Would not the
opposite
wish (if one dare say so) appear more worthy of God, and much more needful to man?
Ezra-Pound-Instigations
.
.
with the gracious salve of this cosmoconception, with this parthenospotless- ness.
"
The company in his wake exhaled an inedited bore-
!
? 262 INSTIGATIONS
dom. They were all afraid of each other. Tiaras nod- ded, but no one confessed to any difficulty in following the thread of her argument. They were, racially, so very correct.
Salome wound oh in summary rejection of theogonies, thebdicies, comparative wisdoms of nations (short shift, tone of recitative). Nothing for nothing, perhaps one measure of nothing. She continued her mystic loquac- ity: "O tides, lunar oboes, avenues, lawns of twilight, winds losing caste in November, haymakings, vocations manquees, expressions of animals, chances. "
Jonquil colored mousselines with black spots, eyes fer- mented, smiles crucified, adorable umbilici, peacock aure- oles, fallen carnations, inconsequent fugues. One felt reborn, reinitiate and rejuvenate, the soul expiring sys- tematically in spirals across indubitable definitive show- ers, for the good of earth, understood everywhere, palp of Varuna, air omniversal, assured if one were but ready.
Salome continued insistently: "The pure state, I tell you, sectaries of the consciousness, why this convention of separations, individuals by mere etiquette, indivisible? Breathe upon the thistle-down of these sciences, r's you call them, in the orient of my pole-star. Is it life to per- sist in putting oneself au courant with oneself, constantly to inspect oneself, and then query at each step: am I wrong? Species! Categories! and kingdoms, bah! Nothing is lost, nothing added, it is all reclaimed in ad- vance. There is no ticket to the confessional for the heir of the prodigies. Not expedients and expiations, but vintages of the infinite, not experimental but in fa- tality. "
The little yellow vocalist with the black funereal spots broke the lyre over her knee, and regained her dignity. Theintoxicatedcrowdmoppedtheirforeheads. Anem-
!
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 263
barrassing silence. The hyperboreans Icxiked at each other: "What time will they put her to bed? " But neither ventured articulation; they did not even inspect their watches. It couldn't have been later than six. The slender voice once more aroused them:
"And now, father, I wish you to send me the head of Jao Kanan, on any saucer you like. I am going upstairs. I expect it. "
"But. . . but. . . mydear. . . this. . . this. . . " However--the hall was vigorously of the opinion that the Tiara should accomplish the will of Salome.
Emeraud glanced at the princes, who gave sign neither of approbation nor of disapprobation. The cage-birds again began shrieking. The matter was none of their business.
Decide
The Tetrarch threw his seal to the Administrator of Death. Theguestswerealreadyup,changingthecon- versation on their way to the evening tepidarium.
IV
With her elbows on the observatory railing, Salome, disliking popular fetes, listened to her familiar polu- phloisbious ocean. Calm evening.
Stars out in full company, eternities of zeniths of em- bers. Why go into exile ?
Salome, milk-sister to the Via Lactea, seldom lost her- self in constellations. Thanks to photo-spectrum analy- sis the stars could be classified as to color and magni- tudes; she had commanded a set of diamonds in the proportionate sizes to adorn nocturnally her hair and her person, over mousseline of deep mourning-violet with gold dots in the surface. Stars below the sixteenth mag-
--
? 264 INSTIGATIONS
nitude were not, were not in her world, she envisaged her twenty-four millions of subjects.
Isolated nebulous matrices, not the formed nebulae, were her passion; she ruled out planetiform discs and soughtbuttheunformed,perforated,tentacular. Orion's gaseous fog was the Brother Benjamin of her galaxy. But she was no more the "little" Salome, this night brought a change of relations, exorcised from her vir- ginity of tissue she felt peer to these matrices, fecund as they in gyratory evolutions. Yet this fatal sacrifice to the cult (still happy in getting out of so discreetly) had obliged her in order to get rid of her initiator, to undertake a step (grave perhaps), perhaps homicide; finally to assure silence, cool water to contingent people, --elixir of an hundred nights' distillation. It must serve.
Ah, well, such was her life. She was a specialty, a minute specialite.
There on a cushion among the debris of her black ebony lyre, lay Jao's head, like Orpheus' head in the old days, gleaming, encrusted with phosphorus, washed, anointed, barbered, grinning at the 24 million stars.
As soon as she had got it, Salome, inspired by the true spirit of research, had commenced the renowned ex- periments after decollation; of which we have heard so much. She awaited. The electric passes of her hyp- notic manual brought from it nothing but inconsequential grimaces.
She had an idea, however.
She perhaps lowered her eyes, out of respect to Orion, stiffening herself to gaze upon the nebulae of her puber- ties . . . for ten minutes. What nights, what nights in the future! Who will have the last word about it? Choral societies, fire-crackers down there in the city.
Finally Salome shook herself, like a sensible person,
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 265
reset, readjusted her fichu, took off the gray gold-spotted symbol-jewel of Orion, placed it between Jao's lips as an host, kissed the lips pityingly and herrrietically, sealed them with corrosive wax (a very speedy procedure).
Then with a "Bah ! " mutinous, disappointed, she seized the genial boko of the late Jao Kanan, in delicate fem- inine hands.
As she wished the head to land plumb in the sea with- out bounding upon the cliffs, she gave a good swing in turning. The fragment described a sufficient and phos- phorescent parabola, a noble parabola. But unfortu- nately the little astronomer had terribly miscalculated her impetus, and tripping over the parapet with a cry finally human she hurtled from crag to crag, to fall, shattered, into the picturesque anfractuosities of the breakers, far from the noise of the national festival, lacerated and naked, her skull shivered, paralyzed with a vertigo, in short, gone to the bad, to suffer for nearly an hour.
She had not even the viaticum of seeing the phospho- rescentstar,thefloatingheadofJaoonthewater. And the heights of heaven were distant.
Thus died Salome of the Isles (of the White Esoteric Isles, in especial) less from uncultured misventure than from trying to fabricate some distinction between herself andeveryoneelse; liketherestofus.
? VI
GENESIS, OR, THE FIRST BOOK IN THE BIBLE *
("Subject to Authority")
The sacred author of this work, Genesis, complied withtheideasacceptabletohisera; itwasalmostneces- sary ; for without- this condescension he would not have beenunderstood. Thereremainforusmerelyafewre- flections on the physics of those remote times. As for the theology of the book : we respect it, we believe it most firmly, we would not risk the faintest touch to its surface.
"In the beginning God created heaven and earth. " That is the way they translate it, yet there is scarcely any one so ignorant as not to know that the original reads "thegodscreatedheavenandearth"; whichreadingcon- forms to the Phoenician idea that God employed lesser divinities to untangle chaos. The Phoenicians had been long established when the Hebrews broke into some few provinces of their land. It was quite natural that these latter should have learned their language and borrowed
their ideas of the cosmos.
Did the ancient Phoenician philosophers in "the time
of Moses" know enough to regard the earth as a point in relation to the multitude of globes which God has placed in immensity? The very ancient and false idea
* Translated from an eighteenth-century author. 266
? GENESIS 267
that heaven was made for the earth has nearly always prevailed among ignorant peoples. It is scarcely pos- sible that such good navigators as the Phoenicians should not have had a few decent astronomers, but the old preju- dices were quite strong, and were gently handled by the author of Genesis, who wrote to teach us God's ways and not to instruct us in physics.
"The earth was all tohu bohu and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, the spirit of God was borne on the waters. "
"Tohu bohu" means precisely chaos, disorder. The earth was not yet formed as it is at present. Matter ex- isted, the divine power had only to straighten things out. The "spirit of God" is literally the "breath" or "wind" whichstirredupthewaters. Thisideaisfoundinfrag- ments of the Phoenician author, Sanchoniathon. The Phoeniciins, like all the other peoples of antiquity, be- lieved matter eternal. There is not one author of all those times who ever said that one could make something ofnothing. EvenintheBiblethereisnopassagewhich claims that matter was made out of nothing, not but what this creation from nothing is true, but its verity was un- known to the carnal Jews.
Men have been always divided on the eternity of the world, but never on the eternity of matter.
"Gigni dfe nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse re- verti," writes Persius, and all antiquity shared his opin- ion. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light, and he saw that the light was good, and he divided the light from darkness, and he called the light day and the darkness night, and this was the evening and the morning of the first day. And God also said that the firmament, etc. , the second day . . . saw that it was good.
Let us begin by seeing whether the bishop of Av-
;
? 268 INSTIGATIONS
ranches Huet, Leclerc, etc. , are right, against those who claim that this is a subHme piece of eloquence.
The Jewish author lumps in the light with the other objects of creation; he uses the same turn of phrase, "saw that it was good. " The sublime should lift itself abovetheaverage. Lightisnobettertreatedthanany- thing else in this passage. It was another respected opinion that light did not come from the sun. Men saw it spread through the air before sunrise and after sunset they thought the sun served merely to reinforce it. The author of Genesis conforms to popular error: he has the sun and moon made four days after the light. It is un- likely that there was a morning and evening before the sun came into being, but the inspired author bows to the vague and stupid prejudice of his nation. It seems prob- able that God was not attempting to educate the Jews in philosophy or cosmogony. He could lift their spirits straight into truth, but he preferred to descend to their level. One can not repeat this answer too often.
The separation of the light from the darkness is not part of another physical theory; it seems that night and day were mixed up like two kinds of grain ; and that they were sifted out of each other. It is sufficiently well es- tablished that darkness is nothing but the deprivation of light, and that there is light only in so far as our eyes receive the sensation, but no one had thought of this at that time.
The idea of the firmament is also of respectable an- tiquity. People imagined the skies very solid, because the same set of things always happened there. The skies circulated over our heads, they must therefore be very strong. The means of calculating how many exhalations of the earth and how many seas would be needed to keep
? GENESIS 269
the clouds full of water? There was then no Halley to write out the equations. There were tanks of water in heaven. These tanks were held up on a good steady dome ; but one could see through the dome ; it must have been made out of crystal. In order that the water could be poured over the earth there had to be doors, sluices, cataracts which could be opened, turned on. Such was the current astronomy, and one was writing for Jews ; it was quite necessary to take up their silly ideas, which they had borrowed from other peoples only a little less stupid.
"God made two great lights, one to preside over the day, the other the night, and he made also the stars. "
True, this shows the same continuous ignorance of na- ture. The Jews did not know that the moonlight is merely reflection. The author speaks of the stars as luminous points, which they look like, although they are at times suns with planets swinging about them. But holy spirit harmonized with the mind of the time. If he had said that the sun is a million times as large as the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller, no one would have understood him. They appear to be two stars of sizes not very unequal.
"God said also : let us make man in our image, let him rule over the fishes, etc. "
What did the Jews mean by "in our image"? They meant, like all antiquity:
Pinxit in eMgiem moderantum cuncta deorum.
One can not make "images" save of bodies. No na- tion then imagined a bodiless god, and it is impossible to picture him as such. One might indeed say "god is noth- ing of anything we know," but then one would not have any idea what he is. The Jews constantly believed god corporal, as did all the rest of the nations. All the first
? 270 INSTIGATIONS
fathers of the church also believed god coiporal, until they had swallowed Plato's ideas, or rather until the lights of Christianity had grown purer.
"He created them male and female. "
If God or the secondary gods created man male and fe- male in their resemblance, it would seem that the Jews believedGodandtheGodsweremaleandfemale. One searches to see whether the author meant to say that man was at the start ambisextrous or if he means that God made Adam and Eve the same day. The most natural interpretation would be that god made Adam and Eve at the same time, but this is absolutely contradicted by the formation of woman from the rib, a long time after the first seven days.
"And he rested the seventh day. "
The Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and Indians say that God made the world in six periods, which Zoroaster calls the six gahambars, as celebrated among Persians.
It is incontestable that all these people had a theogony long before the Jews got to Horeb and Sinai, and before they could have had writers. Several savants think it likely that the allegory of the six days is imitated from the six periods. God might have permitted great na- tions to have this idea before he inspired the Jews, just as he had permitted other people to discover the arts before the Jews had attained any.
"The place of delight shall be a river which waters a garden, and from it shall flow four rivers, Phison . . .
have contained about a third of Asia and Africa. The Euphrates and Tigris have their sources sixty miles apart in hideous mountains which do not look the least like a garden. TheriverwhichbordersEthiopiacanbeonly
Gehon . . . , etc. , Tigris, Euphrates
. "
According to this version the terrestrial paradise would
. .
? GENESIS 271
the Nile, whose source is a little over a thousand miles from those of the Tigris and the Euphrates ; and if Phi- son is the Phase, it is curious to start a Scythian river from the fount of a river of Africa. One must look furtherafieldforthemeaningofalltheserivers. Every commentator makes his own Eden.
Some one has said that the Garden was like the gar- dens of Eden at Saana in Arabia Felix celebrated in an- tiquity, and that the parvenu Hebrews might have been an Arab tribe taking to themselves credit for the prettiest thing in the best canton of Arabia, as they have always taken to themselves the traditions of all the great peoples who enslaved them. But in any case they were led by the Lord.
"The Lord took man and set him in the midst of the garden, to tend it. " It was all very well saying "tend it," "cultivate the garden," but it would have been very difficult for Adam to cultivate a garden 3,000 miles long. Perhaps he had helpers. It is another chance for the commentators to exercise their gifts of divination . . . as they do with the rivers.
"Eat not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. " It is difficult to think that there was a tree which taught good and evil ; as there are pear trees and peach trees. One asks why God did not wish man to know good from evil.
Would not the opposite wish (if one dare say so) appear more worthy of God, and much more needful to man? It seems to our poor reason that God might have ordered him to eat a good deal of this fruit, but one must submit one's reason and conclude that obe- dience to God is the proper course for us.
"If you eat of the fruit you shall die. "
Yet Adam ate, and did not die in the least; they say he lived another nine centuries. Several "Fathers" have
? 272 INSTIGATIONS
considered all this as an allegory. Indeed, one may say that other animals do not know that they die, but that man knows it through his reason. This reason is the tree of knowledge which makes him foresee his finish. This explanation may be more reasonable, but we do not dare to pronounce on it.
"The Lord said also: It is not good that man should bealone,letusmakehimanhelpmateliketohim. " One expects that the Lord is going to give him a woman, but first he brings up all the beasts. This may be the trans- position of some copyist.
"And the name which Adam gave to each animal is its realname. " Ananimal'srealnamewouldbeonewhich designated all the qualifications of its species, or at least the principal traits, but this does not exist in any lan- guage. There are certain imitative words, cock and cuckoo, and alali in Greek, etc. Moreover, if Adam had known the real names and therefore the properties of the animals, he must have already eaten of the tree of knowledge; or else it would seem that God need not have forbidden him the tree, since he already knew more than the Royal Society, or the Academy.
Observe that this is the first time Adam is named in Genesis. The first man according to the Brahmins was Adimo, son of the earth. Adam and Eve mean the same thing in Phcenician, another indication that the holy spirit fell in with the received ideas.
"WhenAdamwasasleep, etc. , . . . rib . . . madea woman. " The Lord, in the preceding chapter, had al- ready created them male and female ; why should he take a rib out of the man to make a woman already existing? We are told that the author announces in one place whatheexplainsinanother. Wearetoldthatthisalle- gory shows woman submitted to her husband. Many
? GENESIS 273
people have believed on the strength of these verses that men have one rib less than women, but this is an heresy and anatomy shows us that a woman is no better provided with ribs than her husband.
"Now the serpent was the most subtle of beasts," etc. , "he said to the woman," etc.
There is nowhere the least mention of the devil or a devil. All is physical. The serpent was considered not only the subtlest of all beasts by all oriental nations ; he wasalsobelievedimmortal. TheChaldeanshadafable about a fight between God and a serpent ; it is preserved byPherecides. Origencitesitinhissixthbookagainst Celsus. They carried snakes in the feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians attributed a sort of divinity to the ser- pent, as Eusebius tells us in his "Evangelical Prepara- tions," book I, chapter X. In India and Arabia, and in China, the serpent was the symbol of life; the Chinese emperors before Moses wore the serpent sign on their breasts.
Eve is not surprised at the serpent's talking to her. Animalsarealwaystalkingintheoldstories; thuswhen Pilpai and Locman make animals talk no one is ever surprised.
All this tale seems physical and denuded of allegory. It even tells us the reason why the serpent who ramped before this now crawls on its belly, and why we always try to destroy it (at least so they say) ; precisely as we are told in all ancient metamorphoses why the crow, who was white, is now black, why the owl stays at home in the daytime, etc. But the "Fathers" have believed it an alle- gory manifest and respectable, and it is safest to believe
them.
"I will multiply your griefs and your pregnancies, ye
shall bring forth children with grief, ye shall be beneath
? 274
INSTIGATIONS
thepowerofthemanandheshallruleoveryou. " One asks why the multiplication of pregnancies is a punish- ment. It was on the contrary a very great blessing, and especially for the Jews. The pains of childbirth are alarming only for delicate women; those accustomed to work are brought to bed very easily, especially in hot cli- mates. Ontheotherhand,animalssometimessufferin littering, and even die of it. As for the superiority of man over woman, this is the quite natural result of his bodily and intellectual forces. The male organs are gen- erally more capable of consecutive effort, more fit for manual and intellectual tasks. But when the woman has fist or wit stronger than those of her husband she rules the roost, and the man is submitted to woman. This is true, but before the original sin there may have been neither pain nor submission.
"God made them tunics of skin. "
This passage proves very nicely that the Jews believed in a corporal god. A Rabbi named Eliezer has written that God covered Adam and Eve with the skin of the tempter serpent; Origen claims that the "tunic of skin" was a new flesh, a new body which God made for man, but one should have more respect for the texj:.
"And the Lord said 'Behold Adam, who is become like one of us. ' " It seems that the Jews at first admired sev- eral gods. It is considerably more difficult to make out what they mean by the word God, Eloim. Several com- mentators state that this phrase, "one of us," means the Trinity, but there is no question of the Trinity in the Bible. *
* The reader will remember in Lander's Chinese dialogues, when the returned mandarin is telling the Emperor's children about England, there is one place where they burst into giggles "because they had been taught some arithmetic. "
? GENESIS 275
The Trinity is not a composite of several gods, it is the same god tripled ; the Jews never heard tell of a god in three persons. By these words "like unto us" it is prob- ablethattheJewsmeantangels,Eloim. Forthisreason various rash men of learning have thought that the book was not written until a time when the Jews had adopted a belief in inferior gods, but this view is condemned. *
"The Lord set him outside the garden of delights, that he might dig in the earth. " Yet some say that God had put him in the garden, in order that he might cultivate it. If gardener Adam merely became laborer Adam, he was not so much the worse off. This solution of the diffi- culty does not seem to us sufficiently serious. It would be better to say that God punished Adam's disobedience by banishing him from his birthplace.
Certain over-temerarious commentators say that the whole of the story refers to an idea once common to all men,i. e. ,thatpasttimeswerebetterthanpresent. Peo- ple have always bragged of the past in order to run down the present. Men overburdened with work have imag- ined that pleasure is idleness, not having had wit enough to conceive that man is never worse off than when he has nothing to do. Men seeing themselves not infrequently miserable forged an idea of a time when all men were happy. Itisasiftheyhadsaid,onceuponatimenotree withered, no beast fell sick, no animal devoured another, the spiders did not catch flies. Hence the ideal of the Golden Age, of the egg of Arimana, of the serpent who stole the secret of eternal life from the donkey, of the combat of Typhon and Osiris, of Ophionee and the gods,
of Pandora's casket, and all these other old stories, some- times very ingenious and never, in the least way, instruc-
*The reader is referred to our heading: "Subject to au- thority".
? 276 INSTIGATIONS
tive. But we should believe that the fables of other na- tions are imitation of Hebrew history, since we still have the Hebrew history and the history of other savage peo- ples is for the most part destroyed. Moreover, the wit- nesses in favor of Genesis are quite irrefutable.
"And he set before the garden of delight a cherubin with a turning and flaming sword to keep guard over the gateway to the tree of life. " The word "kerub" means bullock. A bullock with a burning sword is an odd sight atadoorway. ButtheJewshaverepresentedangelsas bulls and as sparrow hawks, despite the prohibition to makegravenimages. Obviouslytheygotthesebullsand hawks from Egyptians who imitated all sorts of things, and who worshipped the bull as the symbol of agriculture andthehawkasthesymbolofwinds. Probablythetale is an allegory, a Jewish allegory, the kerub means "na- ture. " A symbol made of a bull's body, a man's head and a hawk's wings.
"The Lord put his mark upon Cain. "
"What a Lord ! " say the incredulous. He accepts Abel's offering, rejects that of the elder brother, without giving any trace of a reason. The Lord provided the cause of the first brotherly enmity. This is a moral instruction, most truly, a lesson to be learned from all ancient fables, to wit, that scarcely had the race come into existence before one brother assassinated another, but what ap- pears to the wise of this world, contrary to all justice, contrary to all the common sense principles, is that God has eternally damned the whole human race, and has slaughtered his own son, quite uselessly, for an apple, and that he has pardoned a fratricide. Did I say "par- doned"? He takes the criminal under his own protec- tion. He declares that any one who avenges the murder of Abel shall be punished with seven fold the punishment
? GENESIS
277
inflicted on Cain. He puts on him his sign as a safe- guard. The impious call the story both execrable and absurd. It is the delirium of some unfortunate Israelite, who wrote these inept infamies in imitation of stories so abundant among the neighboring Syrians. This insen- sate Hebrew attributed his atrocious invention to Moses, atatimewhennothingwasrarerthanbooks. Destiny, which disposes of all things, has preserved his work till our day; scoundrels have praised it, and idiots have be- lieved. Thus say the horde of theists, who while ador-
ing God, have been so rash as to condemn the Lord God of Israel, and who judge the actions of the Eternal Be- ing by the rules of our imperfect ethics, and our errone- ous justice. They admit a god but submit god to our laws. Let us guard against such temerity, and let us once again learn to respect what lies beyond our compre- hension. Let us cry out "O Altitudo ! " with all our strength.
"The Gods, Eloim, seeing that the daughters of men were fair, took for spouses those whom they chose. '' This flight of imagination is also common to all the na- tions. There is no race, except perhaps the Chinese,* which has not recorded gods getting young girls with child. Corporeal gods come down to look at their do- main, they see our young ladies and take the best for themselves; childrenproducedinthiswayarebetterthan other folks' children; thus Genesis does not omit to say
* In Fenollosa's notes on Kutsugen's ode to "Sir in the Clouds," I am unable to make out whether the girl is more than a priestess. She bathes in hot water made fragrant by boiling orchids in it, she washes her hair and binds iris into it, she puts on the dress of flowery colors, and the god illimitable in his brilliance descends ; she continues her attention to her toil. et, in very reverent manner. ? P.
? 278 INSTIGATIONS
that this commerce bred giants. Once again the book is in key with vulgar opinion.
"And I will pour the water floods over the earth. "
I would note here that St. Augustin (City of God, No. 8) says, "Maximum illud diluvium graeca nee latina tiovit historia. " Neither Greek nor Latin history takes note of this very great flood. In truth, they knew only Deu- calion's and Ogyges' in Greece. These were regarded a:s universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but were totally unknown in Eastern Asia. St. Augustin is not in error when he says history makes no mention thereof.
"God said to Noah : I will make an agreement with you and with your seed after you, and with all the ani- mals. " Godmakeanagreementwithanimals! Theun- believers will exclaim: "What a contract! " But if he make an alliance with man, why not with the animals ? What nice feeling, there is something quite as divine in this sentiment as in the most metaphysical thought. Moreover, animals feel better than most men think. It is apparently in virtue of this agreement that St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers, and hares, "Sing, sister hoppergrass, brouse brother rabbit. " But what were the terms of the treaty ? That all the animals should devour each other ; that they should live on our flesh ; and we on theirs ; that after hav- ing eaten all we can we should exterminate all the rest, and that we should only omit the devouring of men stran-
gled with our own hands. If there was any such pact it was presumably made with the devil.
Probably this passage is only intended to show that God is in equal degree master of all things that breathe. This pact could only have been a command; it is called "alliance" merely by an "extension of the word's mean- ing. " One should not quibble over mere terminology.
? GENESIS
279
but worship the spirit, and go back to the time when they wrote this work which is scandal to the weak, but quite edifying to the strong.
"And I will put my bow in the sky, and it shall be a sign of our pact. " Note that the author does not say "I have put" but "I will put my bow"; this shows that in common opinion the bow had not always existed. It is a phenomenon of necessity caused by the rain, and they give it as a supernatural manifestation that the worldshallnevermorebecoveredwithwater. Itisodd that they should choose a sign of rain as a promise that one shall not be drowned. But one may reply to this: when in danger of inundations we may be reassured by seeing a rainbow.
"Now the Lord went down to see the city which the children of Adam had builded, and he said, behold a people with only one speech. They have begun this and won't quit until it is finished. Let us go down and confound their language, so that no man may understand hisneighbor. " Notemerelythatthesacredauthorstill conforms to vulgar opinion. He always speaks of Grod as of a man who informs himself of what is going on, who wants to see with his eyes what is being done on his estate, and who calls his people together to determine a course of action.
"And Abraham, having arrayed his people (there were of them three hundred and eighteen), fell upon the five kings and slew them and pursued them even to Hoba on the left side of Damas. " From the south side of the lake of Sodom to Damas is 24 leagues, and they still had to cross Liban and anti-Liban. Unbelievers exult oversuchtremendousexaggeration. ButsincetheLord favored Abraham there is no exaggeration.
"And that evening two angels came into Sodom, etc. "
? 28o INSTIGATIONS
The history of the two angels whom the Sodomites wanted to ravish is perhaps the most extraordinary whichantiquityhasproduced. Butwemustremember that all Asia believed in incubi and succubse demons, and that moreover these angels were creatures more perfect than man, and that they were probably much better look- ing, and lit more desires in a jaded, corrupt race than common men would have excited. Perhaps this part of the story is only a figure of rhetoric to express the horrible lewdness of Sodom and of Gomorrah. We offer this solution to savants with the most profound self-mistrust.
As for Lot who offered his two daughters to the Sodomites in lieu of the angels, and Lot's wife metamor- phosed into the saline image, and all the rest of the story, what can one say of it? The ancient fable of Cinyra and Myrrha has some relation to Lot's incest with his daughters, the adventure of Philemon and Baucis is not without its points of comparison with that of the two angels appearing to Lot and his wife. As for the pillar of salt, I do not know what it compares with, perhaps with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?
A number of savants think with Newton and the learned Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had learned reading and writing, and that all these tales are imitation of Syrian fable.
But it is sufficient for us that it is all Holy Scripture; we therefore revere it without searching in it for any- thing that is not the work of the Holy Spirit. We should remember, at all times, that these times are not our times, and we should not fail to add our word to that of so many great men who have declared that the Old Testament is true history, and that everything in- vented by all the rest of the universe is mere fable.
? GENESIS 281
Some savants have pretended that one should remove from the canonical books all incredible matters which might be a stumbling block to the feeble, but it is said that these savants were men of corrupt heart and that they ought to be burned, and that it is impossible to be an honest man unless you believe that the Sodomites desired to ravish the angels. This is the reasoning of a species of monster who wishes to rule over wits.
It is true that several celebrated church fathers have had the prudence to turn all these tales into allegory, like the Jews, and Philo in especial. Popes still more prudent desired to prevent the translation of these books into the everyday tongue, for fear men should be led to pass judgment on what was upheld for their adoration.
One ought surely to conclude that those who perfectly understand this work should tolerate those who do not understand it, for if these latter do not understand it, it is not their fault ; also those who do not understand it should tolerate those who understand it most fully.
Savants, too full of their knowledge, have claimed that Moses could not possibly have written the book of Genesis. One of their reasons is that in the story of Abraham, the patriarch pays for his wife's funeral plot
in coined money, and that the king of Gerare gives a thousand pieces of silver to Sarah when he returns her, after having stolen her for her beauty in the seventy- fifth year of her age. They say that, having consulted authorities, they find that there was no coined money in thosedays. Butitisquiteclearthatthisispurechicane on their part, since the Church has always believed mostfirmlythatMosesdidwritethePentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts raised by the disciples of Aben- Hesra and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of the comptroller-general Silhouette, in
? 282 INSTIGATIONS
his book, now very rare, entitled "Conjectures on Gene- sis," adds new objections, unsolvable to human wisdom; but not to humble submissive piety. The savants dare to contradict every line, the simple revere every line. Guard against falling into the misfortune of trusting our human reason, be contrite in heart and in spirit.
"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the kingofGeraretookhertohim. " Weconfess,aswehave said in our essay on Abraham, that Sarah was then ninety years old; that she had already been kidnapped by one King of Egypt; and that a king of this same desert Gerare later kidnapped the wife of Abraham's son Isaac. We have also spoken of the servant Agar, by whom Abraham had a son, and of how Abraham treated them both. One knows what delight unbelievers take in these stories ; with what supercilious smiles they con- siderthem; howtheysetthestoryofAbimelechandthis same wife of Abraham's (Sarah) whom he passed off as his sister, above the "looi nights" and also that of an- other Abimelech in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also passed off as his sister. One can not too often reiterate that the fault of all these studious critics lies in their persistent endeavour to bring all these things into accord
with our feeble reason and to judge ancient Arabs as they would judge the French court or the English.
"The soul of Sichem, son of King Hemor, cleaved to the soul of Dinah, and he charmed his sadness with her tender caresses, and he went to Hemor his father, and said unto him : Give me this woman for wife. " Here the savants are even more refractory. What! a king's son marry a vagabond's daughter, Jacob her father loaded with presents! The king receives into his city these wandering robbers, called patriarchs ; he has the incredi- ble and incomprehensible kindness to get himself circum-
? GENESIS 283
cised, he and his son, his court and his people, in order to condescend to the superstition of this little tribe which didnotownahalfleagueofland!
The company in his wake exhaled an inedited bore-
!
? 262 INSTIGATIONS
dom. They were all afraid of each other. Tiaras nod- ded, but no one confessed to any difficulty in following the thread of her argument. They were, racially, so very correct.
Salome wound oh in summary rejection of theogonies, thebdicies, comparative wisdoms of nations (short shift, tone of recitative). Nothing for nothing, perhaps one measure of nothing. She continued her mystic loquac- ity: "O tides, lunar oboes, avenues, lawns of twilight, winds losing caste in November, haymakings, vocations manquees, expressions of animals, chances. "
Jonquil colored mousselines with black spots, eyes fer- mented, smiles crucified, adorable umbilici, peacock aure- oles, fallen carnations, inconsequent fugues. One felt reborn, reinitiate and rejuvenate, the soul expiring sys- tematically in spirals across indubitable definitive show- ers, for the good of earth, understood everywhere, palp of Varuna, air omniversal, assured if one were but ready.
Salome continued insistently: "The pure state, I tell you, sectaries of the consciousness, why this convention of separations, individuals by mere etiquette, indivisible? Breathe upon the thistle-down of these sciences, r's you call them, in the orient of my pole-star. Is it life to per- sist in putting oneself au courant with oneself, constantly to inspect oneself, and then query at each step: am I wrong? Species! Categories! and kingdoms, bah! Nothing is lost, nothing added, it is all reclaimed in ad- vance. There is no ticket to the confessional for the heir of the prodigies. Not expedients and expiations, but vintages of the infinite, not experimental but in fa- tality. "
The little yellow vocalist with the black funereal spots broke the lyre over her knee, and regained her dignity. Theintoxicatedcrowdmoppedtheirforeheads. Anem-
!
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 263
barrassing silence. The hyperboreans Icxiked at each other: "What time will they put her to bed? " But neither ventured articulation; they did not even inspect their watches. It couldn't have been later than six. The slender voice once more aroused them:
"And now, father, I wish you to send me the head of Jao Kanan, on any saucer you like. I am going upstairs. I expect it. "
"But. . . but. . . mydear. . . this. . . this. . . " However--the hall was vigorously of the opinion that the Tiara should accomplish the will of Salome.
Emeraud glanced at the princes, who gave sign neither of approbation nor of disapprobation. The cage-birds again began shrieking. The matter was none of their business.
Decide
The Tetrarch threw his seal to the Administrator of Death. Theguestswerealreadyup,changingthecon- versation on their way to the evening tepidarium.
IV
With her elbows on the observatory railing, Salome, disliking popular fetes, listened to her familiar polu- phloisbious ocean. Calm evening.
Stars out in full company, eternities of zeniths of em- bers. Why go into exile ?
Salome, milk-sister to the Via Lactea, seldom lost her- self in constellations. Thanks to photo-spectrum analy- sis the stars could be classified as to color and magni- tudes; she had commanded a set of diamonds in the proportionate sizes to adorn nocturnally her hair and her person, over mousseline of deep mourning-violet with gold dots in the surface. Stars below the sixteenth mag-
--
? 264 INSTIGATIONS
nitude were not, were not in her world, she envisaged her twenty-four millions of subjects.
Isolated nebulous matrices, not the formed nebulae, were her passion; she ruled out planetiform discs and soughtbuttheunformed,perforated,tentacular. Orion's gaseous fog was the Brother Benjamin of her galaxy. But she was no more the "little" Salome, this night brought a change of relations, exorcised from her vir- ginity of tissue she felt peer to these matrices, fecund as they in gyratory evolutions. Yet this fatal sacrifice to the cult (still happy in getting out of so discreetly) had obliged her in order to get rid of her initiator, to undertake a step (grave perhaps), perhaps homicide; finally to assure silence, cool water to contingent people, --elixir of an hundred nights' distillation. It must serve.
Ah, well, such was her life. She was a specialty, a minute specialite.
There on a cushion among the debris of her black ebony lyre, lay Jao's head, like Orpheus' head in the old days, gleaming, encrusted with phosphorus, washed, anointed, barbered, grinning at the 24 million stars.
As soon as she had got it, Salome, inspired by the true spirit of research, had commenced the renowned ex- periments after decollation; of which we have heard so much. She awaited. The electric passes of her hyp- notic manual brought from it nothing but inconsequential grimaces.
She had an idea, however.
She perhaps lowered her eyes, out of respect to Orion, stiffening herself to gaze upon the nebulae of her puber- ties . . . for ten minutes. What nights, what nights in the future! Who will have the last word about it? Choral societies, fire-crackers down there in the city.
Finally Salome shook herself, like a sensible person,
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 265
reset, readjusted her fichu, took off the gray gold-spotted symbol-jewel of Orion, placed it between Jao's lips as an host, kissed the lips pityingly and herrrietically, sealed them with corrosive wax (a very speedy procedure).
Then with a "Bah ! " mutinous, disappointed, she seized the genial boko of the late Jao Kanan, in delicate fem- inine hands.
As she wished the head to land plumb in the sea with- out bounding upon the cliffs, she gave a good swing in turning. The fragment described a sufficient and phos- phorescent parabola, a noble parabola. But unfortu- nately the little astronomer had terribly miscalculated her impetus, and tripping over the parapet with a cry finally human she hurtled from crag to crag, to fall, shattered, into the picturesque anfractuosities of the breakers, far from the noise of the national festival, lacerated and naked, her skull shivered, paralyzed with a vertigo, in short, gone to the bad, to suffer for nearly an hour.
She had not even the viaticum of seeing the phospho- rescentstar,thefloatingheadofJaoonthewater. And the heights of heaven were distant.
Thus died Salome of the Isles (of the White Esoteric Isles, in especial) less from uncultured misventure than from trying to fabricate some distinction between herself andeveryoneelse; liketherestofus.
? VI
GENESIS, OR, THE FIRST BOOK IN THE BIBLE *
("Subject to Authority")
The sacred author of this work, Genesis, complied withtheideasacceptabletohisera; itwasalmostneces- sary ; for without- this condescension he would not have beenunderstood. Thereremainforusmerelyafewre- flections on the physics of those remote times. As for the theology of the book : we respect it, we believe it most firmly, we would not risk the faintest touch to its surface.
"In the beginning God created heaven and earth. " That is the way they translate it, yet there is scarcely any one so ignorant as not to know that the original reads "thegodscreatedheavenandearth"; whichreadingcon- forms to the Phoenician idea that God employed lesser divinities to untangle chaos. The Phoenicians had been long established when the Hebrews broke into some few provinces of their land. It was quite natural that these latter should have learned their language and borrowed
their ideas of the cosmos.
Did the ancient Phoenician philosophers in "the time
of Moses" know enough to regard the earth as a point in relation to the multitude of globes which God has placed in immensity? The very ancient and false idea
* Translated from an eighteenth-century author. 266
? GENESIS 267
that heaven was made for the earth has nearly always prevailed among ignorant peoples. It is scarcely pos- sible that such good navigators as the Phoenicians should not have had a few decent astronomers, but the old preju- dices were quite strong, and were gently handled by the author of Genesis, who wrote to teach us God's ways and not to instruct us in physics.
"The earth was all tohu bohu and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, the spirit of God was borne on the waters. "
"Tohu bohu" means precisely chaos, disorder. The earth was not yet formed as it is at present. Matter ex- isted, the divine power had only to straighten things out. The "spirit of God" is literally the "breath" or "wind" whichstirredupthewaters. Thisideaisfoundinfrag- ments of the Phoenician author, Sanchoniathon. The Phoeniciins, like all the other peoples of antiquity, be- lieved matter eternal. There is not one author of all those times who ever said that one could make something ofnothing. EvenintheBiblethereisnopassagewhich claims that matter was made out of nothing, not but what this creation from nothing is true, but its verity was un- known to the carnal Jews.
Men have been always divided on the eternity of the world, but never on the eternity of matter.
"Gigni dfe nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse re- verti," writes Persius, and all antiquity shared his opin- ion. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light, and he saw that the light was good, and he divided the light from darkness, and he called the light day and the darkness night, and this was the evening and the morning of the first day. And God also said that the firmament, etc. , the second day . . . saw that it was good.
Let us begin by seeing whether the bishop of Av-
;
? 268 INSTIGATIONS
ranches Huet, Leclerc, etc. , are right, against those who claim that this is a subHme piece of eloquence.
The Jewish author lumps in the light with the other objects of creation; he uses the same turn of phrase, "saw that it was good. " The sublime should lift itself abovetheaverage. Lightisnobettertreatedthanany- thing else in this passage. It was another respected opinion that light did not come from the sun. Men saw it spread through the air before sunrise and after sunset they thought the sun served merely to reinforce it. The author of Genesis conforms to popular error: he has the sun and moon made four days after the light. It is un- likely that there was a morning and evening before the sun came into being, but the inspired author bows to the vague and stupid prejudice of his nation. It seems prob- able that God was not attempting to educate the Jews in philosophy or cosmogony. He could lift their spirits straight into truth, but he preferred to descend to their level. One can not repeat this answer too often.
The separation of the light from the darkness is not part of another physical theory; it seems that night and day were mixed up like two kinds of grain ; and that they were sifted out of each other. It is sufficiently well es- tablished that darkness is nothing but the deprivation of light, and that there is light only in so far as our eyes receive the sensation, but no one had thought of this at that time.
The idea of the firmament is also of respectable an- tiquity. People imagined the skies very solid, because the same set of things always happened there. The skies circulated over our heads, they must therefore be very strong. The means of calculating how many exhalations of the earth and how many seas would be needed to keep
? GENESIS 269
the clouds full of water? There was then no Halley to write out the equations. There were tanks of water in heaven. These tanks were held up on a good steady dome ; but one could see through the dome ; it must have been made out of crystal. In order that the water could be poured over the earth there had to be doors, sluices, cataracts which could be opened, turned on. Such was the current astronomy, and one was writing for Jews ; it was quite necessary to take up their silly ideas, which they had borrowed from other peoples only a little less stupid.
"God made two great lights, one to preside over the day, the other the night, and he made also the stars. "
True, this shows the same continuous ignorance of na- ture. The Jews did not know that the moonlight is merely reflection. The author speaks of the stars as luminous points, which they look like, although they are at times suns with planets swinging about them. But holy spirit harmonized with the mind of the time. If he had said that the sun is a million times as large as the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller, no one would have understood him. They appear to be two stars of sizes not very unequal.
"God said also : let us make man in our image, let him rule over the fishes, etc. "
What did the Jews mean by "in our image"? They meant, like all antiquity:
Pinxit in eMgiem moderantum cuncta deorum.
One can not make "images" save of bodies. No na- tion then imagined a bodiless god, and it is impossible to picture him as such. One might indeed say "god is noth- ing of anything we know," but then one would not have any idea what he is. The Jews constantly believed god corporal, as did all the rest of the nations. All the first
? 270 INSTIGATIONS
fathers of the church also believed god coiporal, until they had swallowed Plato's ideas, or rather until the lights of Christianity had grown purer.
"He created them male and female. "
If God or the secondary gods created man male and fe- male in their resemblance, it would seem that the Jews believedGodandtheGodsweremaleandfemale. One searches to see whether the author meant to say that man was at the start ambisextrous or if he means that God made Adam and Eve the same day. The most natural interpretation would be that god made Adam and Eve at the same time, but this is absolutely contradicted by the formation of woman from the rib, a long time after the first seven days.
"And he rested the seventh day. "
The Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and Indians say that God made the world in six periods, which Zoroaster calls the six gahambars, as celebrated among Persians.
It is incontestable that all these people had a theogony long before the Jews got to Horeb and Sinai, and before they could have had writers. Several savants think it likely that the allegory of the six days is imitated from the six periods. God might have permitted great na- tions to have this idea before he inspired the Jews, just as he had permitted other people to discover the arts before the Jews had attained any.
"The place of delight shall be a river which waters a garden, and from it shall flow four rivers, Phison . . .
have contained about a third of Asia and Africa. The Euphrates and Tigris have their sources sixty miles apart in hideous mountains which do not look the least like a garden. TheriverwhichbordersEthiopiacanbeonly
Gehon . . . , etc. , Tigris, Euphrates
. "
According to this version the terrestrial paradise would
. .
? GENESIS 271
the Nile, whose source is a little over a thousand miles from those of the Tigris and the Euphrates ; and if Phi- son is the Phase, it is curious to start a Scythian river from the fount of a river of Africa. One must look furtherafieldforthemeaningofalltheserivers. Every commentator makes his own Eden.
Some one has said that the Garden was like the gar- dens of Eden at Saana in Arabia Felix celebrated in an- tiquity, and that the parvenu Hebrews might have been an Arab tribe taking to themselves credit for the prettiest thing in the best canton of Arabia, as they have always taken to themselves the traditions of all the great peoples who enslaved them. But in any case they were led by the Lord.
"The Lord took man and set him in the midst of the garden, to tend it. " It was all very well saying "tend it," "cultivate the garden," but it would have been very difficult for Adam to cultivate a garden 3,000 miles long. Perhaps he had helpers. It is another chance for the commentators to exercise their gifts of divination . . . as they do with the rivers.
"Eat not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. " It is difficult to think that there was a tree which taught good and evil ; as there are pear trees and peach trees. One asks why God did not wish man to know good from evil.
Would not the opposite wish (if one dare say so) appear more worthy of God, and much more needful to man? It seems to our poor reason that God might have ordered him to eat a good deal of this fruit, but one must submit one's reason and conclude that obe- dience to God is the proper course for us.
"If you eat of the fruit you shall die. "
Yet Adam ate, and did not die in the least; they say he lived another nine centuries. Several "Fathers" have
? 272 INSTIGATIONS
considered all this as an allegory. Indeed, one may say that other animals do not know that they die, but that man knows it through his reason. This reason is the tree of knowledge which makes him foresee his finish. This explanation may be more reasonable, but we do not dare to pronounce on it.
"The Lord said also: It is not good that man should bealone,letusmakehimanhelpmateliketohim. " One expects that the Lord is going to give him a woman, but first he brings up all the beasts. This may be the trans- position of some copyist.
"And the name which Adam gave to each animal is its realname. " Ananimal'srealnamewouldbeonewhich designated all the qualifications of its species, or at least the principal traits, but this does not exist in any lan- guage. There are certain imitative words, cock and cuckoo, and alali in Greek, etc. Moreover, if Adam had known the real names and therefore the properties of the animals, he must have already eaten of the tree of knowledge; or else it would seem that God need not have forbidden him the tree, since he already knew more than the Royal Society, or the Academy.
Observe that this is the first time Adam is named in Genesis. The first man according to the Brahmins was Adimo, son of the earth. Adam and Eve mean the same thing in Phcenician, another indication that the holy spirit fell in with the received ideas.
"WhenAdamwasasleep, etc. , . . . rib . . . madea woman. " The Lord, in the preceding chapter, had al- ready created them male and female ; why should he take a rib out of the man to make a woman already existing? We are told that the author announces in one place whatheexplainsinanother. Wearetoldthatthisalle- gory shows woman submitted to her husband. Many
? GENESIS 273
people have believed on the strength of these verses that men have one rib less than women, but this is an heresy and anatomy shows us that a woman is no better provided with ribs than her husband.
"Now the serpent was the most subtle of beasts," etc. , "he said to the woman," etc.
There is nowhere the least mention of the devil or a devil. All is physical. The serpent was considered not only the subtlest of all beasts by all oriental nations ; he wasalsobelievedimmortal. TheChaldeanshadafable about a fight between God and a serpent ; it is preserved byPherecides. Origencitesitinhissixthbookagainst Celsus. They carried snakes in the feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians attributed a sort of divinity to the ser- pent, as Eusebius tells us in his "Evangelical Prepara- tions," book I, chapter X. In India and Arabia, and in China, the serpent was the symbol of life; the Chinese emperors before Moses wore the serpent sign on their breasts.
Eve is not surprised at the serpent's talking to her. Animalsarealwaystalkingintheoldstories; thuswhen Pilpai and Locman make animals talk no one is ever surprised.
All this tale seems physical and denuded of allegory. It even tells us the reason why the serpent who ramped before this now crawls on its belly, and why we always try to destroy it (at least so they say) ; precisely as we are told in all ancient metamorphoses why the crow, who was white, is now black, why the owl stays at home in the daytime, etc. But the "Fathers" have believed it an alle- gory manifest and respectable, and it is safest to believe
them.
"I will multiply your griefs and your pregnancies, ye
shall bring forth children with grief, ye shall be beneath
? 274
INSTIGATIONS
thepowerofthemanandheshallruleoveryou. " One asks why the multiplication of pregnancies is a punish- ment. It was on the contrary a very great blessing, and especially for the Jews. The pains of childbirth are alarming only for delicate women; those accustomed to work are brought to bed very easily, especially in hot cli- mates. Ontheotherhand,animalssometimessufferin littering, and even die of it. As for the superiority of man over woman, this is the quite natural result of his bodily and intellectual forces. The male organs are gen- erally more capable of consecutive effort, more fit for manual and intellectual tasks. But when the woman has fist or wit stronger than those of her husband she rules the roost, and the man is submitted to woman. This is true, but before the original sin there may have been neither pain nor submission.
"God made them tunics of skin. "
This passage proves very nicely that the Jews believed in a corporal god. A Rabbi named Eliezer has written that God covered Adam and Eve with the skin of the tempter serpent; Origen claims that the "tunic of skin" was a new flesh, a new body which God made for man, but one should have more respect for the texj:.
"And the Lord said 'Behold Adam, who is become like one of us. ' " It seems that the Jews at first admired sev- eral gods. It is considerably more difficult to make out what they mean by the word God, Eloim. Several com- mentators state that this phrase, "one of us," means the Trinity, but there is no question of the Trinity in the Bible. *
* The reader will remember in Lander's Chinese dialogues, when the returned mandarin is telling the Emperor's children about England, there is one place where they burst into giggles "because they had been taught some arithmetic. "
? GENESIS 275
The Trinity is not a composite of several gods, it is the same god tripled ; the Jews never heard tell of a god in three persons. By these words "like unto us" it is prob- ablethattheJewsmeantangels,Eloim. Forthisreason various rash men of learning have thought that the book was not written until a time when the Jews had adopted a belief in inferior gods, but this view is condemned. *
"The Lord set him outside the garden of delights, that he might dig in the earth. " Yet some say that God had put him in the garden, in order that he might cultivate it. If gardener Adam merely became laborer Adam, he was not so much the worse off. This solution of the diffi- culty does not seem to us sufficiently serious. It would be better to say that God punished Adam's disobedience by banishing him from his birthplace.
Certain over-temerarious commentators say that the whole of the story refers to an idea once common to all men,i. e. ,thatpasttimeswerebetterthanpresent. Peo- ple have always bragged of the past in order to run down the present. Men overburdened with work have imag- ined that pleasure is idleness, not having had wit enough to conceive that man is never worse off than when he has nothing to do. Men seeing themselves not infrequently miserable forged an idea of a time when all men were happy. Itisasiftheyhadsaid,onceuponatimenotree withered, no beast fell sick, no animal devoured another, the spiders did not catch flies. Hence the ideal of the Golden Age, of the egg of Arimana, of the serpent who stole the secret of eternal life from the donkey, of the combat of Typhon and Osiris, of Ophionee and the gods,
of Pandora's casket, and all these other old stories, some- times very ingenious and never, in the least way, instruc-
*The reader is referred to our heading: "Subject to au- thority".
? 276 INSTIGATIONS
tive. But we should believe that the fables of other na- tions are imitation of Hebrew history, since we still have the Hebrew history and the history of other savage peo- ples is for the most part destroyed. Moreover, the wit- nesses in favor of Genesis are quite irrefutable.
"And he set before the garden of delight a cherubin with a turning and flaming sword to keep guard over the gateway to the tree of life. " The word "kerub" means bullock. A bullock with a burning sword is an odd sight atadoorway. ButtheJewshaverepresentedangelsas bulls and as sparrow hawks, despite the prohibition to makegravenimages. Obviouslytheygotthesebullsand hawks from Egyptians who imitated all sorts of things, and who worshipped the bull as the symbol of agriculture andthehawkasthesymbolofwinds. Probablythetale is an allegory, a Jewish allegory, the kerub means "na- ture. " A symbol made of a bull's body, a man's head and a hawk's wings.
"The Lord put his mark upon Cain. "
"What a Lord ! " say the incredulous. He accepts Abel's offering, rejects that of the elder brother, without giving any trace of a reason. The Lord provided the cause of the first brotherly enmity. This is a moral instruction, most truly, a lesson to be learned from all ancient fables, to wit, that scarcely had the race come into existence before one brother assassinated another, but what ap- pears to the wise of this world, contrary to all justice, contrary to all the common sense principles, is that God has eternally damned the whole human race, and has slaughtered his own son, quite uselessly, for an apple, and that he has pardoned a fratricide. Did I say "par- doned"? He takes the criminal under his own protec- tion. He declares that any one who avenges the murder of Abel shall be punished with seven fold the punishment
? GENESIS
277
inflicted on Cain. He puts on him his sign as a safe- guard. The impious call the story both execrable and absurd. It is the delirium of some unfortunate Israelite, who wrote these inept infamies in imitation of stories so abundant among the neighboring Syrians. This insen- sate Hebrew attributed his atrocious invention to Moses, atatimewhennothingwasrarerthanbooks. Destiny, which disposes of all things, has preserved his work till our day; scoundrels have praised it, and idiots have be- lieved. Thus say the horde of theists, who while ador-
ing God, have been so rash as to condemn the Lord God of Israel, and who judge the actions of the Eternal Be- ing by the rules of our imperfect ethics, and our errone- ous justice. They admit a god but submit god to our laws. Let us guard against such temerity, and let us once again learn to respect what lies beyond our compre- hension. Let us cry out "O Altitudo ! " with all our strength.
"The Gods, Eloim, seeing that the daughters of men were fair, took for spouses those whom they chose. '' This flight of imagination is also common to all the na- tions. There is no race, except perhaps the Chinese,* which has not recorded gods getting young girls with child. Corporeal gods come down to look at their do- main, they see our young ladies and take the best for themselves; childrenproducedinthiswayarebetterthan other folks' children; thus Genesis does not omit to say
* In Fenollosa's notes on Kutsugen's ode to "Sir in the Clouds," I am unable to make out whether the girl is more than a priestess. She bathes in hot water made fragrant by boiling orchids in it, she washes her hair and binds iris into it, she puts on the dress of flowery colors, and the god illimitable in his brilliance descends ; she continues her attention to her toil. et, in very reverent manner. ? P.
? 278 INSTIGATIONS
that this commerce bred giants. Once again the book is in key with vulgar opinion.
"And I will pour the water floods over the earth. "
I would note here that St. Augustin (City of God, No. 8) says, "Maximum illud diluvium graeca nee latina tiovit historia. " Neither Greek nor Latin history takes note of this very great flood. In truth, they knew only Deu- calion's and Ogyges' in Greece. These were regarded a:s universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but were totally unknown in Eastern Asia. St. Augustin is not in error when he says history makes no mention thereof.
"God said to Noah : I will make an agreement with you and with your seed after you, and with all the ani- mals. " Godmakeanagreementwithanimals! Theun- believers will exclaim: "What a contract! " But if he make an alliance with man, why not with the animals ? What nice feeling, there is something quite as divine in this sentiment as in the most metaphysical thought. Moreover, animals feel better than most men think. It is apparently in virtue of this agreement that St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers, and hares, "Sing, sister hoppergrass, brouse brother rabbit. " But what were the terms of the treaty ? That all the animals should devour each other ; that they should live on our flesh ; and we on theirs ; that after hav- ing eaten all we can we should exterminate all the rest, and that we should only omit the devouring of men stran-
gled with our own hands. If there was any such pact it was presumably made with the devil.
Probably this passage is only intended to show that God is in equal degree master of all things that breathe. This pact could only have been a command; it is called "alliance" merely by an "extension of the word's mean- ing. " One should not quibble over mere terminology.
? GENESIS
279
but worship the spirit, and go back to the time when they wrote this work which is scandal to the weak, but quite edifying to the strong.
"And I will put my bow in the sky, and it shall be a sign of our pact. " Note that the author does not say "I have put" but "I will put my bow"; this shows that in common opinion the bow had not always existed. It is a phenomenon of necessity caused by the rain, and they give it as a supernatural manifestation that the worldshallnevermorebecoveredwithwater. Itisodd that they should choose a sign of rain as a promise that one shall not be drowned. But one may reply to this: when in danger of inundations we may be reassured by seeing a rainbow.
"Now the Lord went down to see the city which the children of Adam had builded, and he said, behold a people with only one speech. They have begun this and won't quit until it is finished. Let us go down and confound their language, so that no man may understand hisneighbor. " Notemerelythatthesacredauthorstill conforms to vulgar opinion. He always speaks of Grod as of a man who informs himself of what is going on, who wants to see with his eyes what is being done on his estate, and who calls his people together to determine a course of action.
"And Abraham, having arrayed his people (there were of them three hundred and eighteen), fell upon the five kings and slew them and pursued them even to Hoba on the left side of Damas. " From the south side of the lake of Sodom to Damas is 24 leagues, and they still had to cross Liban and anti-Liban. Unbelievers exult oversuchtremendousexaggeration. ButsincetheLord favored Abraham there is no exaggeration.
"And that evening two angels came into Sodom, etc. "
? 28o INSTIGATIONS
The history of the two angels whom the Sodomites wanted to ravish is perhaps the most extraordinary whichantiquityhasproduced. Butwemustremember that all Asia believed in incubi and succubse demons, and that moreover these angels were creatures more perfect than man, and that they were probably much better look- ing, and lit more desires in a jaded, corrupt race than common men would have excited. Perhaps this part of the story is only a figure of rhetoric to express the horrible lewdness of Sodom and of Gomorrah. We offer this solution to savants with the most profound self-mistrust.
As for Lot who offered his two daughters to the Sodomites in lieu of the angels, and Lot's wife metamor- phosed into the saline image, and all the rest of the story, what can one say of it? The ancient fable of Cinyra and Myrrha has some relation to Lot's incest with his daughters, the adventure of Philemon and Baucis is not without its points of comparison with that of the two angels appearing to Lot and his wife. As for the pillar of salt, I do not know what it compares with, perhaps with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?
A number of savants think with Newton and the learned Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had learned reading and writing, and that all these tales are imitation of Syrian fable.
But it is sufficient for us that it is all Holy Scripture; we therefore revere it without searching in it for any- thing that is not the work of the Holy Spirit. We should remember, at all times, that these times are not our times, and we should not fail to add our word to that of so many great men who have declared that the Old Testament is true history, and that everything in- vented by all the rest of the universe is mere fable.
? GENESIS 281
Some savants have pretended that one should remove from the canonical books all incredible matters which might be a stumbling block to the feeble, but it is said that these savants were men of corrupt heart and that they ought to be burned, and that it is impossible to be an honest man unless you believe that the Sodomites desired to ravish the angels. This is the reasoning of a species of monster who wishes to rule over wits.
It is true that several celebrated church fathers have had the prudence to turn all these tales into allegory, like the Jews, and Philo in especial. Popes still more prudent desired to prevent the translation of these books into the everyday tongue, for fear men should be led to pass judgment on what was upheld for their adoration.
One ought surely to conclude that those who perfectly understand this work should tolerate those who do not understand it, for if these latter do not understand it, it is not their fault ; also those who do not understand it should tolerate those who understand it most fully.
Savants, too full of their knowledge, have claimed that Moses could not possibly have written the book of Genesis. One of their reasons is that in the story of Abraham, the patriarch pays for his wife's funeral plot
in coined money, and that the king of Gerare gives a thousand pieces of silver to Sarah when he returns her, after having stolen her for her beauty in the seventy- fifth year of her age. They say that, having consulted authorities, they find that there was no coined money in thosedays. Butitisquiteclearthatthisispurechicane on their part, since the Church has always believed mostfirmlythatMosesdidwritethePentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts raised by the disciples of Aben- Hesra and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of the comptroller-general Silhouette, in
? 282 INSTIGATIONS
his book, now very rare, entitled "Conjectures on Gene- sis," adds new objections, unsolvable to human wisdom; but not to humble submissive piety. The savants dare to contradict every line, the simple revere every line. Guard against falling into the misfortune of trusting our human reason, be contrite in heart and in spirit.
"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the kingofGeraretookhertohim. " Weconfess,aswehave said in our essay on Abraham, that Sarah was then ninety years old; that she had already been kidnapped by one King of Egypt; and that a king of this same desert Gerare later kidnapped the wife of Abraham's son Isaac. We have also spoken of the servant Agar, by whom Abraham had a son, and of how Abraham treated them both. One knows what delight unbelievers take in these stories ; with what supercilious smiles they con- siderthem; howtheysetthestoryofAbimelechandthis same wife of Abraham's (Sarah) whom he passed off as his sister, above the "looi nights" and also that of an- other Abimelech in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also passed off as his sister. One can not too often reiterate that the fault of all these studious critics lies in their persistent endeavour to bring all these things into accord
with our feeble reason and to judge ancient Arabs as they would judge the French court or the English.
"The soul of Sichem, son of King Hemor, cleaved to the soul of Dinah, and he charmed his sadness with her tender caresses, and he went to Hemor his father, and said unto him : Give me this woman for wife. " Here the savants are even more refractory. What! a king's son marry a vagabond's daughter, Jacob her father loaded with presents! The king receives into his city these wandering robbers, called patriarchs ; he has the incredi- ble and incomprehensible kindness to get himself circum-
? GENESIS 283
cised, he and his son, his court and his people, in order to condescend to the superstition of this little tribe which didnotownahalfleagueofland!
