"What!

the child of which she was delivered belonged to the pope, to his son the duke de Valentinois, or to Lucretia's husband, Alphonso of Arragon, who was considered by many as impotent. The conversation immediately became animated and gay. Cardinal Bembo relates a portion of it. My little Pica," says the pope," whom do you think the father of my grandson?" "I think your son-in-law," replied Pica. how can you possibly believe such nonsense?" "I believe it by faith." "But surely you know that an impotent man cannot be a father." "Faith," replied Pica, "consists in believing things because they are impossible; and, besides, the honour of your house demands that Lucretia's son should not be reputed the offspring of incest. You require me to believe more incomprehensible mysteries. Am I not bound to believe that a serpent spoke; that from that time all mankind were damned; that the ass of Balaam also spoke with great eloquence; and that the walls of Jericho fell down at the sound of trumpets?" Pica thus proceeded with a long train of all the prodigious things in which he believed. Alexander absolutely fell back upon his sofa with laughing. "I believe all that as well as you," says he, "for I well know that I can be saved only by faith, as I can certainly never be so by works." holy father," says Pica," you need neither works nor faith; they are well enough for such poor profane creatures as we are; but you, who are absolutely a vice-god, you may believe and do just whatever you please. You have the keys of heaven; and St. Peter will certainly never shut the door in your face. But with respect to myself, who am nothing but a poor prince, I freely confess that I should have found some very powerful protection necessary, if I had lain with. my own daughter, or had employed the stiletto and nightshade as often as your holiness." Alexander VI. understood raillery. Let us speak seriously," says he to the prince. "Tell me what merit there can be in a man's saying to God that he is persuaded of things of which, in fact, he cannot be persuaded? What pleasure can this afford to God? Between ourselves, a man

Ah,

FALSITY.-FALŠITY OF HUMAN VIRTUES. 161

who says that he believes what is impossible to be believed, is a liar."

Pica de Mirandola at this crossed himself in great agitation. "My god!" says he, "I beg your holiness's pardon; but you are not a christian.' "I am not," says the pope, “upon my faith." "I suspected so,” said Pica de Mirandola.

FALSITY.

FALSITY, properly speaking, is the contrary to truth, not intentional lying.

It is said that there were a hundred thousand men destroyed by the great earthquake at Lisbon; this is not a lie, it is a falsity. Falsity is much more common than error; falsity falls more on facts, and error on opinions. It is an error to believe that the sun turns round the earth; but it is a falsity to advance that Louis XIV. dictated the will of Charles II.

The falsity of a deed is a much greater crime than a simple lie; it is a legal imposture, a fraud committed with the pen.

A man has a false mind when he always takes things in a wrong sense, when, not considering the whole, he attributes to one side of an object that which belongs to the other, and when this defect of judgment has become habitual.

False-heartedness is, when a person is accustomed to flatter, and to utter sentiments which he does not possess; this is worse than dissimulation, and is that which the Latins call simulatio.

There is much falsity in historians; error among philosophers. Falsities abound in all polemical writings, and still more in satirical ones. False minds

are insupportable, and false hearts are horrible.

FALSITY OF HUMAN VIRTUES.

WHEN the duke de la Rochefoucauld wrote his Thoughts on Self-Love, and discovered this great spring of human action, one M. Esprit of the

Oratory, wrote a book, entitled "Of the Falsity of Human Virtues." This author says, that there is no virtue but by grace; and he terminates each chapter by referring to christian charity. So that according to M. Esprit, neither Cato, Aristides, Marcus Aurelius, nor Epictetus, were good men, who can be found only among the christians. Among the christians again, there is no virtue except among the catholics; and even among the catholics, the jesuits must be excepted as the enemies of the Oratory;-ergo, virtue is scarcely to be found anywhere except among the enemies of the jesuits.

This M. Esprit commences by asserting, that pudence is not a virtue; and his reason is, that it is often deceived. It is as if he had said, that Cæsar was not a great captain because he was conquered at Dirachium.

If M. Esprit had been a philosopher, he would not have examined prudence as a virtue, but as a talent, as a useful and happy quality; for a great rascal may be very prudent, and I have known many such. Oh the age of pretending that

Nul n'aura de vertu que nous et nos amis !

None are virtuous but ourself and friends!

What is virtue, my friend? It is to do good; let us then do it, and that will suffice. But we give thee credit for the motive. What then! according to thee, there is no difference between the president de Thou and Ravaillac? between Cicero and that Popilius whose life he saved, and who afterwards cut off his head for money; and thou wilt pronounce Epictetus and Porphyrius rogues, because they did not follow our dogmas? Such insolence is disgusting; but I will say no more, for I am getting angry.

FANATICISM.

SECTION I.

FANATICISM is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the passions.

It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views, or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which alone they were intended to operate.. Their laws are made merely for a select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds, constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock, have received a system with equal ardour, and become its apostles, and even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands. Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and mitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which all are urged on to vehemence and madness, the one party for servitude, and the other for freedom.

Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every sect, whether at present subsisting or extinct, at the feet of that divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he has bent himself in humiliation. One,

on the principle that God will not blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at

the sight of his own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that quarter blows the devil's tempest. Another stretches out his arms towards the east, because there God first shows his radiant face. Young women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another checks still more effectually the tempter's violence, by inhuman amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.

Let us observe them quit the temple, and, full of the inspiration of their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear him; the ardour communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented by each individual's personal anxiety and distress, require but a short time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed of wild-fire, prodigies will be multiplied beyond calculation, and whole communities be led astray for ever. When the human mind has once quitted the luminous track pointed out by nature, it returns to it no more; it wanders round the truth, but never obtains of it more than a few faint glimmerings, which, mingling with the false lights of surrounding superstition, leave it, in fact, in complete and palpable obscurity.

It is dreadful to observe, how the opinion, that the