第15章

You would not have found a single book in the whole of Russia in 1700, with the exception of Missals and a few Bibles in the homes of aged men drunk on brandy.

To-day people complain of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to complain;the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read.It is not any the more for authors to complain.Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed.Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! and if one read profitably, one would see the deplorable follies to which the common people offer themselves as prey every day.

What multiplies books, despite the law of not multiplying beings unnecessarily, is that with books one makes others; it is with several volumes already printed that a new history of France or Spain is fabricated, without adding anything new.All dictionaries are made with dictionaries; almost all new geography books are repetitions of geography books.The Summation of St.

Thomas has produced two thousand fat volumes of theology; and the same family of little worms that have gnawed the mother, gnaw likewise the children. Philosophical Dictionary: Bouleverd or Boulevart BOULEVERD OR BOULEVART BOULEVART, fortification, rampart.Belgrade is the boulevart of the Ottoman Empire on the Hungarian side.Who would believe that this word originally signified only a game of bowls? The people of Paris played bowls on the grass of the rampart; this grass was called the verd , like the grass market.On boulait sur le verd.From there it comes that the English, whose language is a copy of ours in almost all the words which are not Saxon, have called the game of bowls "bowling-green," the verd (green) of the game of bowls.We have taken back from them what we had lent them.Following their example, we gave the name of boulingrins , without knowing the strength of the word, to the grass-plots we introduced into our gardens.

I once heard two good dames who were going for a walk on the Bouleverd , and not on the Boulevart.People laughed at them, and wrongly.But in all matters custom carries the day; and everyone who is right against custom is hissed or condemned.Philosophical Dictionary: Bourges BOURGES OUR questions barely turn on geography; but let us be permitted to mark in two words our astonishment about the town of Bourges.The "Dictionnaire de Trevoux" claims that "it is one of the most ancient towns of Europe, that it was the seat of the empire of the Gauls, and gave kings to the Celts."I do not wish to combat the ancientness of any town or any family.But was there ever an empire of the Gauls? Did the Celts have kings? This mania for antiquity is a malady from which one will not be healed so soon.The Gauls, Germany, Scandinavia have nothing that is antique save the land, the trees and the animals.If you want antiquities, go toward Asia, and even then it is very small beer.Man is ancient and monuments new, that is what we have in view in more than one article.

If it were a real benefit to be born in a stone or wooden enclosure more ancient than another, it would be very reasonable to make the foundation of one's town date back to the time of the war of the giants; but since there is not the least advantage in this vanity, one must break away from it.That is all I had to say about Bourges. Philosophical Dictionary: Brahmins BRAHMINS Is it not probable that the Brahmins were the first legislators of the earth, the first philosophers, the first theologians?

Do not the few monuments of ancient history which remain to us form a great presumption in their favour, since the first Greek philosophers went to them to learn mathematics, and since the most ancient curiosities collected by the emperors of China are all Indian?

We will speak elsewhere of the "Shasta"; it is the first book of theology of the Brahmins, written about fifteen hundred years before their "Veidam,"and anterior to all the other books.

Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time.

The words for arms , to kill , to maim , are not to be found either in the fragments of the "Shasta" which we have, or in the "Ezourveidam," or in the "Cormoveidam." I can at least give the assurance that I did not see them in these last two collections: and what is still more singular is that the "Shasta" which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, makes no mention of any war in the great peninsula enclosed between the Indus and the Ganges.

The Hebrews, who were known so late, never name the Brahmins; they had no knowledge of India until after the conquests of Alexander, and their settling in Egypt, of which they had said so much evil.The name of India is to be found only in the Book of Esther, and in that of Job which was not Hebrew.One remarks a singular contrast between the sacred books of the Hebrews, and those of the Indians.The Indian books announce only peace and gentleness; they forbid the killing of animals: the Hebrew books speak only of killing, of the massacre of men and beasts; everything is slaughtered in the name of the Lord; it is quite another order of things.

It is incontestably from the Brahmins that we hold the idea of the fall of the celestial beings in revolt against the Sovereign of nature; and it is from there probably that the Greeks drew the fable of the Titans.

It is there also that the Jews at last took the idea of the revolt of Lucifer, in the first century of our era.

How could these Indians suppose a revolt in heaven without having seen one on earth? Such a jump from human nature to divine nature is barely conceivable.Usually one goes from known to unknown.

One does not imagine a war of giants until one has seen some men more robust than the others tyrannize over their fellows.The first Brahmins must either have experienced violent discords, or at least have seen them in heaven.