God. Babel means the city of God, the holy city. But it is incontestible that Babel meant confusion, possibly because the architects were confounded after having raised their work to eighty-one thousand feet; perhaps, because the languages were then confounded, as from that time the Germans no longer under-Huet founds his proof, that Moses is stood the Chinese; although, according Adonis, in their both keeping sheep :to the learned Bochart, it is clear that the Chinese is originally the same language as the High German. BACCHUS. Et formosus oves, ad flumina pavit Adonis. He contends that he is Priapus, because Priapus is sometimes painted with an ass, and the Jews were supposed, among the Gentiles, to adore an ass. He gives another proof, not very canonical, which is, that the rod of Moses might be compared to the sceptre of Priapus.— Sceptrum tribuitur Priapo, virga Mosi." Neither is this demonstration in the manner of Euclid. Of all the true or fabulous personages of profane antiquity, Bacchus is to us the most important. I do not mean for the fine invention which is attributed to him" by all the world except the Jews, but for the prodigious resemblance of his fabulous history to the true adventures of Moses. We will not here speak of the more modern Bacchuses, such as he who lived The ancient poets have placed the birth two hundred years before the Trojan war, of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed on and whom the Greeks celebrated as a son the Nile, and it is from that event that he of Jupiter, shut up in his thigh. We is named Mises by the first Orpheus, will pause at him who was supposed to which, in Egyptian, signifies" saved from be born on the confines of Egypt, and the waters," according to those who pre-to have performed so many prodigies. tend to understand the ancient Egyptian Our respect for the sacred Jewish books tongue, which is no longer known. He will not permit us to doubt that the Egypis brought up near a mountain of Arabia, tians, the Arabs, and even the Greeks, called Nisa, which is believed to be have imitated the history of Moses. The Mount Sinai. It is pretended that a god-difficulty consists solely in not knowing dess ordered him to go and destroy a how they could be instructed in this inbarbarous nation, and that he passed controvertible history. With respect to through the Red Sea on foot, with a mul- the Egyptians, it is very likely that they titude of men, women, and children. An-never recorded these miracles of Moses, other time, the river Orontes suspended its waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head. He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsis, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt which would have covered them with shame. If they had said a word of it, the historians Josephus and Philo would not have failed to have taken advantage of it. Josephus, in his answer to Appion, made a point of citing all the Egyptian authors who have mentioned Moses, and he finds none which relate one of these miracles. No Jew has ever quoted any Egyptian author who has said a word of the ten plagues of Egypt, of the miraculous passage through the Red Sea, &c. &c. It could not be among the Egyptians, therefore, that this scandalous parallel was formed between the divine Moses and the profane Bacchus. wards adopted and embellished by the Greeks. But how came the stories of the Arabs and Greeks to agree so well with those of the Jews? It is known that the Hebrews never communicated their books to any one, till the time of the Ptolemies; they regarded such communication as a obstinacy in concealing the Pentateuch from the rest of the world, says, that God punished all foreigners who dared to speak of the Jewish histories. If we are to believe him, the historian Theopompus, for only designing to mention them in his work, became deranged for thirty days; and the tragic poet Theodectes was struck blind for having introduced the name of the Jews into one of his tragedies. Such are the excuses that Flavius Josephus gives in his answer to Appion, for the history of the Jews being so long unknown. It is very clear that, if a single Egyp-sacrilege: and Josephus, to justify their tian author had said a word of the great miracles of Moses, all the synagogue of Alexandria, all the disputatious church of that famous town, would have quoted such word, and have triumphed at it, every one after his manner. Athenagorus, Clement, Origen, who have said so many useless things, would have related this important passage a thousand times, and it would have been the strongest argument of all the fathers. The whole have kept a profound silence; they had, therefore, nothing to say. But how was it possible for any Egyptian to speak of the exploits of a man who caused all the first-born of the families of Egypt to be killed; who turned the Nile to blood, and who drowned in the Red Sea their king and all his army? These books were of such prodigious scarcity, that we only hear of one copy under King Josiah, and this copy had been lost for a long time, and was found in the bottom of a chest, on the report of Shaphan, scribe to the Pontiff Hilkiah, who carried it to the King. All our historians agree that one Clodowick, a Sicambrian, subjugated Gaul with a handful of barbarians. The English This circumstance happened, accordare the first to say that the Saxons, the ing to the second book of Kings, six hunDanes, and the Normans, came by turns dred and twenty-four years before our to exterminate a part of their nation. If vulgar era; four hundred years after they had not avowed this truth, all Europe Homer; and in the most flourishing times would have exclaimed against its con- of Greece. The Greeks then scarcely cealment. The universe ought to exclaim knew that there were any Hebrews in in the same manner at the amazing pro- the world. The captivity of the Jews at digies of Moses, of Joshua, of Gideon, Babylon still more augmented their ig Sampson, and of so many leaders and norance of their own books. Esdras prophets. The universe is silent not- must have restored them at the end of withstanding. Amazing mystery! On seventy years, and it was already more one side it is palpable that all is true, than five hundred years that the fable of since it is found in the holy writings, Bacchus had been current among the which are approved by the church; on Greeks. the other, it is evident that no people have ever mentioned it. Let us worship Providence, and submit ourselves in all things. If the Greeks had founded their fables on the Jewish history, they would have chosen facts more interesting to mankind; such as the adventures of Abraham, The Arabs, who have always loved the those of Noah, of Methusalem, of Seth, marvellous, were probably the first authors Enoch, Cain, and Eve; of the fatal serof the fables invented of Bacchus, after-pent and of the tree of knowledge; all which names have ever been unknown to conclude: God has permitted it--a truth them. There was only a slight know-which ought to suffice. ledge of the Jewish people, until a long Of what consequence is it that the time after the revolution that Alexander Arabs and Greeks have said the same produced in Asia and in Europe; the things as the Jews? We only read the historian Josephus avows it in formal Old Testament to prepare ourselves for terms. This is the manner in which he the New; and in neither the one nor the expresses himself in the commencement { other do we seek anything but lessons of of his reply to Appion, who (by way of benevolence, moderation, gentleness, and parenthesis) was dead when he answered true charity. him; for Appion died under the Emperor Claudius, and Josephus wrote under Vespasian. "As the country we inhabit is distant from the sea, we do not apply ourselves to commerce, and have no communication with other nations. We content ourselves with cultivating our lands, which are very fertile, and we labour chiefly to bring up our children properly, because nothing appears to us so necessary as to instruct them in the knowledge of our holy laws, and in true piety, which inspires them with the desire of observing them. The above reasons, added to others already mentioned, and this manner of life which is peculiar to us, show why we have had no communication with the Greeks, like the Egyptians and Phoenicians. Is it astonishing that our nation, so distant from the sea, not affect ing to write anything, and living in the way which I have related, has been little known?" After such an authentic avowal from a Jew, the most tenacious of the honour of his nation that has ever written, it will be seen that it is impossible for the ancient Greeks to have taken the fable of Bacchus from the holy books of the Hebrews; any more than the sacrifice of Iphigenia, that of the son of Idomeneus, the labours of Hercules, the adventure of Eurydice, and others. The quantity of ancient tales which resemble each other is prodigious. How is it that the Greeks have put into fables what the Hebrews have put into histories? Was it by the gift of invention; was it by a facility of imitation; or in consequence of the accordance of fine minds? To BACON (ROGER). Ir is generally thought that Roger Bacon, the famous monk of the thirteenth century, was a very great man, and that he possessed true knowledge, because he was persecuted and condemned to prison by a set of ignoramuses. It is a great prejudice in his favour, I own. But does it not happen every day, that quacks gravely condemn other quacks, and that fools make other fools pay the penalty of folly? This, our world, has for a long time resembled the compact edifices, in which he who believes in the eternal Father anathematizes him who believes in the Holy Ghost; circumstances which are not very rare even in these days. Among the things which render Friar Bacon commendable, we must first reckon his imprisonment, and then the noble boldness with which he declared that all the books of Aristotle were fit only to be burnt, and that at a time when the learned respected Aristotle much more than the Jansenists respect St. Augustine. Has Roger Bacon, however, done anything better than the Poetics, the Rhetoric, and the Logic of Aristotle? These three immortal works clearly prove that Aristotle was a very great and fine geniuspenetrating, profound, and methodical; and that he was only a bad natural philosopher, because it was impossible to penetrate into the depths of physical science without the aid of instruments. Does Roger Bacon, in his best work, in which he treats of light and vision, express himself much more clearly than Aristotle, when he says, light is created by means of multiplying its luminous species, which action is called univocal, you will ask,-that of feudal government, and of the schoolmen. Figure to yourself Samoieds and Ostiacs, who read Aristotle. Such were we at that time. and conformable to the agent? He also mentions another equivocal multiplicahon, by which light engenders heat, and beat, putrefaction. Roger Bacon likewise tells us, that life may be prolonged by means of spermaceti, aloes, and dragons' flesh, and that the philosopher's stone would render us mmortal. It is thought that besides these fine secrets, he possessed all those of judicial astrology, without exception; as he affirms very positively in his "Opus Majus," that the head of man is subject to the influences of the Ram, his neck to those of the Bull, and his arms to the power of the Twins. He even demonstrates these fine things from experience, and highly praises a great astrologer at Paris, who says, that he hindered a surgeon from putting a plaister on the leg of an invalid, because the sun was then in Roger Bacon knew a little of geome try and optics, which made him pass for a sorcerer at Rome and Paris. He was, however, really acquainted with the matter contained in the Arabian Alhazen; for in those days little was known, except through the Arabs. They were the physicians and astrologers of all the Christian kings. The king's fool was always a native,-his doctor, an Arab or a Jew. Transport this Bacon to the times in which we live, and he would be, no doubt, a very great man. He was gold, encrusted with the rust of the times in which he lived: this gold would now be quickly purified. BACON (FRANCIS) Poor creatures that we are! How many the sign of Aquarius, and Aquarius isages have passed away in acquiring a fatal to legs to which plaisters are applied. little reason! It is an opinion pretty generally received, that Roger was the inventor of gunpowder. It is certain that it was in his time that important discovery was made; for I always remark that the spithe doctors, or sages, who govern both rit of invention is of all times, and that SECTION 1. THE greatest service, perhaps, rendered to philosophy by Francis Bacon, has been that of suggesting attraction. He says, on the close of the sixteenth mind and body, are generally profoundly century, in his " Novum Organum Scienignorant, foolishly prejudiced, or at war tiarum:"with common sense. It is usually among obscure men, that artists are found ani- be not a kind of magnetic force, which mated with a superior instinct, who invent operates between the earth and heavy boadmirable things on which the learned af- dies; between the moon and the ocean, and between the planets respectively. It must either be, that weighty substances "It should be inquired whether there terwards reason. is, that Friar Bacon knew not the direct- are mutually attracted; and in this last One thing surprises me much, which are forced towards the earth, or that they Un of the magnetic needle, which, in his case it is evident, that the nearer falling tune, began to be understood in Italy; bodies approach to the earth the more but in lien thereof, he was acquainted strongly they are attracted. It might be with the secret of the hazel rod, and tried, whether a pendulum of the same many such things, of which he treats in weight would go quicker on the top of a tas Dignity of the Experimental Art. ber of absurdities and chimeras, it must the mountain, and increases in the mine, Yet, notwithstanding this pitiable num- If the force of the weight diminishes on be confessed that Roger Bacon was an it would appear that the earth has a true admirable man for his age. What age? { attraction." mountain than at the bottom of a mine. SECTION II. About a hundred years afterwards this; attraction, this gravitation, this universal It is not long since the following useproperty of matter, this cause which re less and frivolous question was agitated tains the planets in their orbits, which, in a celebrated company :—“ Which was acts in the sun, and which directs an iron the greatest man, Cæsar, Alexander, Tabar towards the centre of the earth, has merlane, or Cromwell?" Some one rebeen discovered, calculated, and demon- plied, without contradiction, that the strated by the great Newton. But what greatest man was Sir Isaac Newton. sagacity in Bacon to have imagined what This person was right, for if true greatno one else had ever thought of! ness consists in having received a powerful genius from heaven, and in making use of it to enlighten ourselves and others, such a man as Sir Isaac Newton, who is scarcely found in six centuries, is truly the great man; and politicians and conquerors, in which no age has been deficient, are generally nothing more than illustrious evils. It is to him who pre This is a very different notion from the subtle matter produced by tubular atoms, which sometimes turn about themselves, although in a plenum, or from the globular matter formed of such particles. These ridiculous opinions were received for some time among the curious. They formed a very bad romance; but not only succeeded, like Cyrus and Phara-vails over minds by the force of truth, and mond, but were embraced as a truth by people who endeavoured to think. If we except Bacon, Galileo, Toricelli, and a very small number of sages, the world was then quite blind on the subject of physics. not to them who make slaves by violence; it is to him who knew the universe, rather than to those who disfigure it; that we owe respect. The great Bacon was the son of a keeper of the seals, and for a long time These blind philosophers quitted Greek chancellor himself under King James the chimeras for chimeras of vortices and tu- First. Thus, in the midst of the intrigues bular atoms, and when at last attraction of the court, and the duties of his situaand gravitation are discovered and de- tion, which required a man quite devoted monstrated, they declaim about occult to them, he found time to be a great phiqualities. Alas! are not all the primary losopher, a good historian, and an eleprinciples of nature occult qualities to us? gant writer. What is still more astonishThe causes of motion, repulsion, genera-ing, he lived in an age in which the art of tion; the immutability of the various good writing was still less known than species of sentiment, memory, and thought sound philosophy. He has been, as it is -are they not all profoundly concealed? the custom among men, more esteemed Bacon suspected, and Newton demon- since his death than he was during his strated, the existence of a principle, until life. His enemies were in the court of then unknown. Men must abide by it London, his admirers were foreigners. until they become gods. Newton was When the Marquis d'Effiat carried the wise enough in demonstrating the laws of Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of attraction to say, that he was ignorant of Henry the Great, over to England to bethe cause of it. He added, that it was come the wife of King Charles I., that perhaps an impulse, perhaps a light minister visited Bacon, who, being ill in substance, prodigiously elastic, spread { bed, received him with the curtains drawn. throughout nature. He apparently en- "You resemble the angels," said d'Effiat deavours, by these perhapses, to reconto him, "whom we always hear spoken cile minds which are scared at the word of, and believe to be superior to men, but attraction, and at a property of matter never have the consolation of seeing which acts throughout the universe with- them." out apparent contact. It is known that Bacon was accused of |