第49章
To the shame of mankind, one knows that the laws of games are the only ones which everywhere are just, clear, inviolable and executed.Why is the Indian who gave us the rules of the game of chess willingly obeyed all over the world, and why are the popes' decretals, for example, to-day an object of horror and scorn? the reason is that the inventor of chess combined everything with precision for the satisfaction of the players, and that the popes, in their decretals, had nothing in view but their own interest.The Indian wished to exercise men's minds equally, and give them pleasure; the popes wished to besot men's minds.Also, the essence of the game of chess has remained the same for five thousand years, it is common to all the inhabitants of the earth; and the decretals are known only at Spoletto, Orvieto, Loretto, where the shallowest lawyer secretly hates and despises them.
But I delight in thinking that there is a natural law independent of all human conventions: the fruit of my work must belong to me; I must honour my father and my mother; I have no right over my fellow's life, and my fellow has none over mine, etc.But when I think that from Chedorlaomer to Mentzel, colonel of hussars, everyone loyally kills and pillages his fellow with a licence in his pocket, I am very afflicted.
I am told that there are laws among thieves, and also laws of war.Iask what are these laws of war.I learn that they mean hanging a brave officer who has held fast in a bad post without cannon against a royal army; that they mean having a prisoner hanged, if the enemy has hanged one of yours; that they mean putting to the fire and the sword villages which have not brought their sustenance on the appointed day, according to the orders of the gracious sovereign of the district."Good," say I, "that is the 'Spirit of the Laws.'"It seems to me that most men have received from nature enough common sense to make laws, but that everyone is not just enough to make good laws.Philosophical Dictionary: Liberty LIBERTY EITHER I am very much mistaken, or Locke the definer has very well defined liberty as "power." I am mistaken again, or Collins, celebrated London magistrate, is the only philosopher who has really sifted this idea, and Clark's answer to him was merely that of a theologian.But of all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little dialogue seems to me the most clear.
A: There is a battery of guns firing in your ears, have you the liberty to hear them or not to hear them?
B: Without doubt, I cannot stop myself hearing them.
A: Do you want this gun to carry off your head and the heads of your wife and daughter, who are walking with you?
B : What are you talking about? as long as I am of sound mind, I cannot want such a thing; it is impossible.
A: Good; you hear this gun necessarily, and you wish necessarily that neither you nor your family shall die from a cannon shot while you are out for a walk; you have not the power either of not hearing or of wishing to remain here?
B: Clearly.
A : You have consequently taken some thirty steps in order to be sheltered from the gun, you have had the power to walk these few steps with me?
B: Again very clearly.
A: And if you had been a paralytic, you could not have avoided being exposed to this battery, you would necessarily have heard and received a gun shot; and you would be dead necessarily?
B : Nothing is more true.
A : In what then does your liberty consist, unless it be in the power that your self has exercised in performing what your will required of absolute necessity?
B : You embarrass me; liberty then is nothing but the power of doing what I want to do?
A: Think about it, and see if liberty can be understood otherwise.
B: In that case my hunting dog is as free as I am; he has necessarily the will to run when he sees a hare, and the power of running if he has not a pain in his legs.I have then nothing above my dog; you reduce me to the state of the beasts.
A: What poor sophistry from the poor sophists who have taught you.Indeed you are in a bad way to be free like your dog! Do you not eat, sleep, propagate like him, even almost to the attitude? Do you want the sense of smell other than through your nose? Why do you want to have liberty otherwise than your dog has?
B : But I have a soul which reasons much, and my dog reasons hardly at all.He has almost only simple ideas, and I have a thousand metaphysical ideas.
A: Well, you are a thousand times freer than he is; that is, you have a thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but you do not think otherwise than he does.
B : What! I am not free to wish what I wish?
A: What do you mean by that?
B: I mean what everyone means.Doesn't one say every day, wishes are free?
A: A proverb is not a reason; explain yourself more clearly.
B : I mean that I am free to wish as I please.
A: With your permission, that has no Sense; do you not see that it is ridiculous to say, I wish to wish ? You wish necessarily, as a result of the ideas that have offered themselves to you.Do you wish to be married;yes or no?
B : But if I tell you that I want neither the one nor the other?
A : You will be answering like someone who says: " Some believe Cardinal Mazarin to be dead, others believe him to be alive, and as for me I believe neither the one nor the other."B : Well, I want to be married.
A : Ah ! that is an answer.Why do you want to be married ?
B : Because I am in love with a beautiful, sweet, well-bred young girl, who is fairly rich and sings very well, whose parents are very honest people, and because I flatter myself I am loved by her, and very welcome to her family.
A: That is a reason.You see that you cannot wish without reason.Ideclare to you that you are free to marry; that is, that you have the power to sign the contract, have your nuptials, and sleep with your wife.
B: How now! I cannot wish without reason? And what will become of that other proverb : Sit pro ratione voluntas ; my will is my reason, I wish because I wish?
A: That is absurd, my dear fellow; there would be in you an effect without a cause.