m tyrants, he should
recover the rights of nature, and thence resulted new disorders. Smitten
with an imaginary world, man despised that of nature. For chimerical
hopes, he neglected realities. His life began to appear a troublesome
journey--a painful dream; his body a prison, the obstacle to his
felicity; and the earth, a place of exile and of pilgrimage, not worthy
of culture. Then a holy indolence spread over the political world;
the fields were deserted, empires depopulated, monuments neglected and
deserts multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism, combining
their operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation and ruin.

Thus agitated by their own passions, men, whether collectively or
individually taken, always greedy and improvident, passing from slavery
to tyranny, from pride to baseness, from presumption to despondency,
have made themselves the perpetual instruments of their own misfortunes.

These, then, are the principles, simple and natural, which regulated
the destiny of ancient states. By this regular and connected series of
causes and effects, they rose or fell, in proportion as the physical
laws of the human heart were respected or violated; and in the course
of their successive changes, a hundred different nations, a hundred
different empires, by turns humbled, elevated, conquered, overthrown,
have repeated for the earth their instructive lessons. Yet these lessons
were lost for the generations which have followed! The disorders in
times past have reappeared in the present age! The chiefs of the nations
have continued to walk in the paths of falsehood and tyranny!--the
people to wander in the darkness of superstition and ignorance!

Since then, continued the Genius, with renewed energy, since the
experience of past ages is lost for the living--since the errors of
progenitors have not instructed their descendants, the ancient examples
are about to reappear; the earth will see renewed the tremendous scenes
it has forgotten. New revolutions will agitate nations and empires;
powerful thrones will again be overturned, and terrible catastrophes
will again teach mankind that the laws of nature and the precepts of
wisdom and truth cannot be infringed with impunity.

CHAPTER XII.

LESSONS OF TIMES PAST REPEATED ON THE PRESENT.

Thus spoke the Genius. Struck with the justice and coherence of his
discourse, assailed with a crowd of ideas, repugnant to my habits yet
convincing to my reason,