第17章

Age enfeebles character; it is a tree that produces only degenerate fruit, but the fruit is always of the same nature; it is knotted and covered with moss, it becomes worm-eaten, but it is always oak or pear tree.If one could change one's character, one would give oneself one, one would be master of nature.Can one give oneself anything? do we not receive everything?

Try to animate an indolent man with a continued activity; to freeze with apathy the boiling soul of an impetuous fellow, to inspire someone who has neither ear nor taste with a taste for music and poetry, you will no more succeed than if you undertook to give sight to a man born blind.We perfect, we soften, we conceal what nature has put in us, but we do not put in ourselves anything at all.

One says to a farmer: "You have too many fish in this pond, they will not prosper; there are too many cattle in your meadows, grass lacks, they will grow thin." It happens after this exhortation that the pikes eat half my man's carp, and the wolves the half of his sheep; the rest grow fat.

Will he congratulate himself on his economy? This countryman, it is you;one of your passions has devoured the others, and you think you have triumphed over yourself.Do not nearly all of us resemble that old general of ninety who, having met some young officers who were debauching themselves with some girls, says to them angrily: "Gentlemen, is that the example I give you?"Philosophical Dictionary: Charlatan CHARLATAN THE article entitled "Charlatan" in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" is filled with useful truths agreeably presented.The Chevalier de Jaucourt has there presented the charlatanry of medicine.

We will take the liberty of adding here a few reflections.The abode of the doctors is in the large towns; there are barely any doctors in the country.It is in the great towns that the rich invalids are; debauchery, the excesses of the table, the passions, are the cause of their maladies.

Dumoulin, not the lawyer, the doctor, who was as good a practician as the other, said as he was dying, that he left two great doctors behind him, diet and river water.

In 1728, in the time of Law, the most famous charlatan of the first species, another, Villars by name, confided to some friends that his uncle who had lived nearly a hundred years, and who died only by accident, had left him the secret of a water which could easily prolong life to a hundred and fifty years, provided a man was temperate.When he saw a funeral pass, he shrugged his shoulders in pity; if the defunct, he observed, had drunk my water, he would not be where he is.His friends to whom he gave generously of the water, and who observed the prescribed regime in some degree, thrived on it and praised it.He then sold the bottle for six francs; the sale was prodigious.It was water from the Seine with a little nitre.Those who took it and who subjected themselves to a certain amount of regime, above all those who were born with a good constitution, recovered perfect health in a few days.He said to the others: "It is your fault if you are not entirely cured: correct these two vices and you will live at least a hundred and fifty years."Some of them reformed; this good charlatan's fortune increased like his reputation.The Abbe de Pons, the enthusiast, put him far above the Marechal de Villars: "The Marechal kills men," he said to him, "but you make them live."People learned at last that Villars Water was only river water; they would have no more of it; and went to other charlatans.

It is certain that he had done good, and that the only reproach one could make against him was that he had sold Seine water a little too dear.

He led men to temperance by which fact he was superior to the apothecary Arnoult, who stuffed Europe with his satchets against apoplexy, without recommending any virtue.

I knew in London a doctor named Brown, who practised in Barbadoes.He had a sugar refinery and negroes; he was robbed of a considerable sum;he assembled his negroes: "My lads," he said to them, "the great serpent appeared to me during the night, he told me that the thief would at this moment have a parrot's feather on the end of his nose." The guilty man promptly put his hand to his nose."It is you who robbed me," said the master; "the great serpent has just told me so." And he regained his money.

One can hardly condemn such a charlatanry; but one must be dealing with negroes.

Scipio Africanus, this great Scipio very different otherwise from Dr.

Brown, willingly made his soldiers believe that he was inspired by the gods.This great charlatanry was long the custom.Can one blame Scipio to have availed himself of it? he was the man who perhaps did most honour to the Roman Republic; but why did the gods inspire him not to render his accounts?

Numa did better; it was necessary to police some brigands and a senate which was the most difficult section of these brigands to govern.If he had proposed his laws to the assembled tribes, the assassins of his predecessor would have made a thousand difficulties.He addressed himself to the goddess Egeria, who gave him some pandects from Jupiter; he was obeyed without contradiction, and he reigned happily.His instructions were good, his charlatanry did good; but if some secret enemy had discovered the imposture, if he had said: "Exterminate an impostor who prostitutes the name of the gods in order to deceive men," Numa ran the risk of being sent to heaven with Romulus.

It is probable that Numa took his measures very carefully, and that he deceived the Romans for their benefit, with a dexterity suitable to the time, the place, the intelligence of the early Romans.