Method of determining the signification of words. kind. Let precise ideas be annexed to each expression, and the school divine, who by the magic of words, has often thrown the world into confusion, will be a magician without power. The talisman, in the possession of which his ability consisted, will be broken. Then all those fools, who under the name of metaphysicians, have for so long a time wandered in the land of chimeras, and who, on bladders blown up by wind, traverse, in every direction, all the depths of infinity, will no longer say they see what they see not, and know what they know not; they will no longer impose on mankind. Then the propositions in morality, politics, and metaphysics, becoming as susceptible of demonstration as the propositions of geometry, men will all have the same ideas of those sciences, because all of them (as I have shewn) will necessarily perceive the same relations between the same objects. A new proof of this truth is, that in combining nearly the same facts, either in the material world as is demonstrated by geometry, or in the intellectual world, as is proved by metaphysics, all men have, ių all times, come to nearly the same conclusion. CHAP. Desire constitutes a great portion of happiness. CHAP. XX. THE EXCURSIONS OF MEN, AND THEIR DISCOVE RIES IN THE INTELLECTUAL KINGDOMS, HAVE BEEN ALWAYS NEARLY THE SAME. AMONG the imaginary countries that the human mind runs over, that of the fairies, the genii, and enchanters, is the first where I shall stop. Mankind love fables: every one reads them, hears them, and makes them. A confused desire of happiness attends us with pleasure through the land of prodigies and chimeras. With regard to chimeras, they are always of the same kind. All men desire riches without number, power without bounds, and pleasure without end; and this desire always flies before the possession. How happy should we be, say the greatest part of mankind, if our wishes were fulfilled as soon as formed? O thoughtless man! can you be always ignorant, that a part of your felicity consists in the desire itself? It is with happiness, as with the golden bird sent by the fairies to a young princess; the bird settles at thirty paces from her; she goes to catch it, advances softly, is ready to seize it; the bird flies thirty paces further; she passes several months in the pursuit, and is happy Reflections on fairy-tales. happy. If the bird had suffered itself to be taken at first, the princess would have put it in a cage, and in one week would have been tired of it. This is the bird of happiness, which the miser and coquette are incessantly pursuing. They catch it not, and are happy in their pursuit, because they are secure from disgust. If our desires were to be every instant gratified, the mind would languish in inaction, and sink under disquietude. Man must have desires; a desire new and easy to be gratified must constantly succeed to a desire fulfilled (29). Few men acknowledge that they have this want; it is, however, to a succession of their desires that they owe their felicity. Continually impatient to gratify their wishes, men were incessantly building castles in the air; they would interest all nature in their happiness; but not being able to effect it, they addressed themselves to imaginary beings, to fairies and genii. If they suppose the existence of those beings, it is from a confused hope that by the favour of an enchanter they may become, as in the Thousand and One Nights, possessed of the marvellous lamp, and nothing will then be wanting to their felicity. It is therefore a desire of happiness that produces a greedy curiosity, and the love of the marvellous, that amongst different people has created supernatural beings, which under the names of fairies, genii, sylphs, enchanters, &c. have always been the same beings, and by whom prodigies nearly the same have been Of philosophical tales. every where performed; which proves that in this kind the discoveries have been nearly similar. PHILOSOPHICAL TALES. The tales of this sort, more grave and important, though sometimes equally frivolous and less entertaining than the foregoing, have preserved among themselves the same resemblance. In the number of these tales, that are at once so ingenious and disgusting, I place the beauty of morality*, the natural goodness of men, and the several systems of the material world; of which experience alone ought to be the architect: if the philosopher consults it not, or has not the courage to stop where observation fails, when he thinks to make a system he makes nothing but a romance. This philosopher, for the want of experiments, is forced to substitute hypotheses, and to fill up with conjectures the immense interval, which the present, and what is still more, past ignorance, have left in all parts of his system. With regard to hypotheses, they are almost all of the same kind. Whoever reads ancient philosophers will see that they almost all adopt nearly the same plan, and that where they differ, it is in the choice of the materials employed in the construction of the universe. Thales saw but one element in all nature, which was The beauty of morality is only to be found in the paradise of fools, where Milton makes agni, scapularies, chaplets, and inCulgences, incessantly whirl about. the Of philosophical tales. the aqueous fluid. Proteus, the marine god, who metamorphosed himself into fire, a tree, water, and an animal, was the emblem of his system. Heraclitus discovered the same Proteus in the element of light; the earth appeared to him to be a globe of fire reduced to a state of fixity. Anaximenes made of the air an indefinite agent; it was the common parent of all the elements. The air condensed, formed water; still more dense, it formed earth. It was to the different degrees of the air's density that all beings owed their existence. They, who after the first philosophers assumed like them the office of architects of the palace of the universe, and laboured at its construction, fell into the same errors: Descartes is a proof. It is by proceeding from fact to fact that we attain to great discoveries. We must advance in the train. of experience, and never go before it. The impatience natural to the human mind, and especially to men of genius, cannot accommodate itself to a progress so slow (30), but always so sure; they would guess at what experience alone can reveal. They forget that it is on the knowledge of a first fact, from which all those of nature may be deduced, that the discovery of the system of the world depends; and that it is only by chance, analysis, and observation, that the first fact can lead to the general principle*. * Our author writes here as if he were ignorant of the Newtonian system of the universe, founded on clear, undeniable experiments. But can that be possible? T. P 2 Before |