ome madrigals
for his mistress; dedicate a book on geography to his door-keeper, you
will be well-received; enlighten mankind, you will be exterminated.

Descartes was forced to leave his country, Gassendi was calumniated,
Arnauld dragged out his days in exile; every philosopher is treated as
the prophets were among the Jews.

Who would believe that in the eighteenth century a philosopher was
dragged before the secular tribunals, and treated as impious by the
tribunals of arguments, for having said that men could not practise the
arts if they had no hands? I do not despair that soon the first person
who is so insolent as to say that men could not think if they had no
heads will be immediately condemned to the galleys; "for," some young
graduate will say to him, "the soul is a pure spirit, the head is only
matter; God can put the soul in the heel, as well as in the brain;
therefore I denounce you as impious."

The greatest misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the
object of his confreres' jealousy, the victim of the cabal, the despised
of the men of power; but of being judged by fools. Fools go far
sometimes, particularly when bigotry is added to ineptitude, and to
ineptitude the spirit of vengeance. The further great misfortune of a
man of letters is that ordinarily he is unattached. A bourgeois buys
himself a small position, and there he is backed by his colleagues. If
he suffers an injustice, he finds defenders at once. The man of letters
is unsuccoured; he resembles a flying-fish; if he rises a little, the
birds devour him; if he dives, the fish eat him.

Every public man pays tribute to malignity, but he is paid in honours
and gold.

_METAMORPHOSIS_, _METEMPSYCHOSIS_

Is it not very natural that all the metamorphoses with which the world
is covered should have made people imagine in the Orient, where
everything has been imagined, that our souls passed from one body to
another? An almost imperceptible speck becomes a worm, this worm becomes
a butterfly; an acorn transforms itself into an oak; an egg into a bird;
water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ash;
everything in nature appears, in fine, metamorphosed. Soon people
attributed to souls, which were regarded as light figures, what they saw
in more gross bodies. The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most
ancient dogma of the known universe, and it still reigns in a large part
of India and China.

_MILT